The Internet of Things revolution started in 2015 and will continue to be strong in 2016. 2015 was the year everyone talked about the Internet of Things. (So was 2014. And 2013.) But unlike before, it was the year everyone started making plans, laying groundwork, and building the infrastructure. Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. The premise of IoT is that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been called the next Industrial Revolution — it will change the way all businesses, governments, and consumers interact with the physical world. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer the data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
and the Internet. IoT is also called the Internet of Everything. A critical component for the IoT system to be a success will be secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization services.
In the future, everything will be connected. It won’t just be our phones that access the Internet; it will be our light bulbs, our front doors, our microwaves, our comforters, our blenders. You can call it the Internet of Things, The Internet of Everything, Universal Object Interaction, or your pick of buzzwords that begin with Smart. They all hold as inevitable that everything, everything will be connected, to each other and to the Internet. And this is promised to change the world. Remember that the objects themselves do not benefit us, but what services and functions they make it possible to obtain. We will enjoy the outcome, hopefully even better quality products, informative and reliable services, and even new applications.
There will be lots of money spend on IoT in 2016, the exact sum is hard to define, but it is estimated that nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years. IoT is now a very large global business dominated by giants (IBM, Intel, Cisco, Gemalto, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Bosch, GE, AT&T, T-Mobile, Telefonica and many others). I see that because it is still a young and quickly developing market, there will be lots of potential in it for startups in 2016.
There will be a very large number of new IoT devices connected to Internet in the end of 2016. According to Business Insider The Internet of Things Report there was 10 billion devices connected to the internet in 2015 and there will be will be 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devicesw ill comprise 10 billion (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.). Juniper research predicted that by 2020, there will be 38.5 billion connected devices. IDC says it’ll be 20.9 billion. Gartner’s guess? Twenty-five billion. The numbers don’t matter, except that they’re huge. They all agree that most of those gadgets will be industrial Internet of Things. The market for connecting the devices you use all day, every day, is about to be huge.
Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions because they see ways the IoT can improve their bottom line: lowering operating costs, increasing productivity, expand to new markets and develop new product offerings. Sensors, data analytics, automation and wireless communication technologies allow the study of the “self-conscious” machines, which are able to observe their environment and communicate with each other. From predictive maintenance that reduces equipment downtime to workers using mobile devices on the factory floor, manufacturing is undergoing dramatic change. The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling increased automation on the factory floor and throughout the supply chain, 3D printing is changing how we think about making components, and the cloud and big data are enabling new applications that provide an end-to-end view from the factory floor to the retail store.
Governments are focused on increasing productivity, decreasing costs, and improving their citizens’ quality of life. The IoT devices market will connect to climate agreements as in many applicatons IoT can be seen as one tool to help to solve those problems. A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C was agreed at the climate change summit in Paris in December 2015. Sitra fresh market analysis indicates that there is up to an amount of EUR 6 000 billion market potential for smart green solutions by 2050. Smart waste and water systems, materials and packaging, as well as production systems together to form an annual of over EUR 670 billion market. Smart in those contests typically involves use of IoT technologies.
Consumers will lag behind businesses and governments in IoT adoption – still they will purchase a massive number of devices. There will be potential for marketing IoT devices for consumers: Nine out of ten consumers never heard the words IoT or Internet of Things, October 2015! It seems that the newest IoT technology extends homes in 2016 – to those homes where owner has heard of those things. Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous in homes in so many parts of the world that you can now really start tapping into that by having additional devices. The smart phones and the Internet connection can make home appliances, locks and sensors make homes and leisure homes in more practical, safer and more economical. Home adjusts itself for optimal energy consumption and heating, while saving money. During the next few years prices will fall to fit for large sets of users. In some cases only suitable for software is needed, as the necessary sensors and data connections can be found in mobile phones. Our homes are going to get smarter, but it’s going to happen slowly. Right now people mostly buy single products for a single purpose. Our smart homes and connected worlds are going to happen one device, one bulb at a time. The LED industry’s products will become more efficient, reliable, and, one can hope, interoperable in the near future. Companies know they have to get you into their platform with that first device, or risk losing you forever to someone else’s closed ecosystem.
The definitions what would be considered IoT device and what is a traditional computing devices is not entirely clear, and I fear that we will not get a clear definition for that in 2016 that all could agree. It’s important to remember that the IoT is not a monolithic industry, but rather a loosely defined technology architecture that transcends vertical markets to make up an “Internet of everything.”
Too many people – industry leaders, media, analysts, and end users – have confused the concept of
“smart” with “connected”. Most devices – labeled “IoT” or “smart” – are simply connected devices. Just connecting a device to the internet so that it can be monitored and controlled by someone over the web using a smart phone is not smart. Yes, it may be convenient and time saving, but it is not “smart”. Smart means intelligence.
IoT New or Not? YES and NO. There are many cases where whole IoT thing is hyped way out of proportion. For the most part, it’s just the integration of existing technologies. Marketing has driven an amount of mania around IoT, on the positive side getting it on the desks of decision makers, and on the negative generating ever-loftier predictions. Are IoT and M2M same or different? Yes and no depending on case. For sure for very many years to come IoT and M2M will coexist.
Nearly a dozen contenders are trying to fill a need for long distance networks that cut the cost and power consumption of today’s cellular machine-to-machine networks. Whose technology protocols should these manufacturers incorporate into their gear? Should they adopt ZigBee, Apple’s HomeKit, Allseen Alliance/AllJoyn, or Intel’s Open Interconnect Consortium? Other 802.15.4 technologies? There are too many competing choices.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, two pioneers of the Internet of Things are expanding their platforms and partnerships. Crowdfunding sites and hardware accelerators are kicking out startups at a regular clip, typically companies building IoT devices that ride Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Bluetooth Special Interest group is expected to release in2016 support for mesh networks and higher data rates.
Although ZWave and Zigbee helped pioneer the smart home and building space more than a decade ago, but efforts based on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 6LoWPAN are poised to surpass them. Those pioneering systems are actively used and developed. Zigbee Alliance starts certification for its unified version 3.0 specification in few months (includes profiles for home and building automation, LED lighting, healthcare, retail and smart energy). EnOcean Alliance will bring its library of about 200 application profiles for 900 MHz energy harvesting devices to Zigbee networks. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities. The Z-Wave Security 2 framework will start a beta test in February and Z-Wave aims to strike a collaboration withleading IoT application framework platforms. Zigbee alredy has support Thread.
The race to define, design and deploy new low power wide area networks for the Internet of Things won’t cross a finish line in 2016. But by the end of the year it should start to be clear which LPWA nets are likely to have long legs and the opportunities for brand new entrants will dim significantly. So at the moment it is hard to make design choices. To protect against future technology changes, maybe the device makers should design in wireless connectivity chips and software that will work with a variety of protocols? That’s complicated and expensive. But if I pick only one technology I can easily pick up wrong horse, and it is also an expensive choice.
Within those who want to protect against future technology changes, there could be market for FPGAs in IoT devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) is broken and needs ARM-based field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to fix it, an expert told engineers at UBM’s Designers of Things conference in San Jose. You end up with a piece of hardware that can be fundamentally changed in the field.
There seems to be huge set of potential radio techniques also for Internet of Things even for long distance and low power consumpion. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities in February based on the 802.15.4g standard for metro networks. It will compete with an already crowded field of 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz networks from Sigfox, the LoRa Alliance, Ingenu and others. Weightless-P is an open standard announced by Weightless SIG, which operates at frequencies below one gigahertz. Weightless-P nodes and development cards will be expected to be in the market already during the first quarter of 2016, at the moment Weightless IoT Hardware Virtually Unavailable.
I expect LoRa Technology is expected to be hot in 2016. The LoRaWAN standard enables low-data-rate Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) wireless communication with a range of up to 10 miles, a battery life of 10 years, and the ability to connect millions of wireless sensor nodes to LoRaWAN gateways. LoRa® technology works using a digital spread spectrum modulation and proprietary protocol in the Sub-GHz RF band (433/868/915 MHz). I see LoRa technology interesting because lots of activity around in Finland in several companies (especially Espotel) and I have seen a convincing hands-in demo of the LoRa system in use.
It seems that 3GPP Lost its Way in IoT and there is fragmentation ahead in cellular standards. In theory 3GPP should be the default provider of IoT connectivity, but it seems that it has now failed in providing one universal technology. At the moment, there are three major paths being supported by 3GPP for IoT: the machine-type version of LTE (known as LTE-M) and two technologies coming from the Cellular-IoT initiative — NB-IoT and EC-GSM. So here we are with three full standardization efforts in 3GPP for IoT connectivity. It is too much. There will like be a base standard in 2016 for LTE-M.
The promise of billions of connected devices leads everyone to assume that there will be plenty of room for multiple technologies, but this betrays the premise of IoT, that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency. Too many standard will cause challenges for everybody. Customers will not embrace IoT if they have to choose between LTE-M and Sigfox-enabled products that may or may not work in all cases. OEM manufacturers will again bear the cost, managing devices at a regional or possibly national level. Again, we lose efficiency and scale. The cost of wireless connectivity will remain a barrier to entry to IoT.
Today’s Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts, quite propably supplied by different companies. An Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts. One is the end device that gathers data and/or executes control functions on the basis of its communications over the Internet. Another is the gateway or network interface device. Once on the Internet, the IoT system needs a cloud service to interact with. Then, there is the human-machine interface (HMI) that allows users to interact with the system. So far, most of the vendors selling into the IoT development network are offering only one or two of these parts directly. Alternatives to this disjointed design are arising, however. Recently many companies are getting into the end-to-end IoT design support business, although to different degrees.
