[azdle]

Yes it will be the future and you'll know it's really here when we all stop talking about it.

Machines notifying their owners or service providers that they are empty/full/broken is really one of the most basic IoT ideas. The thing that will really make it take off is going to be something that we haven't thought of or currently thing is impossible.

The biggest issue that still needs to be overcome is the security. Sure, you can get it to be as secure as anything else today using traditional (D)TLS and certs, but some of these devices are have a (shelf) life of over 10 years. What happens to all the devices on the shelf (or just not turned on) if your CA was diginotar? Either you keep your now insecure cert so that devices can still connect to download the new cert or you just remove it and force everyone to do a firmware update manually. Do you really expect your grandma to update the firmware on their smoke detector? If you just leave it, how long do you support it?

All that assumes that you're okay with the wide variety of privacy issues that come with having all this data streamed from your house (or business or whatever) up into someone else's servers. I think another thing that is going to be important is a "local iot", none of your data is able to leave a small box inside your house except for small bits of things that actually need to, like notifications or alert states. But, again, how do you solve the security in this, especially if you want compatibility between different manufactures?