New found love for IoT

As an EE who has worked on multiple facets of microcontrollers for longer than I care to admit, I thought that IoT (Internet-of-Things) will finally make microcontrollers sexy. Historically, microcontrollers have been relegated to performing the dirty work of task oriented compute - running inside washing machines, factories, and even spacecrafts. Hundreds of millions of units sold per annum easily - but no one knows or cares. So I switched to EDA (electronic design automation), to be closer to SW and away from HW.

My interest in IoT revived when I joined Oracle to promote their supply chain cloud emerging technologies group - including IoT. Looking at IoT from the enterprise angle made it much more attractive - almost sexy. Combining OT (operational technology) data with IT (information technology - such as ERP) suddenly propelled IoT into the minds of business leaders (in my case, supply chain business leaders) instead of  gEEky embedded controller guys. At Oracle, IoT had its own apps : Asset Monitoring, Fleet Management, Worker Safety, and Manufacturing. Doesn't take much imagination to know why IoT will help. The magic that Oracle brought to IoT is that we spent time to make the IoT apps attractive : status, control, analytics and AI are all natively shown. It was almost sexy - but not enough to see a strong demand. Perhaps we were talking to the wrong audience. Perhaps we were too expensive (Oracle treats IoT as a SaaS - so a subscription is needed). Perhaps the brand did not resonate. So again, I left IoT.

But what is rekindling my interest in IoT again? Home automation. Specifically a garage door app. 

With Chamberlain "myQ" garage door app kit, IoT can digitize the old tired "analog" world of a garage door, and can directly provide consumers with:

1) peace of mind : How many times have you wondered (in horror) if your garage door is opened or closed? Even if you are just upstairs to the garage, that trek downstairs to check on the garage seems so unnecessary.  

2) security : You want control over the garage door - when to close it, when to open it. From anywhere. You can even set a rule to close the garage automatically at 11PM.

3) insights : Right now, the data this provides is fun. But in the future, as you give others access to your garage (tenants, Airbnb, Amazon delivery, kids), insights will be more than just fun.

4) convenience: Voice control. Turning on the hallway lamp when the garage door opens. Lots of things can be triggered just by simply opening or closing a garage door.

Is IoT now sexy? Maybe not. But definitely not in buried in a washing machine.