It’s undeniable: 2014 was the year when the electronics industry decidedly and collectively moved forward to push the Internet of Things (IoT). In year 2015 IoT markets will continue to grow. I think we’re going to see some critical mass on corralling the IoT in 2015. IoT is a young market – no one seems to be clearly leading. Communications are the key here. Over the last 10 years the world has done a remarkably good job of connecting the global wireless world. The last decade has radically changed the way we live. The smartphone and its cousin, the tablet, was the final link to ubiquitous wireless coverage, globally. The fantasy of the IoT is quite grand: everything on the planet can be smart and communicate. The idea is both powerful and impractical.
IoT is entering peak of inflated expectations: The Internet of Things is at that stage when the efforts of various companies involved in it, along with research, are proving to have a lot of promise. At this stage, the Internet of Things should not have too many difficulties attracting developers and researchers into the fold. As we turn to 2015 and beyond, however, wearables becomes an explosive hardware design opportunity. Tie the common threads of IoT and wearables together, and an unstoppable market movement emerges. There seems to be a lack of public appreciation of the extent to which the Internet of Things is going to fundamentally change how people interact with the world around them.
On the other hand, the Internet of Things is getting poised to enter the trough of disillusionment, which means that there is more room for failure now. There are issues of security, privacy, and sharing of information across vertical implementations that still need to be worked out. Until they are, the IoT will not be able to fulfill all its promises.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to grow significantly, as consumers, businesses, and governments recognize the benefit of connecting inert devices to the internet. The ‘Internet of Things’ Will Be The World’s Most Massive Device Market And Save Companies Billions Of Dollars in few years. BI Intelligence expects that the IoT will result in $1.7 trillion in value added to the global economy in 2019. This includes hardware, software, installation costs, management services, and economic value added from realized IoT efficiencies. The main benefit of growth in the IoT will be increased efficiency and lower costs: increased efficiency within the home, city, and workplace. The enterprise sector will lead the IoT, accounting for 46% of device shipments this year, but that share will decline as the government and home sectors gain momentum. I expect that home, government, and enterprise sectors use the IoT differently.
The IoT is only enabled because of two things: the ability of networks to reach countless nodes, and the availability of cost-effective embedded processors to attach to a multitude of devices. The prices for components and devices continues to decline while the skyrocketing global demand for 24/7 Internet access grows exponentially. The Internet of Things growth will benefit mostly from the autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity that will make up the bulk of the objects of the IoT. This is the main driver for double-digit growth across verticals in the electronics, and especially the semiconductor industry well into the next decade. The IoT will connect places, such as manufacturing platforms, energy grids, health-care facilities, transportation systems, retail outlets, sports and music venues, and countless other entities to the Internet.
Internet of Things can become Engineering for Everyone. The emergence of open-source development platforms, developed and maintained by dedicated volunteers, has effectively raised the level of abstraction to a point where nonexperts can now use these platforms. The availability of open-source software and, more recently, hardware targeting embedded applications means that access to high-quality engineering resources has never been greater. This has effectively raised the level of abstraction to a point where nonexperts can now use these platforms to turn their own abstract concepts into real products. With the potential to launch a successful commercial venture off the back of tinkering with some low-cost hardware in your spare time, it’s no wonder that open-source hardware is fuelling an entirely new movement. A new generation of manufacturer is embracing the open-source ethos and actually allowing customers to modify the product post-sale.
Exact size predictions for IoT market next few years vary greatly, but all of the firms making these predictions agree on one thing—it’s going to be very big.
In year 2014 very many chip vendors and sensor algorithm companies also jumped on the IoT bandwagon, in hopes of laying the groundwork for more useful and cost-effective IoT devices. Sensors, MCUs, and wireless connectivity are three obvious building blocks for IoT end-node devices. Wireless connectivity and software (algorithms) are the two most sought-after technologies. Brimming with excitement, and with Europe already ahead of the pack, a maturing semiconductor industry looks expectantly to the Internet of Things (IoT) for yet another facelift. The IC sales generated by the connectivity and sensor subsystems to enabled this IoT will amount $57.7 billion in 2015.
Chips for IoT market to grow 36% in 2015, says Gartner as automotive V2X, LED lighting and smart domestic objects are set to drive semiconductor market growth through the year 2020, according to market analysis firm Gartner. The move to create billions of smart, autonomously communicating objects known as the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving the need for low-power sensors, processors and communications chips. By 2018, the market value of IoT subsystems in equipment and Internet-connected things is projected to reach $103.6 billion worldwide, which represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.0 percent from $39.8 billion in 2013.
BI Intelligence expects that by 2019 IoT market will be more than double the size of the smartphone, PC, tablet, connected car, and the wearable market combined. A new report by Yole Developpement pegs the market size in the $70 billion range by 2018, with the next five years presenting a golden opportunity for device makers as the IoT enters the growth stage. Device shipments will reach 6.7 billion in 2019 for a five-year CAGR of 61%.
Number of connected devices is expected to to reach 36 billion units by 2020, cautions that “all of this new market opportunity is under threat.” Other estimate according to market research firm Radiant Insights of San Francisco is that the number of Internet connections will grow from 9 billion devices in 2014 to 100 billion by 2020 (twice as many as the estimate from Cisco Systems Inc). IC Insights forecasts that web-connected things will account for 85 percent of 29.5 billion Internet connections worldwide by 2020. Currently fragmented market, the number of cellular M2M connections could rise from 478 million today to 639 million in 2020.
By 2024, the report predicts that overall market value for components will exceed of $400 billion, of which more than 10% will come from hardware alone. Revenue from hardware sales will be only $50 billion or 8% of the total revenue from IoT-specific efforts, as software makers and infrastructure companies will earn the lion’s share. As the Internet of Things grows to a projected 212 billion items by 2020, the question of regulation looms increasingly large.
The growth of the IoT will present some very interesting issues in a variety of areas. You will see some very fast activity because unless it gets resolved there will be no IoT as it is envisioned.
General consensus is that the interconnect protocol of the IoT will be IP (Internet Protocol). As it stands today, the deployment of the billions of IoT objects can’t happen, simply because there just aren’t enough IP addresses with IPv4. While there is still some discussion about how to connect the IoT, most are in agreement that the IoT protocol will be IPv6. The first step will be to convert all proprietary networks to an IP-base. Then, the implementation of IPv6 can begin. Because direct interoperability between IPv4 and iPv6 protocols is not possible, this will add some some complications to the development, resulting in a bit of obfuscation to the transition for IPv6.
Is There Any Way to Avoid Standards Wars in the Emerging Internet of Things? I don’t see that possible. IoT will be in serious protocol war in 2015. There is a wide selection of protocols, but no clear set of winners at the moment. The real IoT standardization is just starting – There are currently few standards (or regulations) for what is needed to run an IoT device. There is no single standard for connecting devices on the Internet of Thing, instead are a handful of competing standards run by different coalitions of companies: The Thread Group (Qualcomm, The Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Panasonic), The Industrial Internet Consortium (Intel, Cisco, AT&T, IBM, Microsoft), Open Interconnect Consortium (Samsung, Intel, Dell), Physical Web (Google), AllSeen Alliance (Samsung, Intel, Dell) and huge number of smaller non-standardized protocols in use. Each of the standards vary how they do things.
Anyone who tries to build a physical layer and drive a software stack based on it all the way up to the application layer is a fool. But many companies try to do it this year. Today Zigbee is the most cost effective, but tomorrow WiFi will figure it out. On networking field in every few years there’s a new management protocol – what will happen in IoT, it will keep moving, and people will need open APIs.
Currently the IoT lacks a common set of standards and technologies that would allow for compatibility and ease-of-use. The IoT needs a set of open APIs and protocols that work with a variety of physical-layer networks. The IP and network layer should have nothing to do with the media. The fundamental issue here is that at the moment the Internet of Things will not have a standard set of open APIs for consumers. IoT, it will keep moving, and people will need open APIs. I suspect that at some point, after the first wave of the Internet of Things, open APIs and root access will become a selling point.
It is not just technical protocol details that are problem: One problem with IoT is that it is a vague definition. Do we simply mean ‘connected devices? Or something else? One of the main issues, which will only get worse as the IoT evolves, is how are we going to categorize all the different objects.
Early in 2015, the Industrial Internet Consortium plans to wrap up work on a broad reference architecture for the Internet of Things, ramp up three test beds, and start identifying gaps where new standards may be needed. The group, formed by AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM, and Intel, now has about 115 members and aims to make it easier to build commercial IoT systems. The IIC hopes to finish a first draft of its reference architecture by the end of January and have it ratified by March. It will define functional areas and the technologies and standards for them, from sensors to data analytics and business applications. The framework includes versions for vertical markets including aerospace, healthcare, manufacturing, smart cities, and transportation. A breakout section on security also is in the works. Hopefully the reference architecture could be used to help people construct industrial IoT systems quickly and easily.
With the emergence of the Internet of Things, smart cars are beginning to garner more attention. Smart cars are different than connected cars, which are simply smartphones on wheels. Even though the technology has been on the evolutionary fast track, integration has been slow. For car manufacturers, it is a little tricky to accept driverless cars because it disrupts their fundamental business model: Private resources will evolve to shared resources, centrally controlled, since autonomous vehicles can be controlled remotely.
Over the next few years, we’ll see a torrent of new devices emerge that are connected to the Internet and each other through a wide range of different wireless networking protocols. As a result, there’s a race on, not just to get those devices connected, but also to provide the network infrastructure necessary to managing all of them at scale. WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular networks are nowadays widely used, nut new alternatives are coming to solve applications were those technologies are not most suitable. There are different plans for wide area wireless networks that use licensed or unlicensed wireless bandwidth to transmit small amounts of data from various connected device – this could create its own connection to them in a cost effective manner without relying on existing cellular or WiFi networks.
Recently we have developed a pressing need, or desire to put our refrigerators, and everything we have access to while mobile, on the net, morphing the brave new world of the Internet of Things, into the Internet of Everything (IoE). And that will make that last 100 meters—that final frontier of interconnect—a reality. Today, only about 10% of the last 100 meter devices that will make up the IoT are connected. As the IoT evolves, other small cells such as businesses, city centers, malls, theaters, stadiums, event centers, and the like, will connect much of what they have on premise (soda or popcorn machines, vending machines, restaurants, parking garages, ticket kiosks, seat assignments, and a very long list of others). And, there are a very large number of devices that are short-range in all of these various cells. What was once the last mile for connectivity is now the last 100 meters.
