The Internet of Things revolution started in 2015 and will continue to be strong in 2016. 2015 was the year everyone talked about the Internet of Things. (So was 2014. And 2013.) But unlike before, it was the year everyone started making plans, laying groundwork, and building the infrastructure. Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. The premise of IoT is that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been called the next Industrial Revolution — it will change the way all businesses, governments, and consumers interact with the physical world. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer the data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
and the Internet. IoT is also called the Internet of Everything. A critical component for the IoT system to be a success will be secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization services.
In the future, everything will be connected. It won’t just be our phones that access the Internet; it will be our light bulbs, our front doors, our microwaves, our comforters, our blenders. You can call it the Internet of Things, The Internet of Everything, Universal Object Interaction, or your pick of buzzwords that begin with Smart. They all hold as inevitable that everything, everything will be connected, to each other and to the Internet. And this is promised to change the world. Remember that the objects themselves do not benefit us, but what services and functions they make it possible to obtain. We will enjoy the outcome, hopefully even better quality products, informative and reliable services, and even new applications.
There will be lots of money spend on IoT in 2016, the exact sum is hard to define, but it is estimated that nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years. IoT is now a very large global business dominated by giants (IBM, Intel, Cisco, Gemalto, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Bosch, GE, AT&T, T-Mobile, Telefonica and many others). I see that because it is still a young and quickly developing market, there will be lots of potential in it for startups in 2016.
There will be a very large number of new IoT devices connected to Internet in the end of 2016. According to Business Insider The Internet of Things Report there was 10 billion devices connected to the internet in 2015 and there will be will be 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devicesw ill comprise 10 billion (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.). Juniper research predicted that by 2020, there will be 38.5 billion connected devices. IDC says it’ll be 20.9 billion. Gartner’s guess? Twenty-five billion. The numbers don’t matter, except that they’re huge. They all agree that most of those gadgets will be industrial Internet of Things. The market for connecting the devices you use all day, every day, is about to be huge.
Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions because they see ways the IoT can improve their bottom line: lowering operating costs, increasing productivity, expand to new markets and develop new product offerings. Sensors, data analytics, automation and wireless communication technologies allow the study of the “self-conscious” machines, which are able to observe their environment and communicate with each other. From predictive maintenance that reduces equipment downtime to workers using mobile devices on the factory floor, manufacturing is undergoing dramatic change. The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling increased automation on the factory floor and throughout the supply chain, 3D printing is changing how we think about making components, and the cloud and big data are enabling new applications that provide an end-to-end view from the factory floor to the retail store.
Governments are focused on increasing productivity, decreasing costs, and improving their citizens’ quality of life. The IoT devices market will connect to climate agreements as in many applicatons IoT can be seen as one tool to help to solve those problems. A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C was agreed at the climate change summit in Paris in December 2015. Sitra fresh market analysis indicates that there is up to an amount of EUR 6 000 billion market potential for smart green solutions by 2050. Smart waste and water systems, materials and packaging, as well as production systems together to form an annual of over EUR 670 billion market. Smart in those contests typically involves use of IoT technologies.
Consumers will lag behind businesses and governments in IoT adoption – still they will purchase a massive number of devices. There will be potential for marketing IoT devices for consumers: Nine out of ten consumers never heard the words IoT or Internet of Things, October 2015! It seems that the newest IoT technology extends homes in 2016 – to those homes where owner has heard of those things. Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous in homes in so many parts of the world that you can now really start tapping into that by having additional devices. The smart phones and the Internet connection can make home appliances, locks and sensors make homes and leisure homes in more practical, safer and more economical. Home adjusts itself for optimal energy consumption and heating, while saving money. During the next few years prices will fall to fit for large sets of users. In some cases only suitable for software is needed, as the necessary sensors and data connections can be found in mobile phones. Our homes are going to get smarter, but it’s going to happen slowly. Right now people mostly buy single products for a single purpose. Our smart homes and connected worlds are going to happen one device, one bulb at a time. The LED industry’s products will become more efficient, reliable, and, one can hope, interoperable in the near future. Companies know they have to get you into their platform with that first device, or risk losing you forever to someone else’s closed ecosystem.
The definitions what would be considered IoT device and what is a traditional computing devices is not entirely clear, and I fear that we will not get a clear definition for that in 2016 that all could agree. It’s important to remember that the IoT is not a monolithic industry, but rather a loosely defined technology architecture that transcends vertical markets to make up an “Internet of everything.”
Too many people – industry leaders, media, analysts, and end users – have confused the concept of
“smart” with “connected”. Most devices – labeled “IoT” or “smart” – are simply connected devices. Just connecting a device to the internet so that it can be monitored and controlled by someone over the web using a smart phone is not smart. Yes, it may be convenient and time saving, but it is not “smart”. Smart means intelligence.
IoT New or Not? YES and NO. There are many cases where whole IoT thing is hyped way out of proportion. For the most part, it’s just the integration of existing technologies. Marketing has driven an amount of mania around IoT, on the positive side getting it on the desks of decision makers, and on the negative generating ever-loftier predictions. Are IoT and M2M same or different? Yes and no depending on case. For sure for very many years to come IoT and M2M will coexist.
Nearly a dozen contenders are trying to fill a need for long distance networks that cut the cost and power consumption of today’s cellular machine-to-machine networks. Whose technology protocols should these manufacturers incorporate into their gear? Should they adopt ZigBee, Apple’s HomeKit, Allseen Alliance/AllJoyn, or Intel’s Open Interconnect Consortium? Other 802.15.4 technologies? There are too many competing choices.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, two pioneers of the Internet of Things are expanding their platforms and partnerships. Crowdfunding sites and hardware accelerators are kicking out startups at a regular clip, typically companies building IoT devices that ride Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Bluetooth Special Interest group is expected to release in2016 support for mesh networks and higher data rates.
Although ZWave and Zigbee helped pioneer the smart home and building space more than a decade ago, but efforts based on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 6LoWPAN are poised to surpass them. Those pioneering systems are actively used and developed. Zigbee Alliance starts certification for its unified version 3.0 specification in few months (includes profiles for home and building automation, LED lighting, healthcare, retail and smart energy). EnOcean Alliance will bring its library of about 200 application profiles for 900 MHz energy harvesting devices to Zigbee networks. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities. The Z-Wave Security 2 framework will start a beta test in February and Z-Wave aims to strike a collaboration withleading IoT application framework platforms. Zigbee alredy has support Thread.
The race to define, design and deploy new low power wide area networks for the Internet of Things won’t cross a finish line in 2016. But by the end of the year it should start to be clear which LPWA nets are likely to have long legs and the opportunities for brand new entrants will dim significantly. So at the moment it is hard to make design choices. To protect against future technology changes, maybe the device makers should design in wireless connectivity chips and software that will work with a variety of protocols? That’s complicated and expensive. But if I pick only one technology I can easily pick up wrong horse, and it is also an expensive choice.
Within those who want to protect against future technology changes, there could be market for FPGAs in IoT devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) is broken and needs ARM-based field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to fix it, an expert told engineers at UBM’s Designers of Things conference in San Jose. You end up with a piece of hardware that can be fundamentally changed in the field.
There seems to be huge set of potential radio techniques also for Internet of Things even for long distance and low power consumpion. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities in February based on the 802.15.4g standard for metro networks. It will compete with an already crowded field of 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz networks from Sigfox, the LoRa Alliance, Ingenu and others. Weightless-P is an open standard announced by Weightless SIG, which operates at frequencies below one gigahertz. Weightless-P nodes and development cards will be expected to be in the market already during the first quarter of 2016, at the moment Weightless IoT Hardware Virtually Unavailable.
I expect LoRa Technology is expected to be hot in 2016. The LoRaWAN standard enables low-data-rate Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) wireless communication with a range of up to 10 miles, a battery life of 10 years, and the ability to connect millions of wireless sensor nodes to LoRaWAN gateways. LoRa® technology works using a digital spread spectrum modulation and proprietary protocol in the Sub-GHz RF band (433/868/915 MHz). I see LoRa technology interesting because lots of activity around in Finland in several companies (especially Espotel) and I have seen a convincing hands-in demo of the LoRa system in use.
It seems that 3GPP Lost its Way in IoT and there is fragmentation ahead in cellular standards. In theory 3GPP should be the default provider of IoT connectivity, but it seems that it has now failed in providing one universal technology. At the moment, there are three major paths being supported by 3GPP for IoT: the machine-type version of LTE (known as LTE-M) and two technologies coming from the Cellular-IoT initiative — NB-IoT and EC-GSM. So here we are with three full standardization efforts in 3GPP for IoT connectivity. It is too much. There will like be a base standard in 2016 for LTE-M.
The promise of billions of connected devices leads everyone to assume that there will be plenty of room for multiple technologies, but this betrays the premise of IoT, that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency. Too many standard will cause challenges for everybody. Customers will not embrace IoT if they have to choose between LTE-M and Sigfox-enabled products that may or may not work in all cases. OEM manufacturers will again bear the cost, managing devices at a regional or possibly national level. Again, we lose efficiency and scale. The cost of wireless connectivity will remain a barrier to entry to IoT.
Today’s Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts, quite propably supplied by different companies. An Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts. One is the end device that gathers data and/or executes control functions on the basis of its communications over the Internet. Another is the gateway or network interface device. Once on the Internet, the IoT system needs a cloud service to interact with. Then, there is the human-machine interface (HMI) that allows users to interact with the system. So far, most of the vendors selling into the IoT development network are offering only one or two of these parts directly. Alternatives to this disjointed design are arising, however. Recently many companies are getting into the end-to-end IoT design support business, although to different degrees.
