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:
Wi-Fi equipped 32-bit Arduino board streamlines cloud-powered embedded app development
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4438571/Wi-Fi-equipped-32-bit-Arduino-Board-streamlines-cloud-powered-embedded-app-development?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150209&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150209&elq=f8074b14b2ca4e60a2d63162a311e6c5&elqCampaignId=21566
Digilent’s chipKIT WiFire board is an awesome little beastie. Powered by Microchip’s latest 32-bit 200 MHz MCU, the Wi-Fi equipped Arduino-compatible platform has been paired with Imagination Technologies’ Flow Cloud service development tools in an effort to make creating cloud-powered embedded applications practical for the average developer. They may well succeed at this not-so-simple task which has eluded several other player in the IoT market.
A smoother on-ramp to the IoT
Although a lot of “experts” have promised that the IoT’s ability to connect low-cost embedded systems to powerful cloud-based services is a “game-changer”, or “(insert today’s hot buzzword)” for smart lighting and other distributed systems, I’ve found there’s usually a wide gap between those promises and a working system. That gap is strewn with obstacles that can be as simple as hardware isn’t up to the task, as frustrating as poorly-integrated design tools, or as confusing as a complex, poorly-documented set of digital rituals an embedded system must follow to access a cloud-based service. My brief road test of the WiFire board and the cloud-app developer resources from Imagination Technologies suggests that it’s well-equipped to avoid the hazards lurking on beside the on-ramp to the IoT which can overtake an unwary embedded system.
WiFire is a pin-compatible variant of an Arduino board which replaces the standard 8-bit AVR MCU with Microchip’s 200 MHz, 32-bit PIC32MZ MCU, and adds an on-board 802.11b/g Wi-Fi module (also from Microchip).
Onward, into the cloud!
WiFire’s primary mission is to serve as a development platform for embedded IoT applications. Microchip-powered chipKITs have been used as a remote node development platform by several cloud services including Exocite, OctoBlue, UbiDots, and Imagination Technologies’ Flow Cloud service. Microchip and ChipKit have made things even easier by partnering with Imagination Tech to make its FlowCloud services and IoT application development technology available on the WiFire platform.
Getting started is pretty straightforward, you can point the PC, Mac or Linux box you’re using to write your code to the FlowCloud Developer site http://flow.imgtec.com/developers or directly download the FlowCloud “Getting Started” app for either an iOS or Android platform. The app enables a mobile device to use its Wi-Fi radio to connect with the WiFire development board and set up the remainder of its configuration parameters.
From there, you use the FlowCloud SDK to create your cloud application from FlowCloud’s modular infrastructure capabilities and underlying services. At present, the available services include:
• Device and user management
• Asynchronous messaging
• Data storage
• Event logging
• International E-wallet payments
• Optional FlowRadio and music services
• A customizable website
The cloud services infrastructure also provides secure asynchronous messaging and end-to-end connection establishment.
It’s easy to see how several of these services could be used to build a smart lighting management system which could manage energy and maintenance costs for a single building or easily scale to provide centralized lighting, security, and other services for all the properties in a national hotel chain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Promira Serial Platform and IoT
http://www.totalphase.com/solutions/video/promira-intro-video/
http://www.totalphase.com/products/promira-serial/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open Source and the Internet of Things: Roles, Reach and Rationale for Deploying OSS
http://intelligentsystemssource.com/open-source-and-the-internet-of-things-roles-reach-and-rationale-for-deploying-oss/
Open source software will help drive the IoT build-out, but dominance in IoT technologies is not a foregone conclusion. Open source does indeed dominate large swaths of intelligent networking and Cloud platform software. For that to translate into IoT dominance, developer communities will have to cross key gaps and implement technologies essential to the Internet of Things.
The build out of the Internet of Things is outpacing desktop and mobile computing. By 2020, over 50 billion intelligent devices (Cisco) will connect to and exchange information over the Internet with an economic impact of nearly US$2 trillion. This huge cohort of “things” comprises staggering diversity, from recognizable computers to infrastructure devices to sensors, light switches, and thermostats.
The impact will span the gamut of industries and applications – medical, agriculture, manufacturing, consumer electronics, transportation, and energy. Like the existing Internet, the emerging IoT will rely upon and instigate adoption of ofpe source software (OSS) technologies and open standards.
With the range of applications and constituents, divergent visions exist for building out and benefiting from the IoT. Some see the IoT as an incremental extension of existing computing technologies and methods (including open source); others herald the IoT as a revolution that will reinvent the IT industry and spur a major paradigm shift
Competing Visions for IoT
The IoT engenders excitement and inspires optimism about its potential. However, those prognostications will be subject to different, competing visions and paths for the actual build out. Monetization of the IoT, especially of open source software supporting that build out, will be subject to competing technical and financial models.
The two prevalent views of the architecture and make-up of the Internet of Things are Many Peers and Many Leaves.
Many Peers extends the current connected universe: the IoT comprises a network of “compute peers,” deployed with Linux, Android and comparable high-level OSes, running on 32- or 64-bit hardware, communicating over TCP/IP with applications running on a LAN or in the Cloud. Many Peers are just that, peers, but they do exist in a hierarchical context extending from the edge of the IoT to the Cloud.
Many Leaves envisions an extension of the machine to machine (M2M) paradigm – a vast collection of simple end-point systems, deployed with deeply embedded operating systems or no OS at all, running on a mix of 8-, 16-, and 32-bit hardware including RFID, communicating via specialized interconnects and protocols. Traffic from these systems traverses specialized gateways to reach local application servers (a.k.a. “the fog”) or travels onward to the Internet and up to the Cloud. These two visions are not incompatible and devices implementing both paradigms already populate the nascent IoT.
A stark distinction exists between two approaches to populating the different technical tiers of the IoT, with important implications for collaboration and interoperability—vertical integration vs. horizontal diversity.
Vertical Integration: There already exist silos of IoT devices and protocols. Providers of premises control equipment, home appliances, medical and e-health devices, and other gear are providing extensive, interoperating product lines with devices designed to function together and/or with Cloud and mobile apps. An example is home monitoring with network cameras and home automation equipment. A half-dozen vendors supply various lines of cameras, other sensors and actuators, along with Cloud and mobile apps to view and control them. In a mono-branded environment, vendors provide near-flawless out-of-the box and user experiences but do not interoperate with nearly identical devices from other vendors.
Horizontal Diversity: With a single IoT tier, there are less ambitious and more open suppliers. These companies offer fewer devices and device types but strive to interoperate with similar gear from other vendors (cameras with cameras, smart light switches with similar kit, etc.) and with third-party infrastructure devices as well. To achieve quality interoperability, vendors across tiers must implement using open IoT standards (e.g., MQTT) vs. enabling interoperation only with their own devices. They must also eschew the addition of “secret sauce” to differentiate their own wares and support brand affinity, and limit interoperability.
End Points or Leaf Nodes
An area often overlooked in IoT discussion is the population of “dumb” devices – smart labels, inductive slugs and other RFID devices, used in manufacturing, inventory control, and elsewhere to track presence and location of objects and materials. These devices are stateless and passive, reporting only an ID and relatively small amounts of data when energized by scanning equipment.
The role of OSS in such passive devices lies not in the RFID tags and slugs themselves but in the equipment that activates them and in supporting the applications that act upon data they generate.
The “things” par excellence that comprise the leaf nodes of the prototypical IoT are simple end points—mono-function, ubiquitous, free-standing sensors and actuators. Imposing low power consumption and lower cost, these devices can be mostly stateless or highly stateful; they can be “headless” or boast device-local UI/UX functions; they can be completely independent or tightly networked with their peers; their communications can be terse or “chirpy,” and the data they transmit and receive can be slow-changing or highly dynamic. Think light switches and sockets, thermostats and HVAC controls, motion sensors and perimeter alarm switches, soil moisture and air temperature sensors.
The prototypical leaf node deploys fairly minimal software, supporting core functionality for sensing or affecting its environment and communicating state/status information upstream. Such devices may benefit from an actual embedded OS or just run a main loop and device service code. With minimalist 4/8/16-bit CPUs, they are unlikely to deploy a full OSI TCP/IP stack, instead employing point-to-point communications, mesh networking, 6LowPAN or partial IP networking (UDP, etc.).
The role of OSS in such devices is tactical or incidental. OEMs may choose a nominally open source RTOS (e.g., TinyOS, FreeRTOS) or a proprietary kernel to manage resources and simplify application programming. Developers will surely use OSS tools to create leaf node devices, and semiconductor suppliers will provide open source device drivers and other elements to support them, but the applications running on them will likely remain closed as are many other types of device software.
