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:
Nano PLC designed to communicate with IoT
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/nano-plc-designed-to-communicate-with-iot/4945ef29b2b0aed84919e0188b1c153c.html
Crouzet Automation’s em4 series is a nano-PLC that is able to communicate as part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and is an integrated solution for integrators and OEMs that allows them to connect their devices via the Internet on demand, without adding additional modules.
Crouzet Automation’s em4 series is a nano-PLC that is able to communicate as part of the Internet of Things (IoT). There are three versions of the em4, which is comprised of the em4 remote, which is designed to be fully connected to the secure infrastructure; the em4 alert, which is capable of sending SMS or email alerts; and the em4 local, which is designed for applications that do not require remote communication or require only a local area network (LAN).
http://www.crouzet.com
Tomi Engdahl says:
Marvell Shrink-Wraps IoT Gateway Product
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325222&
Marvell came to the International CES to pitch a ready-to-customize home server/home networking/IoT gateway system, called “Smart Home Cloud Center.”
The highly integrated unit, small enough to hold in one hand, enables consumers to manage their wireline and wireless network connectivity, store home media, automate home devices (i.e. lighting) and access digital home entertainment.
In an interview with EE Times, Weili Dai, president and co-founder of Marvell, called it “common sense IoT solution for home.” While acknowledging “a religious war” on the IoT market among devices using different operating systems and separate ecosystems, Dai said, “Our hope is to bring IoT to the masses, by offering a dynamic smart translator based on Kinoma.”
Kinoma, originally developed as “a next-generation virtual software platform,” had been used by companies such as Palm, Sony and Sling Media, before Kinoma was acquired by Marvell in 2010. Today, Marvell’s Dai sees Kinoma software as “an integral ingredient” to tie disparate IoT products and services.
While a host of vendors are promoting IoT building blocks — including many connectivity chips and sensors — Marvell has gone ahead and built a whole system, allowing customers to visualize what they could develop in order to get in on the IoT action.
Marvell’s system is designed as a “turnkey solution” for OEMs and service providers with little to no experience in connected homes. In theory, they can pick up the reference design, select the features they want and get a head start in IoT.
Marvell’s target audience for this reference design includes “OEMs with their own brands, hard disk drive companies and service providers,” according to Dai.
Cloud service and carrier markets
Marvell says the system will work well on the cloud service market, since the Smart Home Cloud Center can enhance mobile Internet user experience of home cloud services.
It’s also applicable to the carrier market. The Smart Home Cloud Gateway “can replace existing home gateway developed by major carriers worldwide,” according to Marvell.
Connectivity is essential to any home IoT devices; but some digital entertainment content can be easily downloaded and stored in the Smart Home Cloud Center.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Thing Is…
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325249&
“Thing” is a word that encompasses everything, goes with anything and clarifies just about nothing.
“The thing is to put a motor in yourself.”
– Frank Zappa, “We’re Only In It for the Money”
According to all the banners, keynote speakers and shameless self-promoters at this year’s Consumer Electronics Saturnalia (CES), the thing is the “Internet of Things.”
Samsung, tried to explain how the Internet of Things (Eye Oh Tea) will endemically “change people’s lives for the better while “transforming society and revolutionizing industries” the world over. Whoo-ee!
The thing is that Yoon seemed to be having trouble with the concept of the “thing” itself. I don’t blame him. Socrates and Einstein could probably talk for days about what exactly is a “thing” and come away from the whole thing cranky, disheveled and irresolute.
“Thing” is a word that encompasses everything, goes with anything and clarifies just about nothing. Yet, here at CES, I watched 160,000 non-philological geeks and post-metaphysical hustlers clogging up Sin City, trying to plug their particular “things” into a nebulous global “cloud” of concept, communications and cutthroat commerce.
If the Internet of Things were a flying-saucer refugee who terrorizes arctic research outposts, it would bring blessed clarity to the endless hype of CES and the bewildering vagueness of IoT. But movie monsters are, definitely, not what Yoon and his army of nerds are trying to explain.
Internet of People
The thing is that the “Internet of People” (Eye Oh Pee?), which most of us now use daily to do Facebook, answer e-mail, delete spam, watch dirty movies and buy socks from Amazon, has exhausted its run as The Next Big Thing (TNBT). The all-new, latest-thing Eye Oh Tea consists of products — that is, devices — that is, gadgets, doo-hickies and buzzing, spinning gewgaws — that is, things! that are styled to dazzle the gullible consumer and create infinite possibilities of income for the gadget-makers.
But what are the things — in an economic era of vast income inequality and stagnant incomes among us non-Yoons in the 99 percent — that radiate the irresistible power to squeeze the last drop of blood from the stone of consumer culture.
What are the things we still don’t have? What things are left that we really want?
Yoon told an adoring, standing-room audience at CES that one thing we all want for sure (little did I imagine) is a seamless, end-to-end technology that will effortlessly manage our… wine cellars. Yes, surprising. But he had a point. The thing is, not only do I need a wine-cellar solution. I need wine and I need a cellar. Not to mention a house above the cellar. And an income that would allow me to buy all that wine, seamlessly, effortlessly.
But the thing is, I actually don’t want what B.K. Yoon wants for me. Neither the wine thing nor the brain-wave thing. Nor the thing that that drives my car for me. Nor the thing that beeps six times every minute, forever, reporting on the GSM coordinates of my entire family — none of whom wants me to know where they are.
Here’s the thing: I do my thing. B.K. Yoon does his thing. This is not a thing for me.
When you said it — “Ain’t no big thing” — you had to chill.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Verge:
Siri can control HomeKit devices while you’re away from home only if you have an Apple TV — First HomeKit devices confirm Apple TV’s limited role in home automation — CES 2015 has given us a deluge of new HomeKit announcements. Thus far, we’ve seen several smart outlets …
First HomeKit devices confirm Apple TV’s limited role in home automation
Siri, let’s say it’s complicated
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/8/7510647/first-homekit-devices-confirm-apple-tvs-role-in-home-automation
CES 2015 has given us a deluge of new HomeKit announcements. Thus far, we’ve seen several smart outlets, a garage door opener, light bulb adapters, a door lock, and a power strip from vendors such as iDevices, iHome, GridConnect, Chamberlain, Schlage, and Incipio. Elgato announced an entire range of HomeKit sensors while Insteon introduced a full-on hub that bridges HomeKit-compatible devices with Insteon’s vast catalog of otherwise incompatible smart home accessories.
Each new Wi-Fi device also shares one common trait: an Apple TV is required if you want to control them with Siri while away from home.
So, while commands like “Siri, turn off the lights in the living room” will always work while connected to your home Wi-Fi network, they won’t from the airport unless you have an Apple TV. But that’s it — you can still switch off the lights with an app, no Apple TV required.
AppleInsider reported back in October that Apple TV Software beta 2 included support for testing HomeKit with iOS apps. While that would seemingly suggest a prominent role for Apple TV, we’ve been reliably informed that Apple is not positioning its little hobby device as a home automation hub.
Here at CES we’ve seen a wide variety of HomeKit-compatible controllers of variable quality. Demonstrations ran fine for the most part: lights turned on, power strips popped to life, and fans blew. But any deviation from the script risked crashes, lockups, and embarrassment in front of a throng of eager onlookers.
“It isn’t fully baked yet,” said one HomeKit partner looking wistfully at an unresponsive light bulb. “Apple still has work to do.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
ZigBee 3.0 radio chips and modules can add Smart Home/IoT capabilities to lighting applications
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4438249/ZigBee-3-0-radio-chips-and-modules-can-add-Smart-Home-IoT-capabilities-to-lighting-applications-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150112&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150112&elq=88120662e220454aaed2022b3c2a87b3&elqCampaignId=21114
With a growing number of lighting products being required to work with Smart Home and IoT networks, GreenPeak Technologies’ GP691 communication controller chip and GPM6000 integrated Modules provide a much-needed solution for implementing ZigBee 3.0, Thread, and other advanced wireless protocols.
The new GP691 ZigBee communications controller provides IEEE Standard 802.15.4-compliant robust spread spectrum data communication in the worldwide 2.4 GHz band and is capable of running the full stack and application for ZigBee applications, including ZHA and ZLL profiles. The GP691 features a radio transceiver, real-time MAC (Medium Access Control) processor, micro-controller, security engine, 16 KB RAM and 248 KB Flash memory for field upgradeability.
GreenPeak says the GP691 supports the latest ZigBee 3.0 (including the ZHA1.2) specification for wireless sense and control networks. It also helps future-proof the products it’s used in because its flash memory can support over-air upgrades which allow it to support new 802.15.4 based standards upon availability, such as Thread.
While no single standard will dominate lighting controls in the foreseeable future, ZigBee 3.0 will be an important part of the mix because it supports a wide range of Home, Enterprise and Industrial Automation, Smart Energy, and Light Link applications. IEEE 802.15.4 compliant, it can cover a complete home with multiple floors. It can handle dead spots and WiFi interference via mesh networking.
IDE for ZigBee IoT MCUs promises “breakthrough” programming
http://www.edn.com/design/design-tools/development-kits/4438100/IDE-for-ZigBee-IoT-MCUs-promises–breakthrough–programming
BeyondStudio IDE for the NXP Semiconductors JN516x family of wireless MCUs for Internet of Things (IoT) applications is a software development environment, developed by Beyond Semiconductor, that simplifies the development of software on the JN516x family improving code density, reducing development time and improving code quality.