Plenty of people and companies in the technology world tend to come at the Internet of Things by dwelling on the “Internet.” But what if, instead, we started with the “Things?” Knowing intimately what “things” are supposed to do and how they think and behave will be the key to solving one of the IoT’s most pressing issues: application layers. Over the past 18 months, the industry has launched numerous consortia, from Qualcomm’s AllSeen and Intel’s Open Interconnect Consortium to Apple’s HomeKit and Google’s Thread. Every entity says it’s targeting the “interoperability” of things at home, but each is obviously concentrating primarily on its own interests, and making their “layer” specifications slightly different from those pursued by others.
It seems that no industry consortium is particularly interested in defining — in gory detail — the specific functions of, say, what a door lock is supposed to do. The library of commands for each function already exists, but someone, or some group, has to translate those already determined commands into an IP-friendly format. One of the standards organizations will take up the challenge in 2015. This will be the first step to “knock barriers down for IoT” in 2015.
Missing today in the IoT are reliability and robustness. Consumers expect their light switched and other gadgets to be infinitely reliable. In many today’s products we seem to be far from reliable and robust operation. Today’s routers can relay traffic between networks, but they have no idea how to translate what functions each device attached to them wants to do, and how to communicate that to other devices. The network needs to be able to discover who else is on the network. Devices connected to network need to be able to discover what resources are available and what new devices are being added. The network needs to be extensible.
Despite the oft-mocked naming scheme, the Internet of Things (IoT) has an incredibly practical goal: connecting classically “dumb” objects—toasters, doorknobs, light switches—to the Internet, thereby unlocking a world of potential. Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website, accessing it without geographic restriction. But there is one missing piece of the smart home revolution: smart home operating system. So what will be the system that capitalizes on the smart home in the same way, the enabler of all the applications and actions we want our homes to run and do? There are no ready answers for that yet. And there might not be a singular, cohesive operating system for your home, that this stuff isn’t one-size-fits-all. It might be that the real potential for home automation lies not in local software running on a home device but in the cloud. I think that the cloud is going to be more important over time, but there will always be also need for some local functionality in case the connection to cloud is lost. Right now the Internet of Things is rather disjointed compared to Internet and computers.
When everything will be connected, how about security? In the path to IoT, the issue of data and device security looms large. Security for the ‘Internet of Things’ will be talked about very much in 2015 for a good reason. As Internet of Thigs becomes more and more used, it will be more hacked. Thus security of Internet of Things will be more and more talked about. Virtually anything connected to the Internet has the potential of being hacked, no matter how unlikely. Internet of Things devices often lack systematic protections against viruses or spam. Nowadays most security breaches are software-based, when an application can be compromised. Counter-measures for such attacks range from basic antivirus scanning software, to embedded hypervisors to hardware-bound secure applications tying their execution to uniquely identifiable hardware. There is emerging customer demand for silicon authentication. But the threats extend way beyond software and some hackers will put a lot of effort into compromising a system’s security at silicon-level. Individual devices can get hacked, but all systems should have some way of self-checking and redundancy. Those IoT systems can be very complex at device and system level. The problem with complexity is that you create more attack points and make it easier for hackers to find flaws.
Experts recommend far more layers of cyberprotection than manufacturers have thought necessary. Because many of the devices will often be practically inaccessible, the “patch and pray” strategy used for many desktop software packages is unlikely to be an effective strategy for many forms of IoT devices. Right now, there are hundreds of companies churning out “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices as fast as they can, without thinking too much on the security issues they can cause in the future. The imperative is clear: Do your homework on the specific security features of any IoT device you might consider bringing into the home. What steps are IoT companies taking to keep us safe from others online, and what constitutes a truly “safe” smart appliance?
What we’re opening up is a whole new subject not just of security but of safety. That safety depends on devices to be constantly connected to the Internet the same way they’re connected to the power grid. That’s a whole new area that deserves its own consideration. Keep in mind that IoT is one field where cyber security flaws can kill in the worst case. Connecting unrelated devices in the IoT means many more pieces now affect reliability and security. More devices are now considered critical, such as a connected baby monitor or a smart smoke detector, because wrong information can injure or kill people. The Internet of Things is coming no matter what happens. The people in charge of keeping the public safe and the industry healthy need to be ready.
The European Police Office (Europol) said governments are ill-equipped to counter the menace of “injury and possible deaths” spurred by hacking attacks on critical safety equipment. There are many potential dangers are in transportation: many new cars are Internet connected and potentially vulnerable, SCADA Systems in Railways Vulnerable to Attack and Airline bosses ignore cyber security concerns at their peril. With industrial control systems becoming network-connected, security risks rise and will need a long-term solution. In light of the trend toward the Industrial Internet of Things, development teams must start thinking hard about network security and planning for its long-term viability.
You have to accept the fact that at each point in the IoT there are vulnerabilities to malicious attacks and interception of vital information. Soon, almost every network will soon have some IoT-hacking in it. IDC predicts that in two years from 90 per cent of the global IT networks have met IoT data theft. In a report, cybersecurity firm Fortinet expects greater threats from “denial of service attacks on assembly line, factory, industrial control systems, and healthcare and building management…resulting in revenue losses and reputation damages for organizations globally.” This opens new doors of risks in the areas of corporate extortion, altering of corporate business operations, and the extension of cyberattacks to include physical threats of harm to civilians.
There are lessons to be learned to keep the cyber security in control in the IoT era. There will be lessons to be learned for all the parties of the IoT ecosystem. The companies that figure out how to make security available on multi-stakeholder platforms will be the most successful ones. Figuring out a secure platform is important, but having different levels of security is still important. Different uses have different bars. Security is a self-regulating system to some extent because it is supply and demand. That is the Holy Grail for technology right now, which is how to build systems with enough security—not 100% protection right now—from a unified platform point of view for multiple applications.
The data generated by the Internet of Things has the potential to reveal far more about users than any technology in history: These devices can make our lives much easier … The Internet of Things however, can also reveal intimate details about the doings and goings of their owners through the sensors they contain. As the Internet of Things grows to a projected 212 billion items by 2020, the question of regulation looms increasingly large. There is a lot of effort is going today at the government level. They’re not thinking about whether the Internet goes down. They’re worried about what happens if the Internet gets compromised.
When we have devices on the field, there is question how to analyze the data coming from them. This is easily a “big data” problem because of the huge amount of data that comes from very large number of sensors. Being able to monitor and use the data that comes from the Internet of Things is a huge potential challenge with different providers using different architectures and approaches, and different chip and equipment vendors teaming up in a range of different ways. Many large and smaller companies are active on the field: Intel, IBM, Lantronix+Google, Microchip+Amazon, Freescale+Oracle, Xively, Jasper, Keen.io, Eurotech, and many other.
The huge increase of data is coming. Radiant predicts that wireless sensor networks will be used to monitor and control very many domestic, urban, and industrial systems. This promises to produce an explosion of data, much of which will be discarded as users are overwhelmed by the volume. As a result, analysis of the data within the wireless sensor network will become necessary so that alerts and meaningful information are generated at the leaf nodes. This year has seen the software at the very highest point in the Internet of Things stack — analytics — becoming tightly coupled with the embedded devices at the edge of the network, leading to many different approaches and providers.
Integrating data from one IoT cloud to another will have it’s challenges. Automation services make big steps by cutting corners. Sites like IFTTT, Zapier, bip.io, CloudWork, and elastic.io allow users to connect applications with links that go beyond a simple synch. Check what is happening with integration and related services like IFTTT, ItDuzzit, Amazon Lambda. For example IFTTT is quietly becoming a smart home powerhouse.
Most important sources of information for this article:
With $16M In Funding, Helium Wants To Provide The Connective Tissue For The Internet Of Things
IFTTT, other automation services make big steps by cutting corners
Internet of Things: Engineering for Everyone
IoT in Protocol War, Says Startup – Zigbee fortunes dim in building control
Analysts Predict CES Hotspots – Corralling the Internet of Things
What’s Holding Back The IoT – Device market opportunities will explode, but only after some fundamental changes
Apps Layer: ’800lb Gorilla’ in IoT Nobody Talks About
Analysts Predict CES Hotspots – IoT, robots, 4K to dominate CES
10 Reasons Why Analytics Are Vital to the Internet of Things
Tech More: Mobile Internet of Things BI Intelligence Consumer Electronics – Most Massive Device Market
Wearables make hardware the new software
Zigbee Opens Umbrella 3.0 Spec
IoT Will Give ‘Embedded’ a Shot in the Arm - Connected cities to be largest IoT market
Chips for IoT market to grow 36% in 2015, says Gartner
Apps Layer: ’800lb Gorilla’ in IoT Nobody Talks About
Short-Range, Low-Power Sensors – once the last mile for connectivity is now the last 100 meters
The one problem the Internet of Things hasn’t solved
Plan Long Term for Industrial Internet Security
To Foil Cyberattacks, Connected Cars Need Overlapping Shields
IoT cybersecurity: is EDA ready to deliver?
More Things Are Critical Systems
Silicon, Security, and the Internet of Things
The missing piece of the smart home revolution
Hackers will soon be targeting your refrigerator
10 Reasons Why Analytics Are Vital to the Internet of Things
1,316 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spark Core and the battle for IoT “platform”
http://hackaday.io/project/883-the-hardware-startup-review/log/1805-spark-core-and-the-battle-for-iot-platform
In a world of tech fairy tales, there would be nothing wrong with telling the Spark Core story as yet-another Kickstarter miracle that surprised everyone, especially its founders, who were subsequently left with only one option – to go ahead and change the world. “People have spoken”, the Oracle would announce.. “now go and fulfill your destiny”. Intentionally or not, Kickstarter has been often instrumental in myth-making and repackaging of impulse reactions to a particular product pitch into ultimate and irrevocable expression of collective free will.
Spark guys were certainly on the “smart” side of this dilemma.
The product itself is exactly what you would expect out of Y Combinator-style accelerator in 2013 – a “Platform for Internet of Things”. People love to fund platforms. They are much more lucrative than the product you sell a piece at the time. Platforms are about a steady stream of recurring revenues, long-term user lock-in and high switching costs, network effects, “app” ecosystem, scalable business models… the works. Selling X “units” of a product only yields revenue that is a function of its net margin. Bringing the same number of users on a “platform”, on the other hand, can be worth anything you can dream of. And investors like to dream.