Infrastructure
At this level, the IoT still resembles machine-to-machine (M2M) networking. Mission-specific devices transmit context-dependent information across a point-to-point or mesh network, aggregated, buffered and conditioned by application-specific gateways and routers. In M2M, these devices communicate over a LAN to computers tasked with control, data analysis, etc. Today, they bridge and forward to the larger Internet and onward to Cloud servers.
These gateway devices deploy 32- or 64-bit CPUs and are provisioned with industrial network and serial connections – Zigbee, 6LowPAN, RS-422 and other specialized interconnects – as well as more familiar Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Ethernet connectivity for both LAN- and WAN-ward communications. Depending on the number and variety of connected leaf devices, the “chattiness” of those devices, and the mix of public and private source and destination packets, IoT infrastructure devices may also log and buffer IoT traffic, time and space compress packets, and perform analysis and conditioning of the data in those packets before sending traffic upstream to the Cloud or downstream to local devices.
These nodes provide opportunities for OSS deployment and for the evolution of new OSS implementations: embedded Linux provides a flexible platform with native IP networking, IP routing software and standardized local file systems. New IoT frameworks are almost universally first hosted on Linux, as are most popular programming languages and tool kits.
End-User Software
End-user IoT software supports monitoring, control and configuration of IoT devices and analytics of the data generated by one or more IoT end point devices. These applications also provide domain-specific functionality relating to the functioning of one or more IoT devices. End-user IoT applications are typically manifested as web applications or mobile apps, but can really come in any form, such as parts of Big Data analytics packages.
As with the existing marketplaces of mobile apps and the even broader universe of web applications, IoT end-user apps certainly benefit from the existence of open source development tools and middleware, but have no particular impetus towards being open source themselves. Reasons include small audiences for niche apps unlikely to engender and support communities; mostly traditional per-unit business models; freeware with revenue from advertising or in-app purchases that don’t accrue additional benefit from the “frictionless” distribution model of OSS
Meeting Key IoT Challenges with OSS
Having established the various roles of OSS in the ongoing IoT build-out, and substantiated the design share enjoyed today by embedded OSS platforms (as well as their likely future dominance), let’s pause to consider how OSS can address some of the most daunting challenges facing the Internet of Things – security, privacy, and IP rights.
The history of OSS and security has been a roller coaster. First, a market accustomed to security-by-obscurity was slow to embrace community oversight as a means of tracking exploits and correcting the software defects that enable them. After years of debate, IT industry professionals finally came to appreciate the “many eyes” approach of OSS communities to detecting and addressing security risks and the essential requirement to keep software up-to-date. The low defect rates of OSS code were borne out by independent studies such as Coverity Scans. Then came the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug and the pendulum began to swing back, again casting critical eyes upon OSS security, even as community developers acted quickly to remedy the vulnerability.
Privacy-wise, OSS stepped up to enable protection of individuals’ data by implementing strong encryption for the masses (SSL, SSH, PGP, etc.) and by supplying building blocks for mobile security and data protection—whether or not they are currently employed to great effect.
The IoT presents its own set of security and privacy challenges.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Anything: The Startup Bringing the Smart Home to Apartment Renters
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/iotas/
Smart homes are here.
You can use motion sensors to trigger smart light switches. You can program smart thermostats to warm only the rooms that people are actually using. You can even control smart power outlets with your mobile phone, setting appliances to turn on and off at certain times of day.
The problem is that all this gear is pretty expensive. And generally, you’re forced to install each system by hand—or hire someone to do it, which makes things even more expensive. And if you’re renting? Forget about it. These devices are almost completely out of reach you’re not allowed to retrofit your home.
All those barriers make it particularly difficult for young people to embrace what we now call the Internet of Things—and they’re typically the ones who are most interested in experimenting with new technologies.
But Pike and IOTAS aim to solve this problem. The company works with real estate developers to build Internet-of-Things tech into apartment buildings, so that renters get access to it without having to pay upfront costs. The idea is to bring the smart home to everyone, to finally push it into the mainstream.
IOTAS is starting simple, with motion sensors, light switches, and power outlets. Using the company’s mobile app, you can create custom rules for your apartment.
The system operates via a central online service. This could be included with your rent, or offered for an additional fee, like a utility.
IOTAS hardware is wireless and designed to plug right into standard light switch and power outlet fittings, so that there’s no need for construction contractors to receive special training to install and maintain the gear. It’s already installed in 100 units of the Grant Park Village apartment building in Portland, Oregon, where the service is being offered to residents as a free trial for now.
So many other companies are making the same pitch—including Google—but that’s what the Internet of Things needs: Many companies pushing the market forward, in many different ways.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alibaba and Meizu Join Forces vs. Android
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325610&
One Chinese industry source based in Beijing, who declined to be named, told EE Times, “Alibaba will use Meizu to fight Tencent’s Internet of Things (IoT) initiative, which is far ahead at the moment with the weChat.” WeChat is a mobile text and voice messaging service developed by Tencent, whose active users were estimated to be as many as 438 million last summer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Security Protocol Protects Pacemaker Information
http://www.medicaldesignbriefs.com/component/content/article/1104-mdb/news/21548
The Ladon security protocol, developed by Spain’s University of the Basque Country/EHU researcher Jasone Astorga in the 12T (Telematics Research and Engineering) research group, protects the information provided by pacemakers and similar medical devices connected to the Internet.
The remote monitoring of implantable, wireless medical sensors is a constantly advancing field, which nevertheless still has clear shortcomings. The direct connection of medical sensors to the Internet is the next natural step
The Ladon security protocol is an efficient mechanism to authenticate, authorize, and establish the end-to-end keys (keys for communication between the terminal used by the doctor and the patient’s device).
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Tweeting Vending Machine
http://hackaday.com/2015/02/10/a-tweeting-vending-machine/
[Sigurd] manage to obtain an old vending machine from his dorm. The only problem was that the micocontroller on the main board was broken. He and his friend decided they could most likely get the machine back into working order, but they also knew they could probably give it a few upgrades.
This system uses two Arduino Pro Minis and an Electric Imp to cram in all of the new features.
IOT Arduino Vending Machine
http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2015/02/iot-arduino-vending-machine/
In this blog post I will describe a IOT (Internet Of Things) Vending Machine that I built quite some time ago with a friend of mine Sigurd Jervelund Hansen.
One Arduino Pro Mini is connected to the mainboard and takes care of reading and lighting up the buttons (lights up if the relevant slot is not empty), controls the 7-segment LED display, reading the output from the coin validator and returning money if the user requests it by pressing a dedicated button.
A second Arduino Pro Mini is used to read NFC/RFID cards using a Mifare RC522 reader.
On top of that we also made it able to tweet. First we used a Raspberry Pi connected to the Arduino via Bluetooth, but as the SD card on the Raspberry Pi kept getting corrupt, we ended up using an Electric Imp instead. It is a 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller with a WiFi module built into a SD card form-factor.
The Arduino will send out a status update every minute, the Electric Imp will then send out a tweet if there is any updates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless standards–Home automation, energy, care and security
http://www.edn.com/design/wireless-networking/4423578/Wireless-standards-Home-automation–energy–care-and-security-
Any home network technology must be capable of reliably transmitting over a distance of the size of a typical house. When discussing the range of an RF technology, it’s common to think in terms of the link budget (the path loss that can be bridged between transmitter and receiver). To cover most homes, a minimum link budget of around 115 dB is required. The link budgets for the various HAECS options depend on use case choices such as data rate, transmission frequency, transmitter power, etc.
Interference between radio signals reduces the probability of information reaching its desired destination. Even if interference problems don’t prevent transmission, they significantly reduce the technology’s range and autonomy in the home. Many home networking technologies operate in the popular sub-GHz or 2.4 GHz Industrial–Scientific and Medical (ISM) band because it offers unrestricted geographic use. However, these bands are very crowded and are dominated by a large installed base of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a long string of proprietary devices.
This represents a big challenge to newcomers in the 2.4 GHz band, like Zigbee or RF4CE, but also to the many proprietary sub-GHz band solutions.
The HAECS market is a very fragmented one, with many individual players each supporting few elements of the HAECS residential network. Interoperability is essential to reach critical mass and also to offer value to the consumer.
Zigbee, Bluetooth and DECT all have similar hardware and software requirements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arm Buys IoT Security Firm
Offspark provides security piece for mbed OS
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325614&
ARM acquired Offspark, a Netherlands-based supplier of Transport Layer Security, that will get folded into its mbed operating system for its Cortex-M cores. ARM aims to make mbed, announced in October, a unifying code base for the fragmented Internet of Things where security is an increasingly key concern.