Voice is becoming more often used the user interface of choice for IoT solutions. Smartphones let you control a lot using only your voice as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung have their solutions for this. For example Amazon, SoundHound and Nuance have created systems that allow to add language commands to own hardware or apps. Voice-activated interface becomes pervasive and persistent for IoT solutions in 2016. Right now, most smart home devices are controlled through smartphones, and it seems like that’s unlikely to change. The newest wearable technology, smart watches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce – it learns from its users, and generate as responses in real time appropriate, “micro-moments” tied to experience.
Monitoring your health is no longer only a small group oriented digital consumer area. Consumers will soon take advantage of the health technology extensively to measure well-being. Intel Funds Doctor in Your Pocket and Samsung’s new processor is meant for building much better fitness trackers. Also, insurance companies have realized the benefits of health technologies and develop new kinds of insurance services based on data from IoT devices.
Samsung’s betting big on the internet of things and wants the TV to sit at the heart of this strategy. Samsung believes that people will want to activate their lights, heating and garage doors all from the comfort of their couch. If smart TVs get a reputation for being easy to hack, then Samsung’s models are hardly likely to be big sellers. After a year in which the weakness of smart TVs were exploited, Samsung goes on the offensive in 2016. Samsung’s new Tizen-based TVs will have GAIA security with pin lock for credit card and other personal info, data encryption, built-in anti-malware system, more.
This year’s CES will focus on how connectivity is proliferating everything from cars to homes, realigning diverse markets – processors and networking continue to enhance drones, wearables and more. Auto makers will demonstrate various connected cars. There will be probably more health-related wearables at CES 2016, most of which will be woven into clothing, mainly focused on fitness. Whether or not the 2016 International CES holds any big surprises remains to be seen. The technology is there. Connected light bulbs, connected tea kettles, connected fridges and fans and coffeemakers and cars—it’s all possible. It’s not perfect, but the parts are only going to continue to get better, smaller, and cheaper.
Connectivity of IoT devices will still have challeges in 2016. While IoT standards organizations like the Open Interconnect Consortium and the AllSeen Alliance are expected to demonstrate their capabilities at CES, the industry is still a ways away from making connectivity simple. In 2016 it will still pretty darn tedious to get all these things connected, and there’s all these standards battles coming on. So there will be many standards in use at the same time. The next unsolved challenge: How the hell are all these things going to work together? Supporting open APIs that connect with various services is good.
Like UPnP and DLNA, AllJoyn could become the best-kept secret in the connected home in 2016 — everyone has it, no one knows about it. AllJoyn is an open-source initiative to connect devices in the Internet of Things. Microsoft added support for AllJoyn to Windows in 2014.
Analysis will become important in 2016 on IoT discussions. There’s too much information out there that’s available free, or very cheaply. We need systems to manage the information so we can make decisions. Welcome to the systems age.
The rise of the Internet of Things and Web services is driving new design principles. The new goal is to delight customers with experiences that evolve in flexible ways that show you understand their needs. “People are expecting rich experiences, fun and social interactions… this generation gets bored easily so you need to understand all the dimensions of how to delight them”
With huge number of devices security issues will become more and more important. In 2016, we’ll need to begin grappling with the security concerns these devices raise. The reality of everything being connected can have unintended consequences, not all of them useful – Welcome to the Internet of stupid (hackable) things.
Security: It was a hot topic for 2015 and if anything it will get hotter in 2016. The reason is clear. By adding connectivity embedded systems not only increase their utility, they vastly increase their vulnerability to subversion with significant consequences. Embedded systems that add connectivity face many challenges, of which the need for security is both vital and misunderstood. But vendors and developers have been getting the message and solutions are appearing in greater numbers, from software libraries to MCUs with a secure root of trust.
Bruce Schneier is predicting that the IoT will be abused in conjunction with DMCA to make our lives worse instead of better. In theory, connected sensors will anticipate your needs, saving you time, money, and energy. Except when the companies that make these connected objects act in a way that runs counter to the consumer’s best interests. The story of a company using copy-protection technology to lock out competitors—isn’t a new one. Plenty of companies set up proprietary standards to ensure that their customers don’t use someone else’s products with theirs. Because companies can enforce anti-competitive behavior this way, there’s a litany of things that just don’t exist, even though they would make life easier for consumers.
Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. Maybe it’ll be 2016, maybe the year after, but the train is coming. It’ll have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and probably eight other things, and you’ll definitely get a push notification when it gets here.
More interesting material links:
1,510 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chips for Energy Harvesting: The Next Billion-Dollar Market
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329577&
Although energy harvesting has failed to take off to date – usually because it is has been uneconomic compared with installed battery power – it will drive semiconductor sales worth $3 billion in 2020, according to Semico Research (Phoenix, Ariz.).
This drive will be from values of about $200 million and 40 million units shipped in 2015.
The key components for an energy harvesting system include the transducer – whether it is thermal, photovoltaic or vibrational – plus a power management IC, microcontroller and an energy storage device.
Annual unit shipments over the period 2015 to 2020 will grow to 777 million with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 80.6 percent. This would put unit shipments in 2015 at about 40 million and shipments in 2016 at about 70 million.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Such devices, Nokia acquired from France: WLAN-scales, thermometer …
Withings throw-purchase Nokia’s strong health technology dealer. But data protection are concerned.
Nokia said Tuesday its intention to buy a health technology company Withings EUR 170 million. Founded in 2008 would turn Nokia once again firmly in the device of choice, but with the phones, the French company does not have anything to do.
Withings website reveals the spectrum of the device, which Nokia is about to get over. The company offers, for example, small tokens, which measures walking, running, swimming and sleeping.
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/vimpaimet/2016/04/28/tallaisia-laitteita-nokia-osti-ranskasta-wlan-vaaka-kuumemittari/20164604/66?rss=6
More: http://www.withings.com/eu/en/
Tomi Engdahl says:
If the Internet of Things will be SOOO BIG why did Broadcom just quit the market?
Radio silicon offloaded to Cypress Semi for US$550m as founder and CEO retires
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/01/broadcom_divests_to_cypress_semiconductor/
Cypress Semiconductor has made Broadcom an offer too good to refuse: US$550 million in cash for its wireless Internet of Things business unit.
The deal covers the whole kit-and-kaboodle: Broadcom’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee Internet of Things product lines, its WICED brand and developer community, and the relevant intellectual property.
Exiting the Internet of Things seems a surprising decision from Broadcom, considering it endorses the wider industry’s “50 billion devices by 2020” prediction in its promotional material.
Broadcom’s canned statement about the sale says the segment generated $189 million in 2015, and the transaction will see 430 staff worldwide go to work under a new logo by the third quarter of 2016.
The acquisition gives Cypress Semiconductor its own radio silicon, with the company noting that at the moment it can only pair with “generic” radio sets in the Wi-Fi and Zigbee space (the company has its own Bluetooth Low Energy devices).
Cypress’s main IoT play is in the programable system-on-a-chip (SoC) market, with low-power ARM-based mixed-signal devices, with the Broadcom acquisition to give it a footprint in micro-controller, SoC, memory, module, and now connectivity.
Cypress To Acquire Broadcom’s Wireless Internet Of Things Business
http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s2162841
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Library: Mesh Networks Ideal for Smart Home Control Applications
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1329424&
Mesh networking is emerging as an ideal design solution for interconnecting a large number of network devices.
The Internet of Things will have an estimated 6.4 billion “connected things” by the end of 2016 according to technology research firm Gartner. Increasingly, mesh networking is emerging as an ideal design solution for interconnecting a large number of network devices, especially for smart home applications.
Internet of Things (IoT) network meshing enables a high degree of integration for connected things such as lights and thermostats that contain embedded sensor technologies. It allows these devices to communicate without relying on PCs or dedicated hub services. For designers, this makes it relatively easy to build a network of connected devices, inexpensively. Also, there are plenty of technology options available for connecting IoT devices, including cellular networks, Wi-Fi, the cloud or Bluetooth. In addition, the ZigBee Alliance and Google-backed Thread Group have both developed a significant foundation within the IoT and wireless meshing realm, and the two groups are collaborating further to develop connected home products.
A good example of how mesh networking is making its way into the home can be seen in GE Lighting’s recent adoption of Bluetooth mesh technology from Telink Semiconductor. GE will reportedly use Telinks mesh technology to connect LED light bulbs in a new connected home application. Telink’s makes highly integrated low-power radio-frequency and mixed-signal system chips for Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
“For many, lighting is the gateway to a smart home that connects other devices including smart thermostats, security cameras, and smoke alarms. While interoperability is key, in a crowded market with no clear platform winner, we wanted to give consumers the option for a standalone smart lighting solution.” says Tom Stimac, GE Lighting’s chief innovation manager.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Energy efficiency is key to cloud services for the Internet of Everything
http://www.edn.com/design/power-management/4441898/2/Energy-efficiency-is-key-to-cloud-services-for-the-Internet-of-Everything
Tomi Engdahl says:
AIOT-DRM
Din-Rail Modular Gateway for Building Management System
http://www.aaeon.com/en/p/gateway-system-aiot-drm?_bta_tid=3.XxM.B1We4w.HPv4.BDTWhw..BVZ72w.b..l.EUDg.n…3uxZoA&_bta_c=8hgsnl3kg804l986nrjjlwij6moej
Jointly-developed by Intel® and AAEON®, the BMS, or Building Management System is an intelligent gateway aimed at introducing the burgeoning IoT technologies to professionals, as well as to the general populace. The system primarily comprises of four different boards, namely the PC board, CPU board, Industrial I/O board and backplane board, stacked atop one another for a compact system that not only brings convenience to installation in both big offices and typical households, but also allows for hassle-free upgrades and customization,as the boards can simply be swapped out and replaced, as desired.
In addition to the extensive I/O capabilities provided by the PC board, the Industrial I/O board, located at the bottom most layer of the stack, employs isolated RS-485 and digital I/Os, allows for analog signals, such as temperature,pressure and sound, to be detected and converted to digital signals for control and monitoring purposes.
