Analytics for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Sensor types

Sensors may report real numbers or conditional states (such as on/off or raining/not raining). Even if it is reporting conditional states, in many cases, the signal is continuous and some logic determines if it has crossed a threshold that is interpreted as a change in state.

Sensors vary in accuracy, and there is usually a cost trade off in order to increase measurement accuracy.

External conditions may also affect accuracy. For example, extremes in cold can affect the accuracy of some motion sensors. This is important to know for analytics, as it can affect the results of prediction from machine-learning models. This external influencer can be what is referred to as a confounding variable. It has an effect on two or more measured ...