Used in conjunction with the Beyond Debug Key, it provides full access to the JTAG software debug feature of the chips, simplifying and accelerating the development process.
“For almost a decade, the JN51xx microcontroller family has provided the optimum hardware platform for Zigbee products, integrating the highly efficient BA22 32-bit processor and a 2.4 GHz radio transceiver on a single chip,” said Simon Wadsworth, Software Team Leader at NXP Semiconductors. “BeyondStudio now brings improvements in code size, performance, and software development productivity, giving NXP customers even more advantage over those using competing products in the Zigbee space.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can IoT deliver energy savings or will it be another power drain?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/power-forward/4438286/Can-the-Internet-of-Things-deliver-energy-savings-or-will-it-simply-become-another-power-drain-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150112&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150112&elq=88120662e220454aaed2022b3c2a87b3&elqCampaignId=21114
While there are many people who question the media hype about the Internet of Things (IoT), what it is and how how significant it will be, most industry insiders agree that this nebulous “thing” has become a reality with potential for enormous growth. Even the lay public has some appreciation for this, having witnessed the growth in Internet connectivity through the evolution in personal computing from laptops, through smartphones, tablets and smart TVs to wearable devices. Certainly Business Insider believes this market will be huge – its 2014 report cites a forecast increase in the number of Internet connections from 1.9 billion devices today to 9 billion by 2018.
So what’s driving this growth? Well key to its description, the Internet of Things is about the connectivity of ‘Things’, not people. This means it is all about how data from remote sensors and the ever-increasing number of intelligent devices in our world today can be acquired and used to provide autonomous control in a smarter, more efficient way. Arguably some of the applications embraced by the IoT have been around for some time e.g. factory automation with machine-to-machine (M2M) networks that not only ensure a smooth manufacturing flow but also provide back-office data on production rates to facilitate more effective supply chain management.
Other IoT applications include smart metering for electricity, gas and water and even waste management systems, all of which have an environmental agenda. Building management is another example often quoted
But opinion seems divided over whether the IoT will deliver improved energy efficiency overall. Taken individually there are applications where there is an undeniable energy saving benefit. However there is the fear that collectively the growth in connected ‘Things’ that all consume power could negate many of the efficiency gains, especially devices that unnecessarily waste power as a consequence of their own inefficiencies.
Championing the former viewpoint is the publication FutureStructure with its belief that the Internet of Things will thrive on energy efficiency. It highlights the advantages of smart thermostats such as the nest product from Google or a similar device from German company tadoo that, by being connected to the Internet, allow users to manage their domestic heating requirements via their smartphones.
On the flip side, a Forbes article highlights an IEA (International Energy Agency) report claiming $80 billion in power is wasted by connected ‘Things’. This picks up on what’s colloquially known as “vampire power”, an expression referring to lost power when electronic devices are notionally switched off or put into standby mode.
Historically this phantom load was associated with appliances like televisions but this IEA report identifies network-connected equipment like set-top boxes, gaming consoles, modems and the like, which it says have been overlooked and yet apparently are consuming about 400 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in standby mode alone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES 2015: MEMS that Wearables/IoT Need
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325262&
All things MEMS, especially how they provide greater functionality in smaller, more power-efficient wearable Internet of Things (IoT) devices, was the overall theme of the “Sensors and MEMS Technology” track at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015, June 6-8, Las Vegas) sponsored by the MEMS Industry Group (MIG, Pittsburgh).
“MEMS/sensors are the frontline ‘edge’ device collecting the raw data from the environment, such as pressure and temperature, or human body data, such as number of steps taken and heart rate,” Stephen Whalley, chief strategy officer at MIG told EE Times. “In wearable devices and IoT applications such as smart homes, buildings, cities and vehicles, they usually form a sensing cluster around the application processor, feeding it with every sensory change taking place. That data is then processed using algorithms to make sense of it so that humans or machines can react appropriately.”
Wearable strategies are all over the map
One of the biggest problems with keeping them powered, because they are usually always-on and thus need to constantly stay charged to be useful. Besides the technical side, according to Holmes three things define wearables in 2015: “intimacy, immediacy and persistence.”
“A day on a smart watch a day’s battery life would be great — but we don’t have that yet,” said Oh.
power consumption is limiting the functionality of smartwatches.
When asked where the biggest power savings can come from in a wearable device Behrooz said it’s the sum of the display, processor, communications, sensors and software. In some use cases, such as always-on applications, you have limit the use of communications and GPS which runs down batteries quickly. But if you use sensor fusion to keep most of the battery-hungry circuitry off until needed, you can extend battery life to reasonable lengths.
Saxe added that consumers would prefer to have a battery life of 3-to-6 months with wearables that merely use sensors to report the data a smartphone.
“The top issues depend on whether the developer is thinking of a wearable device without a display, or one with a display.”
“The next ‘big’ algorithm for sensor hubs for wearables will be the one that achieves the lowest power,”
“Energy harvesting will create a whole new generation of products, we’ll see sensors — even see customized packaged goods.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Needs More Than Moore
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325241&
The Internet of Things requires specialty processes, pioneered by smartphone chips, to create optimal IoT silicon, says a TSMC executive.
More-than-Moore technology sales skyrocketed when smartphones took off five years ago. Also known as specialty technologies, these devices complement the digital processing and storage elements of an integrated system by allowing interaction with the outside world.
Smartphones in particular, are like little specialty technology storehouses. Consider that the 1.24 billion smartphones that shipped worldwide in 2014 each contain ten or more specialty chips for microphones, cameras, gyroscopes, accelerometers and more.
Several emerging opportunities also rely on specialty technologies. Among those with the most potential is the nascent Internet of Things (IoT), ready to devour billions of ICs to fulfill its promise of connecting all our gadgets to us through the Web. The IoT presents the semiconductor community with nearly limitless opportunities thanks to specialty technology foundry services with the ability to integrate flash, CIS, RF, high voltage, power and MOSFET technologies.
Designers need to evaluate several factors to select the right technology for a new circuit designs. The criteria quickly come down to a discussion on the trade-offs between power, performance and area.
Leveraging third-party IP is an intelligent and essential way for SoC designers to expedite product development.
Having easy access to IP quality data online can significantly shorten the SoC design cycle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom CEO: Life After LTE, 5G Cellular Exit
4K UHDTV, iGrill and proliferating remotes
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325250&
If you had to guess one product category conspicuously absent from Broadcom’s CES booth this year, would you name smartphones?
If you did, you were right.
The company’s focus is now on the broadband and connectivity businesses. “Our broadband is an extremely strong and valuable business. Our connectivity business is also very strong, and is focused more on the Internet of Things now,” he said. “Frankly, these are better businesses to be in and invest in.”
The company is broadening its technology and businesses. These include connected homes, and more recently, automotive. McGregor called the automotive segment “a great business we are sort of tiptoeing into” and finding it “very interesting.”
McGregor: So, if you think about the connectivity business, we won all of that business without any baseband participation.
The reason we win in connectivity is because we have very strong execution across the broad range of technologies. And we are really good at integrating different connectivity technologies. We are creating a platform out of connectivity technologies. And that doesn’t change.
Chinese fabless are also getting into connectivity
EE Times: With all the capital going into the Chinese semiconductor industry, I hear that a lot of Chinese fabless companies have money to burn. They’ve begun licensing connectivity technologies from others because they want to be in that business [of modem and connectivity] for smartphones.
Shanghai-based Spreadtrum, a successful vendor of baseband chips but with no connectivity solutions, recently licensed connectivity IP core — such as Bluetooth Low Energy – from Ceva. And Spreadtrum isn’t alone making such deals.
Now, to me, that means trouble for Broadcom. No?
McGregor: Oh, potentially. But you can make the same argument about Samsung LSI or Huawei. But at the end of the day, they use our connectivity chips. There are big differences between the best and almost the best… or not at all the best. I think people want to have the best technologies in these spaces. You need that to win specs, market values, and there are a lot of features you enable with these products.
EE Times: That’s an IoT coming to the kitchen story.
McGregor: I think there are a couple of themes at the show. One is that the Internet of Things has moved beyond just a total geek field. Mainstream consumers are starting to understand how they might actually like to have some of these devices. Price points are beginning to come down and the quality is going up. This will be an ongoing process. It’s not a binary thing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The number of homes with smart thermostats doubled in 2014
http://www.berginsight.com/News.aspx?m_m=6&s_m=1
According to a new research report from Berg Insight, the number of North American and European homes with a smart thermostat grew by 105 percent to 3.2 million in 2014. The North American market recorded a 107 percent growth in the installed base of smart thermostats to 2.5 million. In Europe, the total number of homes with a smart thermostat grew by 96 percent year-on-year to reach 0.7 million. Berg Insight forecasts that the number of homes with smart thermostats in Europe and North America will grow at a CAGR of 64.2 percent during the next five years to reach 38.2 million in 2019.
Smart thermostats is a particularly attractive opportunity in the smart home market, as these systems are of great interest for consumers, energy companies and HVAC service providers.
Consumers embrace smart thermostats primarily due to the potential for energy savings, increased comfort and convenience. For energy companies, smart thermostats open up new possibilities to introduce consumer-friendly demand response and energy efficiency programmes.
The North American smart thermostat market is led by Nest, Honeywell and Ecobee that each has sold hundreds of thousands of thermostats, primarily through the retail, utility and professional installer channels.