Intel® Quark™ SoC series
Onboard DDR3 512MHz SODIMM
USB 2.0 x 2
Industrial I/Os: DI x6, DO x2, ADC x4, DAC x1, Isolated RS-485 x1
LAN x 1, USB x 1, RS-232 x 1
mPCIe card slot for wireless connectivity
Fanless Cooling System
Modular design- easy to customize
Tomi Engdahl says:
Not Even Hamsters Are Safe From The Internet Of Things
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/03/not-even-hamsters-are-safe-from-the-internet-of-things/
The internet of things is this strange marketing buzzword that seems to escape from the aether and infect our toasters and refrigerators. Now even a hamster is not safe.
[Mifulapirus]’s hamster, Ham, was living a pleasant hamster life. Then his owner heard about another hamster named Sushi, whose running wheel stats were broadcasted to the internet.
The feat of techno enslavement for the little hamster was accomplished with a custom board, an esp8266, and an arduino as described in the instructable.
RunningHam Palace – Online Hamsters
http://www.instructables.com/id/RunningHam-Palace-Online-Hamsters/
There is a Hamster on Twitter Now… Thanks to ThingSpeak, Arduino, and ESP8266 Wi-Fi
http://community.thingspeak.com/2015/04/hamster-on-twitter/
https://twitter.com/runnerham
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia to support intelligent homes networking standard
Home Wireless Intelligent Network technology manages the Z-Wave Alliance announces that Nokia has joined as a member. Z-Wave technology, developing the organization has almost 400 members.
Z-Wave is originally a Danish Zen-Sysi developed a home automation network protocol that operates in a free 2.4 GHz. The technology is already a little over 10 years old and has been in the market tens of millions of Z-Wave products from different manufacturers.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4364:nokia-tukemaan-alykotien-verkkostandardia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s The Weather Like For The Next Six Hours?
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/04/whats-the-weather-like-for-the-next-six-hours/
The magic glowing orb that tells the future has been a popular thing to make ever since we realized we had the technology to bring it out of the fortune teller’s tent. We really like [jarek319]’s interpretation of the concept.
The core of the project is an ESP8226 project board of some description or another. The LEDs are a matrix of WS2812B individually addressable LEDs. He programmed it to ping OpenWeather and get the current status. After that he started writing animations for the display to loop.
MyForecast
A small gadget that reminds you to bring an umbrella
https://hackaday.io/project/11042-myforecast
This gadget pulls the 6 hour weather forecast for your area from OpenWeather, and displays the conditions using an animation.
What started as a single LED that would just tell me if its rainy or snowy, turned into a full-color 8×8 LED matrix that displays an animation based on the 6 hour weather forecast for my zip code from OpenWeather. I’m using an ESP8266 to pull the weather in, and an 8×8 array of WS2812B LEDs to display a few animations I hand-wrote.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wearable devices come in many shapes and sizes, inside and out.
Most wearable devices are extremely small, often utilizing an 8-bit microcontroller unit (MCU) clocked at less than 25 MHZ, with only 8k of memory. Given those constraints, one of the greatest challenges when designing wearables is connectivity.
Source: https://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/resources/overview/embedded-development-of-today-s-wearable-devices-design-requirement-and-considerations-66972d5a-6fc0-4b40-ad24-bec449e88529?contactid=1&PC=L&c=2016_05_04_esd_wp_wearables_requirements_2of2
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building IoT gateways and devices for emerging markets can lead to disruptive and timely solutions. IoT does pose several challenges to developers in getting these solutions to market:
- How to ensure robust security
- Incorporating connectivity for requirements like LTE, Wireless, Zigbee, and BLE
- Enabling over the air (OTA) secure updates for both applications and operating system components
- Integrating the combination of software with selected hardware partners
- Creating edge network devices
Tomi Engdahl says:
Converging the worlds of IT and automation
http://www.br-automation.com/en/company/press-room/br-joins-industrial-internet-consortium/converging-the-worlds-of-it-and-automation/?utm_source=pressconference&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=iot
Although Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things (IoT) have long existed in relative isolation, efforts to align the two concepts are now rapidly gaining traction. We sat down with Tony Shakib of Cisco and Stefan Schönegger and Marc Ostertag of B&R to discuss the two approaches’ similarities and differences – as well as the potential for synergy between them.
That’s where the concepts of Industry 4.0 and IoT come in.
Stefan Schönegger: Yes, and from our perspective, both certainly have important roles to play. The goal of Germany’s Plattform Industrie 4.0 project is to conduct a very detailed examination of the manufacturing process, to describe it – and ultimately to improve it. This is some very important groundwork that will serve as a foundation for many long-term improvements.
Tony Shakib: That’s actually the crux of it: Industry 4.0 deals primarily with theoretical concepts, whereas the Internet of Things is focused on practical applications. The testbeds operated by the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) are a perfect example. There you’ll find companies like B&R, Cisco and National Instruments experimenting – under real-world production conditions – with ways to implement technologies for the smart factory of the future.
Stefan, you mentioned a need for open standards. What form might those standards take?
Schönegger: Well, the first one is already here. OPC UA will be the vendor-independent communication protocol for the factory of the future. It will provide seamless communication from individual sensors and actuators up to ERP systems and the cloud – and it won’t matter who makes the hardware.
It seems we’ve come full circle to understand how two companies as different as B&R and Cisco ended up sharing a table here today…
Schönegger: Exactly right. To realize the smart manufacturing solutions of the future, we must succeed in converging the worlds of IT and automation. That’s precisely what we see reflected in the cooperation between our two companies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
First field device with OPC UA and Pub/Sub
http://www.br-automation.com/en/company/press-room/first-field-device-with-opc-ua-and-pubsub/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=automationLETTER_EN&utm_campaign=opcua
B&R adds the vendor-independent communication protocol to their X20 I/O system
B&R made an announcement at the Hannover Messe confirming development of the world’s first field device for OPC UA. The new X20 I/O system bus controller makes it possible to implement OPC UA communication from the sensor layer to the ERP layer without any interfaces whatsoever.
The X20BC008U bus controller functions as an OPC UA server and provides all information about connected I/O modules to OPC UA clients from any manufacturer. This includes, for example, controllers, SCADA systems, ERP systems or cloud applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What are the most useful sensors?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/sensor-ee-perception/4441907/What-are-the-most-useful-sensors-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20160506&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20160506&elqTrackId=8c2c717d09eb40e0a552fedca6aad4e5&elq=182bd206f44e4182afdf521f3bb45b37&elqaid=32159&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28071
Tomi Engdahl says:
Creating Embedded Systems Enhanced with IoT
https://www.eeweb.com/company-blog/ibm/creating-embedded-systems-enhanced-with-iot
Creating embedded systems enhanced with IoT
Engineering a bridge between the physical world and the online universe
Engineers have gained some design flexibility with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the many options for product enhancement that it provides. For example, an industrial control system can now be greatly enhanced in near real-time with the information gathering of cloud applications and information gathered by an IoT-type hardware/software combination.
Thirty years ago, a design for machine control was a mostly electromechanical one — with a programmable logic controller (PLC) changing settings based on time and using no software at all (well, a little programming of the controller). Later on, engineers had a specially designed microprocessor-based system with some C and assembly code and a rather simple man-machine interface.
Modern-day engineers develop in a bigger dimension. Machine-control systems are connected to the universe of the Internet, supported with a cloud-based infrastructure. This new approach opens many dramatic possibilities, a true digital disruption of the physical world and a whole new way of looking at things. Today, we design systems of systems. And if, let’s say, you are an engineer designing a factory control system, adding IoT and its benefits could very well be a competitive requirement.
The advent of the IoT brings with it new markets and opportunities. It is accelerating the number of products that incorporate software and the amount of software they contain.
Embedded software for industrial control systems has always been developed by the product engineering team, or a software team that closely interacts with it. Their concerns, historically speaking, have always been: Do I have the right processor and memory, and do I have the right amount of software to deliver the functionality that the machine needs? These are the typical systems engineering trade-off questions.
Adding IoT to an industrial system can be extremely beneficial, but there are concerns that didn’t exist before IoT technology became so readily accessible. Specifically, the IoT side of the design is really an information technology (IT) function, and for this type of development, the design engineers and IT groups must work hand-in-glove with one another.
Value from Composable Solutions
If an engineering team wants to build an IoT application without having to build infrastructure to go with it, IBM Bluemix is just the ticket. When you start to use Bluemix, you can use an Eclipse interface or a command-line interface. You can choose from a number of programming languages, including Java, Node, Nova, PHP, Python, or Ruby. You also have access to “Build Packs” for languages not otherwise supported.
The designer can go to the Bluemix catalog IoT area for services — the building blocks of web and mobile apps. They provide various functions ready for use in the user’s code, including chat, for example. Additionally, you can use the Data and Analytics area here for another large collection of pre-built apps. There is also Watson. The services in Watson involve deep learning and cognitive computing and include such applications as speech-to-text, visual recognition, and extensive relationship extraction functions.
After experimenting, the design team can move on to building the system, whereupon they can apply all of this software — some in the machine, some to the cloud.
All of that data can be used to understand how efficiently these machines are running — too fast, too slow, too hot, too cold? Ultimately, the designers will be able to derive more efficiency out of the target system.
Cognitive IoT is not explicitly programmed. It learns from experiences with the environment and interactions with people. It brings true machine learning to systems and processes so they can understand your goals, then integrate and analyze the relevant data to help you achieve them.Ensuring you leverage the right information from the right sources and that the right software runs where you need it,
Design for Every Embedded System
Every embedded device needs software to operate. Whether we call it firmware or embedded software, it has to control the device and provide the user interface and decision-making for the product to do its job. Designing embedded software is different from traditional software development, because engineers have to deal with custom hardware and very tight constraints in power, memory, storage, and time.
