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.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacks rebel after bosses secretly install motion sensors under desks
Well done, thanks for giving PHBs everywhere a great idea for 2016
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/12/bosses_install_motion_sensors/
Staff at one of Britain’s oldest national newspapers got a shock on Monday morning when they found monitoring sensors installed under their desks.
The boxes, sold by OccupEye as a way to monitor how long staff are at their desks without relying “on coffee cups and coats on chairs,” were installed in the offices of The Daily Telegraph. Staff weren’t told anything about the installation and soon kicked up a storm of protest.
The devices were installed under the desks of journalism, advertising, and other commercial departments. There’s no word if HR got them too.
In response, some staff removed the batteries from the devices, while others called their colleagues in rival press organizations to leak the news. In the wave of this public backlash, management said the boxes were there to monitor building heating systems and agreed to remove them.
OccupEye sells itself as a company that can give building managers a good idea how long their desk space is being used. The sensor boxes contain motion and temperature sensors that link back wirelessly to central network points and let HR know who is, or isn’t, at their desks.
The firm extols the virtues of hot desking as a money-saving tip for companies. Hot desking eliminates personal desks and just sets up a central pool of furniture that people use on a first-come, first-serve basis.
While beloved of accountants, hot desks are usually very unpopular with staff, who face the breakup of team structures and an extra layer of uncertainty when coming in to work in the morning.
But the OccupEye system is just one of an increasing number of staff monitoring systems that companies are introducing in the name of efficiency. These are all totally legal, so long as employees are informed.
Take, for example, Boston startup Sociometric Solutions, which builds personnel smartbadges that come equipped with sensors to track an employee’s movements and location and a microphone for checking how long they talk to fellow workers.
HR departments who institute these types of monitoring products are going to have to be increasingly careful about how they are used, or risk losing more money than they save
How it works
http://www.occupeye.com/how-it-works/
A fully-deployed OccupEye installation would typically comprise a large number of wireless utilisation sensors (transmitters) linked to small number of network receivers, the system controlled and monitored via data logging and analytical reporting software. For example, an office block with 3 floors might deploy 100 sensors per floor and 3 receivers (1 per floor).
Sensors are most commonly mounted under desks or on a ceiling or wall using hook & loop pads, for easy fixing and removal. Receivers are networked and deliver utilisation logs to a standard PC acting as a data logging server, from where the information is automatically transmitted to the OccupEye analytical software (usually in the cloud). Authorised users can access the secure OccupEye analytics dashboard through a web browser to view a variety of flexible space utilisation reports.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Make the Amazon Echo the Center of Your Smart Home
http://www.wired.com/2016/01/iot-cookbook-amazon-echo/
The Amazon Echo defies easy categorization. Amazon has placed the $180 gadget in its Home Automation Controllers category alongside remotes, security components, and hubs. On the Echo’s product page, however, it’s marketed first and foremost as a music player. But its most unique feature is that it’s primarily controlled by Amazon’s Alexa voice command platform.
Alexa is what makes the Echo go. Speak, “Alexa, read me the news,” or, “Alexa, what are the baseball scores?” and she’ll tell you. She knows the weather, traffic and your stock prices. She tells bad jokes. (“Why was the ocean wet? It seaweed.”) She compiles lists: “Alexa, add ice cream to my shopping list.” And so on.
But what makes the Echo so powerful is its ability to link to and control other devices. For example, Echo can control both the Belkin WeMo Switch and Philips’s Hue light bulbs (among other smart home devices). Link either of them to your Echo, and you can turn your lights on and off with your voice.
Filling your home with smart devices that let you use your phone or issue voice commands is just the start. The real power move is making your devices talk to each other. A service called If This Then That (IFTTT) has pre-made recipes that can connect your devices to each other.
Turn off the Lights: Too cold to venture outside to switch off your outdoor string lights? Alexa will brave the weather for you. Connect your lights to a Belkin WeMo Switch, then use this IFTTT recipe to use Alexa’s voice controls. Ask her to turn the lights on and off.
I Hear It Somewhere…: Lost your phone again? Make it ring. IFTTT has a recipe that will make a phone (any phone) ring if you just ask Alexa to do so.