Offspark’s PolarSSL, an implementation of Transport Layer Security (TLS) for embedded systems, “will form the core of the ARM mbed communication security and software cryptography strategy,” ARM said in a press release today. ARM will give PolarSSL a new name, ARM mbed TLS, and continue to provide it as open source code both as a standalone product and later this year as part of mbed.
ARM will release mbed OS under an Apache 2.0 license which will include mbed TLS, Thread, and other technologies toward the end of 2015. The independent release of mbed TLS 1.3.10, is now available online under GPL and to existing PolarSSL users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IoT (Internet of Things) is expected to make everything faster and more efficient. That is, from the automated testing of consumer devices to the designing, prototyping, deployment, and monitoring of industrial systems, to development of next-generation wireless communications.
As IoT engineering advances, the technology will drastically change how things communicate and the advance will significantly impact both the consumer and manufacturer. For consumers, there will be more wearable, smarter, and faster phones. Manufacturers will see more intelligent factories and energy grids. Smarter machinery control will symbolize the next crucial transition.
According to National Instruments, an efficient testing system capable of integrating data with different formats is critical. Without such systems, testing costs will remain almost as high as equipment manufacturing costs.
Source: http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325616&page_number=6
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sophie Sassard / Reuters:
French Internet of Things startup Sigfox raises $113M from Telefonica, NTT Docomo, and more
Exclusive: France’s Sigfox taps Telefonica, GDF Suez to raise $113 million – sources
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/11/us-sigfox-fundraising-idUSKBN0LF06720150211
French start-up Sigfox has raised 100 million euros ($112.80 million) from seven heavy-weight investors to help it build new networks globally to connect everything from washing machines to smart meters to the Internet, sources said.
Sigfox has turned to investors to finance its growth, as the firm aims to roll out its network in 60 countries within the next five years.
Sigfox’s network covers France, Spain, the Netherlands and 10 of the UK’s larger cities. The money raised on Wednesday will finance a roll out in the United States, Latin America, Japan and South Korea with the help of its new corporate investors, which have also signed commercial agreements with Sigfox.
Sigfox builds low-energy, low-cost wireless networks to connect objects such as electricity meters, smart watches or washing machines, providing the infrastructure that makes the so-called Internet of Things possible (IOT).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of everyting train already left – are you aboard?
Traditionally, company known for networking devices Cisco is tightly pushing everything around the internet (OIE, internet of everything), for example, by providing älykaupunkien, telecommunication, and industry solutions.
“CIO should be in their own organizations of all Internet lawyer. You should go to find out how the OIE could change the company’s operations. Experiment, track trends, be agile. Make sure that you communicate to finally finds the government, “Cisco’s Vice President Carlos Dominguez encouraged.
“Overall, the Internet, the OIE, the train has already left the station. All do not understand what the OIE means. Aboard gets only if the run really fast, “says David Bevilacqua, Cisco’s director of the Southern EMEA region.
Cisco itself has had to seek new directions, while Asian manufacturers are slowly stepped into the old plot, or provide corporate network devices.
“Ioc already accelerates the business, creating a completely new business and drive the digitalization”
Cisco stammers that the business value comes from the intelligent network, which allows the proper analytics – and that the intelligence must be taken to the network.
For example, Bevilacqua mentions smart cities, which Cisco has developed a large arsenal of solutions across Europe. The city of Barcelona with the Cisco entered into a partnership smart city construction as early as 2012.
“Barcelona is one of the smart city pioneer, and most important, thing to generate money. Intelligent solutions, the city has received about 44 million additional parking income and saved with smart lighting nearly 33 million, “Bevilacqua said.
Cisco access points connected sensors and cameras detect free parking. The user can reserve a parking place in advance with the smart phone at home.
For example, the darkened light bulbs need to be replaced telling smart lighting in use in Copenhagen.
Cisco Intelligent Network also provides transport and industry.
German railways Cisco is going to smart stations and smart trains pilot where passengers get new services to the train station waiting for the train ride. The service is the cornerstone of effective WLAN and 4G connectivity for passengers. Trains are packed with network devices, sensors, cameras and monitors.
“The response has been a success. Customer experience is much better now than before, ”
“the package includes a comprehensive analytics and related equipment preventive maintenance”
Cisco ONE release the iron shackles. Now, if you upgrade to the new iron, the software will no longer have to buy it again.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/2015-02-11/Kaiken-internetin-juna-l%C3%A4hti-jo-%E2%80%93-ehditk%C3%B6-kyytiin-3215586.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Voice as an interface in the smart home: Can you hear me now?
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4438627/Voice-as-an-interface-in-the-smart-home–Can-you-hear-me-now-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150211&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150211&elq=6e68789c488d47e682933b3a60326942&elqCampaignId=21576
It is not difficult to imagine a future where humans speak to their smart home and have as meaningful an interaction as they do with each other. Such ideas have been portrayed in television shows and movies even as early as the 1960s.
However, there is an economic challenge to building a practical product with good performance. As most end consumers don’t have the resources of Tony Stark, the product should be able to provide excellent speech recognition performance within a limited cost budget. In particular, traditional beamforming voice processing technologies require many microphones for typical smart home applications
There are many technical challenges in developing such a system
This discussion will focus on an often overlooked technical challenge in far-field speech interface systems, yet one that is just as critical: pre-processing of the speech before it reaches the speech recognition engine.
Even the most modern speech recognition engines have one basic requirement to work well – the input to the engine should be speech. Although this may seem obvious, for far-field speech interface systems, it is one of the most significant challenges. In this case, “far-field” refers to a system where the user’s voice is more than half a meter away from the product’s microphones.
Implementing a system that enables robust speech pickup in these conditions is a challenging task.
This article will show why conventional approaches fall short of delivering acceptable performance under these far-field conditions, then propose a solution that provides good far-field performance in a cost effective manner.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home Automation, part 2: Z-Wave and ISY programming
http://changelog.complete.org/archives/9289-home-automation-part-2-z-wave-and-isy-programming
Tomi Engdahl says:
Connecting buildings via the Internet of Things
The Internet of Things offers engineers ripe opportunities to take the lead with clients.
http://www.csemag.com/single-article/connecting-buildings-via-the-internet-of-things/15cee85182d9175f2f113f9aea9c94ef.html?OCVALIDATE&ocid=101781&[email protected]
The Internet of Things (IoT) is not aspirational technology. It’s here. It’s not a question of “if,” but of “how much” and “how fast.” And what it means to consulting engineers day to day. The answer could be: “A lot.”
The reason is that IoT is taking by storm many of the technologies engineers include when designing, specifying, and building projects: building and industrial automation systems, backup power, lighting, asset management, and testing and measurement.
A number of prestigious organizations already have weighed in on IoT
The industrial version of IoT (IIoT) makes a good business case for consulting engineering clients. It also is good business for engineering firms to be their clients’ IIoT go-to source of expertise.
Specifying, designing, and building IIoT capabilities require skillsets already offered by engineering firms: deep understanding of facility spaces and the knowledge to connect legacy systems with new technology. That makes IIoT a low-hanging fruit. The opportunities to enable clients to achieve higher efficiencies and reliability by better managing, controlling, maintaining, diagnosing issues, and optimizing their facilities are ripe.
The overall business case for consulting engineers lies in the compelling insights produced when big data are analyzed quickly. Such insights empower clients to know what’s happening 24/7. Call it heightened situational awareness or contextual insight in real time.
It means operators have a much better understanding of system operation.
The ability to analyze, diagnose, and act quickly, from both an operator and a machine perspective, improves asset management. Operational efficiency, reliability, and predictive maintenance all benefit. Risk drops and costs fall. Critical power management systems are a case in point.
Specifying, designing, and building IIoT capabilities into critical power management systems need to accommodate such requirements as power demand, integration, lifecycle value, and security considerations.
The volume of data generated could be overwhelming, if not for cost-effective, high-speed processing. A single industrial machine, for instance, can produce 1 terabyte of data hourly.
The variety of data often has to be combined from many sources that will almost always have different structures and meet various standards.
For critical systems, such as backup power, data is streamed in real time at speeds measured in milliseconds. It’s monitored, stored, and if it signals out-of-parameter operating conditions, displayed graphically and perhaps annunciated.
Even with high-speed processing, the growing volume and variety of data gathered for analysis would be nearly impossible to effectively manage as a whole. The solution is cluster management.
For IIoT, cluster management is a group of sensing devices on related equipment. A prime example is the coexistence of devices for building management systems, supervisory control and data acquisition, data center infrastructure management, and critical power management systems. The devices have local intelligence and compatible, two-way communication pathways, and, ideally, streamlined network topology protocols that eliminate repetitive wrapping and unwrapping of data.
