Top 10 Innovative IoT Connected Devices

Gartner research suggests that there will be 6.4 billion connected devices in 2016, and that figure will hit 20.8 billion by 2020. Here are our top 10 innovative devices.

The IoT Oil Spill

If big data was described as the new oil ten years ago, then the IoT has created an oil spill. EMC² estimates the current Digital Universe (DU) at 4.4ZB, with 2% of that data coming from connected devices. They go on to depict that as enough to fill a stack of 128GB iPad Air tablets 2/3 of the way to the moon and back (157,674 miles). With the sheer amount of data being created, you have to pay attention. Here are our top 10 connected devices.

1.  Imagination Technologies Creator Ci40 Creator Kit

Starting as a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, this innovative kit features cloud infrastructure, a high-performance low power microcomputer, and support for IPV6, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and onboard memory. This kit allows entrepreneurs to quickly prototype IoT projects.

2. Apple Research Kit

Apple recently unveiled Research Kit, which has an open-source framework that allows medical researchers to quickly create apps to revolutionize the healthcare industry. Researchers have already developed apps to help people with cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, Parkinson’s, asthma and diabetes.

3. Connected Cattle

In the IoT infographic referenced in this article you will see that, indeed, there are IoT connected cows. The Dutch Startup “Sparked” measures when a cow is sick or pregnant and sensors on each cow transmit over 200MB of data per year.

4. Delphi Connect Vehicle Diagnostics

This sensor plugs into any car with a ODB 2 port and features the ability to lock and unlock doors, start your engine, and set up “geofences” that send alerts if the car goes outside of the parameter. Watch out rebellious teenagers!

5. Trackdot

Have you ever lost your luggage and been scared to check your bags from then on? Trackdot aims to solve this problem by automatically tracking your luggage at every stop through local cellular networks. It won’t save your luggage from being misplaced, but at least you will be able to find it.

6. LifeX: Lifestyle eXplorer

Microsoft currently has a project in the works that will allow headphones to track a user’s mood based on speech, activities, heart rate and location. It will then recommend music based on their mood or where they are, further exploring the power of music and social networking.

7. Organs on Chips

Wyss institute wanted to mitigate the use of animal testing, which is expensive and emotionally tolling. Their solution is chips that mimic the behavior and responses of human organs. So far they have lung-on-a-chip, kidney-on-a-chip, bone marrow-on-a-chip, and peristalsing gut on-a-chip. They hope to integrate all of the chips into a fully functioning body system.

8. Social Virtual Reality

Mark Zuckerburg posted this video from development from a recent acquisition in which two people play ping pong in virtual reality! VR could be the next big leap in social networking, putting your friends in arm's reach from across the world.

"The craziest Oculus experience I've had recently is playing ping pong in virtual reality. You feel like you're right there with your friend even though they may be halfway around the world. And not only can you hit the ball back and forth, but you can turn gravity up and down to simulate completely different worlds -- outer space, under water and so on. In our new Toybox experience, you can pick up objects, build things and play games. This video shows a few examples of what's possible. What's really amazing is sharing these experiences with your friends. We're getting closer."

9. Smart Clothing

CuteCircuit is innovating in leaps and bounds when it comes to smart fabrics. Their technology aims to make fabrics embedded with smart LEDs that change into any color or pattern imaginable. This wouldn’t just change the fashion industry, it might even save you a few bucks since you would only need one outfit!

10. Smart Desk

This desk made by Autonomous includes a hands-free virtual assistant, reports weather, schedules meetings, and controls other connected home devices (such as Hue and Nest). It is also adjustable and learns your preferences, adjusting automatically.

Cleaning Up the Spill

The volume of data created by smart devices is hard to imagine—and quite a bit of this data is actionable. As IoT data floods databases, analyzing and integrating it is essential to the success of businesses. Progress DataDirect stays on the leading edge of technology and provides the most comprehensive, fast, secure data integration options available. Wherever your data is coming from, our enterprise solutions will meet your needs and exceed expectations.