IBM’s solution helps with embedded software development by uniting the product’s architecture and intended behavior with the realities of its operating environment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“The smartphone is much more complex than space shuttle”
Ensuring the operation of smart devices, namely verification should be constantly challenging. The new car ola software code can be more than one hundred million rows. Several tens of millions of smart phones.
In 1986 the Challenger space shuttle’s computer to run a million lines of code.
Challenger accident was the case of a mechanical defect, even if it was the time the most advanced intelligent system.
That is an increase of complexity, said yesterday EDA-house development of Cadence Design Systems.
- One of the worst mistakes are architecture-level defects in the code. Their number of all software defects is only 8 per cent, but the time spent on fixing bugs so they take up more than half.
Smartphones and robot cars must be completely safe, IoT devices should not be able to hack. – But all that is connected to the network can be hacked, Beckley recalled.
- All the equipment we need to verify what’s going to happen and also what should not happen
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4361:alypuhelin-on-paljon-avaruussukkulaa-monimutkaisempi&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Whose responsibility of the intelligent technology of the future?
Digitalization and smart technologies raise ethical issues in companies including use of new technologies, says Accenture consulting firm Avanade done by a clearing. According to the intelligent digital technologies can while getting great improvements in sales, customer experience and job satisfaction.
the benefits of the introduction of intelligent technology are clear and attractive, but the senior corporate management is battling to a study commissioned by Avanden with ethical questions imported by smart technologies with them.
“In the future, the algorithms will begin to make decisions on our behalf – for example, they determine how the self-guided car and must act to minimize damage in collisions, says Avanade Finland’s innovation leader Johanna Juuvinmaa.
Enterprise and 78 percent of IT executives report estimates that their organization is not considered the ethical issues in the use of smart technologies to increase sufficiently brought by the workplace.
“The introduction of intelligent technologies can be seen as a threat, but in reality, successful organizations make the results they have already and are planning the following investments in intelligent technologies,”
However, the trend is clear, as the majority of the target up to ten percent of the IT budget on smart technologies for the next five years. Juuvimaa believes that smart technologies can make a digital workplace more humane as well as to help organizations acquire and payroll precisely the expertise that they will need in the future.
The main results
63 percent of companies have already received significant benefit from its investment in smart technologies. These benefits include increased turnover and improved customer experience and satisfaction.
92 percent of respondents believe that organizations will be easier to attract and retain top professionals on its payroll by increasing the use of intelligent technologies.
73 percent of respondents said their organization in need of new skills, while smart technologies will be to work alongside the people.
The main competence needs are problem solving (61 percent), data collection and analysis (59 percent), critical thinking (51 percent) and collaboration (51 percent).
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/05/03/kenen-vastuulla-tulevaisuuden-alytekniikat/
More: https://www.avanade.com/en/thinking/research-and-insights/~/media/asset/point-of-view/smart-technologies-delivering-benefits-pov.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thinking of You: IoT Style
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/07/thinking-of-you-iot-style/
Do you have loved ones who live far away? Or do you just want an interesting starter ESP8266 project to get your feet wet? If the answer to either of these questions is “yes”, we’ve got just the project for you. [Craig Lindley] built a “thinking of you” button-and-LED display device that helps people keep in touch, in a very simple way.
We like the minimalism of the design. One party presses their button, electrons flow, WiFis WiFi, data travels through a set of tubes, and an LED far away glows a pre-arranged color.
The code is available in a zip file
http://www.craigandheather.net/misc/Lindley_ThinkingOfYou.zip
Thinking Of You Page
http://www.craigandheather.net/celethinkingofyou.html
The ToY devices are built using an inexpensive module called a NodeMCU Amica that incorporate a ESP8266-12 WiFi module with embedded application processor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
K.I.S.S. Pi Sprinkler – Just Keep the Plants Alive
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/06/k-i-s-s-pi-sprinkler-just-keep-the-plants-alive/
A good first step in a project is knowing what you want to do. [Ben Fino] made it clear that his Raspberry Pi Sprinkler control system for his wife’s garden had one goal: keep the plants alive. The resulting project is doing just that and no more.
The circuitry, and plumbing, is straightforward and explained well in the Instructable. All the electronics consists of is the Pi and a MOSFET to take the 3.3v GPIO to 5v to control a relay. The valve controlling the water requires 28v AC which necessitated the relay to control it. There are also three LEDs: one is for power, one to indicate when the valve is opened, and one is an extra for some future purpose.
The intriguing part is the use of weather data from the web to determine if it’s rained recently. Python scripts provided by [Ben’s] friend [Mark Veillette] use a weather site API to get the rainfall data. The main script is set to run once every 24 hours.
What a great application of the KISS principle: keep it simple, stupid
Raspberry Pi Controlled Irrigation System
http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Controlled-Irrigation-System/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Super Massive Musical Instrument
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/07/super-massive-musical-instrument/
Performing music in open spaces can be a real challenge. The acoustics of the space can play spoil-sport. Now imagine trying to play an instrument spread out over tens of kilometres. The folks at [LimbicMedia] wrote in to tell us about the project they worked on to build the The World’s Largest Musical Instrument.
The system consists of wirelessly controlled air horns deployed at remote locations. Each air horn is self contained, driven by a supply of compressed air from a scuba diving tank and battery powered electronics. The wireless link allows the air horns to be placed up to 10kms away from the base station. Each air horn is tuned to a specific note of the piano keyboard which, in turn, is configured to transmit its note data to the air horns.
The World’s Largest Musical Instrument
December 17, 2015, by Manjinder Benning
http://limbicmedia.ca/the-worlds-biggest-musical-instrument/
Over the last year we had the pleasure of starting work on a very interesting and totally ridiculous project. We were tasked with building “The Worlds Largest Musical Instrument”. Sounds cool right?
So basically it is a wirelessly controlled system where a piano keyboard sends its note data to a set of, very loud, distributed air horns. Each air horn is connected to a compressed air scuba tank and is totally standalone, meaning it has its own battery, and wireless receiver and can be placed up 10 km from the location of the keyboard. So far we have built 12 of these horns, tuned specifically to the notes on a piano keyboard such that Oh Canada and God Save The Queen can be played with the system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VVO took IoT sensor networks in Espoo
Rental company WO experimenting with Digita rental housing temperature and humidity data collection of the latest IoT technology. To begin in the spring of the pilot project will be implemented VVO 200 in a rented apartment in Espoo, Finland.
The future of VVO’s pilot, temperature and humidity data collected from the sensors and the user interface is done on the basis of measurements necessary adjustments. After the pilot period, the sensors may also be added to other destinations. Digita’s network allows sufficient that the sensors are attached to the desired measurement points. The separate building-specific systems is not required.
” Digita IoT solutions utilize Lora technology. Lora is a radio technology of a new generation, which is aimed specifically at the needs of the Internet of Things applications, says Digita’s Chief Operating Officer Markus Lower Hautala.
Currently, Lora-pilot network covers a large part of the capital region. Digita will utilize the network in building their own high radio and TV mast support.
‘ We believe that the IoT technology will revolutionize the everyday functions. Even now, it can be used to monitor, for example, the storage facility conditions, the use of the equipment and take care of access control ”
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/05/09/digita-tuo-iot-anturiverkot-espooseen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart homes are one of the fastest-growing segments in the IoT. Intelligent applications such as connected thermostats, washing machines and lights make life easier and more convenient for home dwellers, also helping to cut electricity bills. However, these networked devices can also open virtual doors to unwanted guests. The challenge facing smart home service providers and device manufacturers lies in protecting their services and products against digital threats.
Who should attend?
Design engineers, system and security architects and product managers involved in device and system design for smart homes
Source: https://webinar.techonline.com/2045?keycode=TOL1
Tomi Engdahl says:
Which Wireless Tech is Right For You?
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/05/which-wireless-tech-is-right-for-you/
It seems these days all the electronics projects are wireless in some form. Whether you choose WiFi, Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth Low Energy, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Thread, NFC, RFID, Cell, IR, or even semaphore or carrier pigeon depends a lot on the constraints of your project. There are a lot of variables to consider, so here is a guide to help you navigate the choices and come to a conclusion about which to use in your project.
Does it need to connect to the Internet?
spark-core
The Spark Core (now Particle Photon) is a WiFi connected Arduino Compatible board.
If it does, and it needs to maintain a constant connection, then the answer is almost certainly WiFi. A WiFi connection will get its own IP address, manage the connection with the router, and send and receive packets on its own. Considering you’ve probably already got the wireless router, this is pretty much a done deal. Many people are prototyping with the ESP8266, but there are other options as wellDoes it need to connect to the Internet?
spark-core
The Spark Core (now Particle Photon) is a WiFi connected Arduino Compatible board.
If it does, and it needs to maintain a constant connection, then the answer is almost certainly WiFi. A WiFi connection will get its own IP address, manage the connection with the router, and send and receive packets on its own. Considering you’ve probably already got the wireless router, this is pretty much a done deal. Many people are prototyping with the ESP8266, but there are other options as well
BLE and ZigBee, would require another hub that is connected to the Internet.
Does it need to connect to a smartphone?
If it does, Bluetooth is probably the way to go, with WiFi and NFC coming in second and third. Bluetooth Classic is older and is used for high-bandwidth streaming like wireless headphones. But Bluetooth Classic is super sketchy with lag, dropped connections, and range problems. Bluetooth Low Energy (sometimes called Bluetooth Smart) is the newer version. It’s completely different and is designed for IoT or low bandwidth applications.
WiFi is another technology that almost every smartphone has, but setting up direct connections can be a real pain. It interrupts the phone’s internet connection so you can’t do WiFi to the Internet and WiFi direct to a device.
Do devices need to talk to each other?
If devices are talking to each other for some reason, then WiFi is a great option here, ZigBee, is awesome, and there’s an upcoming spec called Bluetooth Mesh which will be breaking into the scene soon.
