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Forget androids dreaming of electric sheep, your fridge is chatting with your car!

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The idea of your fridge talking to your car is not as far-fetched as you might think. Samsung already manufactures a smart fridge that allows you to order fresh groceries directly from an integrated touchscreen. You can also integrate your family calendar, check the weather and play YouTube videos. And not to be outdone, LG’s smart fridge allows you to scan the contents of your fridge, beams the data to an app on your phone and even makes shopping suggestions if you are running low! 

It’s totally conceivable that in the near future, your fridge will let your self-driving car know to stop by a store to grab some more avocados! That’s of course, when your car isn’t making restaurant reservations for you or recommending a new eatery a short drive away. As with most things, science fiction becomes science fact. 

With IoT or ‘Internet of Things’, inanimate objects or ‘things’ communicate data over the internet. The car and fridge becoming BFFs is just one example of how IoT can optimize our daily lives – The real power of IoT is its ability to drive efficiency and improve business processes through the application of data. 

A great example of IoT technology transforming a traditional industry is in gaming machines found in pubs, bars and club houses. Up until now, the pub would try out new machines on its locals and the provider would check them periodically to empty the money collected and it would be a case of trial and error, and time, to determine if they were successful or not. With IoT, every single machine in every location sends data on usage patterns including what times people play, peak days/nights, which machine types work best in each venue type and the machines themselves would send alerts when they needed to be emptied with a guide on which other machines locally could also be emptied on the same trip.

To work, this simply needs a specialist data SIM card in each machine which sends data back to HQ for analysis. With the right software, cash collection alerts and maintenance schedules can be automated along with analytics dashboards on the best performing machines and venues. This is a great example of technology making a fairly traditional business optimised and data-driven. 

Vehicle tracking is another very popular application of IoT Sim Cards, whether that’s to monitor a fleet of trucks carrying goods to see estimated delivery times in real-time or tell you how close your Uber driver is with your pizza! CCTV cameras, rather than needing miles of cable, simply have a data sim feeding images back to a central monitoring centre. 

It’s good news all round for businesses as there are plenty of platform providers who can help you build out your IoT dashboards and define how your ‘things’ will gather useful data to find efficiencies. It’s very likely someone has already built a platform for your industry which will save you time and investment in R&D and get you connected to your things even faster.

IoT is changing the way we do business and not just in terms of logistics and efficiencies, it’s making the workplace safer, improving customer service and driving revenue as products and services are delivered just in time or in some cases, just ahead of when they are needed. 

As with all technology, it’s going to be fascinating watching the pace of innovation over the next few years and I am quite happy for my things to chat to each other if it improves productivity and makes my life easier.