The number of smart homes in Europe and North America reached 10.6 million in 2014
According to a new research report from Berg Insight, the number smart homes in Europe and North America reached 10.6 million in 2014. The North American market recorded a 70 percent year-on-year growth in the installed base of smart homes to 7.9 million at the end of the year
The strong market growth is expected to last for years to come, driving the number of smart homes in North America to 38.2 million by 2019, which corresponds to 28 percent of all households. The European market is 2–3 years behind North America in terms of penetration and market maturity. At the end of 2014, there were 2.7 million smart homes in Europe and the market is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 61 percent in the next five years to reach 29.7 million smart homes by 2019
Tomi Engdahl says:
In Europe, the leading smart thermostat vendor is eQ-3, whose smartphone-controlled radiator thermostats have been installed in more than 0.3 million homes. Other successful initiatives include the smart thermostat solutions offered by the energy companies British Gas in the UK and Eneco in the Netherlands.
Source: http://www.berginsight.com/News.aspx?m_m=6&s_m=1
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why is Modbus TCP not being more regularly discussed as a good protocol for M2M applications? Either technically, politically or commercially? Any thoughts?
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Why-is-Modbus-TCP-not-108418.S.5876795524283133955
Only thing I can see is that it is a poll / response setup and as such not very bandwidth efficient on costly GPRS networks? That said, I thought the ability to push messages was included Modbus TCP?
HI David – Modbus TCP was good in it’s day, but is really designed for SCADA style applications. As you have identified, it is bandwidth intensive, and also slow in operation due to the polling mechanisms, but more importantly it’s pretty restricting in the volume and type of data it can transport. Crucially, a user has to know a lot about the remote device in order to get any meaningful data from it, which leads to the continued deployment of closed ‘device centric’ architectures, as opposed to the data centric ones we need for IoT style applications.
From a cellular perspective, it doesn’t sit well with remote origination, and needs fixed and public IP addressing, which again is not the best starting point. It is still a huge protocol in terms of legacy deployments (as is serial modbus), so companies do need a strategy to integrate these devices onto more modern IoT style systems, which is where devices like our multiservice gateways come into play. Hope this helps
Probably because most things that tunnel across TCP/IP are niche standards (Serial, SCSI, ModBus, CAN, et al) that are leveraging a transport that uses low cost COTS hardware from Ethernet/WiFi/Wireless to stay relevant. If you have TCP/IP support natively, and have built Ethernet 10/100/1000 on to a board, wouldn’t UDP/TCP sockets, and internet protocols be the way to go?
Thanks for the good comments guys but let me define my reasoning a bit better:
its a defined protocol on TCP port 502
it can move digital or analogue values in a pre-defined fashion
open source stacks are readily available
Server side can be easily squared away with a Modbus map
Legacy serial devices can be easily added by means of a gateway
Its tried and tested
There are 1000s of devices that can be pulled of the shelf and used straight away
Modbus TCP compliant SCADA packages mean little or no server side programming
The biggest challenge is that natively I don’t think it supports transport of remote time stamps, something that is critical in a scenario where comms may be down.
In more detail and probably not exhaustive list but enough:
There is no SOE (sequence of event capability) in Modbus, which needs timestamps as a minimum.
The protocol is not fully deterministic in that it does not add the source address into the packets, which will prevent multi master functionality etc
Overhead, no timestamp, no security, most people would still have to develop a sub protocol, perhaps OK for simple I/O but most people want beyond that now.
Of course you could always add the required functionality, such as every second and third word could be the time stamp etc … BUT then that is not modbus anymore…
Short answer: Modbus TCP is an inherently poll-response based protocol. Polling an unchanging value wastes bandwidth and costs money – a bad thing in the M2M/IoT space. MQTT uses a publish-subscribe pattern and is inherently exception-based. A lightweight exception-based protocol/transport saves bandwidth and money.
David’s question sounds familiar to me.
We are facing a situation where we have equipment talking modbus spread in a wide area.We are testing a gsm device that read modbus on regular basis (every 5, 10 or x minutes) and then transmit the data to a DB if the gsm link is up or store the data locally (including the read’s timestamp) if the link is down and then when it get’s up push all the data collected into the DB.
The main problem for us it that our Scada (and Scadas in general I guess) works pulling info from devices, one read from each variable defined every run period, but this is not our situation. In order to solve this problem I’m developing a software that reads the data from the gsm device DB and then it push it into the Scada, it’s a homemade solution that I don’t like really.
Dave I was wondering if you know a software (Scada/ HMI) that support the pull and the push schema as well.
The problem is not with the SCADA but with the choice of protocol. The protocols designed for telemetry type applications do support exception based comms. ie Where the device can “push” data to the SCADA. The standards are such as IEC-60870-104, DNP 3 (distributed network protocol), the problem with these is that they have all been designed by committees, for good reason but they are very extensive but very “heavy” protocols in terms of data. A lot of RTU manufacturers have developed their own and often then ship some OPC Server to allow the data to get into the SCADA Server. The added problem is that all to often SCADA servers aren’t designed to accept remote and historical time stamps and be able to handle this in terms of historical logs, alarms etc.
..and on MQTT
MQTT is a lightweight transport mechanism and you would run your protocol as the message (data) payload of an MQTT topic. Think of it as the 485 to your Modbus.
In an mqtt network one party publishes a message on a topic and the other party subscribes to the topic. The MQTT broker makes sure the message is distributed to all parties that are interested in that topic.
MQTT also allows data to be hierarchically structured, this structure is defined by the topic name and allows the subscribing party to automatically get all the value updates below a specified node in the hierarchy.
The format of the message is entirely up to the implementer, and would be dependent on the use case and scenario. If
If you want to send commands to a remote device, that device has to subscribe to a control topic on the broker. AS a rule mqtt messages are text based and are humanly readable, but this is not a rule just a guideline. I have also seen compound messages containing multiple pieces of information structured as JSON.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT not ready for ‘iPhone moment’
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4438294/IoT-not-ready-for–iPhone-moment-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150114&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150114&elq=2db3b0bdd1ad49d1a1e663310cbf577a&elqCampaignId=21162
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?
Tomi Engdahl says:
2. Internet of Things will cause private concerns
We are all used to making some form of compromise over access to information about our private lives as the cost of living in modern society. For example, we accept surveillance via proliferated CCTV, analysis of our spending habits via store loyalty cards, or the tracking of our movements and data on our smart phones. The Internet of Things expands this on a grand scale. Gartner forecasts there will be nearly five billion connected devices by the end of this year, and 25bn in 2020.
IoT massively increases the opportunity for hackers to get access to our personal data. This prompted the Chair of the US Federal Trade Commission to air her concerns at CES 2015.
Source: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2015/01/15/frank_jennings_microsoft_us_govt_iot_big_data_2015_legal_cloudy_issues/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Logitech launches Harmony API to spur smart home connections
http://www.zdnet.com/article/logitech-launches-harmony-api-to-spur-smart-home-connections/
Summary:Logitech said it has already wired its Harmony platform and API to support more than 270,000 connected devices made by the likes of Nest, Honeywell, Sonos and SmartThings, among others.
The API provides developers direct access with Logitech Harmony, a platform designed to enable personalized smart home entertainment and automation experiences through the digital control of connected lights, locks, thermostats, sensors, TVs and more.
API is promised to enable voice, gesture and motion controls – such as responding to simply “Watch a Movie” – to activate a connected TV, media player, or sound system
But the API’s power ties back to Logitech’s Harmony suite of wireless products, such as digital remote controls, smart keyboards, and set-top boxes rather than the onward shift toward centralizing all these commands on a smartphone or tablet.
“By opening our platform to developers, we’re giving developers the ability to create complete smart home experiences that include the living room, knowing that their entertainment component will offer the same flawless experience that consumers have come to expect from Harmony,”
Harmony API
http://www.myharmony.com/discover/harmony-api/
Logitech is working with companies like SmartThings, IFTTT, and others to create simpler, more powerful, and more comprehensive home experiences for our customers.
Developers using the Harmony API can give their users access to personalized Harmony home automation Activities such as Welcome Home, Watch A Movie, or Listen to Music directly in their own devices and services.
Products using the Harmony API are identified by the Control with Harmony badge. Harmony API is RESTful and leverages OAuth 2.
If your company creates devices or services that could benefit from Harmony API integration, request access
Tomi Engdahl says:
GreenPeak CEO discusses Smart Home at CES 2015
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438365/GreenPeak-CEO-discusses-Smart-Home-at-CES-2015?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150115&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150115&elq=186ff942e6d74923943935984cbb8958&elqCampaignId=21174
Smart home is not as much about sensors as it is about learning and coaching. The Smart Home learns how we want to live and will then manage to make our life comfortable.
Social Media Applications for the Smart Home
Zigbee, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi sensors will be connected to the Cloud via DSL, Cable or 2G/3G/4G. The Cloud System will be hosted by the Service Provider and include gateway management, subscriptions, billing and support plus user interface through apps.
Links says that Wi-Fi uses too much energy—hence their use of Zigbee and their GP691, Next Generation ZigBee Radio Chip and GPM6000 Modules for Internet of Things and Smart Home Networks announced at CES 2015.
The ZigBee Chip will support wireless IoT networking standards as ZigBee 3.0 and Thread New radio chips and integrated modules allow design engineers to easily add Smart Home/IoT capabilities to their devices and solutions for faster time-to-market.
ZigBee 3.0 supports a wide range of Home, Enterprise and Industrial Automation, Smart Energy, and Light Link applications. IEEE 802.15.4 compliant, it is capable of covering a complete home with multiple floors.
