How smart buildings and IoT came together
A major component of IoT is the internet, but as I mentioned earlier, it is not always required. It began in 1962 as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In the early 1970s, it evolved into the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET).
In the 1980s, ARPANET gained support from commercial service providers to be used by the public, and from there it evolved into the internet. Basic communications for devices were mostly connected by satellites and landlines. Tim Berners -Lee proposed the framework of the World Wide Web in 1989 and that laid the foundation of the internet. Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) were introduced in 1993 with the Department of Defense providing a system of 24 satellites. Privately owned, commercial satellites were placed in orbit soon after and IIoT became much more functional.
Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) was used primarily as an inventory tracking solution and was a prerequisite for the IoT in the early 2000s. Devices were tagged and computers were used to manage, track, and inventory them. Walmart and the US Department of Defense were the first to have large-scale deployments of this inventory system. This tagging of things has evolved from RFID chips to digital watermarking, barcodes, and QR codes today.
Every item that was tagged was also given a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPV6) was implemented by major internet service providers and web companies in June of 2021. They agreed to increase the address space on the global internet by enabling this new protocol for their services and products. Based on 128-bit addressing, IPV6 can support 340 trillion addresses – plenty to last many years.
Considered to be the first IoT device – the first thing that began the IoT, John Romkey’s 1990 toaster, could be turned on and off over the internet. The toaster was wired directly to a computer since Wi-Fi did not exist yet. Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky built the Trojan Room Coffee Pot in 1993 in the University of Cambridge’s computer laboratory. A picture of the interior of the pot was uploaded to the building’s server, allowing an updated image to be viewed online three times per minute.
Transistors were introduced in the 1940s and the computer was invented in 1951. Couple these with ARPANET, mentioned earlier and introduced in the 1960s, and you now have the three components of the digital revolution. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, people started becoming more environmentally conscious. The 1970s energy crisis saw energy prices rise significantly and the green building movement was kicked off with US government legislation for eco-infrastructure.
In Chapter 2, Smart Building Operations and Controls, we will explore in more detail the evolution of various building systems, but for now, we will provide a quick summary. The term intelligent buildings was introduced in 1981 by United Technology Building Systems to refer to buildings with its HVAC systems, with a self-claim of minimal energy consumption and better building efficiency. The 1980s also introduced us to mobile phones and personal computers.
The 1980s property boom saw a shift toward intelligent buildings. There was a demand that all these new buildings be as efficient as possible. These intelligent building systems lacked connectivity, but by the early 1990s, the World Wide Web and the internet were introduced. Businesses and buildings were focused on energy-efficient buildings and digital transformation.
As the 21st century began, heavy emphasis was placed on the introduction of computerized programs that better managed HVAC systems to lower energy costs and manage a building’s operations. The term smart building was coined; however, it would take years before the first smart building was built. To this point, intelligent buildings relied on computer programs and RFID tagging systems.
For the introduction of IoT in buildings, we need to look at the sensors that were introduced and connected. Temperature, humidity, motion, gas/air, and electrical current monitoring sensors could be considered the first introduction of IoT sensors in buildings. The final step was to connect all these sensors together in an IoT network and develop software to monitor, manage, and control them.
Figure 1.1 highlights the many applications where IoT sensors and controllers are used to create a smart building.
Figure 1.1 – IoT applications in today’s commercial buildings
The introduction of IoT provides building owners and operators the opportunity to quickly transition their conventional building to a smart building by simply adding IoT sensors and devices, connectivity, and software-driven applications. But technology simply for technology’s sake should not be the objective. These must be purpose-driven to deliver beneficial outcomes for each of the many stakeholders that are reviewed in the next section.