Voice is becoming more often used the user interface of choice for IoT solutions. Smartphones let you control a lot using only your voice as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung have their solutions for this. For example Amazon, SoundHound and Nuance have created systems that allow to add language commands to own hardware or apps. Voice-activated interface becomes pervasive and persistent for IoT solutions in 2016. Right now, most smart home devices are controlled through smartphones, and it seems like that’s unlikely to change. The newest wearable technology, smart watches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce – it learns from its users, and generate as responses in real time appropriate, “micro-moments” tied to experience.
Monitoring your health is no longer only a small group oriented digital consumer area. Consumers will soon take advantage of the health technology extensively to measure well-being. Intel Funds Doctor in Your Pocket and Samsung’s new processor is meant for building much better fitness trackers. Also, insurance companies have realized the benefits of health technologies and develop new kinds of insurance services based on data from IoT devices.
Samsung’s betting big on the internet of things and wants the TV to sit at the heart of this strategy. Samsung believes that people will want to activate their lights, heating and garage doors all from the comfort of their couch. If smart TVs get a reputation for being easy to hack, then Samsung’s models are hardly likely to be big sellers. After a year in which the weakness of smart TVs were exploited, Samsung goes on the offensive in 2016. Samsung’s new Tizen-based TVs will have GAIA security with pin lock for credit card and other personal info, data encryption, built-in anti-malware system, more.
This year’s CES will focus on how connectivity is proliferating everything from cars to homes, realigning diverse markets – processors and networking continue to enhance drones, wearables and more. Auto makers will demonstrate various connected cars. There will be probably more health-related wearables at CES 2016, most of which will be woven into clothing, mainly focused on fitness. Whether or not the 2016 International CES holds any big surprises remains to be seen. The technology is there. Connected light bulbs, connected tea kettles, connected fridges and fans and coffeemakers and cars—it’s all possible. It’s not perfect, but the parts are only going to continue to get better, smaller, and cheaper.
Connectivity of IoT devices will still have challeges in 2016. While IoT standards organizations like the Open Interconnect Consortium and the AllSeen Alliance are expected to demonstrate their capabilities at CES, the industry is still a ways away from making connectivity simple. In 2016 it will still pretty darn tedious to get all these things connected, and there’s all these standards battles coming on. So there will be many standards in use at the same time. The next unsolved challenge: How the hell are all these things going to work together? Supporting open APIs that connect with various services is good.
Like UPnP and DLNA, AllJoyn could become the best-kept secret in the connected home in 2016 — everyone has it, no one knows about it. AllJoyn is an open-source initiative to connect devices in the Internet of Things. Microsoft added support for AllJoyn to Windows in 2014.
Analysis will become important in 2016 on IoT discussions. There’s too much information out there that’s available free, or very cheaply. We need systems to manage the information so we can make decisions. Welcome to the systems age.
The rise of the Internet of Things and Web services is driving new design principles. The new goal is to delight customers with experiences that evolve in flexible ways that show you understand their needs. “People are expecting rich experiences, fun and social interactions… this generation gets bored easily so you need to understand all the dimensions of how to delight them”
With huge number of devices security issues will become more and more important. In 2016, we’ll need to begin grappling with the security concerns these devices raise. The reality of everything being connected can have unintended consequences, not all of them useful – Welcome to the Internet of stupid (hackable) things.
Security: It was a hot topic for 2015 and if anything it will get hotter in 2016. The reason is clear. By adding connectivity embedded systems not only increase their utility, they vastly increase their vulnerability to subversion with significant consequences. Embedded systems that add connectivity face many challenges, of which the need for security is both vital and misunderstood. But vendors and developers have been getting the message and solutions are appearing in greater numbers, from software libraries to MCUs with a secure root of trust.
Bruce Schneier is predicting that the IoT will be abused in conjunction with DMCA to make our lives worse instead of better. In theory, connected sensors will anticipate your needs, saving you time, money, and energy. Except when the companies that make these connected objects act in a way that runs counter to the consumer’s best interests. The story of a company using copy-protection technology to lock out competitors—isn’t a new one. Plenty of companies set up proprietary standards to ensure that their customers don’t use someone else’s products with theirs. Because companies can enforce anti-competitive behavior this way, there’s a litany of things that just don’t exist, even though they would make life easier for consumers.
Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. Maybe it’ll be 2016, maybe the year after, but the train is coming. It’ll have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and probably eight other things, and you’ll definitely get a push notification when it gets here.
More interesting material links:
1,510 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
oT is all about two-dollar processors with fifty cents worth of memory wrapped around a lot of power- and penny-pinching software and services. IoT will seep digital technology slowly into many former analog markets, but they will not lead to a single, big gold mine and certainly not to the next PC, smartphone or tablet.
Source:
8 Predictions for 2016
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328577&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Expect Unexpected Innovation in IP Development
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328524&
IP and IoT
Internet of Things (IoT) has been all the rage over the past two years, but the industry is starting to sort out what kinds of products make sense. Consumer IoT gets the most attention, but a lot of the early “wearables” are gathering dust in the top dresser drawer. Transportation and commercial production applications of IoT—telematics to gather information from vehicles, farms and factories, for example—are taking off more quickly, but perhaps not driving the breathtaking volumes seen in some IoT hype. IoT maturation and growth will drive semiconductor in particular ways. I picture three rough categories.
The bottom slice of the market as low sample-rate sensors, low duty cycle and comparatively simple software in the device. Basic IP for microcontrollers, analog interfaces, low-bit-rate wireless modems, on-die RAM and flash, and simple security will satisfy these chip needs. There may be lots of unit volume, but the needs may be so generic that the number of unique designs may not be huge.
A middle tier of platforms will support higher sample rate interfaces, including microphones, multiple motion sensors and higher-performance wireless. These designs will often deploy significant DSP cores alongside of the microcontrollers, stacked DRAM and flash die for storage, richer radios and more wired connectivity. The units per design may be fewer, but the number of unique designs will grow to satisfy the diverse, but challenging functionality.
The top-tier IoT platforms will be the most demanding—they will support the rapidly growing use of cameras in IoT to understand the environment, to recognize people and to detect patterns of activity. Image-centric platforms will drive orders of magnitude higher bandwidths at every level—in computing, in memories, in wired connectivity and in back-haul to the cloud. And the IP will be different—higher-end CPUs, widespread use of vision DSPs, advanced DDR interfaces and very-high-speed wireless LAN and cellular modems. These top-tier platforms will also place the biggest demands on IP robustness, including support for functional safety, system redundancy and recover, performance monitoring and in-the-field secure upgradability.
Consumer convenience IoT will drive more unit volume, but the valuable IP will be pushed most intensively by the “heavy-lifting” IoT applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Biz Carson / Business Insider:
Mark Zuckerberg’s challenge in 2016 is to build an AI butler like in ‘Iron Man’ — For the past year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been reading two books a month. He’s spent other years learning Mandarin or only eating meat that he killed. — This year, Zuckerberg is clearly envious of Iron Man Tony Stark’s futuristic life.
Mark Zuckerberg’s challenge in 2016 is to build an AI butler like in ‘Iron Man’
http://uk.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-2016-new-years-resolution-2016-1?op=1?r=US&IR=T
This year, Zuckerberg is clearly envious of Iron Man Tony Stark’s futuristic life. He’s challenged himself to code his own version of JARVIS from “Iron Man,” the digital butler who controlled Stark’s life and home.
Zuckerberg says he’ll start with understanding some basic smart-home technology that’s out there — he’s a fan of Amazon’s Echo — but then he wants to build something that’s custom to his own home.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Federico Musto of Arduino SRL Shows Us New Products and New Directions
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/04/new-products-and-new-directions-an-interview-with-federico-musto-of-arduino-srl/
The big story from our meeting, that [Federico] actually hinted at before, is the release of the Uno WiFi. How many projects have you seen on Hackaday that are based on an Arduino Uno with an ESP8266 WiFi module plugged into it? A bazillion. The Uno and ESP8266 are like the peanut butter and jelly of the last few years’ hacker zeitgeist.
The Uno WiFi, then, is the Goober Grape (not an endorsement, you consume this stuff at your own risk). Less poetically put, Arduino has soldered the ESP8266 onto the Arduino Uno for you: no fiddling around with modules and pin-headers necessary. It’s not a ground-breaking innovation, but this is the kind of smart, community-led development that we like to see. You wanted cheap and easy WiFi on your Arduino? You got it.
Indeed, since the Arduino Yun came out, a lot of hackers were using it as a simple way to get their Arduino onto a wireless network: IoT and all that. When the ESP8266 hit the scene, many thought that the Yun looked dead in the water: with the ESP chip, you could get WiFi on your Arduino for half the price.
With the addition of the Uno WiFi, both the simple IoT devices and the more demanding applications can stay within the Arduino family. Go with the Uno WiFi if you want something networked but simple that the standard AVR ATmega328 processor can handle easily. If you actually need the extra computational power and flexibility of an embedded Linux distribution in addition to the ATmega, go for the Yun.
The Arduino Tian is a neat new board, in our opinion. It’s got an integrated MIPS processor with 2.4 and 5GHz WiFi on board, as well as being able to do Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE. It runs faster than the Yun by a bit
We can’t decide if the Tian (or the Yun, for that matter) is a microcontroller with a Linux computer tacked on, or a Linux computer with a microcontroller to handle GPIO.
The Tian has only been available for about a month now.
The Yun, the Tian, and the China-only Lei boards all feature an OpenWRT-based Linux distribution onboard as well as WiFi connectivity. They also managed to get the entire GCC compilation chain compiling natively on the MIPS cores. It shouldn’t be too much more work to get a cross-compiler for the microcontroller up and running on the Arduino’s Linux side.