GreenPeak has partnered with USI, Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, to develop an integrated module for the GP691 that reduces a product design company’s time to market without having to solve RF product integration challenges or to worry about international wireless certification. The (25 x 17 x 2.5mm) pre-integrated, pre-certified module adds a power stage/LNA providing up to 20 dBm output power, special transmit and receive circuitry and an integrated antenna plus a connector for a second external antenna
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hybrii® Solutions / Hybrii-XL GV7011
http://www.greenvity.com/products/products-gv7011.htm
Greenvity’s Hybrii® technology with multi-standards provides reliable and robust connectivity to smart energy management application devices and systems.
The industry’s first Hybrid SoC integrating IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee Wireless and HomePlug Green PHY PLC
GV7011 is the industry’s first hybrid System-on-Chip with HomePlug Green PHY PLC and IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee. The chip integrates a HomePlug Green PHY PLC transceiver, a 2.4GHz RF transceiver of IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee, a high performance 8-bit micro controller and various interfaces including Ethernet 10/100 and SPI for plug & play purpose.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephen Lawson / PC World:
Open Interconnect Consortium releases preview of IoTivity, an open-source framework for its Internet of Things standard
Intel-backed OIC advances in fast-moving IoT standards race
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2870872/intelbacked-oic-advances-in-fastmoving-iot-standards-race.html?null
Internet of Things industry groups are in high gear, driving toward standards they hope will define how connected devices work together for years to come.
On Wednesday, an open-source project sponsored by the Open Interconnect Consortium released a preview of IoTivity, a software framework for implementing OIC’s emerging IoT standard. The move came just a week after the AllSeen Alliance introduced a new software framework of its own, which was designed for remote control of multiple AllJoyn-based devices.
There are half a dozen or more organizations crafting specifications for IoT or trying to reconcile ones developed by other groups.
The outcome will determine whose technology is used to link objects as diverse as wearables, home appliances, parking meters and industrial equipment.
OIC, which includes Intel and Samsung Electronics, and AllSeen, backed by Qualcomm, Cisco and others, are shaping up as the groups most likely to have a showdown. As such, they may be working hardest of all.
The culmination of those efforts was the IoTivity open-source code released on Wednesday.
The preview release is now generally available. The first full release—IoTivity 1.0—and the OIC standard should be out by the middle of this year, said Mark Skarpness, chair of the IoTivity Steering Group. Products based on the technology are likely to hit the market later this year, he said. Skarpness is also director of embedded software in Intel’s Open Source Technology Center.
Though it seems too soon to be pushing out specifications and code, given that the industry isn’t expected to settle on standards until next year or later, this may be the best time to capture the hearts and minds of product developers. The International CES show last week in Las Vegas was rife with emerging (and some half-baked) IoT devices, especially for smart homes. Those that make it to market will eventually need to lock into some platform for working with other connected products.
The OIC is developing its own standard for IoT connectivity but turned to the Linux Foundation to organize the project that is developing IoTivity. That project is open to anyone who wants to participate, whether they belong to OIC or not.
Vendors will use IoTivity as a reference implementation of the OIC standard.
“If you don’t have a reference implementation, it takes forever for people to build products,” Skarpness said. “And if you don’t have a standard, then really all you have is the reference, and whether you like it or not, you have to use it, because that’s the only means of knowing you’re going to be interoperable.”
Having both sets OIC apart from AllSeen, which doesn’t have a standard, Skarpness said.
“The quickest way to get lots of products into the market is to provide a core open-source framework that everyone uses.”
https://www.iotivity.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building an IoT Project with Intel Galileo and Node.js
http://www.drdobbs.com/embedded-systems/building-an-iot-project-with-intel-galil/240169187
Intel XDK IoT Edition provides an IDE that enables you to use JavaScript with Node.js to build Internet of Things (IoT) projects that target specific Intel boards and interact with Arduino shields and modules.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finnish company pushing home automation with
http://houm.io/
Houm.io hardware is based on open standards. We use EnOcean components. You do not depend on one manufacturer. If it says EnOcean, it works with Houm.io.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things for the Rest of Us
http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/the-internet-of-things-for-the-rest-of-us-1?xg_source=activity#axzz3PBubZ5Kb
Mainstream customers are missing participants in the growing conversation around the Internet of Things (IoT), but they are not the only missing voices. Legacy brands (i.e. those brands that you have in your home and recognize on store shelves) are largely absent as well. Typically legacy brands are category leaders. They are not known for their early adoption of emerging technology or for becoming change agents in their own markets. This is striking because they are vulnerable to new market entrants. As the IoT economy matures, legacy brands find themselves in the crosshairs of disruptors and they are often ill-equipped to defend their position against newcomers.
In 2015, media outlets will be inundated by two sides of a self-serving debate; namely, which big internet company’s home automation platform is winning the battle for the IoT, and which smart devices will serve up consumer data to each respective platform. The most troubling aspect of this debate is that it was manufactured in the echo chamber of big home automation players and presumes that there is only one way to participate in the growing IoT economy. Newcomers to the IoT space are forewarned that if their solution doesn’t aggregate into a big, home automation offering or pass their data to a particular smartphone service, the result will be a fragmented world of products jockeying for superior wireless connections and a deluge of push notifications that will interrupt users’ binge-streaming of Modern Family.
It’s the Majority, Stupid
The problem with the IoT has been difficult for non-technical consumers to participate. Even for the most eager innovators and early adopters, the IoT has be a hodgepodge of after market wall-warts, stand-alone hub systems or DIY kits that would confound Inspector Gadget. Efforts around IoT product safety and security continue to be ambiguous at best and hazardous at worst; it’s ok if your light bulbs turn on when you’re not at home, but not your oven. Similarly, commercial IoT efforts have been focused on this same, disillusioned sliver of audience and have ignored or failed to reach mainstream customers. These are either priced out of reach of average customers or are being marketed by brands that customers don’t know or trust.
A few IoT solutions have made it into popular consciousness, but they were quickly gobbled up by large Internet companies. Stand-alone hub solutions have been outwardly rejected by the majority of customers and these offerings are either withering on the vine or have been acquired.
In “Crossing the Chasm,” Geoffrey Moore offered an outline that predicted why early IoT efforts have failed. Like all new technologies, the IoT will have to run the gauntlet of the technology adoption life cycle curve before the majority of customers will trust (and purchase) IoT solutions.
Mainstream customers have thus far been sidelined in this conversation. Stop for a minute and ask your parents, friends, or neighbors if they know what the IoT is – go ahead, we’ll wait.
Our guess would be that they either have a) no idea what you were talking about or, b) they gave an indecipherable explanation worthy of an SNL skit. When prompted, we bet that they are aware of some IoT devices, like thermostats and fitness trackers, but the safe money is that they don’t have a clue.
The solution for legacy brands and their customers may be found in partnering with Product as a Service (PaaS) solutions and developing hybrid, co-branded products. A successful transition into the IoT may be more evolutionary than revolutionary.
Legacy brands have the power and reach to create a sea change in the way we think about IoT products. By slowly enhancing the feature sets of existing products that customers already know and love, legacy brands can get a foothold in the IoT space.
When correctly utilizing the IoT, brands will have more access to their customers than ever before.
Brands must mind the gap into the IoT. Customers will be more likely to upgrade an existing experience with a trusted brand in order to receive the benefit of a connected device as long as there is no headache involved, no extra hardware to buy or configure and a low technology bar to hurdle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why the Future Will be Made by Creators, Not Consumers
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/future-made-by-creators-not-consumers/
The ability to code enables young people to become creators rather than consumers. Students with this creative capacity and technical literacy will hold the power in the future. They are the next generation of entrepreneurs, and, as some teenagers and younger students have shown us, they are already the entrepreneurs of today.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Attracts a Smart Skeptic
Analyst plays contrarian on Internet of Things
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325314&
“No analyst is saying IoT will not be huge, but we still have to take that with a grain of salt,” Thomas said at the Industry Strategy Symposium, where nearly every talk was peppered with upbeat references to the emerging Internet of Things. “What if the IoT is smaller or takes longer to arrive than expected?”
A very real challenge is that the IoT is not expected to generate short-term gains. Thomas cited a recent survey in which eight out of 10 C-level executives said they expect the IoT to account for less than 10% of revenue in 2017, and five out of 10 said it would represent less than 5% of revenue.
Another survey suggested the market for consumer IoT products may be narrow. The average annual income of a wearable device user today is a whopping $184,000. Users of smart home devices said their average annual income was $135,000 — miles above the global average household income of $7,000, he said.
The widespread hope for the IoT was just one of several assumptions he challenged in a talk that raised interesting questions about the future of smartphones, PCs, and China.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WSN Solutions – Part 1
http://www.eeweb.com/company-blog/renesas/wsn-solutions-part-1
This article presents the first part of the 5-part series of Renesas Solutions for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), which is the semiconductor technology opening vast new markets benefiting the smart society. It describes the Renesas’ expertise to help create and promote new markets, the laying foundation of the Smart society, as well as eliminating the need for wires and the utilization of standards to make wireless sensor networks more flexible.
The biggest challenge that this department faces is the amazing speed with which the electronics technology evolves—much faster than other segments of the economy. New electronic products are introduced and associated markets are born seemingly every day. Their movements from startup to growth phases can be quite spectacular.