Great news for Spark guys was that, around the time, Texas Instruments came up with a module that’s just a tool for the job – CC3000 wireless network processor with a price tag in the low $10 range. It was not the first such module on the market, but with features such as Smart Config, it was the easiest to use and apply to most real-world situations straight out of the box. Startups love things that work out of the box – it leaves more time for all the handwaving.
The question is – how does Spark become the Platform for Internet of Things? Sure, it does provide a drop-in worry-free Internet connectivity to any hardware device, but at $39 price tag, how does it get designed in? For Makers, handing out this sum for one Spark Core to hook it up to that one Arduino sitting in the drawer is a no brainer.
Given that It aims at having a pretty general functionality and uses quite expensive chip, the cost of components alone (even at significant volumes) ends up in the high $20 ballpark. With all other things on top, this leaves a fairly narrow profit margin for Spark. Also, we know there are similar sub-$10 drop-in WiFi connectivity modules out there which might not be as easy to use, but not too hard either.
If the design was closed, the board would never stand a chance of getting designed in into anything aimed at mass production and would probably remain in the hobbyist realm forever.
The catch is in the fact that monetization of IoT “platforms” like this simply can’t be about the hardware. In that aspect, it will always be a race to the bottom and it is the manufacturer’s modules that will end up being designed in at the end
That is not to say that using REST APIs to drive IoT devices is not the right way to go. On the contrary – it will allow moving all the complexity and computational requirements back on the server side, which will provide a lot more power to every single IoT device at only a fraction of the cost and allow for previously unimaginable applications. This shift is bound to happen because of the economics of the whole thing – deploying expensive devices as endpoints, where they will idle most of the time, makes no financial sense. Centralization is known to solve this very efficiently and is a direction that everything in this space will take, sooner or later.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Now Hear This!
CES 2015 preview: 8 hot trends
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4438207/CES-2015-preview–8-hot-trends?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150106&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150106&elq=6db3b65852a342ad98aa923f6efbb3d2&elqCampaignId=21020
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Here’s a tip whether you’re attending or just keeping tabs on the 2015 edition of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: Get used to the word “connected.”
Connected this, connected that, connected everything. Heading into the tech industry’s annual consumer fête in Sin City, it is the one word that best sums up the buzz. Think connected cars, connected homes, connected people, and the myriad connected devices those people carry, or, as might increasingly be the case, the myriad connected devices people wear. All of these technologies have made prior appearances at CES, but they’ll take up even more of the desert air this year, from a self-parking BMW, to home automation advances, to the growing industry of developer frameworks such as Android Wear and Apple HomeKit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stack enables Bluetooth to Internet for SoCs
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438096/Stack-enables-Bluetooth-to-Internet-for-SoCs?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150106&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150106&elq=6db3b65852a342ad98aa923f6efbb3d2&elqCampaignId=21020
Nordic Semiconductor’s IPv6 over Bluetooth Smart protocol stack for its nRF51 Series SoCs puts, Nordic says, Bluetooth-direct-to-Internet connectivity – “Thing-to-cloud” – on one chip at micro-amp power levels, enabling small, low cost, ultra-low power Internet of Things applications.
Now available for download, the nRF51 IoT Software Development Kit (SDK) is a complete IPv6-ready Internet Protocol Suite for Nordic’s nRF51 Series Bluetooth Smart SoCs. The SDK enables native and interoperable IP-based connectivity between a Bluetooth Smart ‘thing’ and a cloud service. It also enables Bluetooth Smart to be used in large, distributed, cloud-connected, heterogeneous networks such as home, industrial, and enterprise automation.
Nordic sees a particular market opportunity in what it calls the “Internet of (my) Things”; of things around us that don’t necessarily belong to use but that “notice” us – the emerging market in beacons being an example. For such devices, the company sees an urgent need for a “headless router” – some means of enabling devices (nodes or ‘things’) to operate directly to Internet without the intervention of bridges or gateways.
Building on the newly adopted Internet Protocol Support Profile (IPSP) from the Bluetooth SIG and 6LoWPAN technology from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Nordic’s SDK takes Bluetooth Smart with Nordic’s nRF51 Series and IoT to the next level by enabling end-to-end IP based communication. This also enables security to be implemented (relatively) easily, Nordic adds; existing Bluetooth security measures protect the Bluetooth part of the link, while established Internet security standards can be applied in the end-to-end, Internet portion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wearable, bracelet-sized development kits offer quick IoT development
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4438204/Wearable–bracelet-sized-development-kits-offer-quick-IoT-development?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150106&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150106&elq=6db3b65852a342ad98aa923f6efbb3d2&elqCampaignId=21020
The two companies, focusing upon each of their synergistic core strengths, are co-creating a fantastic design tool called SENtrode.
SENtrode is the first wearable-sized development kit integrating sensors, PNI’s SENtral sensor hub, sensor fusion algorithms, programmable processor, and wireless capabilities into a bracelet-sized form factor
A second version of SENtrode will be offered in a separate housing fit for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smart home appliances and connected sensor networks
Keep watching in 2015 for more creative and highly useful design tools
SENtrode
http://www.pnicorp.com/products/sentrode
SENtrode is the first ever smartwatch-sized development kit with both the hardware and software crucial for quick and easy product development of wearables and Internet of Things.
SENtrode for wearables comes in a wrist-watch form factor casing with bracelet and includes:
Gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetic sensor, pressure and optical heart rate sensor readings
$299.00
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM mbed Bluetooth and WiFi boards
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438101/ARM-mbed-Bluetooth-and-WiFi-boards?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150105&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150105&elq=266393b67ee24506b37065b2a6eb7550&elqCampaignId=20992
CSR announced two connectivity products for the new ARM mbed OS that will enable developers to produce complete Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.
CSR will offer two mbed expansion boards, also known as shields; one combines Wi-Fi and Bluetooth based on the CSR6030 and CSR8311 ICs. The other offers Bluetooth Smart connectivity based on CSR1010 chip. These shields, which will be released in early 2015, are designed to work with the ARM mbed OS that will also be available to developers in early 2015. The two systems will provide the fundamental connectivity required for all IoT devices. With a choice of connectivity solutions, CSR says, developers can adopt the technology to achieve the right performance for each device.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IPv6-ready Bluetooth Smart protocol stack powers Internet of Things applications
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2014/12/nordic-bluetooth-iot.html
Ultra low power (ULP) RF specialist Nordic Semiconductor ASA (Oslo, Norway) announced the launch of its nRF51 IoT (Internet of Things) Software Development Kit (SDK), an IPv6-ready complete Internet Protocol Suite for Nordic’s nRF51 Series of systems-on-chips (SoCs). According to Nordic, the SDK enables native and interoperable IP-based connectivity between a Bluetooth Smart ‘thing’ and a cloud service. Now available for download, the SDK also enables the Bluetooth Smart chips to be used in large, distributed, cloud-connected, heterogeneous networks, including those for home, industrial, and enterprise automation.
“With the emergence and massive growth of wearables, Bluetooth Smart is already an established and key technology for connecting ‘my things’ to the Internet,” says Thomas Embla Bonnerud, director of product management with Nordic Semiconductor. “The nRF51 IoT SDK unleashes the potential of Bluetooth Smart for connecting ‘things around us’.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung to invest $100M in Internet of Things developers
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/05/samsung-to-invest-100m-in-internet-of-things-developers/
Samsung chief executive Boo-Keun Yoon said that his company will invest up to $100 million in the developer community for applications for the Internet of Things.
This category — where everyday devices become smart and connected — is a big theme at the 2015 International CES, the tech trade show where Yoon gave one of the opening keynotes today.
He said that in 2017, about 90 percent of Samsung’s products would be connected in some way to the Internet of Things. To get ready for that day, Samsung needs to invest in a lot of developers and startups that can create meaningful applications based on all of the data collected from the newly created devices.
“We have to strike partnerships everywhere.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES 2015: Warning over data grabbed by smart gadgets
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30705361
A “deeply personal” picture of every consumer could be grabbed by futuristic smart gadgets, the chair of the US Federal Trade Commission has warned.
Speaking at CES, Edith Ramirez said a future full of smart gadgets that watch what we do posed a threat to privacy.
The collated data could create a false impression if given to employers, universities or companies, she said.
Ms Ramirez urged tech firms to make sure gadgets gathered the minimum data needed to fulfil their function.
The internet of things (IoT), which will populate homes, cars and bodies with devices that use sophisticated sensors to monitor people, could easily build up a “deeply personal and startlingly complete picture” of a person’s lifestyle, said Ms Ramirez.
The data picture would include details about an individuals credit history, health, religious preferences, family, friends and a host of other indicators, she said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel unveils button-sized Curie module to power future wearables
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-01/07/intel-curie-quark-chip
Intel has today unveiled Curie, a low-powered module no bigger than a button, as part of its vision to lead in the wearables field. Company CEO Brian Krzanich announced the module, which will be built on a tiny new chip called the Quark SE, during his keynote at CES in Las Vegas — a year on from announcing the Intel Edison platform.
The module incorporates the low-power 32-bit Quark microcontroller, 384kB of flash memory, motion sensors, Bluetooth LE and battery-charging capabilities in order to power the very smallest of devices. Intel is hoping Curie will prove the flexible solution designers need to create wearables such as rings, pendants, bracelets, bags, fitness trackers and even buttons. It has been created with always-on applications in mind, so will be suitable for devices that relay notifications or constantly track a wearer’s activity.
“You could think of it maybe as Edison for wearables.”
Intel believes that predictions there will be 50 billion wearable devices by 2020 will not happen without platforms like Curie. “That’s not going to happen unless its approachable for people to build those devices,” says Bell.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brian Hough / Haverzine:
HomeKit compatible switches, devices, and sensors for home automation debut at CES
Apple may not be at CES, but their HomeKit system is a star
http://haverzine.com/2015/01/05/apple-may-ces-homekit-system-star/
Finally, my time as come, and it figures it would be in part thanks to Apple to lead the charge; though Apple may not actually have any sort of presence at CES 2015, hardware supporting their HomeKit smart home ecosystem is absolutely everywhere.
iHome, manufacturer of an absolutely endless line of portable speaker systems that work well with iPhones, iPods, and iPads, came to CES with their first HomeKit accessory, the $40 SmartPlug. SmartPlug works as an intermediary between the electrical outlets in your house and whatever you plug into the wall, allowing you to turn nearly every piece of electronics in your house on and off, right from your iOS device. It even supports Siri, so if you’re really lazy, you could just say “Hey Siri, turn on my lamp,” and poof – lamp is on.