ZigBee is a mesh, so if any node goes down, it’s still possible for the network to continue working. ZigBee doesn’t have many modules, but XBee is a popular one.
Another option is Thread, which is IPv6 based. It uses 802.15.4, which is the same wireless protocol as ZigBee, but the IP-Addressable aspect is pretty appealing. This is still fairly new, so it’s hard to come by a lot of examples, but there are some big companies pushing it hard.
Bluetooth Mesh is a new entrant and is promising.
With Bluetooth LE the concept is there are servers and clients. A server is the thing collecting the data or interfacing with hardware, and a client is the smartphone or other device that wants to be fed the data or send commands to the server
in some cases you want something to happen when two objects get close enough to each other, like a cat approaching an automated cat door, or a credit card tapped on a wireless card reader. For this you want either NFC or RFID. NFC is a subset of RFID but they have very different uses.
Do you want to be clever?
There are a couple wireless transmission methods that have niche adoption but are still kind of cool. First is ultrasonic.
Modulated light is another possibility.
Choosing your Chips
You’ve chosen your wireless technology, now you need to build it. Depending on what you’re trying to build, there are options for how this technology is packaged.
There are USB solutions for every one of these wireless technologies. No matter what you choose, you’ll be able to communicate with a computer over USB without having to develop any hardware. Plug a dongle into a Pi and you’re good to go.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Minimal MQTT: Building a Broker
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/09/minimal-mqtt-building-a-broker/
In this short series, we’re going to get you set up with a completely DIY home automation system using MQTT. Why? Because it’s just about the easiest thing under the sun, and it’s something that many of you out there will be able to do with material on-hand: a Raspberry Pi as a server and an ESP8266 node as a sensor client. Expanding out to something more complicated is left as an exercise to the motivated reader, or can be simply left to mission creep.
In this installment, we’re going to build a broker on a Raspberry Pi, which is the hub of your MQTT network. Next time, we’ll get an ESP8266 up and running and start logging some data. After that, we’ll do some back-end scripting in Python to make the data speak, and in the last installment, we’ll explore some of the useful frills and fancy bits. Let’s get started!
Overview
MQTT is a pub-sub, store-and-forward, IoT-enabled, machine-to-machine connectivity protocol juggernaut. As you can see, it’s fully buzzword-compliant. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s super complicated, though. You can read up on MQTT until you’re blue in the face. Here’s the bare minimum you need to know to be comfortable.
The network has clients (called “clients”) and servers (called “brokers”). Clients, whether it’s your temperature sensor node or the graphing application that’s going to use the data, use the broker as a central hub. Data are arranged in “topics”, which use a directory-like structure.
When a client gets some new data, it “publishes” it to the topic — sends the data to the server. The server then forwards the data along to all of the other clients that have “subscribed” to the topic
Build a Broker
attachment_69370628OK, “build” is a little bit overstated. We’re just going to download mosquitto, which is the most widely-used broker. If you’ve got a Raspberry Pi (or other spare computer) lying around, you’ve got an MQTT broker-in-waiting.
Now that our broker is set, let’s do some quick experiments to get a taste of how MQTT works in practice.
Here is MQTT’s killer feature for a low-power home automation sensor network: it’s a “store and forward” protocol with a couple levels of quality of service (QOS) guarantees. If your node has already registered with the broker and it’s offline when a new message comes in, the broker can take care of delivering that message to the node as soon as it reconnects. This means that your nodes can spend most of their lives in a deep sleep, conserving battery power, and when they do finally connect, they haven’t missed anything.
Three things are needed for the QOS feature: the subscribing clients need to be previously registered by ID with the server, and they need to disable the (default) clean-slate behavior otherwise all stored messages are erased when you log back in. Both the subscriber and the publisher need to be using quality-of-service level one or two so that the server knows it’s a stored message. (QOS level one usually suffices
If you don’t need to get the full history of messages since your node was last online, consider the “retain” flag. When messages are sent as retained, the last such message gets automatically transmitted to any client that subscribes to the topic. Retained messages are great for things like status reports. Any time that you want to log in and see just the last value without having to wait for an update, you’ll wish you had retain set.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Martela intelligent cellphone chair
Martela has been made available by the intelligent office chair, who remembers every 30 minutes on the need to move. The chair’s settings can be controlled by mobile phone. The chair communicates with jitters. New features are brought to most widely sold Axia office chairs. Online control application is available for the Android operating system and Apple’s phones.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/05/10/martelalta-kannykkatuoli/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Secure Your World
http://www.microchip.com/promo/cec1302#utm_source=Press_Release&utm_medium=Press_Release&utm_term=FY17Q1&utm_content=CPG&utm_campaign=Press-Release
CEC1302 32-bit ARM® Cortex®-M4 Controller with Integrated Crypto
The CEC1302 easily and quickly allows for pre-boot authentication of the system firmware in order to ensure that the firmware is untouched and uncorrupted thereby preventing security attacks such as man-in-the-middle, denial of service, and backdoor vulnerabilities. It can also be used to authenticate any firmware updates, protecting the system from malware or memory corruption.
Tomi Engdahl says:
1btn – an Open Source Dash
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/29/1btn-an-open-source-dash/
The availability of cheap radios, omni-present WiFi and powerful web services means the IoT wave is here to stay. Amazon got into the act with its “do only one thing” Dash button. But a more interesting solution would be an IoT “do it all” button.
[Anand] has been working on his 1btn Open Source WiFi connected IoT button for a while. It connects to the Internet over WiFi to trigger whatever action you have assigned to it using a simple, online interface. It’s reconfigurable and open source. Which means it can be used in pretty imaginative ways, and if needed, can be re-flashed with your own custom firmware should you decide to really get under its hood.
The 1btn’s ESP8266 module is usually in sleep mode, waking up when the button is pressed, making the connection, performing the task and then going back to sleep once confirmation is received. A Red/Green LED indicates if the action was successful or not.
1btn: Open Source WiFi connected IoT Button
1btn is a powerful, open source, do-it-all button for the Internet…
https://hackaday.io/project/11269-1btn-open-source-wifi-connected-iot-button
Currently crowd funding campaign is live at https://www.crowdsupply.com/knewron/1btn
Tomi Engdahl says:
Energy Monitor Optically Couples to Smart Meter
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/24/energy-monitor-optically-couples-to-smart-meter/
https://hackaday.io/project/10673-power-monitor-smart-meter-hack
Tomi Engdahl says:
A sophisticated term for technologically-developed rental seems to be “smart house”. The definition of intelligent buildings varied depending on which side of the street walked, but it is kind of like building Internet Of Things. It is able to self-sensoroida their environment and basically talk to the mist or cloud, to react to changes by adjusting the heating or even … well, mainly by adjusting the heating. IoTin like smart house in 2015, is a big disappointment.
the most advanced space-age thermostatic control technology and top names in the reference models were able to show the inside and the outside temperature, in addition to a number of illustrative icon of modernist. Graphic, icon of color.
A few other house smart house According to the firm in turn meant that the upstairs stereos can make jointly controlled downstairs. Others leaned security aspects and retostelivat the house is able to communicate, the fraction fellow ring at night through the terrace window hogging them controlled from downstairs remote stereos. You know text messaging, is based on the innovative potential of GSM technology.
No need to be a Skynet or even HAL. I do not expect artificial intelligence to solve the world’s problems or to make my works. Rather, the same kind of lähetsymistapaa, what can you expect from Mercedes or S-model smartphones. Image, into pattern, voice recognition, user behavioral heuristics. Calendars and the Internet, the final non-data warehouses exploitation. Small micro-level applications, notifications. Safety, sociability and entertainment! A collection of simple basic stuff that would not be accomplishing anything, even rocket science.
However, a couple of positive surprises at the fair was found. Two to the installed solar panels. One in the back yard was presented to the fingerprint lock. The direction is good, but the baby steps only…
Source: http://labs.rakettitiede.com/alyttomat-talot/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Viv, the multi-platform AI assistant made by Siri co-founders Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer which is built for easy 3rd-party integrations, demoed for first time
Siri-creator shows off first public demo of Viv, ‘the intelligent interface for everything’
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/siri-creator-shows-off-first-public-demo-of-viv-the-intelligent-interface-for-everything/
Voice-controlled assistance is seeing another evolution as it looks to prove its worth as the next shift in human-computer interaction.
Today, onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, Siri creator Dag Kittlaus showed off the first public demo of Viv, an AI virtual system that aims to be “the intelligent interface for everything.”
In a live presentation that mentioned the word “paradigm” at least a dozen times
The live demo went off without any major glitches despite the laser-focused specificity of the queries all uttered onstage in front of an audience of hundreds.
“Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden gate bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?” Kittlaus asked onstage.
Kittlaus detailed the real secret sauce of Viv was something called “dynamic program generation,” which allows the AI-powered assistant to understand intent and generate a program itself to best answer the query.
“Instead of having to write every code instructed, you’re really just describing what you want it to do,” said Kittlaus.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robert McMillan / Wall Street Journal:
Salesforce to use AWS for its IoT cloud service, expected to launch midyear
Salesforce Bases New Service on Amazon’s Cloud
The business software company’s IoT Cloud is expected to launch after midyear
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/salesforce-bases-new-service-on-amazons-cloud-1462917059-lMyQjAxMTI2MzE2MDMxOTA1Wj
Salesforce’s Internet of Things Cloud, introduced last fall, is designed to help corporations make sense of the rising tide of data generated by everyday devices outfitted with computing and communications capabilities, such as smart phones, wearable devices and industrial sensors. The service is being tested by a handful of unnamed Salesforce customers and is expected to launch sometime after midyear, said Adam Bosworth, the executive vice president of Salesforce’s IoT Cloud.
The service is one of a wave of such offerings from Amazon itself, as well as General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp. and others. Such services are designed to track billions of digital events daily and extract useful information that, for example, could help customer support representatives diagnose problems.
