Drupal and the Internet of Things

Out of all the devices and appliances you use everyday how many have some kind of sensor or measurement mechanism that would be useful to monitor once connected to the internet? Quite a few I hear you think.

Meet the Internet of Things

Besides the explosive growth of smartphones and tablets usage, the years ahead will see more and more appliances, devices and 'things' connect to the internet and exchange data with web platforms. Web platforms? Is this not what Drupal is? Exactly! The Drupal ecosystem seems to have all the ingredients to serve as a platform for this new wave of devices and data streams but is it the right match?

Coming to an appliance near you

If you take your fridge for example, you set it to a certain temperature and its function is to maintain this. But what if your fridge is connected to the internet, has an API and could tell your Drupal website what temperature it's running at and you are able to alter the temperature or find out if you're running low on eggs? This is just one simple example and the same can be applied to other appliances/domotica/'insert your thing here' that all send data to your Drupal site and provide it on your IoT dashboard. That would be cool right?

Combine this with the community aspect of the Drupal software and all of a sudden it's incredibly exciting to think about sharing your usage with others. Some great examples of this approach are the Smart Citizen Project and Flukso.

It's Cool to be Idle

What if your fridge has redundant computing capacity, what could it use it for? Could this be served up to its fellow Internet of Things buddies or be made available to other distributed computing platforms such as SETI @ home?

And what if the redundant computing capacity of these cloud connected appliances could be aggregated and made available for real-time applications such as database driven websites? This will give the term 'server cluster' a whole new meaning!

Bringing it all together

So, how are we going to make Drupal IoT friendly? Are there modules out there already? Should there be a Drupal Internet of Things distribution? Do we need an App or is Phonegap better for catering for mobile devices?

We will go through these and other questions in this crossover between Presentation, BoF and Lab session. Since the topic covers many aspects of Drupal this session aims to bring together Coders, Site builders, DevOps, Front-end devs and Business heads alike to explore, come up with practical solutions that prepare Drupal for these new 'users' and use cases. Do you not see yourself in any of the groups mentioned but feel you can contribute to this session then please do come along.

If time permits a prototype Drupal IoT site may even be possible!