There’s also Switch by accessory manufacturer iDevice, another device that plugs into your wall outlets and devices to do the same.
Next up – and most ambitiously – there’s the Elgato Eve, a complete line of HomeKit connected devices and sensors that do everything from determine how energy efficient your home is to the amount of water you consume in a given timeframe, to automatically turning the lights on and off like the aforementioned devices, and even the weather both in and outside your house.
While Apple has yet to officially launch HomeKit, and none of these devices have hit the market just yet, CES 2015 is the sign we needed that smart homes will finally become a real, honest to goodness thing this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Misfit Bolt, a $50 smart bulb with sleep tracker integration, now available for pre-order
Misfit introduces a smart bulb to go with its sleep tracker
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7488419/misfit-bolt-smart-bulb-mobile-app-sleep-tracker
There’s no shortage of smart light bulbs on the market, but wearables company Misfit has decided that its influence shouldn’t stop with collecting health data. The company has just started taking pre-orders for the Misfit Bolt, a multicolored smart bulb that will work with its mobile apps. A forthcoming Misfit Home service will let users control their lights, but it will also have some compatibility with the existing Misfit app, which currently records physical activity, food intake, and sleep patterns.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Misfit is going up against Philips, GE, Lifx, and other companies that have rolled out smart bulbs over the past few years. At $49.99 for a single 60W-equivalent Bolt or $129.99 for a set of three (there’s no central hub required to run them), it’s not the absolute cheapest smart lighting on the market if you’re alright with monochrome bulbs. Insteon’s white LEDs, for example, sell for around $30. But it handily undercuts the roughly $200 Philips Hue starter pack, as well as the company’s Wake-Up Light alarm clock. You’ll just have to decide if you’d rather try something new or stick with Philips’ pedigree.
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7488419/misfit-bolt-smart-bulb-mobile-app-sleep-tracker
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES: IoT Modules Quicken Innovation
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325180&
Want to get a leg up on that great Internet of Things (IoT) idea of yours? Weaved Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif., may have just the answer to get you started. Weaved says it supplies not only the cloud connectivity and turn-key software you need for an IoT device, but also customizes hardware modules that do almost anything — from 360 cameras to controlling sprinkler systems. Already in use by the big guys like Philips and Cisco, Weaved is making a concerted effort at the International Consumer Electronics Show, January 6 through January 8 in Las Vegas, to bring the little guys into their fold, with customized modules, colors, form factors, and free software to marry it all to their cloud.
“What we are announcing today at CES is that one of our partners, Jemtek — a billion dollar original design maker (ODM) in Taiwan that has built the vast majority of product branded Linksys, Belkin, and many others — is building for us a line of products for the Internet of Things: lighting products, smart plugs, web cameras, routers, and more coming in 2015,” Ryo Koyama, chief executive officer (CEO) at Weaved told EE Times. “In addition to being pre-certified products that are ready to go they all have our cloud-based Internet of Things services built right into them.”
If you have a great idea for a IoT device, Weaved will work with you to have it manufactured by Jentek Technology Co. Ltd. in Taipei, Taiwan, with your logo, your name, your form factor, and color, with Weaved’s cloud-connectivity built-in for instant-on operation according to Koyama.
“With us you just need to define the hardware side of your Internet of Things device, and rather than having to build-out your own connectivity, we provide that service in the cloud,” Koyama told us.
Say you have a great IoT idea. Rather than have it crowdfunded on Kickstarter and think you’re going to have a product out in six months, which would really be a challenge, since you will need to do the custom engineering, find a factory to produce it, get it ready for production, then build out the cloud connectivity it requires.
“These are not the core competencies that every company necessarily has ready to go, and you are definitely not going to be able to build them up in six months,” Koyama told us.
Today the Internet of Things is fixated on consumers products, according to Koyama, but over the next few years industrial applications are going to have to build-in these capabilities too.
Weaved also supplied free a Rasberry Pi software tool kit that marries any local processing that needs to the done to the cloud connectivity and big data computational abilities available in the Weaved cloud. User controls are typically built into a smartphone app that communicates with the modules over Bluetooth or WiFi, to the Raspberry Pi or directly to Weaved’s servers in the cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lutron Opens to Smart Home
Apple Watch app shown, Zigbee remote coming
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325193&
Someday the smart home may be the norm, but today it still a somewhat pricey set of proprietary products, slowly opening up to work with industry standards.
“We’re in the early stages of the connected home,” said Swatsky, who is attending CES 2015 this week. “In the early 90s, custom cabinets were an upgrade. Now they are standard. The connected home may follow that trend.”
Before we get there, AV and security products need to work better with the kind of lighting, motorized shades and HVAC controls Lutron makes, and everybody has to interoperate with everyone else.
Lutron has been taking its own small steps in that direction. Its proprietary 433MHz wireless systems now work with a WiFi thermostat from Honeywell, and Lutron recently agreed to support the Google Nest thermostat.
The company already ships Android and iOS apps for its network that goes under the Caseta Wireless brand. Apple demoed its app running on the Apple Watch when it was announced last year. “All the technology in that watch was not available five years ago,” Swatsky said. “Mobile devices make home controls more accessible.”
Lutron has 15 partners in its Caseta Wireless ecosystem, including Logitech, and it is reaching out for more. This year, it will embrace ZigBee in a remote control for smart LED lights.
“The customer doesn’t always care about the protocols,”
Lutron’s dimmers sell for $70 or more. It sells bridges to link to WiFi nets for $150 or more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Low Power Bluetooth Network Processor
http://www.eeweb.com/news/low-power-bluetooth-network-processor
STMicroelectronics announced the release of its latest version of its award-winning BlueNRG Bluetooth® SMART network processor, which supports the latest Bluetooth version 4.1 enhancements and introduces 1.7V operation for longer-lasting battery-powered applications.
The new BlueNRG-MS network processor integrates a complete Bluetooth PHY and 2.4GHz radio, ARM® Cortex®-M0 microcontroller running the Bluetooth 4.1 protocol stack, and dedicated AES-128 security coprocessor. The API, power management, and Flash are already integrated, allowing direct connection to the application host controller using a simple SPI bus leveraging clear software partitioning between network processor and host microcontroller.
ST’s BlueNRG-MS network processor can power devices such as a hub capable of collecting sensor data and subsequently acting as a peripheral to transfer the data to a smart phone. I
Tomi Engdahl says:
The number of intelligent homes in Europe and North America is growing rapidly.
Late last year Berg Insight Research Institute estimates that already 10.6 million homes in Europe and USA are intelligent.
North America increased last year by 70 percent to 7.9 million. This means in practice that six percent of Americans and Canada hones are equipped with an intelligent network, which is connected to the home automation equipment. According to Berg Insight, the share of intelligent homes in North American households will grow over the next four years to 28 per cent.
In Europe, this development is now a few years behind, but here too intelligent homes will increase to 29.7 million at the end of 2018. This means that 13 per cent of European households.
The most successful are the smart house smart thermostats, security systems, intelligent controllable light-emitting diodes, network cameras, and several operating room entertainment systems. Furthermore it is about individual products, which are designed to be for a particular task
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2237:alykkaita-koteja-jo-yli-10-miljoonaa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES Overselling the Internet of Things
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4438233/CES-Overselling-the-Internet-of-Things?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150107&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150107&elq=9ee18bc7e85049fa9f4c7ffd07851e69&elqCampaignId=21042
If you look at the early news coming out of the International CES this week in Las Vegas, it is clear that the Internet of Things (IoT) is a dominant theme. With more than 900 IoT exhibitors showing products and the opening keynotes at the show IoT related, the energy behind the technology is immense. But it may be too much.
Early reports from the show are somewhat disquieting in the breadth and range of IoT offerings that are “me too” kinds of wearables and convenience-oriented products of marginal value. Some of the highlights include a tea kettle you can remotely start with a smartphone app, an automatic plant watering device that reports plant status to the cloud, and a coffee pot that strengthens its morning brew if your fitness monitor shows you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. There are also innumerable variations on health and body monitors and smart watches on display.
Frankly, most of these new products invoke little more than mild interest in me at best, and usually elicit a big yawn. But then, I have been covering the IoT for some time now and not so easily impressed. I can see, though, how the general consumer could find these devices amazing and exciting the first time they encounter them. But that will only be a flash of interest based on the novelty of the technology. For consumer IoT to develop a lasting market, it will need to actually offer value. And for the IoT to deliver its full value, devices need to be able to connect with one another in true Internet fashion rather than be the isolated solutions that they are today
Tomi Engdahl says:
8 attributes IoT gateways need
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4437841/8-attributes-IoT-gateways-need
Tolerate intermittent power conditions
Revert its software to a known good version
Be remotely updateable
Tolerate intermittent and dynamic connectivity situations
Be very efficient with network traffic
Consider supporting SMS over cellular
Support some form of local communication
Be absolutely, positively secure
If you can cram all these features into your gateway, you will have gone a long way toward fulfilling the gateway’s primary function. As you can see, it’s not quite so simple. Admittedly, many of these topics could fill blogs of their own.
5 rules for playing nice with IoT gateways
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4437896/5-rules-for-playing-nice-with-IoT-gateways-
Please talk to me
Respond quickly
Don’t be chatty
Never just go away
Tolerate multiple masters
I know, I know — tons of rules. But with the Internet of Things, the world is about to embark on one of the most amazing and ambitious endeavors of all time, more so than the original Internet (of people). This time, the machines will be doing the talking — to one another. But if we don’t get things right, the IoT will make the Tower of Babel seem like a family picnic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qualcomm allies in cars, health, IoT
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/systems-interface/4438220/Qualcomm-allies-in-cars–health–IoT?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150107&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150107&elq=9ee18bc7e85049fa9f4c7ffd07851e69&elqCampaignId=21042
Qualcomm came to the International CES highlighting partnerships in automotive, health, and the Internet of Things but without any big chip announcements.
Mobile technology, wearables, and the Internet of Things share many of the same “pain points” in size, power, and computing requirements. Aberle said Qualcomm has its silicon (both processors and modems) in more than 15 wearable products in 30 countries.
