Philipp-Alexander Blum

IoT: The road to sustainability

How can a simple JSON file solve the IoT industry's massive e-waste problem and make devices truly interoperable?

IoT: The road to sustainability
#1about 3 minutes

The problem of unsustainable IoT devices

Major tech companies like Sonos, Apple, and John Deere create electronic waste by locking down devices and limiting repairability.

#2about 2 minutes

Taking responsibility and fighting for repair rights

Engineers must take responsibility for product lifecycles, while consumer and legal actions can force companies to adopt right-to-repair policies.

#3about 2 minutes

Building sustainable hardware with open source

Open source hardware, championed by companies like Adafruit and SparkFun, provides accessible circuit designs and PCBs to enable repair and modification.

#4about 3 minutes

Achieving interoperability with Web of Things standards

The W3C Web of Things (WoT) standard aims to solve device fragmentation by enabling different IoT devices to communicate with each other.

#5about 5 minutes

Understanding the Web of Things Thing Description

The core of WoT is the Thing Description, a JSON file that describes a device's capabilities, metadata, and API endpoints for interaction.

#6about 5 minutes

A practical demo of a WoT-enabled device

A live demo shows how to interact with an ESP32 OLED display using its Thing Description and a simple Node.js application.

#7about 8 minutes

A developer's journey from web dev to IoT

The speaker shares his career path from early hardware tinkering to web development with PHP and JavaScript, and back to embedded systems with Riot OS.

#8about 5 minutes

How to advocate for sustainability in your team

To promote sustainability, frame it as a marketing advantage, a cost-saving measure, and a necessary mindset shift to attract future talent.

#9about 8 minutes

Lessons from legacy systems and risky projects

Anecdotes from past projects reveal the risks of outdated practices in large companies, such as using local Excel files for financial trades.

#10about 5 minutes

From tinkering with PCs to open source IoT

The speaker details his hardware experience, from building PCs and using Arduino to contributing to open source IoT projects like Riot OS.

#11about 5 minutes

The future of tech: AI, IoT, and DeFi

The next five years in tech will be shaped by the convergence of AI for efficiency, IoT for interoperability, and DeFi for accessible financing.

#12about 3 minutes

The sustainability problem with blockchain technology

Blockchain's future depends on moving away from energy-intensive proof-of-work models toward more sustainable alternatives like proof-of-stake.

#13about 2 minutes

Developing a playful hardware kit for Web of Things

The speaker's current project involves creating a playful hardware development kit to make learning and building with Web of Things more accessible.

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