“Thing” is the deliberately broad word at the heart of the Internet of Things. It names whatever is being connected rather than the electronics doing the connecting. A thing can carry its own radio, like a smart object, or it can be passive and only become visible through a tag, a camera or a sensor attached to it. A pallet with an RFID label is a thing even though it has no circuitry of its own.
The distinction matters when you design a system. Modeling the thing (the pump, the room, the vehicle) separately from the IoT device that observes it lets you replace hardware without losing history, and it is the basis of digital twins and asset registries.
Part of the IoT Glossary. Spotted an error or a missing term? Tell us.