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Last week, Apiumhub attended the IOT Solutions World Congress that was held at Fira Barcelona on the 16-18th of September. During the conference, there were various Keynotes sessions that opened up the eyes of visitors on the possible changes of different industries as the Manufacturing industry, Transportation, Healthcare and others.
We also had the opportunity to explore innovative Internet of Things projects of startups and of the most Innovative leading companies. Before mentioning some of the amazing projects we saw, for those of you who are not sure of what IoT means, here’s a small explanation: IoT stands for the Internet of Things, which represents the network of “things” that are connected to the Internet and that we can control remotely in order to get an integration that can improve efficiency and that basically creates a relationship between people & things and between things & things.
It’s a way of connecting billions of devices, and when we talk about devices, we mean any sort of device, going from trains to payment terminals to mirror or even elevators.
Although there were many extremely interesting projects, we will only mention three of them.
MICROSOFT AZURE IOT SOLUTIONS
With Microsoft Azure IoT solutions, businesses connect their assets and people. That helps them when it comes to managing and analyzing their “things” in an easier way. The main advantages are that efficiency is increased and operational performance is higher, which obviously implies saving money and being able to do more.
An example would be a trucking company that would basically be able to improve the entire transport flow by sending data wirelessly from the trucks to the system. This would permit to get the data from all the trucks in real time and therefore analyze them and improve the decision-making process.
GE INDUSTRIAL INTERNET SOLUTIONS
As Microsoft Azure, GE Predix is a cloud service provider that is targeting the emerging market of IoT solutions & serivces. GE offers more than 40 Industrial Internet solutions; businesses can develop apps that will be used in real-time to provide necessary information to get more efficiency and a faster decision-making process.
An extremely interesting example here is the AgileTrac used in hospitals. As many times equipment are left in corridors once the staff is done with it, and as it is very often difficult to know where it is, specially in a 10 floor building, you can use the AgileTrac which tracks down all the connected equipment. Another functionality could be an electronic wristband for patients. It gives an overview of the hospital; the staff is instantly notified about who’s waiting for a bed, who’s out of surgery, who’s ready to go home, etc. and that for example helps getting people in the emergency room quicker.
VODAFONE MACHINE TO MACHINE
Vodafone provides M2M solutions that basically connect any machine or device to their mobile network anywhere in the world and in many different industries as the automotive industry, consumer electronics, manufacturing, etc.
Admirror is an advertising mirror that is known in the Netherlands because it is quite innovative. The company has been growing and the demand has been increasing, which is why they required the help of Vodafone for an M2M solution. To change adverts on a mirror, the task had to be done manually, so to make scalability possible and to reduce costs and time, Vodafone changed the process of updating adverts, to a remote solution. In fact, the communication now flows through 3G networks and a SIM card that is built-in the mirrors.