Raise the Roof! What if you threw a party and it was boring? Tell Alexa to put your Philips Hue smart LED lights on a color loop, that’s what. Use this recipe and say, “Alexa, trigger loop all lights” to kick off a color show.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Remote data acquisition devices with Wi-Fi support
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/remote-data-acquisition-devices-with-wi-fi-support/adda5d2092b62e1fc6ba3cdeda227047.html
Moxa’s ioLogik 2542-WL1 and 2512-WL1 remote data acquisition devices are designed to support Ethernet, serial and WLAN interfaces for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications.
Moxa’s ioLogik 2542-WL1 and 2512-WL1 remote data acquisition devices are designed to support Ethernet, serial and WLAN interfaces for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. Both devices feature 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi connectivity; the ioLogik 2542-WL1 supports analog I/O connections over Wi-Fi and the ioLogik 2512-WL1 supports digital I/O connections over Wi-Fi. Both ioLogik units feature automatic tag generation and reporting for connected sensors and devices. This enables operators to monitor a large number of field devices.
The ioLogik 2542-WL1 and 2512-WL1 also feature a 4-port unmanaged Ethernet switch and two serial ports for connection to a variety of field devices. The serial ports support data polling from devices using the Modbus RTU protocol. This data can be converted into Modbus TCP or AOPC tag format before sending it out over the Ethernet network. The units also support communication with multiple remote I/O devices under a single IP address.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New threat: heat pump installation of attacking the Internet – what can you do?
The air conditioner is it-easy target for criminals, says security expert.
Cybercriminals harness remote-controlled air-source heat pumps and other households is rapidly becoming popular home appliances to industrial-Fi denial of service attacks and spam to spread. Tekniikka ja Talous (Technology & Economy) magazine, the telecom operator TeliaSonera to by investigating the problem almost on a daily basis.
- Industrial equipment home internet security in general is pretty much behind the computers, which in principle is designed to be connected to the network, says a leading information security consulting Antti Nuopponen security company Nixu
The air conditioner, horizontal, refrigerator or other smart device is an easy target for an attacker, because the manufacturers have not thought about the upgrade process equipment.
- Because they are difficult to upgrade, air source heat pump can remain vulnerable for a long time, says Nuopponen.
Nuopposen basic instruction is to protect the network, which is connected to the air source heat pump. The current good home modems often firewall have protection – many basic modems supplied by telecom operator do not have firewall in them.
Operators and manufacturers liability protection is so great.
- The consumer is pretty weak. He can influence what you buy
The consumer can, of course, always be connected to a remote-controllable air-source heat pump out of the net – Then, however, the pump can loose it’s easy to use features.
I would give the responsibility to manufacturers and dealers
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/tietoturva/2016/01/13/uusi-uhka-lampopumppusi-hyokkaa-netissa–mita-voi-tehda/2016421/66
Tomi Engdahl says:
Creating IoT Devices & Controlling Them With Your Smartphone or Tablet
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=216&doc_id=1328495
The teeny-tiny Simblee module allows you to create ‘things’ for use with the Internet of Things, and to then monitor and control these little scamps using your smartphone or tablet.
I’m currently performing my Happy Dance (stop laughing, it’s not my fault I caper and cavort this way) because the Simblee by RF Digital officially launched this morning.
Just to set the scene, let’s remind ourselves that, a few years ago, the folks at RF Digital created a fingertip-sized, wireless-enabled, Arduino-compatible microcontroller called the RFduino.
The RFdunio is supported by an ecosystem of plug-in shields, including Switch/LED, Relay, Servo, microSD, USB, Prototyping, and Power/Battery shields (all of these shields also work with the Simblee breakout boards discussed below).
Now we have the Simblee module, which is 10mm x 7mm x 2mm in size, and which contains two main functions: A 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 processor (with 128KB of Flash and 24KB of RAM running at 16MHz) and a Bluetooth Smart engine.
If you are creating commercial or industrial products from the ground up, then you will almost certainly decide to mount Simblee modules directly on your circuit boards. By comparison, when it comes to prototyping or hobbyist applications, you may find it more advantageous to use one of the Simblee breakout boards.
Now, I love Arduinos — I use them for all sorts of things, but I have to say that it can be a bit of pain remembering which pins can act as digital inputs and outputs, which can act as analog inputs, which can act as pseudo-analog (PWM) outputs, which are dedicated to acting as a UART, which can be used as an SPI bus, which can be used as an I2C bus, and so on and so forth.