In the IoT, Qualcomm has introduced a smart lighting kit that it says will “help any company build smart light bulbs.” It has partnered with the smart bulb company LIFX and contributed WiFi connectivity as well as its AllJoyn protocol, now part of the AllSeen Alliance under the Linux Foundation.
Qualcomm is working to connect systems with the upcoming Qualcomm VIVE tri-band WiFi device, which enables 802.11ac at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, as well as 802.11ad at 60 GHz. Aberle said WiFi and LTE convergence, as well as use of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, will be critical to solving data challenges as the IoT proliferates. VIVE is scheduled to ship in the second half of this year.
In addition, Qualcomm will tackle the mobile health market with its 2Net wireless health platform, a “HIPAA-compliant end-to-end system that gets data from remote monitoring devices.”
“There’s a huge opportunity here in terms of reducing cost … but also to increase access to healthcare in remote areas,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
August announces Connect, a $50 WiFi bridge that adds internet connectivity to its smart lock, available mid-February
August Launches A $50 WiFi Bridge Called August Connect To Open Its Smart Lock To Other Developers
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/07/august-connect/
Home automation startup August first came to market with a smart lock that allows users to get inside their homes without having to reach for their keys. But now it’s launching a new device, called August Connect, that will connect its smart lock to the Internet and open up a ton of new features for users.
Since going on sale in October, the August Smart Lock has enabled users to lock or unlock their homes seamlessly, without having to pull keys out of their pockets. Thanks to an intuitive mobile app and Bluetooth connectivity, the device also enabled users to give others access to their home without having keys made.
By only supporting Bluetooth, however, the smart lock had one major drawback: Users could only interact with it when they were within range of it. With the launch of August Connect, the company hopes to gives users more ways to interact with the smart lock they already own.
August Connect is essentially a $50 WiFi bridge for the smart lock, connecting to the device being Bluetooth and then relaying signals to the cloud over the home’s WiFi network. The device plugs directly into an outlet near the smart lock and can be connected to WiFi via the August mobile app.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT: Collaborate or Else, Says Samsung CEO
Korean giant proposes self-styled “open ecosystem”
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325181&
Samsung Electronics CEO Boo-Keun Yoon, in a keynote speech at the International Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, Jan. 5, made a passionate pitch to “unlock the infinite possibilities of the Internet of Things,” while suggesting that the industry fall in line behind Samsung’s leadership.
On the one hand, Yoon stressed the importance of an “open ecosystem” for IoT, noting that “cross-industry collaboration is the key.”
Yoon noted that Samsung put 665 million products in the hands of consumers last year. “That’s 20 devices a second,” he said, before pausing for a second. “We just made 20.”
The implication of his joke was obvious. Samsung is the 800-pound gorilla of consumer electronics.
Backed by its prowess in mass production, marketing, and technology, Samsung will call the tune in the IoT market. He promised that by 2017, 90% of Samsung devices will be IoT devices. Yoon said he hopes to make that 100% within the next five years.
Calling SmartThings “one of my favorite developers,” Rahman said, “So, as the integrations come together, more and more technologies are working for you.” In conclusion, he said, “This feels like a path to make the connected world center around the user.”
Obviously, if you have the money and market share that Samsung now commands, partnerships and collaborations in an open ecosystem are easy to come by. Yoon said Samsung will be committing $100 million toward bolstering its IoT programs with developers and startups.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Tips Mini IoT Module
Button-sized Curie geared for wearables
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325200&
Taking another step into the emerging market for wearable devices, Intel unveiled a button-sized module called Curie in a keynote at the International CES.
Curie is based on Intel’s smallest-ever SoC, based on a Quark SE processor with a Bluetooth Low Energy radio, and sensor hub with a “patterned ID engine,” and rechargeable or coin-cell battery. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said Curie, currently a prototype, will be available in the second half of 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Indian IoT Ideathon
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=187&doc_id=1325203&
How one entrepreneur in India is creating an IoT hackathon culture.
BANGALORE — In every page and almost every article I read anywhere, the Internet of Things (IoT) dominates it all. CES is exploding with IoT. Semiconductor companies are banking on IoT. India, too, is not immune, so let me add some Indian flavor to the ubiquitous IoT.
Industry stalwart Satya Gupta has tweaked the hackathon and brought it to India. He explained his brainchild the IoT Ideathon to me during the 2015 VLSI Design Conference, going on now.
“The IoT-Ideathon, is a unique onsite event for creative engineering minds to convert their ideas to prototypes in 60 hours. It’s based on the concept of hackathons, which are mostly software-based events that last for about 24 to 48 hours to make mobile apps and so on. If we were to make it hardware and product-centric, we realized that this couldn’t be done in 24 hours. Hence, we made it a three-day event held in conjunction with VLSI Design 2015, which starts on Monday [Jan. 5],” explained Gupta, who also is the co-chair for the event.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BlackBerry: Internet of Things! Smartwatches! Anything but the sound of a flushing toilet!
On-wrist BBM touted to help bowl-swirling biz
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/07/blackberry_at_ces/
CES 2015 BlackBerry used this year’s CES conference in Las Vegas to make the case for a comeback, touting not just two new smartphones but also moves into wearables and the internet of things (IoT).
On the wearables front, the beleaguered Canadian firm showed off a version of its BlackBerry Messenger client that runs on Android Wear smart watches.
The Hbox runs on QNX Neutrino, the realtime operating system that BlackBerry acquired, and which now accounts for more than 50 per cent of the RTOS market, according to BlackBerry Technology Solutions president Sandeep Chennakeshu.
BlackBerry is pushing QNX and the BlackBerry data network as core components of its IoT efforts. On Wednesday, the company said its OS is already running in more than 50 million in-car systems from over 40 automakers – and during the Tuesday morning CES keynote, Ford Motors demoed its new Sync 3 in-car system, which also runs QNX.
The onetime smartphone kingpin began turning up the volume on its IoT rumblings at the O’Reilly Solid conference last May, when it teased an ambitious IoT initiative dubbed “Project Ion.”
Forget phones, BlackBerry’s new Project Ion is all about THINGS
Cloudy backend promises to munch data from QNX devices
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/21/blackberry_project_ion/
Solid With its smartphone sales circling the drain, beleaguered BlackBerry has announced Project Ion, a set of initiatives aimed at delivering services and infrastructure for everyone’s favorite hot-button buzzword, the Internet of Things (IoT).
The project was unveiled in a brief presentation at the O’Reilly Solid conference on Wednesday by Alec Saunders, who in January was tapped by BlackBerry CEO John Chen to head the company’s new QNX Cloud business.
QNX on its own powers a wide range of devices, from in-car entertainment systems to industrial machinery.
“QNX is literally everywhere,” Saunders told the audience at Solid. “It’s in satellites, it’s in trains, it’s in cars, it’s in laser eye surgery systems, it’s even in robotic vacuum cleaners.”
“If you believe all of the predictions that there will be 50 billion devices connected to the internet of things by 2020,” Saunders said, “we could be talking about trillions of machine transactions and exabytes of data being created on a daily basis.”
The first piece will be a “cloud-based product” – it’s still not clear whether we’re talking about something that BlackBerry will manage or something that customers can install in their own data centers, or both – that will help customers capture and collate their IoT data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT has too many platforms, says IoT platform startup
Octoblu pitches management / comms platform
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/23/iot_has_too_many_platforms_says_iot_platform_startup/
Yet another startup wants to take over the business of connecting your Internet of Things devices.
Octoblu, which has “emerged” from “stealth mode” (if you don’t count Tweets about its financing in May, or its joining the AllSeen Alliance in June) is pitching an open-source platform called Meshblu that connects devices with or without IP addresses.
The software supports MQTT (message queuing telemetry transport) and COAP (constrained application protocol) messaging, providing communications with a range of devices it says includes “smart devices, sensors, cloud resources, drones, Arduinos and Raspberri Pis”.
Communications are secured by the Meshblu platform, which issues a 36-character device ID and token for each device connecting to the network. Other current and planned components include a device directory with API and presence support; gateway software for Mac, Windows and Linux; an OS for Arduino; and modules for node.js, Javascript and Python.
“Cloud-to-cloud message routing” in the system let the “private cloud” (that is, your home network of devices) to the Meshblu cloud.
Octoblu, which has “emerged” from “stealth mode” (if you don’t count Tweets about its financing in May, or its joining the AllSeen Alliance in June) is pitching an open-source platform called Meshblu that connects devices with or without IP addresses.
The software supports MQTT (message queuing telemetry transport) and COAP (constrained application protocol) messaging, providing communications with a range of devices it says includes “smart devices, sensors, cloud resources, drones, Arduinos and Raspberri Pis”.
Communications are secured by the Meshblu platform, which issues a 36-character device ID and token for each device connecting to the network. Other current and planned components include a device directory with API and presence support; gateway software for Mac, Windows and Linux; an OS for Arduino; and modules for node.js, Javascript and Python.
“Cloud-to-cloud message routing” in the system let the “private cloud” (that is, your home network of devices) to the Meshblu cloud.
Octoblu, which has “emerged” from “stealth mode” (if you don’t count Tweets about its financing in May, or its joining the AllSeen Alliance in June) is pitching an open-source platform called Meshblu that connects devices with or without IP addresses.
The software supports MQTT (message queuing telemetry transport) and COAP (constrained application protocol) messaging, providing communications with a range of devices it says includes “smart devices, sensors, cloud resources, drones, Arduinos and Raspberri Pis”.
Communications are secured by the Meshblu platform, which issues a 36-character device ID and token for each device connecting to the network. Other current and planned components include a device directory with API and presence support; gateway software for Mac, Windows and Linux; an OS for Arduino; and modules for node.js, Javascript and Python.
“Cloud-to-cloud message routing” in the system let the “private cloud” (that is, your home network of devices) to the Meshblu cloud.
Play with Octoblu and Meshblu (SkyNet.im) IoT platforms in Chrome
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nodeblu/aanmmiaepnlibdlobmbhmfemjioahilm
Tomi Engdahl says:
The market is already home automation systems, which trigger an alarm from open windows, but they require a hard-wired contact the control system.
Fraunhofer’s solution is autonomous. It is powered by its own solar cells. In fact, the radio circuit is about the size of a fingernail. 10 millimeter width means that the circuit is suitable for insulating glass panel space.
The window opening of the circuit senses the magnet and the acceleration sensor. If the window has been open for too long, a radio circuit sends a signal to the base station. The circuit decides very quickly, split seconds, so it gives a warning when the intruder tries to open a window crank.
