When people get introduced to the IoT world, oftentimes they try to build a project along these lines:
Connect a sensor to a microcontroller, upload the data to the cloud, and display it on some dashboard.
While such projects are good for getting started with the field, in reality,
IoT solutions are much more involved than that.
The real-world examples have a slew of additional details and considerations, such as
what business need inspires the development, is the data accurate enough, what happens if the connection is lost, should data processing happen on-device or in the cloud, how to secure the device, can the system scale 10x or 100x, and what actions should be taken once data is obtained.
Once one takes all of these into account, an IoT system starts to transform into AIoT: the systems which process information about their environment and make decisions based on that.
The issue with "connected for connected's sake"
There is one critical flaw which many entry-level IoT solutions have: they pursue connectivity for the sake of connectivity.
An example of that can be seen in statements such as
"We connected a temperature sensor to our dashboard".
But if asked "what were the results of doing so", such projects often do not have an answer.
A proper IoT or AIoT solution would have a defined goal which it tries to accomplish: for example, reduce energy bills by analysing residents' patterns in a smart apartment, automate watering based on plant conditions, or predict equipment failures in industrial settings.
Without a goal, an IoT system has no direction and cannot improve anyone's reality.
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