Creating User Interfaces for Smartphones and Tablets
A Simblee module or breakout board can be programmed using the Arduino IDE and used as a standalone microcontroller. In this case, the Simblee can be visualized as being “Just another flavor of Arduino with a different footprint or form factor.”
Where the Simblee really comes into its own is when we start controlling it using a smartphone or tablet computer. This is probably a good time to mention that the term SimbleeForMobile encompasses any software, tools, and applications used to control Simblee-enabled devices using a mobile platform such as a smartphone or tablet. Now, this next part can be a bit tricky to wrap your brain around, so take a deep breath and I’ll try to be gentle.
As I just mentioned, users create sketches (programs) to run on their Simblees using the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The thing is that these sketches can include user interfaces (UIs), which can be displayed on the user’s smartphone or tablet, and which can be used to monitor the Simblee’s inputs and control its outputs.
We’ll talk about how we create a Simblee user interface shortly. For the moment, let’s just say that both your application and your user interface are loaded into your Simblee module (that little 10mm x 7mm x 2mm beauty we introduced earlier).
Next, you download a free Simblee app onto your smartphone or tablet. If you are using an Apple platform running the iOS operating system, you will download the Simblee For Mobile app from the Apple’s App Store; if you are using an Android platform, you will download the Simblee For Mobile app from Google Play (formally known as the Google Play Store or the Android Market).
When you launch the Simblee app on your mobile platform, it uses Bluetooth to announce itself to the surrounding world and ask if any Simblee-enabled devices are in the vicinity. When each of those devices replies “I’m here,” the Simblee app lists their names and descriptions on the screen (from the perspective of the user, this process is essentially instantaneous). Once the user taps the desired item on the screen, the Simblee app sends a message to that device saying “You’re up”; the device then uploads its user interface to the Simblee app, which renders it as a graphical user interface (GUI) on the screen. Due to the way in which this works, the Simblee app may also be thought of as being a Simblee Browser or a Simblee Renderer.
Now, I have to say that when I first heard about creating a user interface with the Arduino IDE, I was a bit puzzled — I really couldn’t see how this could be achieved — but once you get the idea, you say “Wow! That’s Brilliant! (Why didn’t I think of that?)”
Remembering that the Simblee contains a 32-bit Cortex-M0 processor along with its Bluetooth Smart engine, the majority of users will almost certainly use the Simblee as a standalone solution to monitor and control things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IoT Library: Roadmap to Internet of Things Connectivity
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1328602&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultra-Thin Sensors Flex for Medicine
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328660&
he future of medical monitoring should be small, flexible and very, very thin according to MC10. The Massachusetts-based wearable company announced several flexible body-worn sensors at International CES, one of which is less than half the thickness of a human hair.
MC10’s “conformal” electronics look a bit like Band-Aids embedded with chips. Like many medical wearable companies, MC10 hopes to take medical monitoring out of the lab with patches that can be worn for a long period of time and send collected data to the cloud.
“We’re building a system that’s hardware, mobile-based application, cloud-based analytics storage, and visualization tools,” said Don Fuchs, vice president of marketing and strategy for MC10. “The idea is that we start with the research community because it’s small…but ultimately we’re moving toward tools that could be used with a specific disease.”
MC10’s BioStamp Research Connect System (BioStampRC) targets researchers with what Fuchs called “a Swiss Army knife” of connectivity and sensors. The flexible device has a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis gyroscope, as well as integrated electrodes for surface electromyography and electrocardiography. The device has Bluetooth connectivity, a rechargeable battery, amd comes with a tablet and web applications that connect to the cloud for real-time data sharing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chip Forecasts, Drivers Diverge
2016 predictions span -3 to +4 percent
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328665&
Forecasts of semiconductor revenues in 2016 and what’s likely to drive them longer term vary widely among analysts. China will be key factor but one nearly impossible to predict, they agreed at an annual event for chip executives here.
Bill McClean of IC Insights is currently the bull, predicting four percent revenue growth in 2016. Handel Jones of International Business Strategies (IBS) is the bear, forecasting a 1.5% decline that could slide to a negative three percent when he updates his crystal ball at the end of the month. In the middle, Gartner expects 1.9% growth.