Currently, Fraunhofer developed a small-sized solar cell can store power, so that the radio circuit works without light for 30 hours
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2253:radiopiiri-halyttaa-jos-ikkuna-jaa-auki&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will guns be connected in the future?
Connected Gun Lets Anyone Watch What Or Who You Are Shooting
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/01/07/2042220/connected-gun-lets-anyone-watch-what-or-who-you-are-shooting
A gun that lets novices make mile-long shots likes experts and which allows the owner to stream live video to show what the gun is aiming at to anyone, anywhere around the world is being showcased at CES.
TrackingPoint shows off the “Mile Maker,” a rifle with 1,800-yard range
Prototype rifle is latest in company’s line of Linux-powered weapons.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/trackingpoint-shows-off-the-mile-maker-a-smart-rifle-with-1800-yard-range/
Aside from the “Mile Maker,” TrackingPoint also announced that it will be expanding its weapons’ audio and visual capabilities—rather than streaming videos directly over local Wi-Fi or recording and uploading things after the fact to YouTube or Facebook, TrackingPoint firearms will gain the ability to live-stream the scope’s picture to remote users using TrackingPoint’s smartphone app
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things is now spreading rapidly everywhere. The best way to connect billions of devices to the network will have NFC technology, says Avnet Silican Alessandro Vigano article.
What are these “objects” then? They are cars, household appliances, industrial equipment, televisions, set-top boxes, and even LED lamps, which can be switched on and off from anywhere in the world, wherever there is internet access available.
What really adds to the momentum of the IoT market by the hand-held devices, including wearable products. These include medical devices, as well as health and fitness devices.
Connecting to the Internet of Things
Because of the “objects” definition is so broad, they were the join will also vary greatly. Currently, fixed connections are normally executed in copper and fiber optic cables, or a combination of these. If the connection is used for a smartphone – the need for a wireless link, along which devices communicate with each other. In some applications, the wireless link is used in almost every smart phone found on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection. Both of these have limitations.
Wi-Fi is a very energy to hungry, which limits the operation time of a battery in a portable device. . It sends a signal to the 2.4 or 5 GHz frequency.
Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz area, but with a shorter range and slower data rate. Engineering relatively new low-power consumption version of Bluetooth Smart has reduced the power consumption of a typical classical bluetooth around from one watts to 0.01 watts. The maximum transmit power is 10 milliwatts, and the bit rate of one megabit per second.
The Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group), more than 90 per cent of the bluetooth smartphones supports Bluetooth smart to by 2018, so at first sight, it seems obvious alternative technology “objects” to connect to your smartphone, which will bring mobile connectivity to the cellular network to the Internet.
However, there is another surge left the wireless technology that promises of benefits realization has had to wait for several years. It is a Near Field Communication or NFC for short. It differs wifi and bluetooth in many ways, which can make it very attractive for many IoT applications. In addition, the technology is already integrated into more than 500 million smartphone and tablet, and the number of ABI Research, the market growing to 1.5 billion by 2017.
NFC is different because its range is very short, it is a very private and secure link, the power consumption is very low and it is very inexpensive compared to the alternatives. It pairing and transfer data between devices, only about 10 centimeters, which makes interception of a signal is very difficult. NFC devices can not send data to the broadcast-style. Instead, they require that the NFC-enabled device reads NFC-enabled object in memory. Other features of the protocol confirm this naturally a secure method of communication.
Another key feature is that the NFC transceiver – or tag – might collect energy close to the NFC reader radiated RF energy. Thanks to this tag does not need batteries or power connection
NFC communication facilities are Read / Write Device to Device (peer-to-peer) and Identification Card (Card Emulation).
NXP has been one of the NFC’s biggest supporters in recent years.
When NTAG I2C chip is connected to the NXP-low power microcontroller, the designer can connect the architect Louvre card on your smartphone, allowing for firmware updating, the sensor reading (without power consumption) and the data transfer to the micro-controller. It is an elegant solution to the low power consumption for RFID applications, as LPC11U37 controller consumes power only 85 micro watts per megahertz. E-ink based e-ink display uses power only when the information is updated.
The card will also Arduino interface, so it can be accessed from an external platform, which is developed tens of thousands of applications.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2257:nfc-toimivin-tapa-verkottaa-iot-laitteet&catid=26&Itemid=140
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s view on smart home:
CES 2015: Three New Home Devices Enter Apple Ecosystem
Siri, make my life a little easier please
http://www.popsci.com/three-new-homekit-enabled-devices-enter-apple-ecosystem
At CES on Monday, iDevices, along with Schlage and Chamberlain announced three new devices that will be compatible with Apple’s HomeKit. Announced in 2014, HomeKit is Apple’s attempt to organize the often disjointed world of home automation.
launching Switch, a plug that allows your iPhone to control the appliances, lights, and more that you plug into it
95-year-old lock-making company Schlage has an updated smart lock system called Schlage Sense. The lock allows you to enter your home by speaking to your iPhone. If your iPhone dies, you can always use the touch key pad or a good old-fashioned key.
Chamberlain announced that it’s Wi-Fi garage door control system, MyQ Garage
Tomi Engdahl says:
Belkin expands WeMo line with four new sensors
https://gigaom.com/2015/01/04/belkin-expands-wemo-line-with-four-new-sensors/
Belkin has added a variety of sensors to its popular WeMo line of connected home products, which already include, outlets, light switches, bulbs and cameras. Later this year consumers will be able to buy door and window sensors, a keychain sensor used for detecting presence, an alarm sensor to detect the sound of smoke alarms and an infrared sensor that detects heat signatures for precise, room motion detection.
Belkin is showing off these four sensors at CES this week, but the final devices will be out in the second half of this year with pricing to be announced then. Belkin is also working on a water sensor that will provide deeper insights into water usage and leaks, but that one is in field trials and its ship date isn’t announced yet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Home – Senior Lifestyle System
http://www.eeweb.com/news/smart-home-senior-lifestyle-system
GreenPeak Technologies, the industry leading Smart Home semi-conductor/system company, today announces the availability of Senior Lifestyle sensor and cloud based intelligent system technology for service providers and retailers. The Senior Lifestyle System empowers children and their elderly parents to privately and securely share lifestyle information, enabling the seniors to feel safe and live longer at home independently, while their children feel secure that their parents are safe and well.
The GreenPeak Senior Lifestyle System utilizes a network of wireless ZigBee sensor nodes located throughout the home. This network connects via an internet gateway to a cloud based self-learning algorithm with advanced behavior pattern recognition capabilities that learn the normal day-to-day activities and behavior of people in their home. Because it does not require people to wear devices and does not use cameras, the system is unobtrusive and ensures privacy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New year in tech: Wishes and fears for 2015
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2386183/new-year-in-tech-wishes-and-fears-for-2015
The Internet of Things (IoT) has certainly been in the limelight throughout 2014, but I think 2015 will be the year it gains momentum in the real world.
While the technology is now starting to creep into our homes and businesses, via smart lighting or heating systems, and monitoring of anything from earthquake tremors to parking spaces, use cases in the real world are not widespread, as evidenced by the results of research
Over half of firms said the IoT won’t have any impact on their organisation and they don’t have any plans to make use of the technology, according to the survey of IT professionals.
The main obstacle cited in our survey was a lack of understanding of the benefits.
But with continuing efforts from firms like Intel and Cisco to offer practical use cases, along with vendors grouping together to work on common IoT standards such as HyperCat and Open Interconnect Consortium and technology developments meaning the IoT can be deployed more easily and cheaply, 2015 should see a greater number of businesses planning IoT strategies.
And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s just the small matter of the Apple Watch due out in early 2015 that could give the whole IoT market a boost.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES 2015: The Internet of Things, All the Time
http://news.dice.com/2015/01/06/ces-the-internet-of-things-all-the-time/
This year, the driving category seems to be The Internet of Things. Door locks, thermostats, appliances, light switches, automobiles—all seem to be fair game for digital-age upgrades. That’s in addition to the activity trackers, Internet-enabled televisions, next-generation games, and apps of all kinds that some 3,500 companies will spend the next week actively pushing on the convention-center floor.
(The sheer size of CES makes it extraordinarily difficult for smaller companies to stand out)
Just because the Internet of Things seems poised to dominate CES doesn’t mean that the industry and consumers will automatically embrace the technology over the next twelve months, at least in the way these companies might expect.
That doesn’t mean the Internet of Things won’t become the Next Big Thing. But it might evolve in ways that nobody at CES anticipates—and the company that takes the spoils might not even be present at this year’s show.
Tomi Engdahl says:
No Fee DIY Home Security Kit Debuts at CES
Hughes Marries Home TV & Security
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325218&
While many companies displaying their “smart home” innovations at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) seem to be catering to an audience for whom cost is no object, Echostar has brought to the show a home security system called Sage, under the Hughes brand, that marches boldly in the opposite direction.
Sage is a “home automation” kit, heavy on security devices, that can be installed by hand, according to the company, by a novice do-it-yourselfer. In the area of cost, said spokesperson Linda Haugsted, it liberates homeowners from monthly service fees.
Although reluctant to reveal the price of the Sage “starter kit” until it hits the market officially, she named Sage’s target competitor, saying, “We will be disruptive to ADT’s business model.”
ADT, a leader in home security, charges both for installation and requires monthly fees. Sage, after installation by the purchaser or with professional help, falls entirely under the homeowner’s control. Its current features include home-network links to security cameras, lights, locks, doors and windows, thermostats and various sensors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Feels Unintended Consequences
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325215&
The Internet of Things will require more horsepower in datacenter servers and flexibility at end nodes for security — issues that play well to FPGAs.
As we look toward 2015, many of the dynamics that have supported the programmable logic industry in recent years remain in place. ASIC and ASSP design-costs spiral, uncertainties about functionality grow, and high-volume opportunities are rare
The concept behind the IoT is simple: If a device is controlled by electronics, you can simply connect the controller to the Internet to accept commands with a smartphone or cloud application. The end result is a device composed of sensors and actuators with network interfaces, all connecting across the Internet to control software.
We are already seeing this process at work. Smartphone services like Apple’s Siri execute in the cloud, not on the handset. In the networking space, network functions virtualization replaces entire boxes of specialized networking hardware with software running on servers in datacenters. The future of the IoT appears to be a universe of tiny, inexpensive sensors and actuators connected through the Internet to giant datacenters.
