Last week in our Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things series, we looked at barcode scanning and RFID in the next generation iPhone. We expect to see Apple and Android battling it out for both barcode and RFID supremacy this year.
Another key technology in the Internet of Things - where everyday objects are endowed with Internet connectivity - is sensors. In fact we've seen the most activity so far in the Internet of Things due to sensors. So in this post we explore how mobile phones and sensors are mixing; and what to expect from this in 2010.
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Last year we wrote a lot about sensors and discovered that there are two common scenarios for sensors + mobile phones:
1) Everyday objects with sensors pumping out data on things like temperature, noise and activity; the mobile phone reads and analyzes this data.
2) The phone is used as a sensor itself. For example the iPhone has a built-in accelerometer, which is basically a motion detector.
This is used for game control and also for re-sizing your iPhone display from portrait to landscape. The iPhone also has a microphone (which can be used as a noise sensor), a proximity sensor, and an ambient light sensor.
iPhone as Sensor
A good example of scenario 2 is WideNoise, an iPhone application that samples decibel noise levels and displays the data on an interactive map. WideNoise is essentially a sound sensor, using the iPhone's microphone.
You can take a sound reading on WideNoise and, if you so desire, share that with the community. I must admit that I haven't found too much practical use for this app yet. However one of the use cases cited is checking it when house-hunting, to assess the average noise levels of the neighborhood. It's one of those apps that will become more useful the more data is added to it by the community - but we all know that's a hard thing to achieve for a young startup.
Mobile Phones Reading Sensor Data
Sensors are rapidly growing as a source of data on the Web. A corollary is that sensor networks are an enormous opportunity for some of the big tech companies. In November we wrote about HP's CeNSE project, which aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth." CeNSE a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of what HP calls "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors."
According to HP Labs, CeNSE sensors will enable real-time data collection, analysis and better decision making. And what will be a key tool for doing all of that? You guessed it, the mobile phone. Imagine for example getting a real-time update on traffic conditions on your mobile phone, via sensors on a major stretch of highway.
Those are the two main ways that sensors and mobile phones are mixing currently. Let us know in the comments if you have a favorite mobile phone app that outputs or inputs sensor data, or you would like to share another use case.
Image credits: seizethedave; raneko
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