Salesforce typically builds new services on hardware it operates in its own data centers. However, it has used Amazon Web Services as well.
Salesforce has designed its IoT Cloud to run on “any public cloud,” as well as on servers within its own data centers, Mr. Bosworth said. “Where we go with this is probably a mix, because there are probably customers who want data to be controlled within our own data centers,” he said.
Salesforce would be wise to avoid being locked into AWS, said Yefim Natis, a vice president with research firm Gartner Inc.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When the Smart Hits the Fan
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/10/when-the-smart-hits-the-fan/
A fan used to be a simple device – motor rotates blades, air moves, and if you were feeling fancy, maybe the whole thing oscillates. Now fans have thermostats, timers, and IR remotes. So why not increase the complexity by making a smart fan with an IoT interface?
[Casper]’s project looks more like a proof of concept or learning platform than a serious attempt at home automation. His build log mentions an early iteration based on a Raspberry Pi. But an ESP8266 was a better choice and made it into the final build, which uses an IR LED to mimic the signals from the remote so that all the stock modes of the fan are supported. The whole thing is battery powered and sits on a breadboard on top of the fan
Make a “dumb” fan “smart” using cheapo ESP8266 board controllable via ST (universal IR remote)
https://community.smartthings.com/t/make-a-dumb-fan-smart-using-cheapo-esp8266-board-controllable-via-st-universal-ir-remote/47212/1
ESP8266 board, it’s tiny, cheap, has Wifi built-in and requires no SD cards.
Now my fan is “smart”, it can be controlled from ST, Alexa, ST smartTile dashboard. It’s powered by 2 AA batteries (completely wireless).
After all those steps, I could already control the fan from a local web endpoint, then I wanted to integrate it with SmartThings. Since this is merely a web endpoint and all I need to figure out is how to send a GET request from ST to this local endpoint. Although I was aware of MQTT (still don’t know how to use it yet), I decided to grab the HTTP Device handler9, big thanks to @JZst, and simplified the code7 because all I need is to send a GET request without any return value.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MIPI nears ratification on SenseWire/I3C enhancement of I2C/SPI
http://www.embedded.com/electronics-news/4436973/MIPI-nears-ratification-on-SenseWire-I3C-enhancement-of-I2C-SPI
The MIPI Alliance is in the final stages of ratification of its new MIPI I3C sensor interface specification for use in designing mobile and mobile-influenced and embedded applications.
An enhancement and exttension of the existing Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) and Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus alternatives, the new specification will carry the name of MIPI “SenseWire” in mobile devices and “I3C” when used for connecting to a set of sensors, directly or indirectly.
According to Joel Huloux, chairman of the board of MIPI Alliance, the proliferation of sensors has created significant design challenges to product designers.
“The challenges are particularly demanding in the handset market, where smartphones often require as many as 10 sensors and more than 20 signals,”
“Further, integration requirements can vary for each sensor, and the digital interfaces available to the market, including Inter-IC (I2C) and the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), are numerous.”
The result: interface fragmentation increases product development and integration costs.
He said SenseWire incorporates and unifies key attributes of I2C and SPI while improving the capabilities and performance of each approach with a comprehensive, scalable interface and architecture.
The technical features of the MIPI I3C specification include a two-pin interface that is backward compatible with the I2C standard and provides data throughput capabilities comparable to SPI.
On standard CMOS I/O, it supports a minimum data rate of 10 Mbps with options for higher performance high-data-rate (HDR) modes
Companies participating in the MIPI Alliance Sensor Working Group included AMD, Audience, Broadcom, Cadence, Intel Corporation, InvenSense, Lattice Semiconductor, MediaTek, Mentor Graphics, NVIDIA, NXP, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Qualcomm Incorporated, QuickLogic, VLSI Plus, Ltd., ZMDI, and others.
MIPI I3C Provides a Unified, High-Performing Interface for Sensors
http://www.rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/115288
Planned for release in October, 2015, MIPI I3C is a sensor interface from the MIPI Alliance that alleviates sensor integration challenges in mobile, mobile influenced and embedded systems applications such as the Internet of Things.
MIPI I3C is a game changer for sensor vendors and engineers who work to interconnect sensors in their designs to create new products and applications. The new interface will enable manufacturers to combine multiple sensors from different vendors in a device, streamline integration and drive cost efficiencies. It supports connection to any type of device that employs a host processor or microcontroller using standardized sensor interface to ensure high-performance, low-power operation. It will be practical not only for smartphones, tablets, and wearables, but also for IoT, toys, gaming devices, medical, industrial equipment and other use cases. There is a bright future ahead for MIPI I3C.
I3C℠ Sensor Specification
http://mipi.org/specifications/i3c%E2%84%A0-sensor-specification
The technical features of the MIPI I3C℠ specification define a two-pin interface that is backward compatible with the I2C standard and provide data throughput capabilities comparable to SPI.
The new technology can facilitate in-band interrupts within the 2-wire interface, which drastically reduces device pin count and signal paths to enable incorporation of more sensors in a device. On standard CMOS I/O, it supports a minimum data rate of 10 Mbps with options for higher performance high-data-rate (HDR) modes, offering a substantial leap in performance and power efficiency compared to existing options.
Synopsys Delivers Industry’s First MIPI I3C IP for Sensor Connectivity Targeting IoT and Automotive Applications
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/synopsys-delivers-industrys-first-mipi-i3c-ip-for-sensor-connectivity-targeting-iot-and-automotive-applications-300257388.html
DesignWare IP Compliant with the Latest MIPI I3C Specification Delivers High Bandwidth and Scalability
I3C Controller IP Targets Multiple Sensor Connectivity
http://chipsnwafers.electronicsforu.com/index.php/2016/05/07/i3c-controller-ip-targets-multiple-sensor-connectivity/
Synopsys announced what it claims is the industry’s first MIPI I3C controller IP to allow designers to integrate multiple sensors into a system while simplifying board design and reducing overall cost and power, in applications such as mobile, automotive and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Compliant with the MIPI Camera Control Interface (CCI), I2C and MIPI I3C specifications, the Synopsys DesignWare MIPI I3C Controller IP supports in-band interrupts within the 2-wire interface to deliver low pin count, simplifying board design and reducing power and cost
“Designers are adding more sensors into systems to deliver sophisticated functionalities such as touch, motion, proximity and others. The DesignWare MIPI I3C Controller IP provides a scalable interface solution that enables designers to efficiently integrate required sensor connectivity into their systems, while meeting challenging performance, power and cost constraints of their target application”, said John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP and prototyping at Synopsys.”
The IP is backward compatible with I2C, allowing designers to future proof their design, and the master and slave operating modes enable systems with several ICs to efficiently connect to all sensors on a single I3C bus.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MEMS/Sensor Interface I3C Rocks
MIPI Alliance offer improved sensor spec at MEC
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324598
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Library: Mesh Networks Ideal for Smart Home Control Applications
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1329424&
Mesh networking is emerging as an ideal design solution for interconnecting a large number of network devices.
The Internet of Things will have an estimated 6.4 billion “connected things” by the end of 2016 according to technology research firm Gartner. Increasingly, mesh networking is emerging as an ideal design solution for interconnecting a large number of network devices, especially for smart home applications.
Mesh networks rely on wireless nodes rather than centralized access points to create a virtual wireless backbone. Thus, mesh networks offer the ability to connect wirelessly devices and computers directly, without a phone company or ISP link. All mesh nodes cooperate in the distribution of data in the network, and mesh networks can relay messages using either a flooding technique or a routing technique. In a mesh arrangement, network nodes establish network links with surrounding nodes, enabling traffic to hop between nodes on several paths through the network. Mesh networks are said to be self-healing, self-organizing and scalable, merely by adding more nodes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Nest releases OpenThread, an open-sourced version of its Thread home automation networking protocol
Nest open-sources its home automation network protocol, Thread
http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/11/nest-open-sources-its-home-automation-network-protocol-thread/
Nest has released an open-sourced version of its Thread protocol, making its home automation network technology more broadly available to developers. The introduction of OpenThread is expected to give parties interested in working with open-source technology all the benefits of building on Thread — allowing them to continue innovating without dealing with the current limitations of the protocol.
This project is the company’s first open-source initiative.
Created by Nest, Samsung, ARM, Atmel, Dialog Semiconductor, Qualcomm Technologies, and Texas Instruments, Thread was intended to be the standard for connected home devices and apps. When it was announced in 2014, the protocol was described as providing a common network language that products like smart thermostats and smoke alarms could use to talk with each other.
The original creator companies even formed an industry coalition called the Thread Group to spearhead standards. Since its founding two years ago, more than 230 members have been added to the group, with over 30 products submitted and awaiting Thread certification. Even Google’s own products, such as its OnHub router, include the Thread protocol.
Eventually, Thread was used to develop Nest Weave, a device-to-device communications protocol that allows connected objects such as GE’s branded lighting controls to communicate with other smart devices without solely relying on Wi-Fi.
It’s important to note that OpenThread is solely a creation of Nest
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ships remote monitoring – IoT and the use of sensors
ABB has set up in Vuosaari, Helsinki ships remote monitoring center (Integrated Operations Center), of which cloud computing can be used to remotely monitor all passing ships on the high seas. The new center is a practical example of the industrial exploitation of the internet in ships.
ABB’s new Helsinki-positioned ships control center can connect to any ABB vessel equipped with the technology to track and ship performance. The center is also in direct contact with the ship’s owners Fintecna in the ground and support in problem situations, maintenance planning and ship performance comparison.
The new center will serve both passenger and cargo ships to run on ice. Vessel sensors and software for transmitting data via a satellite connection devices, and performance. the collected data via cloud services, is also associated with condition monitoring data collected manually.