Such clusters integrate legacy equipment and new technologies into an interoperable, distributed ecosystem that can be fairly autonomous and remotely controlled. A top 10 global banking firm, for example, monitors and controls a critical power management system more than 900 miles from the firm’s control center. Near-term, it plans to manage such systems globally.
Engineering considerations for IIoT clusters include compatibility across a wide range of products by multiple manufacturers, robustness, network protocols and standards, speed, remote access and control, and security.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WiFi Controlled Power Outlets with Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/02/11/wifi-controlled-power-outlets-with-raspberry-pi/
[Tim] was looking for a way to control his power outlets using WiFi. He looked into purchasing a WeMo but he realized that he could build something even better with more bang for his buck. He started out by purchasing a five pack of Etekcity wireless remote control outlet switches.
[Tim] just needed to find a way to bridge the gap between the RF remote and WiFi.
[Tim] decided to use a Raspberry Pi as the brains of the controller.
[Tim] began with a fresh installation of Raspbian. He then installed Wiring Pi, which gives you the ability to interface with the GPIO pins in a way that is similar to Arduino. He also installed Apache and PHP to create a web interface for switching the outlets.
a script that allowed [Tim] to sniff out the controls of his RF remote
Wireless Power Outlets RF from Raspberry Pi
http://timleland.com/wireless-power-outlets/
Have you ever wanted to wirelessly control power outlets from your phone? You could buy a Belkin WeMo Switch for over $40 for 1 outlet or build your own with 5 outlets for under $35 if you already own a Raspberry Pi. Hopefully this post will guide you in the right direction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
More informations about the protocol used by the outlets (what does these codes means) ? There is already a lot of stuff like this. See https://hackaday.io/project/465-raspbox-home-automation-cloud for example of outlets using “Home easy” protocol.
RaspBox – Home Automation & Cloud
Voice controlled home automation and personal cloud using a Raspberry Pi
https://hackaday.io/project/465-raspbox-home-automation-cloud
This project uses a Raspberry Pi and a 433Mhz transmitter in order to control objects that uses “Home Easy” protocol.
These can be controlled over a web interface
There is also a Windows and an Android client for some sort of “personal assistant” like Siri with Home Automation features.
The Raspberry Pi is also used as a cloud server using different softwares :
- Bittorrent Sync (to keep files synchronised)
- Pydio (to manage and publish files)
Tomi Engdahl says:
MIO-2263 Embedded IoT Gateway
http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/mouser/mio-2263-embedded-iot-gateway
The Advantech MIO-2263 is an embedded IoT Gateway featuring embedded Interl® Atom™ and Intel Gen 7 DirectX®11.1 supports with flexible design using integrated multiple I/O. It has rich I/O interfaces and supports SUSIAccess and Embedded Software APIs, such as, GPIO and SMBus.
Supports SUSIAcccess and Embedded Software APIs
Software APIs: GPIO, H/W Monitor, Brightness, Watchdog, Backlight On/Off, and SMBus
Advantech MIO-2263 Pico-ITX SBC
http://www.mouser.ph/new/advantech/advantech-mio-2263/?utm_source=EEWeb&utm_medium=TechCommunity&utm_term=2014&utm_content=Content&utm_campaign=Mouser
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Security: The Road Ahead
ARM flexing from device-to-service to -device
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325626&
The Internet of Things will never be fully secure — nothing ever is. But an IoT security specialist at ARM outlined the road ahead in the wake of the company’s acquisition Monday of Offspark, a provider of one key piece of the puzzle.
Offspark’s PolarSSL is an implementation of Transport Layer Security (TLS), one of the most popular device-to-service security standards. TLS is widely used to secure everything from emails to Google searches.
PolarSSL is modular and can work with a wide variety of encryption techniques ranging from AES-128, which is popular in embedded systems, to RSA cyphers more often used on microprocessor-based systems. It also supports a version based on the UDP protocol required by the CoAP protocol used in some IoT implementations.
Overall, PC implementations of TLS might require megabytes of code, but the PolarSSL version should be closer to tens of kilobytes of code.
Today PolarSSL uses a GPL license
“Companies can’t use GPL [for their internal products], and we don’t think that’s reasonable for IoT,” Shelby said. “All devices need security, and they shouldn’t have to pay extra for it,”
ARM already released an alpha version of mbed that includes a so-called Crypto Box, a way of storing secure keys tailored to the resources of flash-based microcontrollers using the Cortex-M architecture. In August, it will release a beta version that blends in the PolarSSL code with production code expected by the end of the year.
That won’t be the end of the evolving story for IoT security. “We still need people to design the products and services such as software updates when new security problems are found,”
The IETF is just starting work in this area with its Authentication and Authorization for Constrained Environments (AACE) standard. “They are in the beginning stages of defining the specs,”
The device-to-device security techniques available today are generally proprietary or require microprocessor-class resources. Developers need to work on creating versions that work across multiple vendors’ products and work inside the limits of microcontroller-based IoT nodes
Authentication and Authorization for Constrained Environments (ace)
https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/ace/documents/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Security platform targets industrial automation
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438638/Security-platform-targets-industrial-automation?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150212&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150212&elq=72a8cc97f090466193ce720224abf318&elqCampaignId=21615
Icon Labs, provider of embedded networking and security technology, has announced integration of its Floodgate security products with Mentor Graphics’ Nucleus RTOS and Mentor Embedded Linux. The integrated solution creates a secure platform for industrial automation and extends the “Internet of Secure Things” initiative into industrial control systems.
Icon Labs’ “Internet of Secure Things” Initiative defines a platform for developing secure, connected devices. The platform is designed to ensure that security is intrinsic to the architecture of the device itself and incorporates security management and visibility, device hardening, data protection and secure communications. Natively securing the devices simplifies protection, audit, and compliance independent of the secure perimeter, reducing the need for expensive and complicated security appliances.
Mentor states, “Icon Labs’ Floodgate product family provides a comprehensive security platform for developing secure, embedded devices using Nucleus and Mentor Embedded Linux.”
The integration of Icon Labs’ Floodgate products and Mentor Graphics’ embedded OSes provides:
· Security policy management
· Event and command audit log reporting
· Integration with the McAfee ePolicy orchestrator (ePO)
· Integrated embedded firewall
· Firmware and data anti-tamper support
· Integrated solution on both Nucleus and Mentor Embedded Linux
“Today’s modern industrial automation devices and systems are complex connected devices charged with performing critical functions,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Secure cloud system for networking data in real-time
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/secure-cloud-system-for-networking-data-in-real-time/0b4bdf1c67668e9fdbd1c6c31403e33d.html
Skkynet Cloud Systems’ Secure Cloud Service is designed to provide system integrators, engineers, and managers of industrial, embedded, and Internet of Things (IoT) systems quick and easy access to a secure, end-to-end solution for networking data in real time.
Skkynet Cloud Systems’ Secure Cloud Service is designed to give system integrators, engineers, and managers of industrial, embedded, and Internet of Things (IoT) systems quick and easy access to a secure, end-to-end solution for networking data in real time. The Secure Cloud Service enables bidirectional supervisory control, integration, and sharing of data with multiple users, and real-time access to selected data sets in a web browser. The service is capable of handling more than 50,000 data changes per second, per client.
The Secure Cloud Service opened on a trial basis in August 2014 and has been used extensively, and rigorously tested for performance and security.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ridiculously Complicated Home Automation Made Simple
http://hackaday.com/2015/02/12/ridiculously-complicated-home-automation-made-simple/
[Eric T] wrote up his insanely-comprehensive home automation setup.
The basic backbone of the project is actually quite straightforward. He made a radio gateway base station out of an Arduino, a RFM69 radio unit, and an Ethernet shield that connects to a Raspberry Pi to serve up a GUI interface. The open-source home automation project OpenHAB makes it all available through browser or smartphone.
Uber Home Automation w/ Arduino & Pi
http://www.instructables.com/id/Uber-Home-Automation-w-Arduino-Pi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reliability Definition Is Changing
http://semiengineering.com/reliability-definition-is-changing/
Complexity and vulnerabilities in systems are raising questions about what constitutes a fully functional design.
Since the invention of the integrated circuit, reliability has been defined by how long a chip continues to work. It either turned on and did what it was designed to do, or it didn’t. But that definition is no longer so black-and-white. Parts of an SoC, or even an IP or memory block, can continue to function while other parts do not.
This raises some interesting issues across a wide swath of the electronics industry, ranging from legal liability, to design goals for power and performance, to what differentiates any functioning system—especially critical systems—from those that are non-functional or marginally functional. Just as systems are getting more complex, so are the metrics surrounding them.