This view, however, is too simplistic. Trends in data acceleration and network enrichment — both favorable to FPGAs — are addressing needs for faster and predictable real-time performance, low-power WiFi, and Ethernet connections, and rapidly evolving device security.
In the datacenter, tasks historically performed in hardware are being transmuted into functions of software running on servers. Sometimes this conversion is easy. Sometimes it only works when you break the task into many threads and spread the threads over many servers. Sometimes, however, even multithreading doesn’t make the software fast enough, and hardware acceleration is needed to meet the real-time requirements of the task.
Developments from Web giants Microsoft Bing and Baidu — supported by Altera — show that with their flexibility and massive parallelism FPGAs can improve throughput, response time, and energy efficiency, working intimately with the server CPUs. A key part of this trend is to make the FPGA programmable and debuggable in languages already familiar to datacenter programmers. Altera’s SDK for OpenCL tool, for example, allows programmers to create and debug a complete CPU-interface-FPGA platform from a high-level language.
The other problem is that today’s Internet is not appropriate for the IoT for three major reasons:
First, the WiFi and Ethernet connections at the edge of the Internet require power-hungry, always-on interfaces, the opposite of what all those tiny sensors and actuators — the Things — can provide. So a myriad of short-range, low-power networks is springing up to connect the Things to hubs, which in turn connect to WiFi or Ethernet.
Second, some devices have tasks such as motor control that must have guaranteed maximum delay.
Third, hackers will certainly attack the IoT, as seen with the Stuxnet worm of 2010. As the IoT emerges, responsibility for authentication, encryption, and functional safety will fall upon the hubs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT: Collaborate or Else, Says Samsung CEO
Korean giant proposes self-styled “open ecosystem”
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325181&
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT: Collaborate or else, says Samsung CEO
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4438243/IoT–Collaborate-or-else–says-Samsung-CEO?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150108&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150108&elq=60ceafedf026427c830cf304c374f71e&elqCampaignId=21060
Samsung Electronics CEO Boo-Keun Yoon, in a keynote speech at the International Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, Jan 5, made a passionate pitch to “unlock the infinite possibilities of the Internet of Things,” while suggesting that the industry fall in line behind Samsung’s leadership.
On the one hand, Yoon stressed the importance of an “open ecosystem” for IoT, noting that “cross-industry collaboration is the key.”
Obviously, if you have the money and market share that Samsung now commands, partnerships and collaborations in an open ecosystem are easy to come by. Yoon said Samsung will be committing $100 million toward bolstering its IoT programs with developers and startups.
Setting aside the idiosyncrasies of defining an “open ecosystem,” according to Samsung’s own universe the infinite possibilities of IoT the industry is about to unlock, illustrated by Yoon, turned out to be rather thin and superficial.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephen Pulvirent / Businessweek:
Samsung unveils its smart home strategy at CES, plans to develop open Internet of Things platform for developers
Samsung’s Smart-Home Master Plan: Leave the Door Open for Others
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2015-01-06/samsungs-smart-home-master-plan-leave-the-door-open-for-others
The most important product at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show may not actually be a product at all. It’s a policy. Samsung Electronics has pledged that 90 percent of all devices it creates, including televisions and mobile devices, will be Internet-enabled by 2017—just two short years away. The remaining 10 percent will come on board by 2020. Considering that in 2014 Samsung delivered more than 665 million products to consumers around the world, it’s hard to understate how important this is to the overall move to turn the Internet of Things—the everything-is-connected tech Valhalla—from a plaything for early adopters into the mainstream of moms and microwaves.
There’s more: In addition to building this functionality into its own products, Samsung’s platform will be entirely open, rolling out the red carpet for developers and other software and hardware manufacturers to, basically, have at it. Samsung’s smart-home push has been anticipated for a long time, particularly since it acquired smart-home sensation SmartThings in August 2014, but few expected this level of openness. Samsung could have just as easily created a walled garden, forcing users to choose from Samsung or a specific partner devices to assemble a networked life of automatic temperature adjustments and TV-based alerts.
“The Internet of Things is not about things, it is about people,”
Creating an Internet of Things that did not place improving people’s lives at the core of its mission would be “like a bedtime story for robots.”
The move comes as Samsung’s hugely successful smartphone business is under significant pressure, particularly from lower-cost competitors in China. “When the mobile business ceases to be profitable, Samsung will have to force its way into some other industry that requires a lot of upfront capital and expertise in mass-manufacturing,” my colleague Sam Grobart wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek almost two years ago.
SmartThings is still at the core of Samsung’s push forward. Though Yoon didn’t emphasize it in his keynote, SmartThings unveiled the second version of its core Hub product—its version of a central command center for your house—earlier in the day, along with updates to its other hardware offerings.
Services also stand to be a big part of the Internet of Things marketplace as Samsung envisions it. SmartThings will offer the first, a premium subscription service (price to be announced) that will allow users to configure message and phone call alerts that can be escalated to friends and family. If you leave the oven on, you might get an alert; if the security alarm goes off, your down-the-street neighbors might get one, too. Without rigid boundaries between different manufacturers’ devices, it wouldn’t be surprising to see third parties figure out how to squeeze more functionality out of them for a fee. This is the Google Play store for your kitchen instead of your Galaxy.
There’s still a long way to go before this is all a reality. Samsung gave itself a two-year runway, and it’ll take a good bit of time after that for homeowners to embrace the devices. Buying a new smartphone is a lot easier than swapping out all your home appliances. For now, Samsung’s pledge of a well-developed, truly open Internet of Things starts with the SmartThings Hub, some well-credentialed corporate partners, and a lot of people who really want to see this succeed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using The Wink Hub With OpenHAB
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/08/using-the-wink-hub-with-openhab/
Spend enough time looking at home automation setups, and you’ll quickly find there are two competing philosophies. The first wants to put an Arduino on every light socket, with everything connected by cheap eBay radio modules. The second home automation philosophy requires astonishingly expensive hardware to talk to other expensive modules. The Arduino solution is a system that can be infinitely customizable, and the commercial solution talks to ‘the cloud’ for some strange reason. There is no middle ground. At least there wasn’t until [Eric] started poking around and looked at a few hardware solutions.
[Eric] was looking to control some GE Link bulbs through his phone, computer, or through the Internet. They’re supposed to be the best bulb on the market in terms of price and performance, but they can only be controlled with a Zigbee. This lead [Eric] to an interesting hack that gave all owners of the Wink Hub local control of their devices. From [Eric]’s research, this was the only way his lighting wasn’t dependent on ‘the cloud’.
Once [Eric] got the light bulbs talking to the Wink, integrating them with the rest of the devices in his home was easy.
Wink Hub integration with OpenHAB for local control
https://electronichamsters.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/hacking-the-wink-hub-to-work-with-openhab-for-local-control/
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES 2015: The good, the mad and the pointless
Coming to a living room near you – yikes!
Things that should never be spoken of
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/08/breaking_fad_ces_2015/?page=2
Ah, the connected fridge. It wouldn’t be January without someone trotting out more pointlessly connected devices. And CES has certainly turned out to be a showcase for the IoT once more.
Netatmo has created a new camera which recognises when people arrive home, Panasonic’s offering home monitoring too, and you can link your Nest to just about anything that moves. Meanwhile Samsung-owned SmartThings is going to be able to control just about everything, including other branded kit, and let you pay for monitoring subscription.
Oh, what a brave new world.
time may well be taken up in running round your home switching things off and on in the ‘right’ order, to make sure they all reconnect after a power outage or a router reboot.
Perhaps I’m unlucky. My flat has VoIP handsets, Wi-Fi repeater, streamers, TV, NAS, assorted smartphones, tablets, thermostat, security camera and probably a few other things I’ve forgotten. Somehow, restarting the network almost inevitably results in some devices not noticing, a mildly confused DHCP server, and at least one device refusing to work until I’ve sworn at it for a few hours and unplugged it at least six times. But hey, that’s progress, and I’m looking forward to the day I have to keep rebooting the deep freeze to make sure that it picks up a new IP address.
Maybe 2015 will be the year we all move to IPv6 and solve that problem, too. When we do, we’ll probably find a whole new load of exploits in cheap home routers, but at least they’ll be IP6 exploits, so we can feel modern while we’re hacked.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM-based micro-drive circuit known Atmel has launched a Bluetooth radio circuits platform, which cut significantly, for example, IoT devices power consumption. In standby mode, the power consumption of the circuit drops to less than one microampere.
2.1 x 2.1 mm WLCSP-housing pakatti BTLC1000 circuit virtually cut the Bluetooth radio power consumption is one-third lower than the current solutions.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2261:atmel-ennatykseen-bluetooth-virrankulutuksessa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s button-size Curie will power all kinds of wearables
http://www.cnet.com/news/intels-button-sized-curie-may-power-any-wearable/
Intel believes the chip will serve as a platform for new product. It is set to debut in the second half of the year.
“This changes the game of wearables,”
The chip giant, while still dominant in PCs, missed the rise of smartphones and wants to avoid the same fate with the burgeoning market for wearable technology. Realizing it can’t go it alone, the company has partnered with a number of different companies, including eyeglass maker Luxottica, watchmaker Fossil and design house Opening Ceremony. In September, it unveiled Mica, a smart bracelet that costs under $1,000.
Curie is just out of the labs, Krzanich said, adding that he expects it to launch in the second half of the year.
Intel has been on more of an experimental bent over the past year, flexing its innovation muscles by showing off a number of unique concept products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AIR for WICED – Smart Bluetooth Module
Posted Jan 08th 2015
http://www.eeweb.com/news/air-for-wiced-smart-bluetooth-module
Anaren, Inc.’s Wireless Group announced today the release of its first AIR for WICED™ Smart Bluetooth module and Atmosphere on-line developer platform as part of a strategic engagement with Broadcom Corporation. This new relationship advances the goal of both companies to support designers, innovators, and end-equipment manufacturers looking for intuitive, easy-to-use developer tools, like Atmosphere, that will simplify the challenge of ‘going wireless’ and speed up their time to market.
In beta trials of its new module and Atmosphere tool, customers were able to get their product “proof of concept” running in 90 minutes or less. “Our goal is to help innovative customers get a wireless product into the market in around 90 days,” said Bowyer.