Arduino UNO WiFi
http://labs.arduino.org/Arduino+UNO+WiFi
The Arduino Uno WiFi is the new Arduino Uno with the WiFi module!
The board is based on the ATmega328 (datasheet) and it has integrated the ESP8266 WiFi Module (datasheet).
It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.
The ESP8266 WiFi Module is a self contained SOC with integrated TCP/IP protocol stack that can give access to your WiFi network.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Dash built into Whirlpool home appliances – Geek
http://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2016/01/04/amazon-dash-built-into-whirlpool-home-appliances-geek/
http://mobile.geek.com/culture/258951-amazon-dash-built-into-whirlpool-home-appliances?origref=
It’s CES week in the US, and that means connected devices are going to be in the news. So-called “smart” appliances have existed for years at this point, but how many of them have really put those smarts to good use? Seems like they’re mainly for showing off, but Whirlpool’s new fancy smart appliances have something that might actually be useful — Amazon Dash integration. When the appliances can order their own supplies, what do they need us for?
The new smart Whirlpool lineup with Amazon Dash includes a new top-loading washer and dryer and a connected dishwasher. These appliances take the Amazon Dash experience a step further. They can calculate when you’ll need more detergent based on the number of loads you’ve done. When the time comes, the machine will just order more from Amazon. The appliances also have Nest integration, allowing the “away” status to activate features like energy-saving and anti-wrinkle mode.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi + Wolfram Data Drop
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/04/raspberry-pi-wolfram-data-drop/
When you think of Mathematica and Wolfram, you probably think high-power number crunching. You might not think embedded systems. Wolfram runs on the Raspberry Pi, however, and there is a recent video (below) showing a Raspberry Pi, controlling I/O devices, and interacting with the Web using Wolfram data drop.
The second video, below, shows some older example projects including a simple home alarm with a PIR sensor. Not the kind of thing that Wolfram is known for, but fine as a “hello world” project. There is even a project that uses an Arduino for more I/O. Between the two videos, you can get a good idea of the sort of things you can accomplish using a Pi with the language.
There’s even IFTTT integration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NXP Set to Demystify Smart Homes
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328579&
The connected smart home is a popular concept that’s being pitched in practically every vendor’s booth at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week.
The CES pitchmen will make it sound unbelievably easy to turn your home into a smart one with connected appliances. “Unbelievably” is the operative word here.
In reality, it’s inevitable that most consumers will find themselves stymied, as they try to sort through the complexity of setting up their many household devices.
Enter NXP Semiconductors, promising to change the picture.
NXP is rolling out a “Lego-style” smart home development kit.
Included in NXP’s smart home solutions are: production-ready modules and reference designs for smart lighting, smoke detection, motion sensing, home gateways and many other popular smart home applications.
The building blocks include: a variety of connectivity options such as ZigBee, Thread, Bluetooth Low Energy; ARM-based i.MX applications processors for gateways; voice activation algorithms; and NFC to enable “tap and connect” pairing functions.
Inside the kit, NXP is offering its new Bluetooth Low Energy chip, called QN9080.
The chip, based on ARM M4 core, consumes very little power
Security and privacy
The smart home development kit is designed to be modular. Depending on system requirements, developers can pick and choose what they need from the kit, explained Goel.
Security is a key element.
In the IoT industry, it has become paramount to build security and privacy into connected home appliances from the ground up. But IoT developers are also aware that these elements are often easier said than done.
In its smart home development kit, NXP offers system designers “three layers of security,” said Goel. The first layer is to protect the path between the gateway and the cloud, the second is local security, and the third is physical security of the hardware itself.
While encryption and authentication play a key role in protecting the gateway to the cloud, NFC-based proximity technology can be deployed to make the pairing and local security easier, explained Goel. As for physical security, “we offer a secure element inside the hardware,” he noted, much like NXP does for smart cards.
NXP’s goal is to simplify the process of building a smart home for both developers and consumers, Goel noted. In particular, he cited the NFC’s ability to provide “tap and connect” communication between smart devices to the home network, and the availability of voice activation algorithms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung’s latest smart fridge has cameras and a huge display
See your food without the hassle of opening the refrigerator door.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/04/samsung-family-hub-smart-fridge/
One of the highlights of CES is always the wacky new appliance tech (and associated bickering) from Samsung and LG. This year looks to be no exception thanks to a new “Family Hub” refrigerator from Samsung. The imposing-looking model is equipped with a 21.5-inch, 1080p monitor and cameras inside so that you can watch your mayonnaise go bad in real time. You can even check the contents remotely via a smartphone app to see what’s in there while you’re shopping, in case you forgot whether you need that jar of sweet pickles or not.
The fridge will let you know when you need to buy certain foods, tell you if they’re on sale and even let you order them, at least in Korea. The screen, of course, displays web pages, recipes and more. You can micro-manage your family’s food intake through the smartphone app and leave notes and messages on the screen, while a pair of door-mounted speakers lets you chill (sorry) with your favorite radio station.
Finally, the whole thing functions as a hub to control connected objects from SmartThings and other companies.
Samsung is putting SmartThings hubs in its 2016 HDTVs
The TVs will be able to control connected Samsung and “smart” devices.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/29/samsung-smartthings-hub-smart-tvs-ces2016/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Ford says it’s working to integrate Amazon’s Echo and Alexa and “internet of things” platform Wink with SYNC, linking cars to homes
Ford meets Amazon: Automaker to integrate Echo and Alexa with SYNC, linking cars to homes
http://www.geekwire.com/2016/ford-working-on-amazon-echo-integration-connecting-cars-to-homes/
Ford says it’s working to connect its SYNC in-car technology platform with Amazon’s Echo smart speaker and Alexa virtual assistant — letting drivers turn off the living-room lights from their car, for example, or start their vehicle using a voice command from the kitchen.
The plans were announced tonight, in advance of Ford’s news conference Tuesday morning at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s part of a crush of automotive news from the giant tech industry show.
Ford didn’t provide any timeline for the planned Amazon integration. But the move is part of a broader trend of connecting vehicles to external devices and services — including smartphones, cloud services and in-home systems. The automaker said it’s also working on a similar integration with the Wink home automation platform.
“Consumers increasingly want to stay connected to their homes while on the move,” said Don Butler, Ford’s Connected Vehicle and Services executive director, in a news release. “Linking smart devices like Amazon Echo and Wink to vehicles via SYNC would fulfill that desire, and allow consumers to connect with their vehicles even when they aren’t behind the wheel.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Dent / Engadget:
WiFi Alliance approves 802.11ah HaLow WiFi standard in 900 MHz band for IoT devices, with double the range of today’s WiFi, lower power consumption
New WiFi standard offers more range for less power
The WiFi Alliance’s 900MHz ‘HaLow’ standard is aimed at connected home devices.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/04/new-wifi-standard-gives-more-range-with-less-power/
The WiFi Alliance has finally approved the eagerly-anticipated 802.11ah WiFi standard and dubbed it “HaLow.” Approved devices will operate in the unlicensed 900MHz band, which has double the range of the current 2.4GHz standard, uses less power and provides better wall penetration. The standard is seen as a key for the internet of things and connected home devices, which haven’t exactly set the world on fire so far. The problem has been that gadgets like door sensors, connected bulbs and cameras need to have enough power to send data long distances to remote hubs or routers. However, the current WiFi standard doesn’t lend itself to long battery life and transmission distances.
The WiFi Alliance said that HaLow will “broadly adopt existing WiFi protocols,” like IP connectivity, meaning devices will have regular WiFi-grade security and interoperability. It added that many new products, like routers, will also operate in the regular 2.4 and 5GHz bands.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco, Philips teaming up to offer connected, PoE-powered LED lighting
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/12/cisco-philips-poe-powered-led-lighting.html?cmpid=EnlCIMCablingNewsJanuary42016&eid=289644432&bid=1265815
Cisco and lighting giant Philips recently announced their strategic alliance, through which the companies will co-market and co-sell Cisco’s Power over Ethernet-enabled switches and Philips’ PoE-powered LED lighting. When announcing the alliance, the companies said, “Lighting is everywhere, making it one of the easiest ways to bring the Internet of Things to office buildings. Light points in the Philips system, equipped with sensors and software applications, can be connected using Cisco technologies. This lighting network creates a pathway for information and helps enable new services.”
“Our alliance has two of the world’s biggest and trusted lighting and connectivity brands working together to bring the Internet of Things to life in offices and commercial buildings across the world,”
The companies stated that lighting typically is responsible for 40 percent of a building’s electricity use, and their joint technology offering can enable building operators to save nearly 80 percent in combined energy costs and building-maintenance costs.
“To make offices more comfortable, office workers can personalize and adjust LED lighting to their preferences and tasks,” the companies explained. “For mobile access, office workers can use a smartphone app to access other building services through a communications network.
“Lighting is a logical first step to bringing IoT to enterprises worldwide,” they added. “Equipped with sensors, connected lighting becomes intelligent to sense and measure power. For example, occupancy sensors in the system can provide information on space utilization to help reduce costs.”
The two companies teamed up when Cisco installed a Philips PoE-powered LED lighting system at Cisco’s Canadian headquarters at WaterPark Place in Toronto.
Tomi Engdahl says:
8 Predictions for 2016
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328577&
So as all eyes increasingly turn to the Internet of Things, I predict we will exit next year with a new skepticism about IoT. Common wisdom will catch up with the e-intelligensia in realizing IoT is not the next big thing. It is 27 new things and a bunch of old things we used to call embedded, all blended together into a marketing smoothie that’s easy to talk about and hard to take to the bank.
