Kipp Bradford

Kipp Bradford is an educator, technology consultant, and entrepreneur with a passion for creating new products as well as finding new applications for existing technologies. He was the founder or cofounder of start-ups in the fields of transportation, consumer products, HVAC, and medical devices, and holds numerous patents for his inventions. Kipp co-founded Revolution By Design, Inc, a non-profit education and research organization dedicated to empowerment through technology and co-organizes Rhode Island's mini Maker Faire. As the Senior Design Engineer and Lecturer at the Brown University School of Engineering, Kipp teaches several engineering design and entrepreneurship courses. He is the chair of the Rhode Island Entrepreneurship Faculty group and serves on the boards of The Steel Yard and AS220. He is also on the technical advisory board of MAKE Magazine and is a Fellow at the College of Design, Engineering and Commerce at Philadelphia University.

The Industrial Internet of Things

The opportunity no one's talking about.

WeishauptBurner

Photo: Kipp Bradford. This industrial burner from Weishaupt churns through 40 million BTUs per hour of fuel.

A few days ago, a company called Echelon caused a stir when it released a new product called IzoT. You may never have heard of Echelon; for most of us, they are merely a part of the invisible glue that connects modern life. But more than 100 million products — from street lights to gas pumps to HVAC systems — use Echelon technology for connectivity. So, for many electrical engineers, Echelon’s products are a big deal. Thus, when Echelon began touting IzoT as the future of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), it was bound to get some attention.

Admittedly, the Internet of Things (IoT) is all the buzz right now. Echelon, like everyone else, is trying to capture some of that mindshare for their products. In this case, the product is a proprietary system of chips, protocols, and interfaces for enabling the IoT on industrial devices. But what struck me and my colleagues was how really outdated this approach seems, and how far it misses the point of the emerging IoT. Read more…