The Internet of Very Big Things

This article discusses the concept of industrial Internet, which is considered as a union of software and big machines. John Deere has created a system that combines embedded sensors, GPS antennas, and cellular communications technology to provide equipment operations data to anyone with an Internet connection. The system can even enable dealers to forecast impending maintenance issues and schedule repairs before there is a breakdown. Linking sensors to a network gives owners a way to gather data like vibration, voltage, sound, temperature, or electrical output from machines. This type of analog data, previously inaccessible or hard to measure, lets owners monitor machine health. When analog information is collected in the cloud, the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)-type scale grows exponentially and so do its uses. Industrial Internet-type applications take a supervisory control and data acquisition system to the next level.