Everyone thinks IoT devices are a new concept, but the first IoT device was made in the early ’80s. Some computer science students developed a way to track whether or not a vending machine was empty. It was internet-connected and allowed anyone to check its status
I wish I had this when I was in uni over 10 years ago. I’m not sure what happened from the ’80s to 2010 but this didn’t exist on any vending machine I had ever seen. We used to do late nights and the machines were frequently sitting empty, to our disappointment. I used to talk to the owner of the machines near my uni labs and they would just visit each machine once a week and re-stock manually. Imagine how much time and effort this technology could have saved in 40 years if it was implemented and commoditised.
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