NAND flash is “a rare bright spot” with an 8.7% compound growth rate through 2019
Growth is even faster in chips for the Internet of Things. But IoT will make up less than $30 billion in semiconductor sales by 2019, about 7.2% of the chip market, given average selling prices of a couple dollars per chip.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2015 Industrial Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Information Integration Study
http://www.controleng.com/media-library/research/2015-iiot-industry-40-information-integration-study.html
IIoT, Industry 4.0
Familiarity: Six in 10 respondents are “very” or “somewhat” familiar with the IIoT framework, while only 33% are familiar with the Industry 4.0 platform.
Future funding: On average, respondents expect funding levels at their facilities to increase over the next year by 32% as a direct result of IIoT and Industry 4.0 discussions.
Product areas: The top three product areas expected to improve as a result of IIoT and Industry 4.0 discussions are human-machine interface hardware, operator interface, control panels, alarms, annunciators, etc. (45% IIoT, 35% Industry 4.0); computers, industrial PCs, PC-based control (44%, 33%); and programmable logic controllers, programmable action controllers (40%, 37%).
IIoT vs. Industry 4.0: Forty percent of respondents’ facilities are currently using elements of both IIoT and Industry 4.0, while 20% say IIoT better fits their situation, and 16% say the same of Industry 4.0.
Challenges: One in four respondents have found a lack of budget to be the top challenge when integrating operations, followed closely by confusion over project scope and/or benefits.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bosch sensors make life easier for designers
http://www.edn.com/design/sensors/4441168/Bosch-sensors-make-life-easier-for-designers?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20160114&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20160114&elq=a12e63c660c348d3be9ba85524867603&elqCampaignId=26520&elqaid=30326&elqat=1&elqTrackId=d974ca67d7be4b89b920fbc6713ee688
At CES 2016, I met with Dr. Thorsten Müller, CEO of Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions. Dr. Müller and his team never fail to impress me with their new developments and he did today as well with his group’s announcement of the BCDS Design Sensor and the XDK Cross Domain Development Kit.
The ambient indoor air quality sensor
Smart homes, hotels, and office buildings are often closed systems where windows are not able to be opened. But even in a smart home where widows can be opened, when they are opened to eliminate a foul or hazardous chemical odor, the temperature balance is disturbed and when the air is finally cleared and the windows closed, the heating/air conditioning system must now work hard to get back to the equilibrium temperature of comfort set by the occupants.
The ambient air sensor (seen in the background of the photo above) demonstrates how temperature equilibrium can be preserved by not opening a window (in this case a hinged top on this box) but instead by monitoring the air quality and when it is deteriorated, allow outside air, warmed or cooled by the HVAC system, to come in to the room through vents and exhausted and filtered through other louvers until the air quality returns to a safe level. This saves a tremendous amount of energy over opening and closing windows.
Bosch has developed sensor devices and actuators that are easily updatable via Bluetooth, smartphone, or ZigBee wireless, and are made flexible so that users can add functions at a later time.
For air quality monitoring, the ambient sensor reminds inhabitants of sufficient home ventilation and helps significantly reduce heating costs
To optimize the environment and improve living comfort in a smart home or connected office building, a smart sensor can integrate the monitoring of ambient conditions such as air quality, light, and noise intensity with the building’s HVAC and lighting systems. The sensor module is in a small form factor with two-year battery life, making it easy to position anywhere.
XDK Cross Domain Development Kit
http://xdk.bosch-connectivity.com/
I’m a prototyping platform for any Internet of Things use case that you can imagine, and more!
Built your prototype?
It’s not over yet, develop further.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Controlling IoT Devices with Mobile Platforms — Creating Hierarchical Menus
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=216&doc_id=1328691&
“In which we discover how to create a hierarchical GUI to be displayed on a mobile platform, where this GUI can be used to control a Simblee-enabled device.
In my previous column on this topic — Creating IoT Devices You Can Control With Your Smartphone or Tablet — we discussed how I’m using a 29-GPIO Simblee breakout board to control my cunning Chronograph.
