Are You Ready For The Internet Of Things?

We all wish sometimes that things would just work – that the world around you would react to what you want, without you having to ask it. But how can you make your world a smarter place?

Take your home for example. A really ‘smart’ home will be able to regulate itself by detecting the indoor and outdoor temperature, so you never return to a freezing home in the winter and wait for everything to warm up.

There would also be no need to keep remembering to turn the lights off in every part of the house, with rooms switching themselves off if no movement is detected, or items have been on standby for a long period of time.

It would also be more secure, sending an alert if a window or door is forced open when you’re not in, or contacting the emergency services directly if it detects smoke or flames, whilst also providing ambient lighting to get you through smoke-filled rooms.

And all of this controlled via an app on your smartphone that you can access at any time to tweak to your own preference.

This may sound like wishful thinking, but is in fact an increasingly realistic view of the world created by the Internet of Things.

The world is becoming a more intelligent place as more and more devices become connected and begin talking to each other, in a bid to make sure everything just works the way it should, and in some cases, even better.

And this is only the beginning. A recent Gartner study estimated that there will be 4.9 billion ‘things’ connected to the Internet by the end of this year, a figure which will continue growing to hit 25 billion by 2020, as more and more of the world around us grows smarter.

The UK has already proved itself to be a hotbed of Internet of Things adoption, with Ofcom revealing that there are already over 40 million connected devices in the UK alone, which is forecast to grow more than eight-fold by 2022, with hundreds of millions of devices carrying out more than a billion daily data transactions.

These devices will create unbelievable amounts of data, which, when properly connected and harnessed by the cloud, may help us identify trends and uncover secrets about our everyday lives we never even knew existed.

If this sounds like too good an opportunity to miss and you want to get involved in creating the future of the Internet of Things – here is your chance.

TechWeekEurope has teamed up with Intel find talented developers or programmers who have a bright idea and now want to take it to the next level.

Our lucky winners will not only receive a full set of Intel Edison hardware and Sensor Starter kit, but will be taken to Intel’s Swindon Ignition IoT lab, where they’ll work with some of the company’s finest minds to bring their idea to fruition.

The winning ten projects will also be featured on the Intel Developer Zone website, displaying your idea to the world.

So if you think this sounds like you – click here and prepare to take on the world.