The realization of the electronics-based physical and social environment called the “ Smart Society” is the product of two factors: (1) advances in semiconductor technology that continually make more computing power available at lower cost, and (2) the surge in value provided as microcomputer capabilities have jumped from calculating, to control, to databases, to online activities, to anytime/anywhere connectivity and, finally, to artificial intelligence.
Wireless sensor networks already play primary roles in numerous applications—weather observation being a prime example. It is now routine for up-to-the-minute data to be sent from remote observation points such as instrument shelters, weather ships, autonomous sea buoys, satellites, radar and Japan’s AMeDAS (Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System). These data are transmitted via radio waves to a cloud-based collection center for rapid analysis. This wireless connectivity improves weather forecasts and stimulates new applications for environmental data.
The main engineering challenge for expanding the application horizon for wireless sensor networks is to find ways to decrease node size and cost.
Various standards exist for implementing wireless and wired links
Specifically, three sets of standards are necessary to enable globally consistent wireless sensor networks: network standards, wireless standards, and sensor standards.
Accepted standards with approved specifications and conformance requirements define open environments. With regard to wireless sensor networks, Renesas strongly favors the adoption of optimized communication techniques to simplify and accelerate the development and deployment of sensor nodes and base stations. Sensor modules designed with proprietary electronic designs complicate efforts to attach modules from different suppliers, causing costly delays in development projects.
A very significant obstacle to wireless communication standardization efforts is the fact that radio spectrum assignments vary by country and region, defined by government regulations. The resulting inconsistencies raise system compliance costs and inhibit the globalization of wireless transceiver development.
At present, all countries permit wireless communication over the crowded 2.4 GHz frequency band. That explains why most wireless communication standards—including Wi-Fi®, ZigBee®, and Bluetooth®—are using it. In practice, however, this band tends to suffer from limited range. Now a worldwide effort is underway to develop a global wireless communication standard based on the use of sub-GHz bands. Renesas is contributing to the development of this standard.
two new communication technologies that will expand markets for wireless networks: Body Area Networks (BAN) and Visible Light Communication (VLC)
Decades of experience have shown that the multiple-path connectivity of wireless networks is very robust.
To do so, though, network-related information has to be inserted into each data packet.
If energy-harvesting technology can be used to power wireless sensor modules, this will greatly simplify the process of deploying wireless networks
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things Blows Away CES, and it May Be Hunting for YOU Next
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/internet-things-blows-away-ces-and-it-may-be-hunting-you-next
I was blown away by the seemingly endless possibilities the IoT showcase was presenting- from waterproof, Bluetooth speakers and massage chairs (almost old fashioned technology at this point), to the iPassport (for the ultra-paranoid among us), to entire cloud environments. Even snapchat had a shared story for anyone at the CES event. There is, of course, endless good that the IoT can bring to the world at hand, through medical, security and energy-saving improvements.
The IoT is starting to turn anyone and everyone into empowered, capable, real life Avenger-type superheroes with the power to control and manage all aspects of their lives. However, one product is taking this concept to the extreme.
TrackingPoint has developed a Precision-Guided Firearm “capable of making beyond belief shots”. This gun is summarized on the TrackingPoint website as a “comprehensive, purpose-built weapon system.”
The IoT is revolutionary and hopefully will continue to change the world as we know it. The internet of things is truly the internet of everything. But maybe we should stop and reflect upon which technologies we truly wish to present to the public, and just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Remember, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NBN Co makes it official – backhaul charges will fall
CVC down by 12.5 per cent as of February 2015
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/26/nbn_co_cuts_backhaul_charges_at_last/
NBN Co has followed through on its promise to cut the price of its services with a 12.5 per cent snip off the price of its connectivity virtual circuit (CVC) as of 1 February 2015.
Currently $20 per Mbps per month, the CVC will fall to $17.50 per Mbps per month under the new agreement
The CVC is a major chunk of the costs that retail service providers (RSPs) have to fork out to NBN Co for connecting customers.
RSPs provision their CVCs according to their expectations of customer traffic and the amount of contention they believe their networks and customers can stand – so CVC pricing has long been a contentious issue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth 4.1 network processor shrinks to 2.6×2.6mm
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438330/Bluetooth-4-1-network-processor-shrinks
STMicroelectronics has released the latest version of its 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 device 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 new Bluetooth 4.1 specification further increases energy efficiency and supports dual-mode topologies containing devices operating as both master and slave. The new Low-Duty-Cycle Directed Advertising minimizes energy consumed when connecting to known devices.
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.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The market is becoming increasingly more intelligent LED lamps that can be controlled with for home automation technology. Now networked lamp is presented in the field of the pioneers of the American Cree.
Connected-first in a series of LED lamps are designed to replace 60-watt incandescent bulbs. The light intensity is 815 lumens with 2700 Kelvin white.
Cree bulbs, as well as support bluetooth that Wink connections. Wink is a US fast growing way to control the devices home WLAN network. Behind the technology is a company called Quirky, which has quickly become a Wink behind dozens of hardware manufacturers support. Equipment sold in Home Depot.
For wirelessly controlling the lamps the market in 2013 was pretty non-existent – about 2.5 million were sold
ABI Research says that by 2020, yearly selling volume is growing to 223 million connected lamps.
According to ABI, Zigbee or 802.15.4 will become the leading network technology, but it is challenged by bluetooth and wifi different solutions. These Wink is just one example.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2301:lisaa-langattomasti-ohjattuja-ledilappuja&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Drones and Wearables App Store Launches
Ubuntu Shrinks Linux for Smart Wearables
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325341&
The world’s first App Store for the Internet of Things (IoT) was announced today by Canonical Ltd. (Douglas, Isle of Man) the makers of Ubuntu Linux. The company already has an app store for computers running the Ubuntu operating system, but the new IoT App Store will be for devices that have no graphic user interface (GUI).
Drones and robots are the first target for Canonical’s IoT App Store. Use examples include loading an IoT app into your quadcopter drone so it follows you around (homing on the WiFi from your smartphone) to document your vacation with aerial pictures.
“We give away the OS software for your IoT device, with the built-in capability to use a store to sell apps for it developed by anybody,” Ectors told EE Times.
Specifically, Canonical gives away a new stripped down version of the open source Ubuntu Linux OS called the Ubuntu Core, which is minus the GUI and other memory hogging modules needed to run a full-blown OS. Developers use regular old Ubuntu (which by the way means “the universal bond that unites humanity” in South Africa where it originates) to develop their pint-sized Ubuntu Core OS for the IoT. Developers then use the plain-old Ubuntu to develop apps that run under the Ubuntu Core on the IoT and sell them in the store.
Ubuntu has already signed on the biggest developers of cloud-based apps by making its OpenStack the popular OS in public clouds like Amazon’s and Google’s.
“Our app store takes care of all the details developers would have to waste time on, like bullet-proof security and automatic updating,” Ector told us. “We expect Unbutu Core to be used in everything from smart-refrigerators, -diswashers, -vacuums, -set-top boxes as well as all sorts of commercial and industrial uses — from agriculture to building inspection.”
Unbuntu Core is available as open-source for both ARM- and x86- IoTs and high-end wearables (its overkill for single-user unconnected wearables since it takes up 40 Mbytes). Hardware developers can use the $35 ARMv7 Odroid-C-1, Beaglebone Black or the Raspberry Pi boards to get a quick start.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Carriers Sought by Semtech
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325342&
Semtech hopes to arrive at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with one or more new carriers joining its LoRa Alliance working on a 900 MHz wide-area network for the Internet of Things. It is one of a handful or players trying to establish the band for metro and national IoT services.
Rival Sigfox is raising capital to build out a 900 MHz network in the U.S. using its approach. The Weightless SIG is trying to rally supporters for an open standard. And backers of the 802.11ah standard see the giant WiFi ecosystem playing a significant role.
All aim to offer alternatives to a jungle of proprietary technologies. The leading standards are not optimal for IoT: Cellular networks are widespread but expensive, and Bluetooth is cheap but limited in range.
“The market has been very fragmented with separate networks for every application — metering, parking, street lighting — all running different protocols,” said Hardy Schmidbauer, director of Semtech’s LoRa initiative. “That makes it hard to scale because you have to support each company separately using different chips,” Schmidbauer said.
This year the technology rebranded as LoRa is expected to outsell Semtech’s traditional 900 MHz chips based on frequency shift keying (FSK).
The 20 Kbit/second LoRa can stretch up to 30 miles with unobstructed line of sight. A recent trial in New York City extended links a mile with in-building penetration. Using FSK, the approach can deliver data rates up to 100 Kbits/s.
LoRa’s reach and its embedded error correction are two of a handful of its differentiators, Schmidbauer said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Namedropping: The Many Names of Internet of Things
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325245&
IoT used to have many names before we settled on Internet of Things. Now we have one name but can’t agree on what it means.
Our craziness about naming our connected computing environment may have begun in 1998, when the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) formalized IPv6 as the successor protocol to IPv4, which used 32-bit addresses and provided about 4.3 billion unique addresses to the TCP/IP protocols. It was determined that given population trends and the lowering costs of both personal computers and servers to within the price range of most households and small businesses, it was clear that IPv4 was going to run out of addresses soon.
IPv6, which uses a 128-bit address, allows about 3.4×1038 addresses, or more than 7.9×1028 times as many as IPv4, making it theoretically possible to assign not only every person in the world their own URL, but all their pets and personal things as well — just about any ol’ “thing” that could be connected. The Internet of Things became popular with IPv6, perhaps due to the shock of that realization that we have driven ourselves crazy coming up with names for the new environment and the entities in it.