Recently, I’ve been talking to quite a few people who are using Simblees. My impression is that approximately half of them are using their Simblees as stand-alone modules. By this I mean that the Simblee performs all of the processing functions and all of the interfacing to the outside world. The other half are doing what I’m doing — using their Simblees to control other microcontrollers.
http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/max-unleashed-and-unfettered/4441054/Creating-IoT-Devices-You-Can-Control-With-Your-Smartphone-or-Tablet
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Stork Looks Different Than We Thought
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/14/the-stork-looks-different-than-we-thought/
What the Internet of Things really needs is more things, and the more ridiculous the better. At least, that’s the opinion of [Eric] who has created a tongue-in-cheek gadget to add to the growing list of connected devices. It’s a Bluetooth-enabled pregnancy test that automatically releases the results to the world. Feeling lucky?
The theory of operation is fairly straightforward. A Bluetooth low-energy module is integrated into the end of a digital pregnancy test. These tests have a set of photo detectors to read the chemical strip after the test is conducted. If the test is positive, the module sends a signal to a Raspberry Pi which tweets the results out for the world to see. It also has an option to send a text message to your mom right away!
[Eric]’s project to live-tweet a pregnancy test also resulted in a detailed teardown of a digital pregnancy test
Too Much IoT – Tweeting Pregnancy Test © CC BY
https://www.hackster.io/erictsai/too-much-iot-tweeting-pregnancy-test-3922d1
A connected pregnancy test that tweets your results instantly, and text messages your mom. May also be used as a light switch.
The project idea came from this tongue-in-cheek twitter post. But hey, why not try to make one? I read somewhere that the world needs more ridiculous smart devices.
It’s interesting to take apart a pregnancy test to see how it works.
These tests are one-time use products. The chemical strip isn’t reusable, so once the device is activated, it won’t ever work again. Removing and replacing the battery puts it into an unrecoverable disco mode, even if it has never been activated.
Light Blue Bean
The Light Blue Bean provides the real world I/O and Bluetooth connectivity. The digital I/O monitors the “Not” and “Pregnant” pins on the LCD and compares them with the “clock”. When they don’t match, it means the corresponding icon is being displayed.
To preserve power, the Bean is sleeping most of the time. Pin 0 on the Bean (connected to the clock pin on the LCD) is set as the interrupt to wake the Bean from sleep. When the test is not being used, there is no signal on the clock pin. When the test is activated, the LCD starts displaying the hourglass icon, and the clock pin is driven with the 40Hz square wave. This wakes it up.
The Bean also has a tri-color LED and accelerometer. I used the LED to indicate state
Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi uses a Bluetooth USB adapter. It’s running Node-RED, and uses the Bean node to receive serial data from the Bean. Once we have the data on the Pi, Node-RED makes it easy to tweet, send text messages via Twilio, or send email. Pretty much anything is possible from here.
I happen to have some lights that are controlled via MQTT and OpenHAB. In the demo video, you can see the table lamp turn on when the result is “Pregnant”. The lamp turns off when it’s “Not Pregnant”.
The result is this pluggable IoT module that is energy efficient and preserves the accuracy of the original off-the-shelf pregnancy test. The module isn’t limited to pregnancy tests of course. It can be used on other direct drive LCD devices.
After thinking about how this would work in real life, it seems like Twitter could use a feature where pre-authenticated (“verified”) Twitter accounts get permission to tweet under your name, but with their credentials.
Platforms like the Bean make it easy to add connectivity to products. Whether or not you should is a question best not left to the engineering department. My wife pointed out that pregnancy tests are kind of a sensitive subject. So, I hope this project comes off as making fun of IoT, not pregnancy tests.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT’s Coolest Connections at CES
New IoT for your home
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328631
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT’s Coolest Connections at CES
New IoT for your home
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328631
French company EnerBee developed a micro-generator the size of a nickel that uses a combination of piezoelectric and magnetism to harvest energy for home automation. The company’s prototype light dimmer module harvests power from the rotation of the dimmer’s nob to send a radio communication to a smart light bulb
Startup Nexpaq developed a series of modules for smartphone cases and chargers that connect via Bluetooth but also have a built-in 2,600 mAh battery. The swappable modules include a breathalyzer, battery, LED, temperature and humidity sensor, and USB flash card.