Processing and visualizing all of this data the number of ship owners, together with ABB experts can monitor the entire fleets. This will reduce unexpected downtime and costly delays at the ports.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/05/11/laivat-etavalvontaan-iot-ja-anturit-kayttoon/
Tomi Engdahl says:
RF Mesh Network
https://hackaday.io/project/11639-rf-mesh-network
High-throughput zero topology configuration mesh network for temporary/emergency communications over long distances.
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arduino nrf24l01 NRF24L01+PA+LNA rf mesh network iot
This project was created on 05/10/2016 and last updated 24 minutes ago.
Description
I’m using the NRF24L01+PA+LNA radio modules to create a mesh network of inexpensive, identical nodes. There is zero topology configuration, and the network should map itself. Maximum (rated) range between modules is 1km (with 250kbps) and 2mbps at 250m. The total cost of a solar-powered RF unit is currently (estimated) $16. The mesh should implement TCP/IP communication. Communication should be capable of encrypted protocols. This project is just getting started, but will probably finish up near the end of summer 2016
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Bergen / Recode:
Sources: Google’s answer to Amazon Echo is code-named “Chirp” and expected to launch this year
Google’s answer to Amazon’s Echo is code-named ‘Chirp’ and is landing soon
‘Okay, Google,’ your turn.
http://www.recode.net/2016/5/11/11658432/google-chirp-amazon-echo-rival
A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google’s search and voice assistant technology, akin to the Amazon Echo, Recode has learned.
Google’s device will resemble its OnHub wireless router, according to several sources. We don’t know if it has a name yet, but internally the project goes by “Chirp.”
Google declined to comment. The Information previously reported that Google was plotting a competing version of Echo, a portable speaker with voice assistant tech.
Google has long had voice assistant tech in its Android phones — beckoned by the words “Okay, Google” — that many in the industry see as leading the pack. (People inside Google think so, too.) But it has yet to bake that into the home, a key growing marketing for Google and its rivals. Its OnHub router, released last summer, does not have voice recognition capabilities.
Amazon, on the other hand, has moved headlong into the home with Echo. One analyst estimated that Amazon has sold three million units.
And Echo is collecting the type of data — what consumers search for, listen to and buy, and how they talk to machines — that Google loves
Exclusive
Four Nest/Google Products Still Under Wraps
https://www.theinformation.com/four-nest-google-products-still-under-wraps
Tomi Engdahl says:
A comprehensive look at the intelligent building
http://www.csemag.com/single-article/a-comprehensive-look-at-the-intelligent-building/c32b28cda85ef52173bdd8fbbaf8b465.html
Technology is changing what’s possible for buildings. With the advent of smart building technology, heating, cooling, electrical, lighting, fire/life safety, and other systems need monitoring and intercommunication for optimized efficiency and operation.
Most infrastructure systems deployed in today’s buildings are inherently “smart,” with self-contained logical control that includes embedded performance optimization and self-diagnostic algorithmic features. While it is understood that intercommunication of these systems provides tremendous opportunity in optimizing building operation efficiency, it is necessary for the engineer to think beyond the building automation system (BAS) as the link to systems interoperability. With sophistication comes the need for a BAS and building controls that allow for nearly seamless operation of this interrelated equipment. Smart buildings and smart cities integrate the design of the infrastructure, building and facility systems, communications, business systems, and technology solutions that contribute to sustainability and operational efficiency.
Today’s truly intelligent buildings interoperate on a common converged network where data is shared through an open-source platform. Middleware collects, analyzes, and communicates in a two-way fashion with the smart systems to best optimize the building response and enhance the occupant experience. To do this effectively and efficiently, the engineer must bring together and align more stakeholders than in the past.
The BAS, with control over the building’s HVAC systems, has long been viewed as the core smart system in a commercial building. However, modern construction contains many more inherently smart devices and subsystems. Electromechanical timers for irrigation and lighting control have given way to microprocessors with real-time clocks and the ability to network together. Racks of clicking elevator-control relays have been replaced by robust and reliable programmable logic controllers. Multiple networks crisscross the building, each one connecting its specific group of devices, such as surveillance cameras, card readers, or fire alarm initiating and notification devices. Audio/video systems have grown from stand-alone racks of analog-source electronics to buildingwide distribution of digital content. Ever more stringent building energy codes essentially mandate that networked microprocessor lighting control systems be installed instead of an array of interconnected sensors and power packs.
Benefits of integration
Smart devices and IoT technologies are the conduits to capture better and more relevant building data; however, if that data remains solely contained within the boundary of the original smart building system—BAS, lighting control system, electrical power monitoring system, vertical transport system, etc.—the power of the collected data cannot be fully realized. These independent “silos” of smart devices are, at best, inefficient to install, manage, and maintain. Each is typically sold and installed by a separate contractor, each is operated or monitored by a unique software system, and the massive collection of disparate specialty devices makes it all but impossible for the average facility operator to become adequately trained to maintain most of it properly.
However, if these specialty devices become enabled to share their data through an open-source data platform, smart building systems become collectively intelligent and their effectiveness increases exponentially. When elevators, HVAC systems, lighting controls, and other systems are integrated with intelligent building platforms, they move beyond the collection of data to allowing communication across the systems to foster efficiency. Strong building data is the foundation of the intelligent building platform, which turns the collected data into building intelligence that can be applied to foster smarter use of the built environment.
The real power of each smart device gets unlocked when incorporated into an intelligent building software platform. The traditional approach to integrating systems has been to expand the HVAC-centric BAS, but there are practical limits to what a building management system can achieve.
Key features of an intelligent building software platform are:
Multiple protocol capability to allow flexibility in procurement of the various subsystems and devices
A common object/data model to encourage the normalization of the assortment of protocols and subsystems into a consistent framework
Open-source software to enable software development to extend the core features
Open distribution to ensure that the owner/end user will have maximum future flexibility when expanding or maintaining the system
A suite of software features that match up with owner requirements, which could include advanced visualization/user interface, dashboards targeting managers and occupants, fault detection and diagnostics, energy analytics, advanced reporting capabilities, and performance optimization capabilities.
Stakeholders
The best conditions for success when creating an intelligent building occur when the goals of the diverse stakeholders (see Figure 2) can be aligned with intelligent building goals at the project outset. Just as it is necessary for a project team to find agreement on basic architectural programming details like location, size, height, and cost before any detailed construction drawings can be drafted, the “size and shape” of the intelligent platform must be agreed upon before any meaningful design can begin.
Unfortunately, current practice is often to skip an initial programming phase with the stakeholders at the table. Instead, each subsystem design engineer or design-build contractor creates a solution in a vacuum or with minimal coordination between disciplines, and the opportunity to develop the most value at the lowest cost is lost. Much later in construction, as the various stakeholders come to the table, features get added in a patchwork manner, leading to higher costs and unfortunate compromises that result in a system with diminished effectiveness.
Visualizing success
Strong visualization tools organize and present the building data so that stakeholders can better understand the building to make necessary adjustments for optimization. Individual dashboards for each of the building’s stakeholders can be built to concentrate on targeted data sets. For example, the day-to-day building operator will need the most inclusive dashboard that features an overall picture of the facility as well as certain granular-level statistics specific to each facility, while the financial stakeholder will want to know how the day-to-day numbers play out in the overall budget.
Another benefit to effective visualization tools, and possibly the most powerful long-term benefit, is the power to influence behavioral change within the people that occupy and visit the intelligent building.
Cost and budget issues
With all the features and benefits that have been described, why are more buildings not incorporating the truly intelligent, converged building system approach? One common misperception is that it must cost more. If the intelligent concept is an afterthought and is applied as an overlay late in the building design process, there indeed could be a budgetary impact. However, if the intelligent building concept is a key initiative considered from the project inception and supported by the project owners and stakeholders, the individual smart systems can be planned and designed to minimize—and even remove—the budgetary impact.
Early involvement allows the project to eliminate common redundancies, such as multiple parallel networks, multiple software systems configured to create separate user interfaces, and even multiple electrical installation subcontractors.
Accurately estimating the budget of the building project is a key benefit of early intelligent building planning.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Drupal and Alexa: The Next Big Thing?
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/drupal-and-alexa-next-big-thing
This year, Dries wowed the audience with a quick demo of a Drupal site communicating with an Amazon Echo to provide a personalized shopping experience via Echo’s conversational interface. And perhaps most interesting was Buytaert’s take on conversational interfaces as the next big shake-up for developers and content creators, much like mobile interfaces changed the way we approach web development in the recent past.
Drupal Alexa module
https://www.drupal.org/project/alexa
This is an integration module for Amazon Echo devices, allowing Drupal to respond to Alexa Skills. Right now the module provides a basic integration and developers will need to fork in order to provide their own skills. Events integration is coming soon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linaro’s ARM-Based Developer Cloud
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linaros-arm-based-developer-cloud
As the adoption of ARM-based servers accelerates and IoT applications rapidly evolve, software developers are demanding access to requisite hardware and software-reference platforms. In response, Linaro released Linaro Developer Cloud, a new cloud-based native ARMv8 development environment, which can be used to design, develop, port and test server, cloud and IoT applications without substantial upfront hardware investment.
The Developer Cloud is the combination of ARM-based silicon vendors’ server hardware platforms, emerging cloud technologies and many Linaro member-driven projects, including server-class boot architecture, kernel and virtualization. The Developer Cloud is based on OpenStack, leveraging both Debian and CentOS, as the underlying cloud OS infrastructure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESPeasy
The ESP Easy firmware can be used to turn the ESP module into an easy multifunction sensor device for Home Automation solutions like Domoticz. Configuration of the ESP Easy is entirely web based, so once you’ve got the firmware loaded, you don’t need any other tool besides a common web browser.
We need to replace the existing firmware with the ESP Easy firmware. We provide a (Windows only) flashtool to make this process an easy job.
http://www.esp8266.nu/index.php/ESPEasy
http://www.esp8266.nu/index.php/Tutorial_Domoticz_Switch
To be able to communicate with devices like the ESP, we have to add virtual hardware to Domoticz.