IoT is all about two-dollar processors with fifty cents worth of memory wrapped around a lot of power- and penny-pinching software and services. IoT will seep digital technology slowly into many former analog markets, but they will not lead to a single, big gold mine and certainly not to the next PC, smartphone or tablet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Five Big Stories to Watch at CES 2016
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328584&
#3 Internet of Things Hyper Mania Hits Hard Reality: Security
At last year’s CES the hype about the Internet of Things (IoT) was almost off the charts. It was arguably the biggest CES story at the show. Optimism and excitement were palpable and with good reason.
IoT is a market opportunity with a realistic outlook and promising returns. Connecting, sharing, and sending more data to more people and devices is possible with communication network systems and sensors. Mining that data for more personalized and useful experiences is also attainable with IoT products and services. This amounts to a multi-billion-dollar market powered by connected devices that deliver numerous functions and services.
But there’s a roadblock that could prevent this from happening: security.
Consumers are increasingly concerned about the security of the data they share with companies and others. They are worried their private information, including identity, money, and personal behaviors, will be stolen. Recent break-ins into the payment systems of high profile corporations have heightened concerns. As the IoT starts to coalesce, it is natural for consumers to question how protected their personal information is on these devices. The issue threatens the IoT market’s near- and long-term growth.
At last year’s show this was not the story. Count on it being one this year. If consumer technology companies cannot address IoT security, the industry is not going to grow as fast as predicted.
The good news is CES provides a platform for IoT security to improve and assuage consumers’ concerns. Last year, in fact, a special cybersecurity and personal security forum debuted; eighty-two exhibitors participated. This year expect more companies to display these types of products and services.
One sign of progress in security is use of password alternatives. These offer security without the hassle of changing or keeping track of long access codes. Watch for CES news about alternative technologies involving biometric solutions across a wider array of devices and services featuring advanced encryption processes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Intel Says Its Button-Sized Curie Will Ship In Q1, Costing Under $10
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/intel-says-button-sized-curie-will-ship-in-q1-costing-under-10/
Computing devices are getting smaller by the day, and today at CES in Las Vegas Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich announced new details about one of its big (little?) efforts in the space. Curie, Intel’s button-sized wearable hardware module that was first unveiled a year ago, will begin shipping this quarter and will cost less than $10, he said.
The collaboration with ESPN will kick off with the X Games in Aspen in 2016, where the low power Intel Curie module will be integrated into the Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle and Men’s Snowboard Big Air competitions, where it will help to provide real-time data on athlete performance on in-air rotations, jump height, jump distance, speed, and force on landing.
The Red Bull partnership meanwhile is a global deal that will cover “multiple genres and platforms,” Intel says.
Intel has in the past announced other Curie collaborations with hardware makers to complement these deals with content companies announced today. They include the Arduino 101.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home automation with a Tellstick Net (by Telldus)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6r5DSuqOUI
Web Interface to control my home with a Transmitter / Receiver wireless 433.92MHz (with a Tellstick Net, Otio devices and Oregon sensors)
http://www.clasohlson.com/fi/Pr365277000/Pr365277000
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things
Our grandparents could have told you how many electric motors they owned – there was one in the car, one in the fridge and so on, and they owned maybe a dozen. In the same way, we know roughly how many devices we own with a network connection, and, again, our children won’t. Many of those use cases will seem silly to us, just as our grandparents would laugh at the idea of a button to lower a car window, but the sheer range and cheapness of sensors and components, mostly coming out of the smartphone supply chain, will make them ubiquitous and invisible – we’ll forget about them just as we’ve forgotten about electric motors.
This means, I think, that talk of standards for IoT misses the point – ‘connected to a network’ is no more a category’ than ‘contains a motor’, and there will be many different platforms and standards. More important is the fact that, especially in the enterprise, this explosion in sensors means an explosion in data – we’ll know far more about far more, and that allows fundamental system redesign.
Source: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/12/15/16-mobile-theses
Tomi Engdahl says:
No question, we are in the early stages of a new electronic age, often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT) where wearables, self-driving cars, smart homes, and devices with a variety of connected sensors and cameras will soon dot our modern landscape in ways never before imagined.
Source: https://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/resources/overview/developing-effective-design-strategies-for-today-s-wearable-devices-key-factors-driving-the-market-part-1-of-3–cb3f65ab-9159-4247-a2ca-ec9080894ba7?contactid=1&PC=L&c=2016_01_05_esd_wearables_dicktracey
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Gets Its Own Wi-Fi
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4441131/IoT-Gets-Its-Own-Wi-Fi?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160105&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160105&elq=42d3499d125d4358be09e17a2e5c3c96&elqCampaignId=26343&elqaid=30107&elqat=1&elqTrackId=019a829bd9434f78b9137cb0bf59bd67
For many, wireless Internet connectivity is synonymous with Wi-Fi. But for many, if not most, Internet of Things (IoT) use cases, Wi-Fi does not offer the required range and its implementation often costs more in complexity and power than such applications can tolerate. The WIFi Alliance aims to change that situation, though, with a variation of Wi-Fi specifically for the IoT.
The Wi-Fi variant in question is IEEE 802.11ah, to be known as Wi-Fi HaLow (pronounced like halo) according to a recent release from the Wi-Fi Alliance. Despite reports circulating on the Internet, however, the standard is not yet finalized. So far, the only thing cast in stone is the name. The IEEE standard itself is still in the IEEE-SA Sponsor Ballot stage. The first ballot is complete, and a second ballot is scheduled to go out in March, 2016.
Wi-Fi HaLow will follow most of the standard Wi-Fi protocols, which will help simplify the creation of router/hub devices that handle both HaLow and conventional Wi-Fi in a single unit. The protocol commonality also means that IoT developers will find it easier to create HaLow devices, leveraging their knowledge of conventional Wi-Fi. And there will be little, if any, manipulation required to convert a HaLow data stream for Internet Protocol (IP) backhaul.
The aim of the new Wi-Fi variant is also to reduce the power requirement and extend the range of Wi-Fi connectivity compared to conventional 802.11 connectivity.
When the IEEE 802.11ah standard finally becomes official later this year, though, it will be only one of numerous low-power wireless connectivity options available to IoT designers.
Some pundits are saying that Wi-Fi HaLow will be too little, too late. I, however, feel that its family connections will pay off in the long run.
Low power wide-area networking alternatives for the IoT
http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4440343/Low-power-wide-area-networking-alternatives-for-the-IoT
Wireless network technologies such as WiFi, ZigBee, and Bluetooth are fine for consumer applications of the Internet of Things (IoT), but many civic, industrial, and other IoT applications need to operate over vastly greater territory than these technologies can handle. Cellular and satellite machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies have traditionally filled the gap, but cost, power, and scalability concerns make these choices less appealing for the future. A number of low-power, wide-area networking (LP-WAN) alternatives have arisen that need careful consideration by developers looking to address these wide-ranging IoT applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Isolated switch targets low-voltage IoT designs
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4441041/Isolated-switch-targets-low-voltage-IoT-designs?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160105&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160105&elq=42d3499d125d4358be09e17a2e5c3c96&elqCampaignId=26343&elqaid=30107&elqat=1&elqTrackId=c22a95a3cfd340dab40db8216b0cadd5
Housed in a low-profile QFN package, the TS13101 from Semtech is a galvanically isolated, latching 60-V power switch with bidirectional blocking. Its dimensions of 4×4×0.8 mm enable the switch to be used in compact IoT applications, such as smart thermostats, security, and home automation systems.
The TS13101 is part of the Neo-Iso family of power switches for controlling resistive and inductive loads, while protecting sensitive system circuitry from voltage surges and transients.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wi-Fi standard could make Internet of Things things even easier … for hackers
HaLow somewhat less than saintly
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/07/wifi_standard_802_11_ah_internet_things/
A new standard for Wi-Fi for IoT devices may create yet more ways to attack vulnerable kit, according to a security consultancy with a storied history of hacking into internet-connected gizmos.
Many legacy IoT products – thermostats, remote switches, burglar alarms, weather stations etc. – already communicate in the sub-1GHz ISM band. This lower frequency has range and power advantages but this legacy technology is handicapped by a lack of IP integration.
Introducing a modified variant of the long established wireless networking protocol allows a bridge to be built between an IoT network and the home LAN.
Enter 802.11ah or HaLow, a wirelessing technology for the Internet of Things, which was announced on Monday at the CES show in Las Vegas.
802.11ah offers the ability to build wireless functionality into home routers themselves, rather than using dedicated gateways, the typical approach at present. However this change may make it easier for an attacker to bridge between your IoT network and an associated home network, UK security consultancy Pen Test Partners warns.
“802.11ah will significantly improve the distance from which Wi-Fi IoT devices can be attacked,”
Another problem that may come from the IoT protocols is lower power usage. Low power usage implies less processing power, which can lead to corners being cut in security, Munro cautions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES2016: Bosch to support the latest IoT technologies
Car electronics manufacturer Bosch is presenting today in Las Vegas for annual consumer electronics fair in new development projects. One of them involves networking cars to the Internet and the development of new IoT solutions cars.
The emphasis is on the development of transport, infrastructure, energy supply and security. A good example is Bosch’s proposals, the automatic street lighting: if the street is empty, the lights are blurred, but the brightening immediately where appropriate, upon the people the area. The principle works as well as escalators, which are triggered only when people come to them.
