Bottom-Up IoT Innovation Thriving
From ComputerWorld UK:
I experienced some of the vitality, sophistication and breadth of activity in open hardware and associated software and comms this week at the firstCambridge Internet of Things Practitioners Night meetup.
That demonstrated how a rapid expansion of IoT enabling infrastructure is welling from the bottom-up, and that it’s just a not-too-long matter of time before high-impact applications start to appear.
Among the things that struck me talking to people at the meetup this week were:
- Bright young people are talking and engaging much more with open hardware
- There’s a mix of people of all ages and experience levels engaged in this area and across sectors
- When up against the limitations of current technologies the brightest are building from scratch. That includes operating software, designing circuits, and inventing middleware to exploit fully and efficiently the new open hardware environment
- Crowd-funding is beginning to kick in as a successful alternative to looking for angel investment or venture capital funding for open hardware innovation
- The cost of robust IoT application enablers is plummeting – with high powered Internet connectable boards and components- the nuts and bolts of IoT – costing a fraction of what the industry has become accustomed to.
- The recession is forcing young technologists to do things in new ways and come up with novel capabilities
More info here.
Libelium has officially launched today the 
