>> ELECTRIC IMP - IoT DISGUISED AS AN SD CARD

"size does matter" - at least in the world of geeks.

The Electric Imp platform provides a complete solution to play around with IoT in a very small form factor; providing a fully integrated hardware, software, OS and cloud services making development for it a breeze. The hardware is effectively squeezed into an SD card form factor; providing a module with integrated WiFi and Cortex M3 processor.

As a developer you write software in a language called Squirrel; which is a high level, object orientated programming language with a syntax similar to C, C++, C# and objective-C so it is understandable by most embedded software developers. The developer can write code locally on the unit or provide an agent that runs within the cloud and has HTTPS end points to remotely control functionality on the device.

It has an interesting setup procedure using an android or iOS device with its BlinkUp™ patent pending technology. Once the unit is programmed; it can remain connected to the electric imp network or work independently (pointed to alternative servers or offline).

With IoT devices getting smaller and easier to develop for it could start to raise some eyebrows about the potential usages of this technology not only for good; but possibly bad such as terrorism or espionage. I came across a "cool" hack that has integrated the electric imp - while it definitely was a novelty when implemented it doesn't stop you thinking how difficult it could be to be used in a bad way.

• Electric Imp and the Internet connected elevator