Las Vegas Bosch presented by IoT Suite software platform aims to connect the devices, users and services on the same platform, the question then electricity distribution, lighting, traffic lights or cars. Bosch, it is also the world of IoT is possible to connect the entire city infrastructure such as public transport and car parks.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/01/07/ces2016-bosch-tukemaan-uusinta-iot-tekniikkaa/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Always-Listening IoT Devices Raise Security Policy Questions For the Workplace
http://devices.slashdot.org/story/16/01/07/1345251/always-listening-iot-devices-raise-security-policy-questions-for-the-workplace
Rafal Los raises an interesting point about new Internet of Things (IoT) devices that may be coming into the office after Christmas, and the possible security risks associated. He uses an example of the Amazon Echo which is “always listening” and raises the question of how welcome it would be in an office where confidential and highly sensitive conversations are frequent. “How many things are showing up at the office this week that are an always-on conduit to your network from some external third party you really shouldn’t be trusting? Watches, streaming media widgets, phones, tablets and a whole host of other things are likely making their way into the office right now. ”
Do You Have a Security Policy for “IoT” Gadgetry in the Office?
http://www.securityweek.com/when-iot-comes-office
It’s the first work week of the year, and for many of us that means hauling in some new gear into the office. Santa continues to bring more widgets and gizmos, and some of that stuff comes to the office with you. I think this is as good a time as any to think about the Internet of Things (IoT) and what it means for your CISO.
But on a serious note — how many things are showing up at the office this week that are an always-on conduit to your network from some external third party you really shouldn’t be trusting? Watches, streaming media widgets, phones, tablets and a whole host of other things are likely making their way into the office right now. You probably have a BYOD policy, but do you have an IoT policy? BYOD policies are meant to address your mobile handsets, tablets and personal laptops, but who’s addressing all the other gadgetry?
Enjoy those new gadgets folks, but remember, practice safe computing!
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence advises dieters – pours data from activity bracelet
IBM is not a traditional name in consumer electronics in the field, but the company’s Watson artificial intelligence will guide consumers. Watson has been found in the use of particular health products side, where the service has already been used, for example, doctors’ help.
“Digital technology is not a destination, but rather the foundation. Companies can distinguish themselves by understanding their own data, ”
Rometty said IBM’s solmineen Cooperation diabetics insulin pumps and glucose meters with the manufacturer Medtronic. Watson’s analytics equipment to the manufacturer, according to predict dangerous blood sugar level drops as early as three hours in advance.
Another IBM’s new partner is the sportswear giant Under Armour, which manufactures clothing in addition to, inter alia, heart rate monitors, activity bracelets and weight development of the following smart weights. Watson’s purpose is to analyze the data generated by the hardware, and provide the user with advice for weight loss and getting in shape.
The third new partner is the Japanese Softbank, whose Pepper robot Watson to produce intelligence.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/ibm-n-watson-tekoaly-neuvoo-laihduttajia-ahmii-datan-aktiivisuusrannekkeista-6243359
Tomi Engdahl says:
OSHChip: Tiny Cortex-M0 CPU and BLE
http://www.oshchip.com/
16 Pin DIP form factor, pin 8 is ground, pin 16 is VDD (VCC).
Designed from the start to be compatible with Solderless Breadboards
ARM Cortex-M0 32 bit processor with
· 256KB Flash Memory and 32KB SRAM.
· Main oscillator is 16 MHz
2.4 GHz Radio supports 4 protocols:
· Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) / Bluetooth Smart
· ANT
· Proprietary Gazell and ESB. Supports Chip to Chip communications.
· Built-in antenna, range is 10 to 20 feet, depending on environment
Tomi Engdahl says:
MediaTek Delivers Chip Series for Wearables, Smart Home Apps
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328623&
MediaTek unveiled three systems-on-chip at the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016. The SoCs are designed for wearable devices, smart home applications and Ultra-HD (4K) Blu-ray players
The MT2523 series, which is dedicated to smart watches and other wearables, is a system-in-package (SiP) that enables GPS, dual-mode Bluetooth Low Energy and a MIPI-supported high-resolution mobile screen, according to the company. It boasts of long battery life, high-quality display technology and small printed circuit board area that is 41 per cent smaller than competitors’ solutions.
The SiP features a microcontroller unit that allows wearables to last up to one week with a single charge. It also has 2D capabilities of true colour, per pixel alpha channel and anti-aliasing fonts, as well as 1bit index colour to save memory and computing power.
MediaTek’s MT2523, powered by ARM Cortex M4 processor, will be available to device makers by the second half of 2016.
The MT7697 SoC, meanwhile, offers low-power integration of such applications as home appliances, home automation, smart gadgets, Internet of Things (IoT) bridges and cloud connectivity. It features DB Wi-Fi, BLE, CM4 and RAM. It also includes a power amplifier with TX Power-up to 10dBm. The SoC’s BLE, when used on iOS devices, supports up to 160B of maximum transmission units.
Amazon Now Sells Own ARM chips
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328624&
Annapurna Labs Inc., a subsidiary of Internet shopping channel Amazon.com, has announced the availability of its Alpine range of ARM-based chips and subsystems aimed at home use Wi-Fi routers and Network-Attached Storage devices.
The Alpine product line, based on up to four ARMv7 and ARMv8 processor cores, supports the home deployment of applications and services, including media management, IoT management, surveillance and 4K/UHD television streaming, the company said.
There are already Home gateway, Wi-Fi router, and NAS product designs based on Alpine chips available from multiple equipment vendors including Netgear, QNAP Systems and Synology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
32-bit microcontrollers secure IoT nodes
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4441141/32-bit-microcontrollers-secure-IoT-nodes?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160107&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160107&elq=12f7a3e53a614a4eb2d1c192fff96c7e&elqCampaignId=26384&elqaid=30159&elqat=1&elqTrackId=6df7a064224a44d787a734a71e0853be
Two EFM32 Gecko microcontroller families from Silicon Labs deliver enhanced security and energy-management for wearable health and fitness trackers, security sensors, point-of-sale devices, and other IoT node applications. The Jade Gecko and Pearl Gecko MCUs combine hardware cryptography with an on-chip DC/DC converter, low-energy modes, and scalable memory options.
Based respectively on 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 and M4 cores scaling up to 40 MHz, the Jade and Pearl microcontrollers’ hardware cryptographic engine performs autonomous communication encryption and decryption using Internet security protocols with minimal CPU intervention and without sacrificing battery life. The crypto-accelerator supports advanced algorithms, such as AES with 128-bit or 256-bit keys, elliptical curve cryptography (ECC), SHA-1, and SHA-224/256.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When the IoT Comes to the Office
http://www.securityweek.com/when-iot-comes-office
Do You Have a Security Policy for “IoT” Gadgetry in the Office?
It’s the first work week of the year, and for many of us that means hauling in some new gear into the office. Santa continues to bring more widgets and gizmos, and some of that stuff comes to the office with you. I think this is as good a time as any to think about the Internet of Things (IoT) and what it means for your CISO.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft makes Raspberry Pi its preferred IoT dev board
Intel’s Galileo scratched off Windows 10 ‘thing’ list
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/19/redmond_expels_galileo/
A little over a year after Intel’s Galileo development board got its first taste of Microsoft Windows, Redmond has decided to pull the project.
Chipzilla’s Raspberry Pi-like Galileo was anointed as able-to-run-Windows in August 2014, courtesy of the 1.0.2 firmware update for the Gen1 device. In the same month Intel launched the Gen2 board (which got its stripped-down Windows 8 version in October 2014).
Microsoft was also handing out Galileo devices free to developers joining its Internet of Things program.
Alas, there’s no weight-loss program good enough to fit Windows 10 IoT Core into the Galileo, so Redmond has set November 30 as end-of-life for the development boards.
Raspberry Pi is the officially designated migration target: “Wiring support is now available on Windows 10 IoT Core running on Raspberry Pi 2. This allows you to migrate your existing Galileo projects to Windows 10 IoT Core”, the company notes.
http://ms-iot.github.io/content/en-US/Faqs.htm#galileo
Will you continue to support the Windows Developer Program for IoT for Intel Galileo?
No. We continue to focus on providing a great experience for Makers with Windows 10 IoT Core. While we’ve seen some fantastic innovation with the platform, unfortunately it does not meet the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 10 IoT Core.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco, Philips teaming up to offer connected, PoE-powered LED lighting
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/12/cisco-philips-poe-powered-led-lighting.html?cmpid=EnlCIMCablingNewsJanuary42016&eid=289644432&bid=1265815
Cisco and lighting giant Philips recently announced their strategic alliance, through which the companies will co-market and co-sell Cisco’s Power over Ethernet-enabled switches and Philips’ PoE-powered LED lighting. When announcing the alliance, the companies said, “Lighting is everywhere, making it one of the easiest ways to bring the Internet of Things to office buildings. Light points in the Philips system, equipped with sensors and software applications, can be connected using Cisco technologies. This lighting network creates a pathway for information and helps enable new services.”
“To make offices more comfortable, office workers can personalize and adjust LED lighting to their preferences and tasks,” the companies explained. “For mobile access, office workers can use a smartphone app to access other building services through a communications network.
“Lighting is a logical first step to bringing IoT to enterprises worldwide,” they added. “Equipped with sensors, connected lighting becomes intelligent to sense and measure power. For example, occupancy sensors in the system can provide information on space utilization to help reduce costs.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hajaan.nu!
Decentralized Autonomous Organization
https://hackaday.io/project/9073-hajaannu
Hajaan.nu is Ethereum based ldap-blockchain organization, which establishes openvpn subnet for its DAC members with decision process defined by Liquid Feedback.
DAC’s contains humans, who can join DAO as members of DAC.
Fuzzy Nemesis is binary-only corporation (DAC), which aims to create bootstrappable reference structure for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO)
Current task is to redistribute PKI signing infrastructure into internet, gadgets and off-grid network to establish low-trust decision making infrastructure.
Near future hackadayish move is to replace raspberry Pi PKI signing with ESP8266.