If you have your ESP board loaded with ESP Easy firmware, powerup the unit and an Access point named “ESP_0″ should appear. Connect to this access point and browse to http://192.168.4.1
Configure at least the following settings to get you started:
SSID
WPA
Protocol Domoticz HTTP
Controller IP = your Domoticz server IP
Controller Port = your Domoticz server port, default should be 8080
Select “Switch Input” and enter the IDX found earlier in Domoticz
Now toggle GPIO-0 pin high and low and the light bulb in Domoticz should turn on/off accordingly!
(if you’re using a NodeMCU board, you just have to toggle the “flash” button)
https://domoticz.com/
http://www.banggood.com/DIY-Wi-Fi-Wireless-Switch-For-Smart-Home-With-ABS-Shell-p-1019971.html page says “I flashed ESPeasy on it, and it works great.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s Nest Shares Thread Code
Free software enables mesh 802.15.4 network
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329656&
Alphabet’s Nest Labs Inc. released OpenThread, a free open source version of the software it uses to enable the Thread protocol for the Internet of Things. The move marks a small but significant effort to accelerate adoption of its approach to interoperability in a highly fragmented market for smart home devices.
Nest’s rivals including the Allseen Alliance and the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) have already made available open source reference code for their IoT application-layer protocols. Allseen’s Alljoyn was early to release software that has been adopted in a variety of shipping systems.
Thread enables secure mesh networks based on IPv6 and IEEE 802.15.4. Chip makers including Microchip’s Atmel group, Dialog Semiconductor, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are contributing to the development of OpenThread which can also run on development kits from NXP Semiconductors and Silicon Labs.
OpenThread will be distributed on GitHub for free use based on a BSD license. It can run on home routers with 64KByte RAM and 256KByte ROM and end devices with less memory.
The protocol is used in existing Nest products and Google’s OnHub router.
OpenThread is an open-source implementation of the Thread networking protocol
https://github.com/openthread/openthread
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s answer to Amazon’s Echo is code-named ‘Chirp’ and is landing soon
‘Okay, Google,’ your turn.
http://www.recode.net/2016/5/11/11658432/google-chirp-amazon-echo-rival
A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google’s search and voice assistant technology, akin to the Amazon Echo, Recode has learned.
Google’s device will resemble its OnHub wireless router, according to several sources. We don’t know if it has a name yet, but internally the project goes by “Chirp.”
Google declined to comment. The Information previously reported that Google was plotting a competing version of Echo, a portable speaker with voice assistant tech.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT: You ain’t seen nothing yet
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4442008/IoT–You-ain-t-seen-nothing-yet?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160512&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160512&elqTrackId=4065800023534670871219775d9a6f18&elq=f7938c4e037343bfa3e218cf0f0c9f12&elqaid=32221&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28143
This title, borrowed from Bachman Turner Overdrive’s classic 1974 hit, seems very relevant today when we apply it to the “Internet of Things” (IoT). If you think the IoT is confusing now, just wait. Data traffic and applications are headed through the roof.
I’ve been reading and using the term “IoT” for a long time, but realized I needed a clear definition. The Internet is full of similar choices but I selected this one from TechTarget: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
Does the concept ‘without human interaction’ bother anyone other than me?
Meanwhile, technological advances are exploding and suddenly everyone is trying to jump on the IoT band wagon. Junko Yoshida’s recent article, Spiraling Data Costs Imperil IoT points out a critical issue: information overload and its associated cost. I was amazed, for example, to learn that a smart meter produces 400mB of data per day. Does my utility really need sixty messages per minute from my smart meter?
Furthermore, much of the actual “information” being communicated by IoT devices is often quite small — a few tens to a couple of hundred bytes. But the address and security headers can often be much larger, making the entire payload unmanageable and, as Junko rightly points out, prohibitively costly.
As applications expand, the information content will only become larger. Today we already have hundreds of IoT applications in service: iris scanning for immigration, shot spotting technology for high crime neighborhoods, traffic cameras, NFC payment systems, RFID item location, remote automotive diagnostics, intrusion detection, fall detection for the elderly … and much more; even climate controlled clothing. Really?
Yet today’s applications are miniscule compared to the challenges that lie ahead. Compounding an uncertain IoT future is a proliferation of protocol spinoffs. XMPP, CoAP, MQTT, and others in the alphabet soup seem to divide users into several distinct camps. Are we heading toward another VHS/Betamax showdown with a dozen or more players?
Fast forward to the future to see how complicated it may get. What will happen to IoT, for instance, when Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more main-stream?
Replacing human decision making is a huge undertaking. Yet these cars (sophisticated robots; Roombas on steroids … lots of steroids) will need to communicate massive payloads of data (more than my smart meter) in real time in order to sense, act, and react to both predictable and unpredictable road events.
We already have cars that sense collisions and automatically apply the brakes. Good for safety reasons, but what if a hacker gets in?
Advances in Artificial Intelligence, in parallel with the billions of sensors and actuators being dispersed into IoT endpoints, feeds an insatiable set of hungry global databases from which better (more accurate) information can be retrieved at higher and higher speeds.
AI systems will make better, faster decisions than we ever dreamed of because they can easily access this repository of knowledge.
Passenger planes can take off, fly, and land themselves.
On a more peaceful note, we are already compiling medical information databases at an alarming speed that AI mining tools can sort through to winnow down possible illnesses and cures to a manageable few. But how do we protect patient privacy while communicating all these symptoms and possibilities digitally over the internet?
We already have designer drugs to fight cancers. How long before we inject nanobots and direct them (via the IoT?) to remove a blood clot or destroy, repair, or rebuild cells in specific organs?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux is a prisoner of its own development
The Linux kernel now supports 35 different file system, and all architectures conceivable. The core of more than 10 000 lines of new code are added every day. This will flow to the end in the autumn of 25 years to comply with the operating system problem, if it is not already on it.
Code expansion is partly linux excellent update rate should be. On the other hand every week kernel upgrade seats quickly found on the bugs, but on the other hand, it will inevitably lead to an increase in the amount of code. Normal user’s perspective, this also leads to an increase in the size of the installation package.
This is despite the fact that linux is developing for the past five years has been relatively stable.
Completely new subsystems will no longer come
Linux version 4.5 includes more than 21 million lines of code.
aptop hovering around 1.6 million lines of code, lines of code in the smart phone has 2.5 million.
Code expansion will also lead to the fact that Linux may not suit small IoT devices. At least, it requires the company’s ability to develop its own, stripped-down version just for your application.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4417:linux-on-oman-kehityksensa-vanki&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Barometer: utilization of data at an early stage
The Internet of Things rebound in the growth of many Finnish companies, but how good we are now IoT our projects? We are not very good, says Arrow Electronics IoT barometer. Businesses are not taking their devices connected to the network data generated.
Arrow’n Barometer interviewed last year, companies in various sectors are those of the IoT operating mode. The majority (58%) of the product is not intelligent in the sense that it would be connected to the data collected in some kind of analytics. The most advanced IoT business activities are the construction and energy industries.
At the moment, Finnish companies will see that the greatest benefits of the IoT through on customer satisfaction and cost savings. In the near future, within three years, is expected to become the biggest benefits of customer satisfaction as well as quality and risk management, product improvement.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4416:iot-barometri-datan-hyodyntaminen-viela-alkuvaiheessa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Product Spotlight: RAM® Industrial Cellular RTUs
http://www.redlion.net/product-spotlight-ram-industrial-cellular-rtus
Red Lion’s Sixnet® series RAM industrial cellular RTUs provide a secure all-in-one platform that offers unmatched reliability for the remote monitoring and control of field-deployed assets. With a built-in event engine that can trigger I/O and send SMS text messages based on real-time operational data, our rugged cellular RTUs provide local control regardless of location.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Introduces $20 Dash-Like Button For IoT
https://slashdot.org/story/16/05/13/1951224/amazon-introduces-20-dash-like-button-for-iot
Amazon has revealed a programmable Dash Button which can be assigned to any product or purpose, a customizable version of its one-touch reordering gadgets. The AWS IoT Button looks just like the existing Dash Buttons
AWS IoT Button could be used to trigger your lights, integrate with popular APIs from Twitter, Slack, Facebook, or others, or summon a car through Uber
Amazon now has a programmable Dash Button for the IoT
http://www.slashgear.com/amazon-now-has-a-programmable-dash-button-for-the-iot-13439996/
Amazon has revealed a programmable Dash Button which can be assigned to any product or purpose, a customizable version of its one-touch reordering gadgets. The AWS IoT Button looks just like the existing Dash Buttons, which allow products from more than 100 brands to be ordered with a single tap – no web browser required – and delivered to a preset address, but is designed for developers and Internet of Things tinkerers to dig into.
So, rather than having a new multipack of toilet rolls, or a fresh box of laundry detergent added to your shopping list, the AWS IoT Button could be used to trigger your lights, integrate with popular APIs from Twitter, Slack, Facebook, or others, or summon a car through Uber.
It’s what many people have been asking for since Amazon first launched Dash Buttons in March 201
Just as before, each button connects to a WiFi network and then links straight to Amazon’s AWS cloud. The company says that integrating the button into a Lambda function is so straightforward that even beginners should be able to fathom it out, while still leaving sufficient flexibility for more ambitious projects to use the wireless key.
If there’s a downside, it’s that the hardware itself may not be ideal for every purpose, particularly when it comes to battery life.
In fact, it’s only rated to last for around 1,000 presses, and after that you’re expected to buy a new one. “When the device battery runs out of charge,” Amazon says, “there is no way to recharge or replace the battery.”
That’s no big deal if you’re using it to reorder Tide, but if you’re looking to use it as a light switch for your connected bulbs you’ll probably hit the 1,000 press limit far more rapidly.