“Anaren’s demonstrated strength in providing developers with easy-to-use and unique graphical APP builder tools, guided by great-out-of-the-box-experience philosophy and dedicated technical support align perfectly with Broadcom’s strategy of making our technology easy to use and widely available to companies both large and small,” said Sid Shaw, Broadcom Senior Product Line Manager, Wireless Connectivity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES Reveals IoT Not Ready for ‘iPhone Moment’
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325224&
CES has a lot connected hardware but where is the ‘oh, that’s really easy’ surprise.
The International CES exposed how far its aspirational promoters still are from the reality of the “Internet of Things” (IoT).
As one executive in the electronics industry, who asked for anonymity, put it, “We don’t have the iPhone moment yet for IoT.”
Ian Drew, chief marketing officer at ARM, observed, “There is a lot of [IoT] hardware on the show floor. They’re everywhere. And obviously, they connect. But we haven’t had that ‘oh, that’s really easy’” surprise when it comes to using any of those connected devices.
While a “low-level” foundation for connectivity is coming together, as seen in Thread, “we are far from seeing the emergence of high-level software” that makes IoT easy. Drew explained. “Today, everyone’s IoT devices are talking within his own ‘open’ ecosystem.”
A consensus already exists on how the business community can profit from business-to-business IoT applications. In theory, lots of data generated by users will help sharpen their data analytics. That, in turn, will make their businesses run more effectively and smoothly, thus generating more revenue.
But seriously, what’s in it for consumers? Isn’t this trade show, after all, called the “Consumer Electronics Show”? Nobody, not even the CEO of the world’s largest consumer electronics company, appears to have the consumer angle figured it out yet.
After all, early adopters are “ambassadors” in the connected world, said Curran. “It is an absolute pre-requisite” for the industry to get it right before IoT devices can hope for mainstream acceptance.
On the other hand, Samsung’s IoT wine cellar example spectaculary failed to plant the seeds of “purchase intent.”
Even if you have a PhD in computer science, you can sense that there are too many steps involved in creating the connected home.
The ARM executive reiterated the problem of an “Internet of silos.” Everyone is playing with his own “open” ecosystem, he said. Perhaps some industry standard group will save the day. Currently, 150 consortia already exist for the IoT industry, he explained. “I expect someone to come up with software that makes everyone say, ‘ah, that’s easy,’” said Drew, “maybe within the next five years.”
Another important issue is the ownership of data. “We need to sort that out,” said Drew.
Making connected devices smarter involves adding more intelligence to those products.
Explaining the range of sensors now integrated into smart devices, one of the image sensors, for example, can be used for “constantly watching and surveying” outside, sending low-resolution information at one frame per second, Briman said.
But who’s actually asking for this?
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES: Bosch Aims to Connect Whole World
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325204&
Disrupt or be disrupted. We’ve heard that before. That and “embrace the Internet of Things or die” could be the theme of CES this year, ad nauseam. That hyperbole, however, may be an entitlement of companies on the front lines of IoT, such as white goods appliance-maker Bosch. In his keynote “Disrupt: or Be Disrupted” at the International Consumer Electronics (CES) show today (Jan. 7), Bosch board member Werner Struth described how Bosch intends to connect the whole world by excelling at every aspect of IoT, wearables, net-zero energy consumption and both consumer and industrial automation.
“It is amazing how connected living has revolutionized virtually everything we do,” Stuth said in the transcript of his keynote speech obtained by EE Times. “And, we are still in the infancy stage of fully understanding the real impact it will have on our lives.”
Struth said that Bosch is putting all the pieces together to “disrupt” the sensors, software and service industries of the future with smart, connected, sustainable and secure living. Just as the smartphone has transformed the way we communicate an do business, Struth predicts that companies like Bosch’s Flybits will pioneer a future in which connectivity and automation are the way of life for all of us. ”
MEMS sensors are at the center of it all, according to Struth.
“More than 50 percent of the smartphones in the world are equipped with a Bosch sensor. So the chances are that you have a Bosch sensor in your smartphone, in a home appliance, or in your vehicle,” said Struth.
To realize the dream Struth announced an international joint venture between Bosch, ABB and Cisco to create an open software platform for the smart homes of the future. A partner alliance will allow all interested parties to get in on the standardized platform.
Within the living premises, Bosch’s Home Connect app and Z-Wave Home Control Gateway (to be announced later this month) will act as the central control centers for Bosch and compatible appliances via built-in wireless communication modules. The modules will allow users to view refrigerator contents while at the supermarket as well as monitor water and energy consumption. Bosch Security Systems is likewise aiming to secure individual homes and large commercial venues with a broad portfolio of IP products.
“Our connected devices are becoming more and more intelligent. As a leading manufacturer of video systems, we are already very far advanced in this product field,” said Struth.
Bosch’s focus on automation also begins with sensors, such as ultrasonic sensors and near-range cameras to enable automatic parking, collision avoidance radar sensors and other driver assistance functions such as traffic jam avoidance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Robot In Every Home
http://semiengineering.com/a-robot-in-every-home/
The IoT is likely to make robots ubiquitous, but they may not look like what you expected. Some may not even be visible.
Bill Gates, in a 2006 Scientific American article, described his vision of the future as, “A robot in every home.”
It’s difficult to project that far ahead with technology, though. Since then, wireless has come a long way. So have microelectronics—nearly 24 orders of magnitude if you use Moore’s Law. So the robot conceived in 2006 is now more like a gaggle of Internet dust particles that remotely control the appliances of the IoT via next-generation NFC/RFID/ZigBee/Bluetooth, using what we hope are fully secured wireless links.
Rather than having a bunch of function-specific automatons, though, the vision in 2015 looks remarkably different. “You’ll be able to embed this connectivity into just about anything in our lives,” says John Horn, president of RACO Wireless. “We’re seeing thousands of products communicating in real time, with modules so small they can fit on dog collars or wrist watches.”
In the foreseeable future, robots could be just about anything—mobile or fixed, with embedded intelligence. They could even be “Internet dust”, invisible to the naked eye. And while there are no hard and fast definitions of a robot, generally to be called that the object must either move, manipulate and sense their environment, control some sort of limb, or exhibit some sort of intelligent, intuitive behavior.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wearable, bracelet-sized development kits offer quick IoT development
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4438204/Wearable–bracelet-sized-development-kits-offer-quick-IoT-development?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150108&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150108&elq=38036a09a0ee4eb0b85c32b116f11633&elqCampaignId=21073
SENtrode is the first wearable-sized development kit integrating sensors, PNI’s SENtral sensor hub, sensor fusion algorithms, programmable processor, and wireless capabilities into a bracelet-sized form factor
Tomi Engdahl says:
August, Kwikset Add Remote-Access Features to Smart Locks
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2474777,00.asp
The smart deadbolt makers are getting even more connected, and throwing in Nest Thermostat integration.
August and Kwikset, makers of competing smart lock deadbolt systems that unlock when approached by the right smartphone, have both announced their locks are adding remote control over the Internet.
August Connect (pictured) works with the August Smart Lock to set your mind at ease about home security. The Connect simply plugs into any outlet, connecting the Smart Lock —PCMag’s Editors’ Choice for intelligent deadbolts—to the household Wi-Fi.
This gives the Bluetooth-enabled deadbolt online features like remote access. Now you can tell if the door is locked or not after you leave home—and flip the switch either way. Lock up when you’re not home, or remotely unlock it for visitors. There are mobile apps for the August devices for iOS and Android, which also get notifications when the lock is tripped, if desired.
Kwikset, a big name in locks
, isn’t going to be left out. Earlier this week it announced Kevo Plus, an extension of the Kevo deadbolt that provides more remote access features.
New things Kevo owners can do once the gateway is in place: remotely lock or unlock the door; distribute an unlimited number of digital keys to other people with smartphones (for anytime or scheduled use); and monitor in real-time—you don’t have to wait to get home to see who has entered and exited.
While the gateway is free, the Kevo Plus account upgrade won’t be.
As part of the Connect release, August is opening up an application programming interface (API) for developers who’d like to work with the August devices. It’s a private API however, for “trusted partners in the home security, home automation and rental Industries,” according to the company release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BlackBerry’s IoT platform in a slide… #CES2015
https://twitter.com/kevinmichaluk/status/552869488140353536
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Eye on IoT
CES Overselling the Internet of Things
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4438233/CES-Overselling-the-Internet-of-Things?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20150109&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20150109&elq=6b84f503f0d64803b22799dd9cdf3056&elqCampaignId=21081
If you look at the early news coming out of the International CES this week in Las Vegas, it is clear that the Internet of Things (IoT) is a dominant theme. With more than 900 IoT exhibitors showing products and the opening keynotes at the show IoT related, the energy behind the technology is immense. But it may be too much.
Early reports from the show are somewhat disquieting in the breadth and range of IoT offerings that are “me too” kinds of wearables and convenience-oriented products of marginal value.
Frankly, most of these new products invoke little more than mild interest in me at best, and usually elicit a big yawn. But then, I have been covering the IoT for some time now and not so easily impressed. I can see, though, how the general consumer could find these devices amazing and exciting the first time they encounter them. But that will only be a flash of interest based on the novelty of the technology. For consumer IoT to develop a lasting market, it will need to actually offer value. And for the IoT to deliver its full value, devices need to be able to connect with one another in true Internet fashion rather than be the isolated solutions that they are today.
This actually was one of the points made by Samsung CEO Boo-Keun Yoon in his opening keynote today. Yoon called for an open industry ecosystem that will allow IoT devices to collaborate and share data. Such as ecosystem would allow the IoT to more readily deliver on its promises by enabling synergies to arise from the collaboration of multiple devices after installation, providing continual innovation in services as developers figure out how to recombine these devices in new and useful applications.
Perhaps it’s inevitable, though. The early days of the Internet went through a similar stage with vast enthusiasm for all things Internet, with online companies offering services from grocery shopping to custom-roasted coffee. Most of them eventually failed because they lacked value and could not scale, taking the entire industry into a depression that took years to recover from. During that recovery, however, the industry worked out the problems uncovered in that early bloom, building the basis for the substantive online systems we see today.
CES is pushing the IoT, and it seems to me that the result will be like the dot-com bubble that collapsed in the 90s. It won’t be pretty, but perhaps it is necessary.
CES Press Release
2015 International CES to Host Largest Ever “Internet of Things” Showcase
http://www.cesweb.org/News/Press-Releases/CES-Press-Release.aspx?NodeID=bc2c6e17-3991-4897-88ab-114f115dc8b9