I’m also with Ray on this one. Were seeing a lot of connection between devices and smartphones but not a whole lot of networking to create an “Internet”.
For some device, this simple connection is enough to provide a lot. For example, new cameras that you can upload your picture to your smartphone (ok, besides the point that your phone might be a good enough camera). Audio mixing desks that can be controlled wirelessly from a phone - super useful for sound techs as they can set levels from the stage and actually understand what a singer means when he says he can’t hear himself. We’re also seeing hardware devices that use the phone to do complex setup instead of super twiddly hardware interface where you need the manual with you and you need to hold three buttons at once to access some functions…
However, I think the crux of the “Internet of Things” will be how do you get those devices to talk to each other and make useful decisions. Like how do you get your lights to suggest to you that you might want a dim colourful setting in your dining room based on the fact that you got home from work, it’s 6 o’clock, you’ve turned on music and opened your fridge and that it’s also January in New York so the Sun has already set? It’s already just a lot of work to get those devices to talk to each other never mind coming up with useful decisions. Even more complicated, how are those decisions made and how would you modify those behaviours? - What’s the UI of that going to look like !?
At this point, I feel like, at least in the short term, this “Internet of Things” might better be thought of as the rethinking of the embedded systems in everyday objects. Especially with the coming of smartphones, embedded electronics have dropped in price. We can get fairly powerful chips, really cool sensors and practical radios at very low prices. Maybe connecting my microwave to the Internet or my smartphone is completely useless but having a microwave with a microphone and humidity sensor inside that runs all kinds of complex algorithms to determine when it should stop heating my popcorn before I burn it one more time would be a meaningful advancement for humanity.