The theme for IoT India Congress 2019 was ‘Mainstreaming the Internet of Things’. The event was organized by the Institution of Engineering and Technology which made it fitting for Mike Carr, the President of the IET to kick things off. The IET influences and encourages the global engineering community to make use of technology to build a smarter world, and the solutions showcased at the event truly reflected this.

WeMakeIoT attended four of the eight conference tracks in the two days. Each track focused on live solutions to real challenges in the industry with expert panels who first shared their experience, and then participated in the enactment of a relevant case study.

The agriculture track focused on exploring IoT based solutions to reduce agriculture produce wastage due to inefficiency. The goals are to increase money in the hands of the farmer, increase the yields per farmer and increase the shelf-life of their produce. While IoT solutions have been an enabler for larger farmers to improve their efficiency, it has not had the same effect on smaller farmers. Farmers with limited access to network coverage and monetary resources are not yet able to avail the vast benefits that IoT solutions have to offer.

The energy track at IoT India was centered on exploring IoT solutions for transmission tower monitoring. Both the technical and business aspects were discussed in detail. IoT can be used to predict the load and critical levels at towers, automation, perimeter observation and monitoring events like the accumulation of dust on tower insulators. IoT also sets the tone for value-added Artificial Intelligence solutions for analytics. The value of the energy reports generated through IoT cannot be understated.

The standards and regulatory track focused on challenges related to standardization and regulatory policies. The case study dealt with implementing standards for IoT and M2M (Machine-to-Machine) communication while developing Smart City solutions. The lack of a standardized common service layer hinders applications where cross-sector data exchange is increasingly needed. Key requirements like interoperability, security and privacy remain unaddressed.

The manufacturing track revolved around Industry 4.0 and the transition to the newest revolution. IoT can provide real-time data, meaningful insights and be an application enabler for manufacturing processes.  Security concerns and reluctance to modify existing systems remain barriers for implementation.

Day 1 of IoT India Congress came to a grand conclusion with the keynote speech by Sir Robin Saxby, who founded ‘ARM’. ARM has produced and circulated over 15 billion chipsets and microcontrollers to the global market. He gave valuable advice on how to tackle the opportunities, challenges, and uncertainties in the current market. Sir Robin’s inspirational words about how he founded the ARM empire and sustained it was the highlight of the event.