Tech Wiz on Edge Devices…

A picture of the boat on land, waiting for next spring. It actually, the boat looks sad to me right now. The reason however for sharing the picture has to do more with the overall continuation of the IoT discussion I’ve been sharing. Boats have some remote sensors including Radar and Sonar.  They are not, however, sensors that require connection to another system for processing. The IoT devices know as Edge computing devices mix the processing power locally with the remotely connected sensor. This would be devices like Volcanos monitoring, flood monitoring, traffic systems including traffic cameras and speed cameras as well as some other devices.

If we consider the concept of edge computing, the number and types of sensors are huge. One of ht most interesting ones I’ve seen discussed is the air sensor systems. These include systems designed to measure air, noise and other atmosphere information in cities around the world. Why would that matter? One of the interesting trends noticed in the world of healthcare is the reality of neighborhoods, as in where you live may impact your health. The edge sensor systems were designed to begin the process of determining what is risky. For example, there are studies done in major cities around the world that have found some neighborhoods have huge deltas in average lifespan.

There are many factors beyond air quality (education level etc.), but air quality is one of the impacts. There are other studies being done overall that use the concept of edge computing. Again the systems are designed to process information on the device is then pushed to the end user, after the local processing is complete. It allows a broader distribution of both processing and information. The reality of the information however, is the capacity of the networks today. The more bandwidth that is available, the more information that can be moved between the user and the edge device. The other component is the reality of the network and how it allows the data to flow. That is a topic for another post. For now, look up the next time you are out, how many cameras do you see?