“We’re starting to see more generalized questions like whether the system is meeting the expectations set at inception.”
The bigger picture
Reliability measurements don’t stop with a single device, either. Increasingly it involves one device connected to one or more other devices, and reliability may be as dependent on those other devices as the design of the initial device. Consider smart cars, for example, which can communicate with other smart cars to prevent collisions around blind curves. But what happens if one of the other cars fails to communicate and alert the oncoming car? That also can happen even if both communication systems are working, but one car is newer than another and uses a different communications protocol.
“Embedded devices are changing in the way they are put together,”
That big picture extends well beyond the device being designed and tested, even for something as simple as a smart garage door opener, which can be controlled by a smart phone over the Internet. “The device now has three elements—the edge node, which is under mechanical or local control, the central node, which interacts with the edge node, and the application that runs on the mobile client and interacts with the device over a hub.”
A problem in any one of those areas can affect reliability in the other two. And when problems do occur, it can be difficult to determine where the fault is. It might be the hardware, it might be the software that controls the hardware, or it might be in the communication infrastructure that is out of the control of everyone involved in creating the device. And it may be temporary or permanent.
Another factor that can affect performance—and therefore device reliability, as in the case of two cars communicating through the cloud—is data access.
Much of this fits into an as-yet undefined gray area. What’s not so obvious to the outside world, and sometimes even in the design space
So big application processors may not need to last more than a few years, but that same technology needs to last 10 or 20 years if it is included in an automotive infotainment system. It also has to work in much more harsh environments.
Security
And finally, even if all of the technology works as planned, there are gaping security holes in designs at every process node and in almost every IoT design—even if it’s only what a well-design piece of hardware or software is connected to. It’s obvious a device that is compromised is no longer reliable. But a device that can be compromised isn’t reliable, either.
All of the processor companies have been active in securing their cores. ARM already had its TrustZone technology for compartmentalizing memory and processes. Intel has taken a similar tack with its processor architecture, restricting access to the core architecture. And both Synopsys and Imagination Technologies, which make the other popular processors, have taken steps to seal off the processors from intrusions.
Conclusion
While engineers can only control their own piece of the ecosystem, reliability may be harder to define within those bounds in the future. Each piece needs to be engineered as best as it possibly can, but that doesn’t mean it will be reliable in the real world because there are so many other factors that can affect it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New tracking device could help children with autism
http://news.microsoft.com/features/new-tracking-device-could-help-children-with-autism/
Last year, when his friend went missing, Vinny Pasceri was struck by how helpless he felt. All he could do was tweet and post about the search for his friend, a fellow Microsoft employee believed to have vanished from a popular hiking spot north of Seattle.
The prototype, called Lighthouse, has since become a much hailed idea, winning a first place award in last year’s Global Startup Battle.
“Our purpose is to keep children safe in school,” says Pasceri, a Microsoft program manager, of the Lighthouse team. “We think there are three key questions: Where are they? Are they with the right people? And do they need help?”
Tracking devices for kids with autism and other developmental disorders have gained traction in recent months
About half of autistic children are prone to wandering
“At the (National Autism Association), we often hear from parents who have a child who cannot sleep, forcing caregivers to barricade doors and take shifts staying awake,”
Unlike GPS trackers, which pinpoint location, Lighthouse tracks proximity to a caregiver through Bluetooth Low Energy.
With Lighthouse, a student wears a beacon in a wristband or other small device. It’s linked to an app on the phone of every teacher and specialist on the student’s schedule. The app registers when the student is within range of each caregiver. It sends a missing-kid alert if the student is out of range.
“The thing we were going after is reducing the time for someone to know that a kid is missing,” Pasceri says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows Developer Program for IoT
http://dev.windows.com/en-us/featured/Windows-Developer-Program-for-IoT
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:
In new partnership with Canonical, Microsoft and Amazon will publish their Internet of Things APIs on Ubuntu Core
Canonical partners with Amazon, Microsoft, and others on Internet of Things
http://www.zdnet.com/article/canonical-partners-with-amazon-microsoft-and-others-on-internet-of-things/
Summary:Ubuntu Linux aims to become the glue that holds the Internet of Things together with its new partnerships.
Maybe Microsoft does love Linux! Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, announced this week that both Microsoft and Amazon have agreed to publish their Internet of Things (IoT) application programming interfaces (APIs) on Ubuntu Core.
Canonical wants Ubuntu Core to become the operating system for the IoT. Ubuntu Core, like CoreOS and Red Hat’s Project Atomic, uses a lightweight Linux server to support containers. Unlike the others, which are pointed exclusively for the data-center and the cloud, Canonical also sees Ubuntu Core as being ideal for devices as well.
It’s Canonical’s position that Ubuntu Core provides the security needed for critical infrastructure with fast, automated, reliable updates for the machines that drive networking and industrial systems. This, the company states, is especially important since “Critical infrastructure systems are now an attack vector for espionage and disruption. Canonical and partners are working to deliver certified Ubuntu Core devices that are automatically updated to address systemic vulnerabilities fast. Ubuntu Core also provides best-in-class application isolation based on kernel containers, minimizing the impact of errors and vulnerabilities in third-party applications.”
Of course, that’s easy to say, but without support from other vendors it doesn’t mean much. But, Canonical now has IoT partnerships not just with Amazon and Microsoft, but with major silicon providers whose processors and platforms power mission critical device and OEMs building the next generation of secure, software-defined network equipment.
These partners include Deutsche Telekom for telephony; Cavium, for its switch and router solutions, accelerating the development of next-generation smart networking infrastructure; and Real-Time Innovations, Texas Instruments and the Industrial Internet Consortium for industrial control and management systems.
As for Canonical’s Amazon and Microsoft partnerships, John Shewchuk, a Microsoft Technical Fellow, explained in a statement, “Smart industrial systems need secure cloud back-ends for data storage and analysis. Microsoft and Canonical are partnering to deliver developer APIs to enable Ubuntu Core for snappy developers. This partnership will simplify cloud-backed device development.”
Specifically, Canonical will certify a range of platforms across the ARM, POWER and X86 architectures. This will include Cavium’s Thunder range of massively multi-core ARM server CPUs, the TI Sitara range of low-cost ARM SoC’s, and the Intel x86 64-bit server architecture.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ubuntu wants to be the OS for the Internet of Things
http://www.zdnet.com/article/ubuntu-wants-to-be-the-os-for-the-internet-of-things/
Summary:With the use of Docker containers, Canonical wants Ubuntu Linux to become the operating system for smart devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How IoT is changing enterprise security
http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-iot-is-changing-enterprise-security/
Summary:The rise of the Internet of Things has brought a whole new set of security challenges. Here’s what tech decision makers need to know about how IoT is changing security in the enterprise.
Defining IoT for the enterprise
Despite all the talk about IoT, there is still quite a bit of confusion around what, exactly, constitutes the Internet of Things.
“The first big problem that many enterprises face is having their own definition of what they mean by the Internet of Things,” said Gartner analyst Earl Perkins. “So that they can then actually define how they want to approach it from a cyber security perspective.”
“At each of those layers, there is a potential for security challenges or issues if they aren’t architected right from the beginning,” Partridge said.
At the base level, IoT is about interconnectivity, which often breeds complexity. According to Ondrej Krehel, founder and principal of cybersecurity firm LIFARS, LLC, that often leads to problems for IT security.
“Complexity — in its nature — it’s the biggest enemy of security,” Krehel said.
In moving towards the Internet of Things, keep in mind that each piece you add to the system is multi-faceted, requiring other pieces to keep it secure and running efficiently. And, all of these pieces for a system designed with one thing in mind — data.
Regarding the collection and transmission of IoT data, Partridge said there are three main challenges facing security professionals in IT:
Confidentiality challenge – Keep data from people who shouldn’t have access to it
Integrity challenge – Ensure that data being generated is passing along a network without being modified, detected, or spoofed in the middle; the integrity of data on the move
Authentication challenge – Making sure the data you’re getting is coming from a known source; that it is authentic
Guarding the gateways
The reality is that data is constantly moving, and the pathways along which it moves are drastically altered by the Internet of Things.
This is where the interconnectivity really comes into play in IoT security. In a deployment of connected things, there are contact points where data is exchanged among the various pieces of the network. It is at those checkpoints that Krehel believes you should focus.
“There are various checkpoints where you need to scrutinize that connectivity,” Krehel said. “It’s not, now, just about the device that’s connected securely, it’s about that interaction. Interaction is the key here.”