Internet ‘appliances’
Some of the names have included smart devices, netcentric computing devices, network computers, and ubiquitous or pervasive computing devices. Then there were a number of names that built on the definition of “appliance”,
For example, information appliances came into common use to describe such and connected devices, such as smartphones, which had moved far beyond their original function
Another popular name, Internet appliances, met the same fate.
One name I liked then and still do is Tier-0 devices. This term has a long history in computing, dating all the way back to mainframes in the ’60s and ’70s. The term derives from early mainframe/client/server designs, where Tier-3 machines were centralized mainframes and minis, Tier-2 were servers, and Tier-1 were desktop systems, originally smart and dumb terminals and later desktop computers, laptops and smartphones. The name Tier-0 was originally used to describe any computing device smaller than a desktop or smartphone with the main task of embedded processing of real-time events related to controlling devices. Then marketing got involved, and makers of PDAs, set-top boxes, video game consoles and cell phones used it to describe their offerings.
But now, in the new world of the Internet of Things, we are beyond all that foolishness, aren’t we? Fat chance. Now, rather than a confusion of names what we have a multiple often contradictory definitions of what the Internet of Things is.
For the general public, and unfortunately for many journalists as well, even those covering electronics and software development, the broadest possible and most meaningless interpretation is used: if it is a thing and it is connected in any way to a network, Internet-enabled or not, it is an Internet of Things device.
The problem is the word thing.
Originally, the term Internet of Things had specific meaning.
Their idea was to make it easier for companies to keep track of “things” — packages, components, subsystems — by attaching RFID tags to them, each with a unique number. Then in 2004, the term was broadened to include the 6LoWPAN wireless extension to IPv6 to describe the linkage of specific kinds of “things” to the Internet with unique URL identifiers. Usually these were embedded things: microcontrollers, sensors and systems in which communications were machine-to-machine in nature — no humans need apply.
Now, in technical circles, the Internet of Things has come to imply a connected world in which all electronic things will be connected via IPv6’s TCP/IP protocol stack, with each identified by its own unique URL. But not everything will be so connected, for a variety of reasons. Even now, the IoT is beginning to fragment into many multiple subdomains: an industrial IoT, a building automation IoT, a defense and aeronautics IoT, and a consumer IoT — each of them have about as much in common with each other as various sects of Christianity have to one another, which is often very little.
One reason for this segmentation — and separation — has to do with the TCP/IP protocol itself.
But TCP/IP is basically asynchronous and is neither real-time nor deterministic, both of which are key requirements for many embedded things, particularly in the industrial segment. For others, such as in military/aerospace applications, the prime concern is security.
I suspect that such segmentation will continue, but all within under the same broad IoT umbrella, as meaningless and devoid of useful information as it is.
Ashton said that 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,” he said. “Every entity says it’s targeting the ‘interoperability’ of things at home, but each is obviously concentrating primarily on its own interests.”
But how do we eliminate that scattershot effort? One way is to come up with a common set of names and definitions.
We still have time to sort things out, though. Maybe not 15,000 years, but at least two or three hundred years given the current deployment rate of IPv6. IPv4 is still carrying more than 96% of Internet traffic worldwide as of May, 2014. And more than 15 years after it was formalized, only 4 percent of the users are using IPv6 to access Google services. By my calculation, if IPv6 continues to grow at that rate it will be sometime in the twenty-fifth century before all of the miracles of the Internet of Things are fully realized
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Meyer / Gigaom:
Canonical adds Internet of Things support to Ubuntu Core for smart connected devices
Robots embrace Ubuntu as it invades the internet of things
https://gigaom.com/2015/01/20/robots-embrace-ubuntu-as-it-invades-the-internet-of-things/
Canonical has revealed what I reckon is its biggest announcement in years: Ubuntu is about to invade the internet of things with a minimal version of the Linux distribution that it hopes will provide a standardized platform for connected devices from drones to home hubs.
“Snappy” Ubuntu Core came out of Canonical‘s mobile efforts (which are yet to go anywhere) and was made available on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud Platform at the end of 2014. Now it’s available for smart devices, and Canonical has already got players such as the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), drone outfit Erle Robotics and connected hub maker NinjaBlocks on board.
From mobile to IoT, via the cloud
Unlike traditional, package-based Ubuntu for servers and desktops, the extensible Core keeps apps and each part of the OS securely isolated from one another, and it allows for “transactional updates” — they only need to include the difference between the old and new version, allowing for easy upgrading and rolling-back if needed. In the cloud, Canonical is pushing Ubuntu Core as ideal for Docker and other containerized apps.
However, Core’s suitability for the container trend was more or less an accidental bonus while the technology was quietly making its way from Ubuntu Touch to the internet of things, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told me in an interview.
“Let us deliver those updates to your device with the same efficiency as with a phone”
Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical founder
For makers of connected devices, the same technology means being able to concentrate on the connected app and keeping the device more secure. “[Currently] if you’re going to get an update for that firmware, what you’re getting is a whole blog of kernel and OS and app, and the net effect is you rarely get them, so a lot of devices are vulnerable,” Shuttleworth said. “With Core, you can let us worry about Heartbleed and so on, and let us deliver those updates to your device with the same efficiency as with a phone.”
One of the key benefits of Core is its flexibility. The base Ubuntu Core code is identical across the cloud, connected devices and even the desktop – it supports both ARM and x86. This means device makers can prototype their “Snappy” apps on a PC before running thousands of simulations in the cloud, and it also means old PCs can be easily repurposed as a home storage server or photo booth or what have you.
The OSRF is going to use Ubuntu Core for its new app store, so developers can push updates to their open robots.
NinjaBlocks’ is using Core and its app store as the basis for its new Ninja Sphere smart home controller
Speaking of hardware, the Ubuntu founder also hinted that there might be further announcements in connection with the big silicon vendors, with which Canonical already has extensive relationships – “At the silicon level we’re a unifying factor” — though he didn’t want to go into detail just yet.
For those wishing to repurpose old PCs, the private cloud storage outfit OwnCloud (already available in the Core app store) provides an interesting test case for the difference between Ubuntu Core and the full-fat Ubuntu.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2015: The Year of the “Boutique” Acquisition
http://exitround.com/2015-year-boutique-acquisition/
2014 has marked one of the most active years in tech M&A history, largely caused by the strong public markets and cash-rich tech majors.
The only more active year was during the tech boom of 2000.
As we look to 2015 the sustained strength of the public markets is questionable, with macro economic pressures such as rising interest rates and shaky international markets.
What won’t change however is the number of new buyers coming to the table. These buyers aren’t your typical Silicon Valley tech acquirers, they are more traditional household companies and brands looking to embrace technology to better reach end users and create greater efficiencies within their own businesses. And their appetite for boutique acquisitions of tech companies is just gearing up.
A “boutique acquisition” is a deal under $100M transaction size where both the product and selling team experience is the primary driver of the deal – and both investors and selling team members see positive and favorable financial gain.
There is certainly no lack of early-stage tech companies out there these days.
While some of these deals are buyers looking purely to acquire talent, many of them are equally as much about acquiring a product or Intellectual Property to fill an important need. In many cases, these boutique acquisitions result in key products for a large company in both the short term and long term,
As you think through your priorities for 2015 consider how you can take advantage of the skyrocketing demand for technology by companies outside of the traditional tech sector.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things Blows Away CES, and it May Be Hunting for YOU Next
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/internet-things-blows-away-ces-and-it-may-be-hunting-you-next
2015 International CES “Internet of Things” Showcase in Las Vegas, Nevada. After all, of the 3600+ exhibitors, there were fully 900 exhibitors with IoT designation at this most-amazing-of-all trade shows, and 170,000 people came through the turnstiles to see the spectacle!
I was blown away by the seemingly endless possibilities the IoT showcase was presenting- from waterproof, Bluetooth speakers and massage chairs (almost old fashioned technology at this point), to the iPassport (for the ultra-paranoid among us), to entire cloud environments.
There is, of course, endless good that the IoT can bring to the world at hand, through medical, security and energy-saving improvements.
The IoT is starting to turn anyone and everyone into empowered, capable, real life Avenger-type superheroes with the power to control and manage all aspects of their lives. However, one product is taking this concept to the extreme.
TrackingPoint has developed a Precision-Guided Firearm “capable of making beyond belief shots”. This gun is summarized on the TrackingPoint website as a “comprehensive, purpose-built weapon system. It incorporates the same tracking and fire-control capabilities found in advanced fighter jets. Shooters of any skill level can now shoot better than the best shooters who ever lived”. Further, it “ensures never-before-seen precision at extreme distances and high target velocities” . This is super cool technology, no doubt and can turn the average Joe into the next Eagle Eye, but do you really want this in the hands of the redneck down the road (no knock on rednecks, but come on)?
I don’t want to get in to the ethics of guns or which gun laws are right, but it is necessary to discuss the implications of a gun this advanced coming into the wrong or unqualified The IoT is revolutionary and hopefully will continue to change the world as we know it. The internet of things is truly the internet of everything. But maybe we should stop and reflect upon which technologies we truly wish to present to the public, and just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Remember, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wearable Apps Need Some Tailoring
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325356&
Wearables represent a huge emerging market for app developers but require significant tailoring in what data is captured and how it is presented, according to a new white paper.
Developers need to familiarize themselves with the emerging market for wearables expected to reach $53.2 billion in sales by 2019. A new white paper from the Application Developers Alliance aims to educate developers on the tools, data collection process, and opportunities.
