I can't tell if I am about to accuse you of failure of vision, but if I end up doing so, it isn't intended in an mean-spirited way.
I'm an engineer. I build things. If somebody needs a motor or a control system or a marijuana distiller or a laser printer postscript engine kanji-to-scanalizer, that's what I get hired to do.
Recently, I was hired by a residential-to-light-commercial construction engineering company. They get plots and plats and architectural designs and collect their own soil samples and have to generate slabs and framing plans. Pretty mundane, but a lot of their process is done by hand, and they wanted to automate it.
During the process, it becomes apparent that a big component is soil - on the foundation. 30 year insurance plans on how much the foundation gets distorted by ... well, in some areas, ... rainfall.
It turned out (this is a few years ago now, so now we have data) that moister causes expansion and contraction. That causes the foundation to flex and fail. It also turns out that, one can measure the flexing with sensors, report back to the data-munging mother ship, and tell the sprinker system to water more or water less and ... save foundation cracks.
Now, yes, I know that this is nothing more than adding WiFi for ~1$, as you say. But it's a pretty big business value that works all up and down the value chain for how 30 year costs and risks and layoffs get allocated for entire subdivisions. I guess I'm not disagreeing with you - I guess I'm saying that, I agree, but, that's still a lot of value.
I can't tell if I am about to accuse you of failure of vision, but if I end up doing so, it isn't intended in an mean-spirited way.
I'm an engineer. I build things. If somebody needs a motor or a control system or a marijuana distiller or a laser printer postscript engine kanji-to-scanalizer, that's what I get hired to do.
Recently, I was hired by a residential-to-light-commercial construction engineering company. They get plots and plats and architectural designs and collect their own soil samples and have to generate slabs and framing plans. Pretty mundane, but a lot of their process is done by hand, and they wanted to automate it.
During the process, it becomes apparent that a big component is soil - on the foundation. 30 year insurance plans on how much the foundation gets distorted by ... well, in some areas, ... rainfall.
It turned out (this is a few years ago now, so now we have data) that moister causes expansion and contraction. That causes the foundation to flex and fail. It also turns out that, one can measure the flexing with sensors, report back to the data-munging mother ship, and tell the sprinker system to water more or water less and ... save foundation cracks.
Now, yes, I know that this is nothing more than adding WiFi for ~1$, as you say. But it's a pretty big business value that works all up and down the value chain for how 30 year costs and risks and layoffs get allocated for entire subdivisions. I guess I'm not disagreeing with you - I guess I'm saying that, I agree, but, that's still a lot of value.