Low Power ESP8266 – Sleeping at 78 micro Amps
http://tim.jagenberg.info/2015/01/18/low-power-esp8266/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using telematics to perfect the equipment triangle
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/using-telematics-to-perfect-the-equipment-triangle/97753c360bb6ea4026d61baea538a33e.html
Manufacturers can strengthen their dealer network and improve communication with end users through the real-time use of telematics data. See how a supporting a stronger equipment triangle with telematics benefits all angles.
Most equipment manufacturers are tackling the same issue when it comes to product support: How can they make their dealer network more efficient? Manufacturers know that efficient dealerships lead to an increase in sales, revenue, and the overall well-being of the organization.
However, many struggle to find common ground between themselves, their dealers, and equipment end users. By giving each party access to detailed equipment information and telematics data, manufacturers, dealers, and end users all benefit from what’s called the equipment triangle: The ability for manufacturers, dealers, and equipment end users to work together and benefit from greater insight into equipment performance and service needs.
How telematics work
Telematics is the use of wireless devices and “black box” technologies to transmit data in real-time throughout an organization. Today, many equipment intensive businesses—manufacturers, dealers, and end users—rely on telematics to connect them to the status of their equipment in the field in real-time. This is often done through a service management system.
Telematics allow manufacturers, dealers, and end users to support each other’s efforts when they have access to the equipment performance and operation information.
By improving the communication and fluidity between these three key members of the equipment triangle, the organization will earn more service revenue, and the end users will be happier and likely renew their service contracts, creating a virtuous cycle for all three parties.
Telematics strengthens the equipment triangle
Technology is becoming a platform through which the entire triangle—contractor, dealer, and equipment manufacturer—can communicate and come together to reshape expectations about how equipment-intensive businesses run and how equipment-intensive projects get built.
With more insight into the workings of equipment in the field, manufacturers and dealers can analyze when and under what conditions equipment is most efficient so end users can accomplish more work and expand their equipment’s lifespan.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The building blocks of IIoT
Clicking components together like Legos is one vision for how smarter factories will evolve.
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/the-building-blocks-of-iiot/66445b5b88c984901a5df1cc7665222f.html
Manufacturing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is being envisioned in many ways. One way to look at it, both for today and into the future, is exactly as a manufacturing project, complete with the simplest building block ever created.
At the Oct. 8 Smart Factory Industry Forum in Chicago, Detlaf Zuhlke, chairman of the executive board of the German-based SmartFactoryKL Technology Initiative, said IIoT concept is still a long way from full implementation. When it does come to pass, Zuhlke said it will take a series of standards and principles that will allow IIoT to be effective in any plant, anywhere.
“Our components will look like standardized building blocks, and you can arrange them as you need to like Lego blocks,” Zuhlke told more than 100 industry leaders at the event sponsored by the German-American Chamber of Commerce and held at the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII). “So you will need fundamental principles.”
Getting to those fundamentals will take more time, Zuhlke said. “Today we have to first demonstrate the potential use,” Zuhlke said. “We need worldwide standards, and there are different approaches to that. We need solutions for safety and security. Industry wants to have a high level of security. We surely will need training, and we surely will need new business models.
“Digitalization of all of these things will bring us completely new solutions,” he added. “It will change our automation world.”
Before that change comes, Zuhlke said the manufacturing world needs to continue to evolve from a centralized view of information to a distributed view. I In Manufacturing 2.5, there was one computer behind a glass wall. They were big machines with people wearing white coveralls changing the tapes. In Manufacturing 3.0 there were hundreds of computers, most of them visible. In Manufacturing 4.0, there will be hundreds of thousands of computers. But the most important part is not technological improvement itself; it’s the networking of these computers.”
The reality of the ‘Smart Factory’
The Smart Factory Industry Forum focused on the still-evolving Industrial Internet of Things concept, and brought together industry leaders to talk about how that evolution may turn out.
That vision may mean different things for different companies today, but most leaders see much more common ground. “It’s changing industry from CAD centric to a data-based industry. It’s providing the right tool for companies to design their machines,” said Sean Mulherrin, global product manager, EPlan, at an IIoT panel discussion at the symposium. “You now can easily predict the outcome of the design, visualize the design and validate the design. The machine’s already been proven in a digital environment.”
“We’re data rich but information poor,”
Many of the challenges around IIoT focus not on the technology, but on the culture change in organizations looking to implement the technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2016 CES: Highlights of Intel Ceo Brian Krzanich’s Keynote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BslGBBYsi8c
Highlights of the event included: the Intel Curie™ module taking sports to new levels as part of collaborations with ESPN and Red Bull Media House; three-time Ironman champion Craig Alexander showing off “Radar Pace,” Oakley sunglasses with a voice-activated, real-time coach; Krzanich highlighting the Yuneec Typhoon H drone that uses Intel RealSense technology and an Intel Atom processor to navigate complex environment
Tomi Engdahl says:
Let Alexa Control Your Life; Guide to Voice-Enable Everything
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/26/let-alexa-control-your-life-guide-to-voice-enable-everything/
Let’s face it, automation doesn’t feel quite as futuristic unless you can just say what you want out loud and have the machines flawlessly obey. That is totally possible now — and on the cheap. Well, cheap as far as money goes. It can be an expensive learning curve to get it all working. This will help. [Lindo St. Angel] has put together a guide to navigate voice control of hardware using Amazon’s Alexa SDK.
We previously reported that Amazon’s AI had escaped its hardware prison in the form of the Alexa Skills Kit.
https://github.com/goruck/all
Tomi Engdahl says:
The SpeakUp is a speech recognition click™ board. You can
set it up to recognize over 200 different voice commands
and have the on-board MCU carry them out instantly.
http://www.mikroe.com/click/speakup/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
CES: Increasing number of third-party smart home products integrate with Amazon’s Alexa — Amazon’s stealth takeover of the smart home at CES 2016 — Of all the forecasts made here at CES, the smart home feels like one of the nearest to coming true. Nearly every big-name technology brand …
Amazon’s stealth takeover of the smart home at CES 2016
Alexa everywhere
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/7/10719202/amazon-alexa-ces-2016-takeover-smart-home
Of all the forecasts made here at CES, the smart home feels like one of the nearest to coming true. Nearly every big-name technology brand, from Google to Samsung to LG, is in the process of trying to own the way we interact with our appliances and our appliances interact with each other. But the most important name in the smart home is the one you’re least likely to find plastered inside the cavernous halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center: Alexa.
The name corresponds to Amazon’s cloud-based voice assistant, which began as the personal assistant inside the online shopping company’s Echo speaker that went on sale to the public in June. Over the course of a few months, however, Alexa has moved beyond Echo and into a host of third-party devices, in part thanks to Amazon’s $100 million Alexa Fund, which helps other companies incorporate the software into their products.
Now those investments are bearing fruit. At CES 2016, Amazon is a stealth attendee. Without a booth or logo in sight, Alexa is weaving its way into third-party products here as varied as home security cameras, lighting systems, and Ford vehicles. By creating a voice interface for asking about the weather, playing music, and the mundane resupplying of paper towels and snacks, Amazon has emerged as the go-to partner for industries in need of powerful natural language processing and fast access to information from the internet. The benefit for Amazon is obvious: voice software tied directly to the Everything Store is a great way to keep people spending money on Amazon. But for an industry bedeviled by interface and compatibility issues, Alexa is an attractive way forward.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things in Five Minutes
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/08/internet-of-things-in-five-minutes/
If you’re looking for the quickest way to go from zero to voice-controlled home automation system, you should spend five minutes checking out [Hari Wiguna]’s project on Hackaday.io where he connects up IoT gadgets and services into a functioning lightswitch.
[Hari] demonstrates how to set up a complex chain: Amazon Echo to IFTTT to Adafruit.io as a data broker, which is then polled by an ESP8266 unit in his home that controls his X10 setup.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things in 5 minutes
Playing with ESP8266, Adafruit.io, and Amazon Echo
https://hackaday.io/project/8958-internet-of-things-in-5-minutes
Tomi Engdahl says:
Could This Tiny Solar Charger Change the World?
The SunPort solar charger wants to let everyone participate in a solar energy revolution — no panels needed.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2015/09/could-this-tiny-solar-charger-change-the-world.html
If you’re like most Americans, you would love to switch from powering your devices with energy from the grid (coal, natural gas, etc.) to juicing your life with pure clean solar power, but there’s one thing standing in your way: the initial expense and space needed for solar panels. Currently, though solar power is Americans’ most preferred energy source, less than 1% of U.S. energy comes from solar. But one enterprising company wants to change that percentage as fast as possible with an ingenious little device: the SunPort solar charger.
Here’s SunPort’s proposal: you buy a small colorful device that looks almost exactly like a smartphone charger, and download the SunPort app. Plug the Sunport into any wall outlet and plug your device in, and the SunPort will measure how much electricity you use and “convert” it to solar power. It works by taking the huge, expensive solar credits usually only bought by large companies, and breaking them up into tiny bite-sized increments that can be distributed to many, with a sensor to measure how much each user consumes. The app will even show you how much solar energy you’ve used, so you can feel good about your contribution.
What is that contribution, you ask? Well, as the SunPort Kickstarter page explains, by helping use up these huge solar energy credits much faster, you’re creating more demand for solar.
SunPort™ – Demand Solar. Anywhere. Instantly.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1275963200/sunport-plug-into-solar-power-no-panels-required
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT’s Coolest Connections at CES
Simpler connections for your whole family on display
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328631&
Creating a connected world is possible at CES – especially if you’re willing to pre-order – and there was no dearth of Internet of Things devices on this year’s show floor. We saw plenty of cool items for the home and family, and many superfluous devices that left us wondering why?
