The current unstoppable juggernaut that tech geeks in Stroud are getting excited about is the Internet of Things.

The idea is that more and more everyday objects will be able to ‘talk’ to each other – connected together digitally with diminutive computers – to make organising our lives easier.

To find out more about what this could mean for businesses, reporter Megan Titley looked into which Stroud companies are taking the plunge and using the technology to make their processes smarter and more convenient.

A CRAFT brewery nestled in Thrupp is about to get a smart device or app which will allow staff to monitor the brewing process using mobile phones.

It may not sound like much, but this move means that Stroud Brewery is joining the so-called 'connected world'.

The connected world or Internet of Things (IoT) is the network tucked into electronics, software and sensors which allows these objects to gather and share information.

It is an emerging technology which will allow brewery owner Greg Pilley to manage, for example, the temperature of the beer as it is being brewed from anywhere through his mobile or iPad.

On the wall of his brewery there is a touch screen through which staff control the machinery used to create his popular cask ales and a range of organic and vegan bottled beers.

Soon he will be able to see the same screen on his mobile phone or iPad and control what the machinery is doing at the brewery even when he is not there.

He might be able to turn something on or he could check and change the temperature of the various fermentation vessels.

Greg said: “Soon we will be able to see the same screen on our mobile phones so we can track what’s going on.

“Rather than physically coming in we can remotely switch it on.”

Elsewhere in Stroud, Ecotricity is rolling out smart meters, which all homes must have by 2020 to be in line with government regulations.

It means that the green energy company is also joining the connected world.

Ecotricity will not need to send someone round to read meters – readings will be collected centrally.

“Smart meters can also give you more information,” said Jeremy Green from Stroud, who is an IoT principal analyst at Reading-based Machina Research.

“One of the things that people talk a lot about is a smart grid whereby your electricity meter not only sends information to the utility company but it enables them to give you more information about your usage and pattern.

“So you could potentially reduce your electricity usage but also one of the very big problems for power companies is that they need to have as much power generation as is possible to meet the peaks.

“If they could manage the demand they could turn your fridge off for a little while.

“Your fridge would stay cold and they could produce a little bit less power at the peak.

“So instead of having to build an extra power station they could have a smarter grid that would enable them to manage demand a bit better.

“Then if they had dynamic tariffs they could persuade people to use the electricity at a time when it was a trough instead of at a peak and then they could produce less electricity and give you a discount.”

Asked whether Ecotricity would manage demand in such a way a company spokesman said: “We could do demand side management in the future when we roll out our Blackbox energy storage system.

“This would work by drawing electricity off the grid, or from rooftop solar panels, when demand is low and storing it in batteries.

“Then when it hits peak times, say between 5pm-6pm, when businesses are still open but people are also arriving home, we could take households off the grid and draw electricity from the Blackbox.”

But what of privacy?

It is one of the things people worry about regarding the IoT.

With the data utility companies collect about customers, companies would know when people are in and out.

They would know what a person’s habits are.

“And that’s just smart metering which you think of as fairly innocuous,” said Jeremy.

“Privacy and internet security is one of those things that everybody gets very excited about but nobody does very much about.

“What have you done to protect yourself? You have Wi-Fi at home? Did you change the password?

“Nobody does, you’ve got the password that it came with out of the box.

"Everybody cares about it except for when they actually have to do something about it.”

Another area that the IoT is taking hold in is the agricultural industry. Livestock can be connected too.

“Say you’ve just got a whole load of cows,” said Jeremy. “You might want to track where all your cows have got to.

“There’s a lovely Internet of Things company called Findmysheep.

“They’ve got a collar on the sheep, in the collar there’s a GPS receiver and a module.

“The GPS collects the position of where the sheep are and then it sends via the mobile network to an application.

“Then the farmer with his mobile phone or his computer can go and look at that application the same way that you would look at Twitter and there is all the information about these sheep, they might be shown on a map or they might on a list. It might tell you this sheep hasn’t moved in three hours and maybe there’s something the matter with it.”

Silent Herdsman is another alert that gives farmers updates on how healthy their cows are.

But the fun isn’t all reserved for businesses. There are ways that people can dabble with the IoT. Nest Thermostat and Hive let you programme your central heating without being at home, while Parrot’s Flower Power keeps you informed about how much water your plants need.

New uses for IoT are being discovered almost every day.