Typical IoT devices don’t have much processing capacity to be able to handle, perhaps, security code
You might not be able to do it on your own, designing the full set of protocols and integrations, Krehel said. It’s becoming more acceptable to forgo designing the process wholistically, instead relying on a third-party to provide some of the security for you.
“The companies that come in and audit, and consult, and build a plan of attack for how to mitigate security risk in these new environments — big checks are going to written for that,” Partridge said.
Another opportunity presented by IoT, according to Perkins, is understanding The Internet of Things as a revolution in security in and of itself. We can begin to apply security technology and security capability with the connected things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT will dominate Embedded World
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-insights/4438693/IoT-will-dominate-Embedded-World?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150220&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150220&elq=4b9f9db4b24944d8b912e0113077acfc&elqCampaignId=21749
Billed as the world’s largest gathering of embedded developers and their suppliers, Embedded World opens next week in Germany to anticipated crowds of more than 27,000 designers and 900 exhibitors, and the Internet of Things (IoT) will be taking center stage. Unlike the recent CES, however, this show won’t be filled with health-monitoring wristwatches and televisions that watch you watch them. Embedded World promises to be filled with products and practical tips to help the serious developer merge Internet connectivity with local intelligence in industrial, automotive, and enterprise applications.
Companies have also started to tip their hand as to what they will be highlighting at the show, and the IoT is a common theme. Press conferences are scheduled for major announcements by:
AAEON
Adlink
Cadence
CAN in Automation
cognatec
Freescale Semiconductor
Kaspersky
Kontron
Lynx Software Technologies
Rohde & Schwarz
Texas instruments
TQ-Systems
Wind River
These represent major players in semiconductors, boards, software, tools, and systems design, all aiming to make their mark in IoT development.
Clearly the Internet of Things is a major topic of discussion in the industry and, given that every IoT device is also an embedded system design, the importance of IoT at Embedded World is not surprising. Even the US Congress and President are getting into the discussion with hearings on things like privacy and cyber security, both of which are critical issues for the IoT’s future. But with all the popular press focusing on the gimmicky side of the IoT and its marginally useful home automation and me-too fitness monitors, it’s easy to become cynical about the topic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Voice as an interface in the smart home: Can you hear me now?
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4438627/Voice-as-an-interface-in-the-smart-home–Can-you-hear-me-now-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150219&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150219&elq=0171beecabd0436ba7a9305cac9747fe&elqCampaignId=21725
It is not difficult to imagine a future where humans speak to their smart home and have as meaningful an interaction as they do with each other. Such ideas have been portrayed in television shows and movies even as early as the 1960s.
However, there is an economic challenge to building a practical product with good performance.
There are many technical challenges in developing such a system, including use of an accurate speech recognition engine to translate what the machine hears into words – and a comprehensive natural language processor that determines the meaning or intention of what is said and returns a meaningful response or action. These topics have been extensively researched for decades and won’t be addressed here. This discussion will focus on an often overlooked technical challenge in far-field speech interface systems, yet one that is just as critical: pre-processing of the speech before it reaches the speech recognition engine.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Advanced communications system for mobile, fixed and Wi-Fi applications will save lives
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438697/Advanced-communications-system-for-mobile–fixed-and-Wi-Fi-applications-will-save-lives?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150219&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150219&elq=eb12e6edd18d487a943e60b3482926e3&elqCampaignId=21718
By December 31, 2015 the US Congress and the US Dept. of Transportation/Federal Railroad Administration has mandated that rail companies meet and implement Positive Train Control (PTC).
PTC is a GPS-based life-saving system that makes rail travel safer by preventing train-to-train collisions, derailments caused by excessive speed, unauthorized incursion into work zones and train movement by track or other switches left in the wrong position.
Lilee Systems is a leading provider of advanced wired and wireless communication products, solutions and services for the transportation industry.
Their TransAir™ LMS-2450 series is based on the newly released LileeOS 2.8 platform. This new locomotive messaging and application server (LMS) series gives freight and passenger rail operators the ability to achieve positive train control (PTC) compliance for safety and speed enforcement, as well as manage other business data without having to invest in additional software or hardware for what is typically limited onboard cabinet space.
robust connectivity and an x86 application engine that allows users to load any business or PTC applications they wish to support. Other features of this system are integrated GPS, multiple mobile broadband modems, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and an ITCM-capable software defined radio (SDR).
Dynamic on-the-fly roaming, multi-link aggregation, plus static and dynamic load balancing, and link monitoring ensure seamless connectivity and best user experience between back office and mobile environments. With the increasing reliance on Wi-Fi for universal connectivity, the system offers a solution for passenger Wi-Fi, applicable for both trains and buses. And a flexible, modular design delivers scalability that enables users to expand over time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top HVAC controls trends for 2015
http://www.csemag.com/single-article/top-hvac-controls-trends-for-2015/341c305606452a02fd76d56636a713bf.html
As the world becomes more concerned about carbon emissions and energy consumption, the overall efficiency of commercial buildings will remain a key area of focus. The processes and products used by buildings in 2015 will keep evolving as manufacturers, integrators and building owners continue to experiment in order to find better ways of cutting wasteful energy usage.
Increased integration of HVAC controls with other building systems, such as lighting and access control
As buildings take advantage of automation to streamline building systems, using that automation to its full potential remains an important topic. In 2015, the industry should see many more buildings looking to gain more synergy among disparate systems in hopes of achieving better efficiency.
Further proliferation of smart thermostats is expected
Smart thermostats, such as the Nest or Lyric, have become a viable option outside of the residential space and have moved into the commercial arena for small and midsize office buildings during the past year.
Proprietary protocols continue to slowly make their way out the door but will remain present and important
Consumers in recent years have requested more interoperability for HVAC control systems, so that they need not be required to use a single manufacturer for the lifetime of a building. This led to control manufacturers slowly using BACnet or LonWorks to advertise to prospective clients that their systems were now open and ready for interoperability. While the claim of open protocols applies at the field level, it is not entirely true at the management level, as IHS estimated that 14.2% of all worldwide controllers in 2014 still used proprietary protocols.
Smart buildings, the smart grid and smart cities will increasingly move center stage
More efficient buildings make up just one step in the goal to create truly efficient cities. In 2015 as buildings continue to feature increased automation and smarter appliances, more communication and data points will be available. The increasing number of data points from connected devices will not only help a building become more efficient, it will also allow a city’s power grid to be better at limiting waste.
A raft of new regulations will take effect for air conditioners
Tomi Engdahl says:
Connecting buildings via the Internet of Things
The Internet of Things offers engineers ripe opportunities to take the lead with clients.
http://www.csemag.com/single-article/connecting-buildings-via-the-internet-of-things/15cee85182d9175f2f113f9aea9c94ef.html
The Internet of Things (IoT) is not aspirational technology. It’s here. It’s not a question of “if,” but of “how much” and “how fast.” And what it means to consulting engineers day to day. The answer could be: “A lot.”
The reason is that IoT is taking by storm many of the technologies engineers include when designing, specifying, and building projects: building and industrial automation systems, backup power, lighting, asset management, and testing and measurement.
A number of prestigious organizations already have weighed in on IoT:
Gartner projects there will be about 25 billion connected devices by the end of this decade
McKinsey Global Institute has reported that IoT could potentially generate an economic impact of $2.7 trillion to $6.2 trillion annually by 2025
International Data Corp. (IDC) estimated that organizations spent $113 billion worldwide in 2013 on relevant information management, access, and analysis technologies and services.
The industrial version of IoT (IIoT) makes a good business case for consulting engineering clients. It also is good business for engineering firms to be their clients’ IIoT go-to source of expertise.
Specifying, designing, and building IIoT capabilities require skillsets already offered by engineering firms: deep understanding of facility spaces and the knowledge to connect legacy systems with new technology. That makes IIoT a low-hanging fruit. The opportunities to enable clients to achieve higher efficiencies and reliability by better managing, controlling, maintaining, diagnosing issues, and optimizing their facilities are ripe.
The overall business case for consulting engineers lies in the compelling insights produced when big data are analyzed quickly. Such insights empower clients to know what’s happening 24/7. Call it heightened situational awareness or contextual insight in real time.
Specifying, designing, and building IIoT capabilities into critical power management systems need to accommodate such requirements as power demand, integration, lifecycle value, and security considerations.
Improving efficiency and reliability, for example, can be accomplished with more data points and faster response times, which are at the heart of IIoT.
The variety of data often has to be combined from many sources that will almost always have different structures and meet various standards.
For critical systems, such as backup power, data is streamed in real time at speeds measured in milliseconds. It’s monitored, stored, and if it signals out-of-parameter operating conditions, displayed graphically and perhaps annunciated.