Despite the fact that connected wearables are relatively novel for consumers, developers can take advantage of available software development kits and APIs to innovate without relying on larger companies. App developers don’t have to jump on the bandwagon of a major supplier.
“There is a larger community and a long-tail community working together with smaller companies on open source projects and they will be able to get traction with each other where the larger players cannot,”
Collaboration of this nature will strengthen the compatibility and thus the value of the devices, making the data they collect more insightful. This is key because as one report estimates 75% of consumers with wearable devices stop using them within six months. The consumer fatigue is attributed to a lack of actionable data from the devices.
“Venture capitalists want to have ‘quantified self’ [companies] in their portfolios…we’re seeing significant investment,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
B&B Bringing Legacy Systems into Industrial IoT
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325369&
Improving industrial efficiency is one application for the Internet of Things (IoT) where a solid business case exists, and many companies are maneuvering to address this industrial IoT (IIoT) market. But while most companies are trying to formulate end-to-end solutions for new installations, M2M (machine to machine) communications company B&B Electronics is taking a different approach. It targets bringing legacy industrial devices into the IIoT, focusing on the endpoint connection while working with multiple partners to provide the other services needed.
The company is responding to market shifts, Mike Fahrion, B&B’s director of product management, told EE Times. “Historically we have been in the M2M connectivity space,” says Fahrion, “and we started to see a profound change in how people view connectivity in industry. M2M typically formed silos, with only one or two layers up and down the communications stack. Now, companies are looking more and more into building smart, collaborative systems.”
But the components of an industrial IoT are much more complex than those of M2M, Fahrion noted, making implementation difficult. “It’s not a technology barrier,” he said. “It’s due to a fragmentation of standards and approaches.” He added that there also was a fundamental problem: the need to connect legacy devices.
To address these problems, the company last year introduced its Wzzard Bluetooth intelligent edge nodes and Spectre LTE router to connect standard industrial sensors into a wireless mesh network with upstream cellular connectivity. The edge nodes use MQTT publish/subscribe protocols and can be configured to report only data of significance, such as out-of-bounds conditions. They can also associate sensor data with other information, such as geolocation and device name, for analytics applications. The router serves as an intelligent gateway device that handles local device configuration and management and is able to publish data selectively to the cloud. Collectively, they form the IoT Edge Processing Architecture.
But this product introduction was only a beginning for B&B. According to Fahrion, the company understood that a full IIoT system needed many more elements, including cloud support, user apps, analytics, and the like. “End users want solutions,” he said, “and we’re only a component of a solution. To build solutions, we need partners.”
Wireless sensing platform for IoT
http://bb-smartsensing.com/?campaign=20140030
Tomi Engdahl says:
The intelligent controller to adjust the light intensity according to the environment
Austrian AMS has released a driver circuit, which allows the lamp continuously senses the surrounding light. The new controller is equipped with a Bluetooth radio, so it can be connected to your home or office automation system.
AS721x series is ams: According to the market’s first IoT accompanied by light control circuit. The ambient light it senses fotosensors, based on nano-optical filters.
The circuit is integrated with Broadcom’s WICED radio platform, which brings easy part, but firmly secure the bluetooth connection IoT network. It can also use zigbee and wifi.
Sensing the ambient light ams the controller may adjust the light output of the lamp so that it remains constant at the desired level or changing conditions. This dynamic control also saves lamp power consumption.
In fact, the circuit is packaged 20-pin 2,1×2,3-ml of the housing.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2323:alykas-ohjain-saataa-valovoimaa-ympariston-mukaan&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
MCU Solution for Analog Integration of Sensor Applications
http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/renesas/mcu-solution-for-analog-integration-of-sensor-applications
Renesas Electronics Corporation announced the availability of its new microcontroller solution that brings analog solution and low power operation to home and industrial sensing systems. The solution draws 124 µA when operating at 1 MHz and offer functions, which optimized detectors that sense small signals from various sensors.
The RL78/I1D group realizes the industry’s lowest power consumption and integrates a wealth of analog functions usable in various sensing applications. More specifically, the RL78/I1D functions are optimized for detectors that sense small signals from various sensors used to monitor for smoke, gas, and the motion or vibrations.
“The demand for compact, low-power and battery-operated detectors used for emergencies or security systems is growing in both commercial and residential buildings as our society becomes more concerned about disaster prevention and security,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Belkin’s WeMo home sensors expand Internet of Things ecosystem
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/01/belkin-wemo-home-sensors.html
Continuing to expand its Internet of Things ecosystem, WeMo, a Belkin brand, introduced a group of new home sensors at the 2015 International CES in Las Vegas (Jan. 6-9). Including a window and door sensor, personal keychain sensor, room motion sensor and alarm sensor, the new WeMo product line is “designed to make the entire home smarter, more intuitive and more contextually aware,” says Belkin.
WeMo’s new home sensors allow users to monitor their entire home from anywhere using a mobile device and the WeMo Link, a Wi-Fi-to-Zigbee bridge that connects the sensors to the home’s wireless network.
The new products, as described by Belkin, are as follows:
WeMo Door and Window Sensor (F7C038)
A magnetic contact sensor that detects an open or closed state on any window or door in the home, the WeMo Door and Window Sensor allows users to check for unexpected entry into the home while away or even in a different room.
WeMo Keychain Sensor (F7C039)
The WeMo Keychain Sensor is a small fob designed to be placed on a keychain, collar or in a bag that lets users keep track of family members’ whereabouts based on the sensor’s connection to the WeMo Link.
WeMo Alarm Sensor (F7C040)
The WeMo Alarm sensor enhances current alarm systems with monitoring capabilities and is an ideal solution for retrofitting offline alarm systems for use with smart devices.
WeMo Room Motion Sensor (F7C041)
The WeMo Room Motion Sensor is an infrared sensor that detects heat signatures for precise, room motion detection, even in large rooms and hallways.
WeMo Water with Echo Technology (F7C042)
Representing the next generation of WeMo sensors, WeMo Water with Echo Technology uses advanced machine learning algorithms to provide unprecedented insight into household water usage
The WeMo Sensors will be available in the second half of 2015; pricing is undetermined at this time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Small Box Will Stop Hackers from Turning Your Smart Home Against You
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-small-box-will-stop-hackers-from-turning-your-smart-home-against-you?trk_source=recommended
Most people are bad enough at setting up their home routers. It’s probably too much to ask that they know what sort of data is passing through them, too.
And while not everyone should have to be their own CTO, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be an easier way to keep track of what the devices on our networks are doing. Or, at the very least, to know whether the traffic they’re sending or receiving is good or bad.
That’s the intent behind Numa. It’s a personal networking device, still under development, that’s intended to act as a go-between for your router and modem, or whatever you use to connect to the internet. What Numa does is watch the data travelling in and out of your home network for threats. Some of those threats might come from outside, but they might also come from inside your network, too.
Either way, when Numa detects a threat, it can block it, and your network stays secure.
While there’s lots of arcane software that can do this sort of thing already, the goal is to make Numa extremely simple for anyone to use—a self-contained product that’s plug-and-play. When it comes to networking hardware, that’s certainly no small feat.
Numa has a few tricks—it’s got a whole database of possible threats it can cross check when it detects something nefarious. Numa knows what servers are used by botnets, prevents malware from connecting to your computer, and can block traffic from IP addresses known to launch denial of service attacks.
And Numa is thinking of your smart home devices, too. If an attacker tries to access cameras in your home, perhaps, or deliver an exploit to your internet-connected fridge, Numa will keep them out. Gone are the days when threats were limited to payloads of malicious code, waiting to be opened or clicked.
“There are all these new applications for network technology that involve hooking up things to the internet that were never connected before,” Isaac Wilder, Numa’s creator, told Motherboard. It’ll protect everything from thermostats to fridges, vacuums and lightbulbs. “And that comes with a lot of new opportunities. But it also comes with a lot of new risks.”
After the pre-sale, Numa will retail for $349.
Numa sounds great, but—like many hardware startups, especially in the security space—there are questions
There are also myriad companies with enterprise intrusion prevention and detection systems already on the market that might turn their attentions to the consumer space, too, just as they did with home routers.
Its operating system is a heavily modified version of the popular router firmware OpenWRT, meaning Wilder isn’t coding Numa’s underlying functionality from scratch, either. It uses familiar hardware, too.
https://nodal.net/numa
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:
Apple HomeKit incompatible with home automation accessories not licensed as MFi products that connect over WiFi, like Nest Thermostat
Apple details HomeKit compatibility with competing home automation platforms, rules out rival Wi-Fi gear
http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-details-homekit-compatibility-with-competing-home-automation-platforms/
Apple will allow its upcoming Siri-controlled HomeKit platform to work with certain existing, non-HomeKit home automation products, including ones using competing protocols such as ZigBee or Z-Wave, but there are many limitations. According to sources briefed on the new specs, the latest Made for iPhone (MFi) licensing program specifications detail the types of home automation products other than HomeKit that Apple will permit to interact with its platform.
HomeKit will primarily focus on newly-released Wi-Fi and Bluetooth accessories that have been certified by Apple and built with the HomeKit protocol to directly connect to iOS devices.
By comparison, a bridge accessory is built to connect iOS devices to certain non-HomeKit accessories. It will communicate with iOS devices using the HomeKit protocol, while communicating with non-HomeKit accessories using other wireless/transport protocols such as ZigBee, Z-Wave or other proprietary technologies. The bridge will allow the non-HomeKit accessories to be controlled using HomeKit (Siri) commands on iOS devices.