While there was no single killer app or use case that dominated the show floor or pre-show press demos, we noticed a number of trends across IoT gadgets:
1. Simplify our increasingly connected world
While companies encourage consumers to buy into the Internet of Things to simplify their lives, the thought of managing all those devices and associated applications can cause anxiety. We saw many remote control gadgets designed to make a multiple devices easier to use and under a single app.
2. Connected devices must be meaningful
We saw this last year too: connecting devices together isn’t enough; there must be meaningful material that comes from these connections. Only suggestions for behaviorial change or insight into an action will make IoT devices sticky.
3. Baby’s on board
IoT is becoming a family affair, with infants getting connected through car seats, thermometers, and activity monitors. Smaller hardware means connected devices can fit on even the tiniest members of your family.
Connected devices must be meaningful
That being said, not everything needs a grand purpose. Improvements in battery life and compute mean intelligence can be built into so much more — so why not add some smarts to an otherwise simple device? Someone will probably buy it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wink Hub Connects to SmartThings
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/09/wink-hub-connects-to-smartthings/
As home automation grows more and more popular by the day, the free market is taking notice and working to supply the demand. The Wink Hub is a part of this current trend. It’s a device that allows many of your wireless devices to talk to one another. Things like lights, thermostats, door locks, garage doors…and many other devices can all connect to the hub. Typically, you use a program on your phone or tablet to control these devices. But because this is a closed source gadget, it can’t connect to everything, until now. A hacker was not only able to root the device, but he also gained the ability to connect to devices it was never designed to connect to.
[Michael] was able to get root and take control of some of the devices used with one of Wink’s main competitors – SmartThings. The process is not for the faint of heart and requires at least a yellow belt in Linux-Fu.
Bidirectional SmartThings to Wink bridge for Lutron ClearConnect Devices. Needs a rooted Wink hub.
https://github.com/quantiletree/SmartWink
Use Lutron Clear Connect devices on SmartThings using a rooted Wink Hub as a bridge!
Tomi Engdahl says:
New WiFi HaLow Protocol May Bring Old Security Issues With It
http://it.slashdot.org/story/16/01/11/0632216/new-wifi-halow-protocol-may-bring-old-security-issues-with-it
Perhaps because smart lightbulbs that refuse firmware updates and refrigerators with blue screens of death aren’t enough fun on their own, a new WiFi protocol designed specifically for IoT devices and appliances is on the horizon, bringing with it all of the potential security challenges you’ve come to know and love in WiFi classic. The new protocol is based on the 802.11ah standard from the IEEE and is being billed as Wi-Fi HaLow by the Wi-Fi Alliance.
as with any new protocol or system, Wi-Fi HaLow will carry with it new security considerations to face. And one of the main challenges will be securing all of the various implementations of the protocol.
New WiFi HaLow Protocol Could Bring Old Security Issues
https://www.onthewire.io/new-wifi-halow-protocol-could-bring-old-security-issues/
The new protocol is based on the 802.11ah standard from the IEEE and is being billed as Wi-Fi HaLow by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi HaLow differs from the wireless signal that most current devices uses in a couple of key ways. First, it’s designed as a low-powered protocol and will operate in the range below one gigahertz. Second, the protocol will have a much longer range than traditional Wi-Fi, a feature that will make it attractive for use in applications such as connecting traffic lights and cameras in smart cities.
The new version of Wi-Fi also could be useful for connections among smaller, lower-powered devices such as smart watches, fitness bands, and other pieces of wearable technology. The Wi-Fi Alliance, which certifies Wi-Fi compatible devices and is overseeing usage of the proposed new protocol, is touting it as an extension and improvement of the existing protocol.
“Wi-Fi HaLow is well suited to meet the unique needs of the Smart Home, Smart City, and industrial markets because of its ability to operate using very low power, penetrate through walls, and operate at significantly longer ranges than Wi-Fi today,” said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance.
But, as with any new protocol or system, Wi-Fi HaLow will carry with it new security considerations to face. And one of the main challenges will be securing all of the various implementations of the protocol. Device manufacturers all implement things in their own way and in their own time, a practice that has led to untold security vulnerabilities and innumerable billable hours for security consultants. Security experts don’t expect Wi-Fi HaLow to be the exception.
“While the standard could be good and secure, implementations by different vendors can have weaknesses and security issues. This is common to all protocols,” said Cesar Cerrudo, CTO of IOActive Labs, who has done extensive research on the security of a wide range of smart devices and smart city environments.
Many of the devices that may use the new protocol–which isn’t due for release for a couple of years–are being manufactured by companies that aren’t necessarily accustomed to thinking about threat modeling, potential attacks, and other issues that computer hardware and software makers have had to face for decades. That could lead to simple implementation problems that attackers can take advantage of.
“Having a longer range also means that attackers can launch attacks from longer distances, your neighbor’s devices three or more houses away will be able to talk to (hack) your devices. What’s more scary is that if this new standard goes mainstream and it’s adopted by smart home, smart city, smart phones technologies then hackers will get in a golden age being able to hack everything from miles away,” Cerrudo said.
“For instance, an attacker in China wants to hack smart homes and cities in the US he will just need to hack some smart phones in the US and from there launch attacks that will affect homes and cities technologies.”
“This is nothing new but until now we have different technologies (protocols) used for communications on smart home and smart cities devices, etc. When all these converge and use the same technology then the attack surface grows significantly and opens the door for attacks,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Greg Bensinger / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Amazon will release smaller, portable, cheaper Echo in the coming weeks — Amazon to Release Portable Version of Echo Speaker in Coming Weeks — New voice-activated speaker will be smaller, cheaper than Echo — Amazon.com Inc. is doubling down on voice-controlled hardware …
Amazon to Release Portable Version of Echo Speaker in Coming Weeks
New voice-activated speaker will be smaller, cheaper than Echo
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/amazon-to-release-portable-version-of-echo-speaker-in-coming-weeks-1452532671-lMyQjAxMTE2NzExMTIxMzE0Wj
Amazon.com Inc. is doubling down on voice-controlled hardware, part of the Seattle retailer’s broader ambition to overtake rival tech giants with digital assistants that blend into everyday life.
In the coming weeks, Amazon expects to release a smaller, portable version of its voice-activated tabletop Echo speaker, building off the device’s surprise success, according to people familiar with the plans.
The Pringles-can-sized Echo, which must be plugged into an outlet, answers questions, creates shopping lists, plays music and can even turn connected lights on and off upon command. The new portable device is expected to sell at a lower price than the $180 Echo in part to draw more buyers, these people said.
Last week, for example, Amazon announced a partnership with Ford Motor Co. to integrate Alexa software into its vehicles so that, say, garage doors could be opened by voice command.
The initiatives could help make Amazon’s voice-activated software ubiquitous inside and outside the home, helping the company battle Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. ’s Google and Microsoft Corp. which have largely relied on smartphones and tablets for their voice assistants.
Unlike the Echo, which must always be plugged in to listen for voice commands, the new version can be charged on a docking station and responds to voice command only by push-button, a necessary compromise to preserve battery life.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Streetlight Shines on Metro IoT
Cellular LED pole targets smart cities
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328658
Bill McShane sells smart streetlights. His company, Philips, calls them “the connected city experience.”
It’s a growing business and a signpost pointing to the future of smart cities and the emerging Internet of Things. The novel product is by turns simple, complex, nearly invisible and maybe someday omnipresent.
Smart streetlights are essentially poles packed with LEDs, small cell LTE base stations, an optional control system for the lights and a smart meter to monitor the poles’ power use. So far McShane has about 150 of them being deployed in Los Angeles and San Jose. He believes over the next three years he potentially could sell thousands of them in towns all across America.
The product has multiple customers and vendors. And though it has no road map, it invites many thoughts about its potential. The cellular-only poles arrive at a time when cities are also expanding metro Wi-Fi networks and thinking broadly about future sensor nets of various kinds
Philips’ LED lighting group came up with the idea for smart streetlights and owns the product. The Dutch company struck a global deal with Ericsson to act as the subcontractor for the LTE base stations inside them. Other companies supply the optional smart meters some cities such as San Jose require.
Cellular carriers are the primary customers, specifying and paying Ericsson for the base stations and determining where they will be placed.
L.A., for example, charges Philips about $10,000 to install the poles and $40 a year to lease each site. San Jose will let Philips collect fees from the cellular carrier for ten years, after which the city will presumably collect any fees from operators.
Philips helps cities create a simplified permitting process for the poles sometimes owned and serviced by different entities
In the end, everyone makes money, McShane said. “It’s a triple win for residents, businesses and the city,”
The technology inside Philips’ smart pole is fairly straightforward and narrowly defined. What such poles might look like in the future is an open question at a time when cities have tight budgets but are thinking in creative ways about IoT networks.
Today’s smart pole has two configurations — a high-power pole packs three big Ericsson RU-11 or -12 60W LTE radios, the low-power version crams in six 5-10W radios that cover a narrow range of about 1,000 feet.
L.A. requires the poles also include backup batteries in case of a power loss. San Jose requires smart meters to pay its utility,
There’s no road map for the smart streetlights yet. “We want to focus on LTE and get that right, it’s easy to integrate Wi-Fi or other things later,”
The concept of city-wide IoT networks is still in its infancy and raises many thorny issues, said McShane of Philips. “It’s very capital intensive to deploy this, and we have to ask how data would flow to what central hub and what about analytics — there’s a lot of public policy that needs to be developed as well,” he said.
The chief information officer of San Jose, Vijay Sammeta, agreed. He characterized smart cities as a “wild West” where it’s time to move from demonstration projects to the more difficult job of real deployments.