For IIoT, cluster management is a group of sensing devices on related equipment. A prime example is the coexistence of devices for building management systems, supervisory control and data acquisition, data center infrastructure management, and critical power management systems. The devices have local intelligence and compatible, two-way communication pathways, and, ideally, streamlined network topology protocols that eliminate repetitive wrapping and unwrapping of data.
Such clusters integrate legacy equipment and new technologies into an interoperable, distributed ecosystem that can be fairly autonomous and remotely controlled. A top 10 global banking firm, for example, monitors and controls a critical power management system more than 900 miles from the firm’s control center. Near-term, it plans to manage such systems globally.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung 36″ Refrigerator with 8″ Wi-Fi Enabled LCD
http://alsoa.com/samsung-36-refrigerator-with-8-wi-fi-enabled-lcd/
The Samsung 4-Door refrigerator with 8″ Wi-Fi Enabled LCD will allow you to browse the web, access apps and connect to other Samsung smart devices – opening up a world of interactive communication and entertainment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alsoa
IoT products, update daily.
http://alsoa.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultra-low power system for wearable devices
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438646/Ultra-low-power-system-for-wearable-devices?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150218&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150218&elq=76b47d8115734b278622b23d1e1c420e&elqCampaignId=21692
While the brains of the typical wearable device might be the embedded microcontroller (MCU), the heart is definitely with power management. Extremely small capacity batteries, diverse array of functions needing power, and the incredibly small solution size force new and innovative power management solutions to make the system work well. But when an ultra-low power optimized MCU and ultra-low power optimized DC/DC converter come together, the result is a well-running, well-oiled machine fit for wearable applications.
A wearable device brings together multiple facets of engineering, beginning with the MCU and its integrated features and peripherals. Temperature sensors, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), display drivers, a Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE) radio, and even encryption are frequently integrated into the MCU. Other sensors such as accelerometers or pressure sensors are usually implemented discretely due to their system-specific nature. The MCU and sensors define the features and capabilities of the wearable device, which gives it its appeal and niche in the market.
For a very small wearable device, the heart of the system is the power management. A wearable device can lose its appeal if it must be recharged multiple times a day or has a heavy battery pack. Achieving multi-day run times and keeping the device small and light requires ultra-low power-optimized power management to efficiently convert the battery’s limited energy to useable power by the loads.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Swiss uBlox has brought the Internet of Things for the devices are improving the finished radio module. It allows the devices can be quickly either WLAN or Bluetooth connection.
ODIN-W262 module can be replaced, for example, cable connections. The radio part is pre-approved worldwide. The module includes a built-in antenna
The module dimensions are only 14.8 x 22.3 x 4.5 millimeters. It does not need a host to function, but also comes with embedded drivers, software stacks and applications to transfer data. The module supports WLAN 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies, as well as classical and low power consumption (low energy) bluetooth.
The developer can configure the module with AT commands.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2455:moduuli-toimii-suoraan-wifi-ja-bluetooth-yhteydella&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Internet in one-on-chip” will bring Wi-Fi connection
Texas Insteruments has announced two pre-certified Wi-Fi module, with a variety of devices can be quickly imported from internet. TI calls its modules single-chip internetmoduuleiksi. CC3100- and CC3200 modules include TI’s SimpleLink product series. It is a low-power modules, which can be implemented in the network, for example, a variety of IoT devices.
Both modules have been completed Wi-Fi certified. They also have the FCC / IC / CE / TELEC-approvals.
CC3100 can be connected any microcontroller.
CC3200 is the ARM Cortex-M4 driver pre-containing version.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2449:internet-yhdella-sirulla-tuo-wifi-yhteyden&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kontron: Our IoT Vision
http://blog.kontron.com/connectivity/iot-vision.html
Nowadays we talk about IoT – a lot. For good reason! We @Kontron think that IoT is transforming for many industries and will greatly impact all levels of our daily life. But what is our detailed approach to IoT?
The Internet of Things is a group of physical objects with embedded sensory technology that communicates an internal state or external environments to a network. So our attraction to the IoT is clear: When you look at the verticals we serve, as well as our product portfolio along with engineering capabilities IoT is a natural fit! And so are our clients who are exploring or adopting IoT solutions with specific vertical drivers for those projects. Our product offerings range from boards and systems to platform solutions and services which securely connect devices, meet SWaP-requirements, provide faster TTRs by helping to reduce their R&D-costs and create new business models. Our vision for the next evolution of technology: Everything interconnected, sensing and understanding the environment, exchanging data and seamlessly sharing information. IoT promises to connect billions of intelligent devices and people together in exciting new applications. Some estimates, including the simplest passive RFID tags and other sensors, point to as many as one trillion IoT-connected devices by 2025. What an outlook!
Ever heard of an IoT Development Kit?
The IoT innovation flow is a fast one and so must be the development cycle of IoT solutions. Our M2M Smart Services Developer Kit (which is based on the Intel Fish River Island Board) has been designed for developers who need a simple development platform for quick solutions.
Our IoT Vision: The Internet of Things = The Internet of Customers
Long story short: We believe that the future of the IoT needs to be focused on enabling companies to better interact with their customers, their colleagues and suppliers and even their technology to become the Internet of Customers. For this, we also work with Salesforce.com to directly integrate asset information into cloud-based service solutions.
We will stay at the Cutting Edge of Embedded Systems
Currently the market is fragmented and characterized by incompatible systems and stovepiped solutions. IoT concepts like predictive maintenance, big data, and analytics require a holistic approach, but there is a lack of cooperation between hardware and software suppliers, service providers, and communication infrastructure vendors. We strongly believe in partnerships like Industry 4.0 and IIC and I can guarantee that we will continue to push for collaboration and are grateful for the small measure of cooperation we already have with professional partners.
Tomi Engdahl says:
8-bit MCUs Stake New Claim in IoT
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325767&
Falling costs for 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) has prompted considerable speculation about them displacing 8-bit MCUs for new designs. But 8-bit MCUs aren’t nearly dead yet. Silicon Labs just announced at Embedded World a new series of 8-bit MCUs that target a range of cost-, power-, and space-sensitive applications in the Internet of Things (IoT).
“We’ve been working to provide performance, value, and ease-of-use for IoT developers,” said Pannell. “The 8-bit architecture is easier to use than others, and offers lower cost and power. Our high-speed, pipelined 8051 core provides the performance.”
The company also sees the 8-bit market as still thriving. The company quoted a report from Tom Hackenberg of market research firm IHS indicating that 8-bit devices will retain a third of the MCU market for several more years. Indeed, IHS expects the market to growing in value, reaching $7.8 billion in 2018.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Networked, color-tunable troffer makes high-quality lighting affordable, easy to install
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4438682/Networked–color-tunable-troffer-makes-high-quality-lighting-affordable–easy-to-install-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150223&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150223&elq=bc3e5fa2f2c54efab97620dd75886fcc&elqCampaignId=21777&elqaid=24443&elqat=1&elqTrackId=ec327e9cc47949d5a19ff874586fdc90
On the other hand, I still have a few mixed feelings about the SmartCast wireless control system because it’s a proprietary technology. It’s still unclear whether Cree will license for use by other lighting manufacturers so being committed to a SmartCast system may also mean that you’ll be locked in to purchasing Cree lighting products.
It does make use of open standards wherever possible, communicating in the 2.4GHz ISM band, using IEEE 801.15.4-compliant technology which uses readily available Zigbee compatible hardware but the SmartCast protocol isn’t interoperable with standard Zigbee systems. Cree says it’s had to go its own way in order to support many of the system’s advanced features, such as OneButton™ Setup. This enables the fixtures and switches form their own secure wireless networks, perform daylight harvesting calibration, and form into groups to save energy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simplify MCU and Wireless Design
http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/simplicity-studio.aspx
Simplicity Studio provides one-click access to design tools, documentation, software and support resources for EFM32, EFM8, 8051, Wireless MCUs and Wireless SoCs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Insert tab A into slot B
Computers are everywhere, they are in everything. The Internet Of Things is coming and, quite frankly, the day has already come that if IT practitioners are not capable of thinking beyond just the technical aspects of our job then people will die.
Create a wireless pacemaker but forget to secure it against a world filled with madmen? People die. Create a car where electronics systems can be tampered with to override driver input on steering, braking, etc? People die. Create electronic display signage for emergency situations without taking into account people with visual disabilities of various types? People die.