There are restrictions on which accessories can be bridged to HomeKit. For starters, Apple will not allow home automation accessories connecting over Wi-Fi, such as a Nest Thermostat, to be bridged. Those will have to go the HomeKit protocol route and become licensed MFi products.
Apple will allow some Bluetooth LE accessories to be bridged, but only those that don’t offer users control of the home. For example, a non-MFi Bluetooth lightbulb product must not be bridged.
That doesn’t leave a lot of products that will work with a HomeKit bridge, but Apple will permit bridging of Bluetooth products that don’t provide control of the home and only provide data to HomeKit, such as a reading from a sensor. In addition, accessories that use alternative transports like ZigBee or proprietary RF sensors can be bridged, so long as they use an MFi-certified HomeKit bridge.
Controlling accessories remotely with Siri (when outside your home network) will notably require an Apple TV to be on your home network. We’ve confirmed that Apple will also allow bridged accessories to be controlled remotely.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eric Schmidt: Our Perception of the Internet Will Fade
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/01/23/1336249/eric-schmidt-our-perception-of-the-internet-will-fade
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted a change in how we perceive the internet. Schmidt says, “There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time.”
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt: “The Internet Will Disappear”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/google-chairman-eric-schmidt-internet-765989
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted the end of the Internet as we know it.
At the end of a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where his comments were webcast, he was asked for his prediction on the future of the web. “I will answer very simply that the Internet will disappear,” Schmidt said.
“There will be so many IP addresses…so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it,” he explained. “It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room.”
Concluded Schmidt: “A highly personalized, highly interactive and very, very interesting world emerges.”
“You now see so many strong tech platforms coming, and you are seeing a reordering and a future reordering of dominance or leaders or whatever term you want to use because of the rise of the apps on the smartphone,”
Mayer said that the personalized Internet “is a better Internet,”
“we need a convincing global understanding, we need a UN agency for data protection and security.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘One day, YOU won’t be able to SENSE the INTERNET,’ vows Schmidt
Translation: GOOGLE will be EVERYWHERE at ALL TIMES
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/25/eric_schmidt_internet_will_disappear/
Google exec chairman Eric Schmidt misled the world last week by claiming that – one day – the internet will vanish.
However, Schmidt was simply following the now well-worn path of his kingpin contemporaries by bigging up the Internet of Things – a piece of marketing jargon that many tech firms hope will slip into our vocabulary in the same way they eventually managed to get cloud computing to, er, slip off the tongue.
Schmidt made the comments last week during an appearance with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella and Vodafone chief Vittorio Colao at the elite World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
But the dull chinwag about the future of the digital economy between the tech titans failed to deliver much in the way of actual news, with the execs merely spewing out what appeared to be largely scripted anecdotes to the audience.
Here’s what he went on to say in full, however:
” The internet will be so many IP addresses because of IPv6, so many devices, sensors, things that you’re wearing, things that you’re interacting with that you won’t even sense it, it will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic, right?”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Network to get 30 percent more devices this year
Internet of Things, networked car, the new sensor systems and networked car. In the reasons why the number of devices connected to the network is growing rapidly. This year, the new network devices connected to a third more than last year.
According to Gartner, was is the end of this year already connected to the 4.9 billion of the device. The amount will increase to 25 billion by 2020.
The Institute does not believe that before the year 2018 is seen as no dominant platform for IoT devices to the network. This is bad news for Intel’s like giants, who are now building their own IoT ecosystems at a high price.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2333:verkkoon-30-prosenttia-enemman-laitteita&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kif Leswing / Gigaom:
Nest to replace old Dropcams for free before they go dark April 15 — One downside of having products that require cloud services in order to work is that the physical objects can suddenly become obsolete. — Over the weekend, Dropcam announced a “legacy camera replacement program,” …
Nest to replace old Dropcams for free before they go dark April 15
https://gigaom.com/2015/01/26/nest-to-replace-old-dropcams-for-free-before-they-go-dark-april-15/
One downside of having products that require cloud services in order to work is that the physical objects can suddenly become obsolete.
In a statement provided to Droid-Life, Dropcam said that eligible users will be contacted directly and offered the replacement.
The two affected products are the original Dropcam and the Dropcam Echo, both of which came out between 2009 and 2011. Both were launched way before Dropcam was purchased by Nest (which, in turn, is owned by Google.)
Dropcam hasn’t explained why it was sunsetting its older products
Even for early adopters, Dropcam declaring end-of-life on its early products isn’t the biggest problem considering the free camera upgrade. That’s one benefit to a startup being purchased by a deep-pocketed giant like Google.
Tomi Engdahl says:
P0wning for the fjords: Malware turns drones into DEAD PARROT
Parrot AR drones susceptible to flying firmware footling
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/27/malware_backdoor_makes_parrot_ar_drones_squawk/
Hacker Rahul Sasi has found and exploited a backdoor in Parrot AR Drones that allows the flying machines to be remotely hijacked.
The Citrix engineer developed what he said was the first malware dubbed Maldrone which exploited a new backdoor in the drones.
Sasi (@fb1h2s) said the backdoor could be exploited for Parrot drones within wireless range.
“Once my program kills the actual drone controllers, it causes the motors to stop and the drone falls off like a brick,” Sasi said.
“But my backdoor instantly takes control so if the drone is really high in the air the motors can start again and Maldrone can prevent it from crashing.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things Security Challenging Enterprise Networks: Survey
http://www.securityweek.com/internet-things-security-challenging-enterprise-networks-survey
While there have increasingly been many predictions about the impact the Internet of Things (IoT) will have on organizations in the future, it appears that the number of non-traditional devices connected to corporate networks is already challenging enterprises.
According to a study by Atomik Research and security firm Tripwire, employed people working from home have an average of 11 IoT devices on their home networks, and nearly one in four have connected one of these devices to their enterprise networks. The devices run the gamut, with printers (27 percent), routers (22 percent), video equipment (20 percent) and video gaming consoles (14 percent) the most popular. Twenty-four percent of them admitted to connecting a personal smart device – other than laptops and cell phones – to a corporate network, and most said they are only “somewhat” concerned with the security of these devices.
“Network monitoring and change control policies provide the foundation for enterprises to quickly recognize new devices being connected to the corporate network,” said Craig Young, security researcher for Tripwire. “Unauthorized devices should stand out like a sore thumb by performing continuous or periodic network scans. This type of change can trigger an administrative response to disable or isolate the unknown device as an active enforcement of corporate policies.”
“Proper network segmentation and firewalling is definitely good security hygiene and will mitigate some of the risks associated with these systems but this alone is generally not enough to keep the determined attacker out of your system,” Young said.
“By implementing these security controls the attacker may be prevented from launching certain direct attacks but persistent attackers have shown in the past the capability to move laterally through an organization in spite of segmentation and firewalls.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
INTERNET of STUFF: Google to replace old Dropcams for $0.00
Good news: free upgrade! Odd news: reason for upgrade is back-end upgrade
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/27/google_to_replace_old_dropcams_for_000/
Dropcam, the home video camera company acquired by Google’s Internet of Things limb Nest, is giving away new cameras to owners of its old cameras.
Dropcam’s eponymous products are WiFi-connected cameras that make it easy to log on and peer at whatever it is they see over a video stream. The idea is that you’ll buy a Dropcam and use it as a baby monitor, security device or to see how much of the garden your new puppy has dug up today.
The old cameras, it appears, don’t talk to the new back end. Rather than making old cams redundant trash, the company is swapping them for new ones.
Few vendors would be as generous in this situation, but perhaps Dropcam/Nest/Google thinks it needs to keep every customer aboard as it plots a combined IoT assault. After all, when the user is the product, it’s best to have the user on the latest version.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Achieving Energy Efficiency for IoT Designs
http://webinar.techonline.com/19365?elq_mid=6186&elq_cid=303473&keycode=CAA1AC&elq=9a959e9049724c3785d89995059a2b6b&elqCampaignId=114
Reducing energy consumption and system costs are critical in today’s IoT applications. New investments in IP and tools play a significant role in extending battery life, reducing energy costs and enabling added functionality for wearable and machine-to-machine devices. Developing SoCs for IoT applications requires IP that not only supports low power process technologies but also implements advanced low power techniques for energy-efficient sensing, processing and communications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for: The latest evolution in electronics hand gesturing
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4438470/These-aren-t-the-droids-you-re-looking-for–The-latest-evolution-in-electronics-hand-gesturing-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150126&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150126&elq=a4a1b8d043bc44689d296462ab1288ae&elqCampaignId=21343
Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi uttered these words and with a wave of his hand summoned the “Force” and was able to control the minds of two Storm Troopers in Lucasfilm Ltd. and now Disney’s Star Wars.
Well, the advancement of hand gesturing in 2015 has not reached that mind-controlling level by the “Force”, but it has advanced to using an E-field force, a design unique to Microchip, with simplified user-interface options focused on gesture detection for such things as volume control, light dimming and page-turning in e-readers.
I am a big fan of using natural human prompts as control for the Smart Home and other Internet of Things control. Voice and hand gestures just come naturally to control our amazing new electronic design advancements. Using a Smart Phone or tablet is OK, but nothing surpasses the good old human analog control tools like voice sound and hand/body movement in my humble opinion.
Voice, Wireless or Infrared Control?
http://www.planetanalog.com/author.asp?section_id=3065&doc_id=563827&