“Smart cities have reawakened the concept of R&D in government but these things all take time, money and energy so they have to be aligned to our priorities,” said Sammeta.
For example San Jose just completed a year-long pilot project with Intel that involved installing ten air-quality sensors around the city. “We do want to take a look at more of these projects…but I picture a street light pole with so many things strapped to it its leaning over,” he said.
L.A. ultimately plans to install 400-600 smart poles and is pondering what other sensors they might carry. The city is considering adding charging stations for electric vehicles to some of them.
Smart meters in the poles are key to enabling future additions
“When we want to add environmental sensors or cameras, we will be able to install them more easily without rewiring circuits,”
“The business case based on energy savings for converting to LED streetlights is well established, but the benefits of networking (to provide traffic monitoring or air-quality sensors, and etc.) are less well founded and more complex, often crossing city departments,” said Woods, the research director at Navigant.
“Standards will be important for everything from the light fixtures to the communication networks,” Woods said. “The industry has made some progress, but it will be interesting to see what comes out of various smart city standards initiatives that are currently underway — which in part are trying to clarify city needs as much as relevant technical standards,”
enthusiastic about the remote monitoring units for LED street lights that Philips sells for $100-$250 a unit. L.A. is preparing to install a second-generation version with embedded GPS.
While Philips helps carriers build out their cellular infrastructure, L.A. and San Jose are expanding their metro Wi-Fi networks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 Wi-Fi predictions for 2016
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/01/6-wi-fi-predictions-for-2016.html?cmpid=EnlCIMCablingNewsJanuary112016&eid=289644432&bid=1272337
The Wi-Fi Alliance has published a list of predictions for 2016 that demonstrate Wi-Fi technology’s steady march forward, as it continues to deliver an even better user experience.
1. Smart everything.
The number of connected devices will reach 38.5 billion in 2020. This growth is due in part to manufacturers adding intelligence and connectivity to products not typically thought of as “high-tech,” like your Wi-Fi connected vacuum, coffee maker, door locks, or slow cooker. In 2016, companies that do not specialize in developing connectivity technologies — particularly those developing products for the Smart Home — will leverage a new Wi-Fi Alliance Implementer membership category, which will allow them to more easily deliver Wi-Fi connected products with secure operation, certified interoperability, and legacy compatibility with the 6.8 billion Wi-Fi products currently in use.
2. Wi-Fi is in more places you want it to be.
Seventy-three percent of Americans say it is very important to have access to Wi-Fi in their daily lives. Wi-Fi’s value is also recognized around the world, and last year we saw global Wi-Fi infrastructure investments pickup with assistance from cities and companies such as Google andFacebook. In 2016, city Wi-Fi deployments will increase, with some leveraging Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint to enable seamless roaming with other cities miles and even continents away. Sports fans will take advantage of enhanced Wi-Fi as stadiums and sports arenas
3. Protecting unlicensed spectrum is a priority.
Everyone understands and agrees with the need to protect the billions of Wi-Fi users. In late 2015, there was an important shift towards a collaborative model for delivering on Wi-Fi and LTE-U coexistence. In 2016, industry will make progress on a test regimen for LTE-U devices, and Wi-Fi Alliance will emerge as the premier forum for this collaboration.
4. Wi-Fi location will emerge.
Wi-Fi will enable a new breed of innovative applications built on location-based information. Wi-Fi location capabilities will bring users even closer to the world around them, enabling a variety of robust applications and usages — both indoors and outdoors. Retailers will be some of the first to leverage location awareness — a market that will reach $43.3 billion in four short years — and service providers will follow shortly after
5. Wi-Fi portfolio of technologies gets even better.
In 2016, a variety of new programs will make Wi-Fi better than ever. An update to Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac technology will bring new features such as Multi-user MIMO to increase performance and network capacity, taking Wi-Fi beyond the gigabit Wi-Fi speeds already supported.
6. Wi-Fi brings even more value for carriers.
In 2016, carrier Wi-Fi that is faster, more robust, and even easier to use and manage will emerge. While Passpoint was the first of a series of Wi-Fi Alliance programs to enable a more cellular-like experience in Wi-Fi hotspots
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultra Low-Power Sub-GHz Transceiver Module
http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/microchip/ultra-low-power-sub-ghz-transceiver-module/
The MRF89XAM9A is a 915 MHz ultra low-power sub-GHz transceiver module that conforms to FCC certification standard. This device has integrated PCB antenna, matching circuitry, and supports Microchip’s proprietary protocol MiWi™ development environment. The MRF89XAM9A module connects to hundreds of PIC® microcontrollers via a 4-wire SPI interface and is an ideal solution for low power wireless sensor networks, home automation, building automation and consumer applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IoT Library: Roadmap to Internet of Things Connectivity
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328602
What’s in your library?
Welcome to the expanding universe of Internet of Things connectivity. If you’re like most engineers, you are forever on the lookout for fresh ideas and smart solutions. You have or are building your library of technical papers, documents, data sheets, products, technologies, standards, and applications for future and handy reference. Smart move.
Are you trying to figure out how to deal with Internet of Things challenges like—low-power micro-computing, signal conditioning, wireless communications, sensors, actuator control, more efficient power sources and the man-machine interface? Think of this blog as a design roadmap: as I discover and pass along useful resources, I hope you will find them valuable enough to archive or share.
Wireless technologies are perfect for transferring urgent amounts of real-time data to and from sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices. But due to very severe application constraints, even the smartest wireless things have to be designed for ultra-low power operation—IoT nodes can be remote, or not easily serviceable. And they are going to be vanishingly small: Paul Saffo, director of Discern Analytics predicts, “devices are going to disappear into what we wear and carry. For example, the glasses interface will shrink to near-invisibility in conventional glasses.”
Clearly, wireless connectivity design can be daunting and requires solving the ultra low power, low cost, and physical size equation perfectly.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. First you have to sort through the acronym clutter: There’s Bluetooth LE, ANT, ANT+, ZigBee, ZigBee RF4CE, Wi-Fi, Nike+, IrDA, LoRa, and NFC, by my count. And new solutions, like Weightless-P are always coming along.
How do you, as an engineer or designer keep up? To try to help with this no small challenge,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comparing Low-Power Wireless Technologies
http://www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2011/aug/comparing-low-power-wireless-technologies?WT.mc_id=online_15comparing
This article compares Bluetooth low-energy, ANT, ANT+, ZigBee, ZigBee RF4CE, Wi-Fi, Nike+, IrDA, and the near-field communications (NFC) standard, detailing the features, benefits, and shortcomings of each protocol in various applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s first intelligent mobile phone shell
Consumer electronics giant CES fair still exudes the news. I-Blades introduced in Vegas in conjunction with the sensor manufacturer Bosch Sensortechin mobile phone shell, which for the first time in the world are integrated in embedded electronics.
The company’s development of shell platform will be integrated with Bosch BME680 environment sensor (only 3 x 3 millimeters component).
When your smartphone is slipped i-Blades-shell, this will be the device extension. It may contain new features, such as the Bosch sensor, extra battery, more memory, or even a variety of security functions.
I-Blades recalls that the smartphone more shells are already sold eight billion dollars a year, and the market is growing.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3825:maailman-ensimmainen-alykas-kannykkakuori&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
$30 webcam spun into persistent network backdoor
Bring on the Internet of dangerously hacked things
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/13/30_dlink_web_cam_spun_into_persistent_network_backdoor/
Vectra Networks security wonks have spun a cheap webcam into a backdoor to persistently p0wn PCs.
The junk hacking expedition led Vectra’s chief security chap Gunter Ollman into the internals of the D-Link DCS 930L, a network camera that can be had for US$30.
The attacks are useful as an alternative backdoor for targeted attackers who already have access to a machine, or for those capable of compromising a device before it is installed by the user.
It is not something users should expect to surface in the wild and is rather an example of the risks posed by internet-of-things devices.
Ollman dumped and reflashed the camera’s firmware so that it opened a remote backdoor that was difficult to detect and did not affect normal operation.
The update feature was also removed, preventing the backdoor from being lost through patches.
“The irony in this particular scenario is that WiFi cameras are typically deployed to enhance an organisation’s physical security, yet they can easily become a network security vulnerability by allowing attackers to enter and steal information without detection,” Ollmann says.
Vectra Networks Demonstrates How Vulnerabilities in IoT Devices Can Create Hidden Backdoors for Persistent Attacks
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vectra-networks-demonstrates-vulnerabilities-iot-130000551.html
SAN JOSE, CA–(Marketwired – Jan 12, 2016) – Vectra® Networks, the leader in real-time detection of in-progress cyber-attacks, today announced that the Vectra Threat Labs™ has verified that consumer-grade Internet of Things (IoT) products, such as Wi-Fi security web cameras, can be hacked and reprogrammed to serve as permanent backdoors, enabling potential attackers to remotely command and control a cyber attack without being detected by traditional security products.
“Consumer-grade IoT products can be easily manipulated by an attacker, used to steal an organization’s private information, and go undetected by traditional security solutions,” said Gunter Ollmann, CSO of Vectra Networks. “While many of these devices are low-value in terms of hard costs, they can affect the security and integrity of the network, and teams need to keep an eye on them to reveal any signs of malicious behavior.”
Turning an IoT device into a backdoor essentially gives hackers 24×7 access to an organization’s network without needing to infect a laptop, workstation or server, all of which are usually under high scrutiny by firewalls, intrusion prevention systems and malware sandboxes, and typically run antivirus software that is updated regularly.
“Most organizations don’t necessarily think of these devices as miniature computers, but essentially they are in that they can still give attackers access to sensitive company information, particularly because they are connected to the corporate network,”