I’m scared of the future. I’m scared of a world of armed drones and cybernetic implants, of self-driving cards and creepy “always on” wearable video cameras. I’m scared of a world where these products and services are designed and overseen by nerds who can’t overcome brand loyalty or make objective judgments about privacy.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/24/how_objective_are_you_sysadmins/?page=2
Tomi Engdahl says:
Silicon Labs’ First Salvo in IoT SoCs: Blue Gecko
Low-power Bluetooth SoC combines 32-bit MCU with 2.4GHz radio
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325788&
Focusing on the potential of IoT, Silicon Labs unveiled this week at the Embedded World conference in Nuremberg, Germany, the company’s first Bluetooth Low Energy wireless SoC, Blue Gecko. Silicon Labs’ new Bluetooth portfolio includes Bluetooth wireless SoCs, a software stack, embedded modules and a software development kit.
Blue Gecko is the first in a series of IoT SoCs Silicon Labs has promised to deliver in coming months. They include a family of Sub-GHz wireless products, a family of multi-protocols and multi-bands products, and a family of sub-GHz and 2.4GHz products.
Silicon Labs’ Blue Gecko SoC integrates, on a single die, 2.4GHz Bluetooth Low Energy transceiver with Silicon Labs’ energy-friendly EFM32 Gecko MCU.
The 32-bit MCU inside the wireless SoC runs Bluetooth protocol stacks and scripting language developed by Bluegiga, a Bluetooth module company Silicon Labs acquired earlier this month.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC:
Internet of things starter kit unveiled by ARM and IBM — A “starter kit” designed to spur on the invention of internet-connected gadgets has been announced as part of a tie-up between two leading tech firms
Internet of things starter kit unveiled by ARM and IBM
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31584546
A “starter kit” designed to spur on the invention of internet-connected gadgets has been announced as part of a tie-up between two leading tech firms.
Chip designer ARM and cloud services giant IBM say it can take just five minutes to unbox the equipment and start sending readings to online apps.
They suggest this will make it easier to test smart home, smart city and other “internet of things” prototypes.
One expert said small start-ups would be among those that could benefit.
The IoT Starter Kit consists of two parts:
a pre-configured microcontroller development board – featuring one of ARM’s Cortex-M4 processors and a small amount of built-in memory – which is designed to be dedicated to a single task
a sensor expansion board, containing a thermometer to measure temperature, an accelerometer to measure motion, two potentiometers – kinds of rotating dimmer knobs, a buzzer, a small joystick, an LED light that can show three different colours, and a rectangle black-and-white LCD display
These two components fit together and can be attached to the net via an ethernet cable and to other computer equipment via a USB link.
Instructions contained in the box guide the owner to visit an IBM website
If the owner enters the device’s credentials on this site they can see the data it is recording in real-time.
In addition they can access a variety of tools created by IBM and other firms to analyse the information and/or funnel it through online programs that in turn control other internet-connected equipment.
Internet of things explosion
The components in the starter kit are not new, but by bundling them together ARM and IBM hope to tempt developers to their ecosystems rather than those of rivals.
Nearly five billion internet-connected “things” – including fridges, sprinkler systems and cars – will be in use by the end of the year, and that figure is set to rise four-fold by 2020, according to the tech consultancy Gartner.
IBM provides a range of compatible cloud services, including the Bluemix platform, which allows online apps to be built and run, and Watson, an artificial intelligence-enhanced analytics system.
Its goal is to entice developers who buy the kit with free trials of these products and then convince them to pay for their regular use and associated storage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Intel IT department guide to running an IT department
Interview Firm’s IT director Chris Shaw talks mobility, big data and the IoT
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2396587/the-intel-it-department-guide-to-running-an-it-department
“Like any other organisation we have to demonstrate our value within the organisation. We want to share our journey, not just our successes, but some of the things we’ve had to take a bit of a detour on.”
The report, for the first time this year, adds a separate chapter for the Internet of Things (IoT).
“We tried to make it familiar to the industry so we’ve used that familiar SMAC stack (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) but this year we’ve started to introduce thought processes for the IoT,” he said.
“It’s so bleeding edge and so innovative that it is creating brand new ways of doing things, so we’ve separated it from the cloud in the hope of demonstrating some initiatives we’ve had that other organisations might be able to take advantage of too.”
“It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you need to prove to the people that hold the purse strings that you are adding value”
Finally, we turn to the IoT. It’s the buzz phrase of the moment, but it also represents the next revolution in technology, just as the web did 25 years ago.
Shaw talks about it being something that the company has spearheaded since before it was a thing.
“There’s been a part of us involved in the idea of embedding our products within items that stretches back 20 years to embedding chips in F1 engine management systems, so we have a long pedigree in this,” he said.
“We’ve set up Intel IoT Labs all over the world. There’s one at our UK base in Swindon. We’ve got some investment in smart cities – how we can help London build a flagship smart city – and we’re doing that using some interesting internal pilots.”
It’s these pilots that once again see Intel thinking small and local and then global and external.
“We added motion sensors to the room. If after five or 10 minutes after the meeting starts there’s no motion, it’s either a really boring meeting or more likely they’ve not turned up, in which case an event is triggered to free up the meeting room.
“Another idea is temperature sensors, not just to control temperatures in a building but in a room or department to improve productivity and reduce sickness through coughs and colds.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
OK Google, Open Sesame
http://hackaday.com/2015/02/24/ok-google-open-sesame/
There are a myriad of modern ways to lock and unlock doors. Keypads, Fingerprint scanners, smart card readers, to name just a few. Quite often, adding any of these methods to an old door may require replacing the existing locking mechanism. Donning his Bollé sunglasses allowed [Dheera] to come up with a slightly novel idea to unlock doors without having to change his door latch. Using simple, off the shelf hardware, a Smartwatch, some code crunching and a Google Now app, he was able to yell “OK Google, Open Sesame” at his Android Wear smartwatch to get his apartment door to open up.
The hardware, in his own words, is trivial. An Arduino, an HC-05 bluetooth module and a servo. The servo is attached to his door latch using simple hardware that looks sourced from the closest hardware store.
http://dheera.net/projects/sesame
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ready to fly to Sweden? Apply to the Nordic IoT Hackathon 2015
http://blog.arduino.cc/2015/02/16/ready-to-fly-to-sweden-apply-to-the-nordic-iot-hackathon-2015/
Arduino Verkstad is partner of the Nordic Internet of Things Hackathon 2015 organized in collaboration with Mobile Heights & the MVD Project and taking place April 10th-12th, 2015 in the city of Lund, Sweden. Programmers, interaction designers, professionals and enthusiasts are invited to a 50-hour competition for attendees from any part of the globe no matter their technical skills and focused on two topics: Smart Transportation or Smart Home
Tomi Engdahl says:
Deconstructing Iot: Temboo video-interviews Tom Igoe
http://blog.arduino.cc/2015/02/18/deconstructing-iot-temboo-video-interviews-tom-igoe/
At Temboo they’ve just started a new web series and the second episode released last week is a video interview with Arduino co-founder Tom Igoe.
He spoke with Vaughn and Claire about the challenges the Internet of Things poses to designers, the relationship between consumer and industrial IoT applications, some of his favorite Arduino creations, and more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Trends to Watch at Mobile World Congress
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325797&
Anything and everything in the world that demands wireless connectivity — cars, phones, homes, retail transactions, factories, buildings, wearables, public transportation systems, you name it — is descending upon the Mobile World Congress (MWC) next week in Barcelona.
The MWC is no longer reserved to smartphones and cellular modem technologies. It has morphed into a gathering place to discover and debate connected devices and new network technologies tailored for different applications — best represented by Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, aka, the Internet of Things (IoT).
The mobile industry is already hard at work adapting LTE for “Machine Type Communications (MTC)” via the development of LTE Cat-0 or LTE-MTC. But pay attention. Watch for big-name cellular network providers to announce their plans to jump in and start operating low data-rate M2M networks promoted by companies like Sigfox and the LoRa Alliance, said IHS senior principal analyst Sam Lucero.
“5G as a standard isn’t done, but there are people who are looking at [4G and 5G] and trying to do pre-standard product,”
Setting that aside, the biggest trend among smartphones emerging in 2015 and 2016 is a host of “always-on” features embedded in handsets, according to Ceva, a DSP IP core licensor. In short, your next phone will be always listening to you and watching, so that it can add context to your actions. More important, it’s intended to anticipate your next move, Eran Briman, vice president of marketing at Ceva, told EE Times.
As a part of the connected life, “connected cars” will have a big presence again at the Mobile World Congress.
Whether enabled by cellular connectivity, NFC, RFID or vehicle-to-vehicle (V2) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, the heart of billions of connected devices is security. Lars Reger, vice president strategy, new business, and R&D for the automotive business unit at NXP, told EE Times, “Security is the name of the game…Otherwise, IoT is just a hoax.”