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Comment by tristanj | Hacker News Reader

It sure sounds like the definition of what is IoT has changed since the last time I checked. I always thought IoT was about attaching sensors to objects in daily life, such as in clothing, appliances, food packages, doors, etc. Building sensors along a canal to me sounds like a regular surveillance network.

The project is still innovative though.

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> It sure sounds like the definition of what is IoT has changed since the last time I checked...

It’s almost like some kind of system for supervisory control and data acquisition...

IoT terminology gets used for a lot of different things, including fairly traditional SCADA. It does tend to be different in degree than historically--more sensors, more analysis, more real-time control, but it's certainly different from wearables, SmartHome, or even the broader set of sensors that go by things like smart cities.

I'm going to start calling my PLCs IoT devices from here on out.

That's a mouthful. There should be an acronym...

They solved the problem of connectivity but there are also many other problems many related to the data they receive from the sensors. It is probably not enough to simply store or monitor this data. Analyzing such amounts of data could be the next challenge.

its not exactly high data rates we are talking about is it

There's an entire section of IIoT, the Industrial Internet of Things that most people don't know or think.

I'm guessing they called it IoT so more people would click on the title.

You've got that backwards. Things (i.e. things other than general purpose computers) were connected to the internet in industrial settings long before they were in homes.

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