The Cassia Hub from Cassia Networks is a Bluetooth router capable of significantly extending the operating range of a typical Bluetooth device. The Hub can network and control up to 22 devices at a range of 1,000 feet. The Cassia Hub also communicates via Wi-Fi or Etherne
With Nuimo, Senic (Berlin) wants to keep your smartphone in your pocket and make managing IoT easier. The wireless controller can manage smart home devices over a 40-meter range without having to use a separate app to manage each device.
Palm-sized Bixi uses gestures to control connected devices at a 25-cm distance over Bluetooth. Largely made with ST Microelectronics chips, Bixi uses optical and gesture sensors to remotely manage Bluetooth-enabled devices with a wave or hand raise.
Bonjour, the voice controlled alarm clock from Holi (Lyon, France), tracks your sleep and schedule, adjusting your wake up time to match your requirements
In a world where 90% of devices store personal information and the majority of connected devices don’t have sufficient security, the Internet of Things requires more than an attack dog. Cujo is an IoT security system for virtual intrusions.
Lumo Run from Lumo Bodytech (Palo Alto, Calif) are running shorts/capris for men and women with a slip-in sensor that tracks running metrics while providing tips to improve your run. A nine-axis IMU, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, barometer, and vibration monitor track stride, pelvic rotation, bounce, and cadence. Auditory feedback during a run is also available through Bluetooth-enabled headphones.
Chinese company LeTv — the first company to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor in a smartphone — also has a connected bicycle. The Super Bike “rideable” is a premium bicycle that’s connects with Android smartphones. Embedded sensors can track fitness, distance, BMI (body mass index) and also play music or map routes.
Zepp aims to improve your golf, baseball, cricket, or tennis game with a Bluetooth connected sensor hub that monitors movement and provides suggestions.
The Blu-Toque Bluetooth Beanie from Toronto-based Caseco is a waterproof beanie with Bluetooth and cellular connectivity for music and call streaming.
Lego’s WeDo are a series of connected building blocks to teach STEM to second through fourth grade students.
Each kit comes with a “smart hub” — microcontroller, motor, motion sensor and tilt sensor — that communicates with a smartphone or laptop via Bluetooth.
4moms’ connected car seat takes the hassle out of installing a safe seat for your infant. The self-installing car seat uses robotics and a variety of sensors to guide parents through the installation process
The Starling, a clip-on sensor that tracks and analyzes words a baby hears each day with the goal of increasing future intelligence.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensors Slip Into the Brain, Then Dissolve When Their Job Is Done
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/01/18/1853219/sensors-slip-into-the-brain-then-dissolve-when-their-job-is-done
Silicon-based electronic circuits that operate flawlessly in the body for some number of days–soon weeks–and then harmlessly dissolve: they’re what University of Illinois professor John Rogers says is the next frontier of electronics. Today he released news of successful animal tests on such transient electronics designed for use in brain implants, but says they could be used just about anywhere in the body. As these devices move into larger animal and eventually human tests
Sensors Slip into the Brain, Then Dissolve When the Job Is Done
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/biomedical/devices/siliconbased-sensors-slip-into-the-brain-then-dissolve-when-their-jobs-are-done
Today, Rogers released news of his latest breakthrough in silicon biocompatible circuitry: pressure and temperature monitors, intended to be implanted in the brain, that completely dissolve within a few weeks. The news, published as a research letter in the journal Nature, described a demonstration of the devices in rats, using soluble wires to transmit the signals, as well as the demonstration of a wireless version, though the data transmission circuit, at this point, is not completely resorbable.
The technology, the Nature letter reports, can be adapted to sense fluid flow, motion, pH, and other parameters, and could be implanted in the heart, other organs, or in the skin.
The team at the University of Illinois built what are essentially microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) out of a membrane of polylactic-co-glycolic acid, a biodegradable polymer common in medical applications such as dissolvable stitches. This membrane sits on a substrate of nanoporous silicon or a metal foil.
The structure is stable for at least five days, but completely dissolves after three weeks in the body. Rogers expects the neurosurgeons at Washington University in St. Louis who are testing the device in rats to move into more extensive studies with larger animals; human trials could begin in perhaps five years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ingestible Sensor Measures Heart and Breathing Rates from Within Digestive Tract
http://www.techbriefs.tv/video/Ingestible-Sensor-Measures-Hear
Using technology invented at MIT, doctors may one day be able to monitor patients’ vital signs by having them swallow an ingestible electronic device that measures heart rate and breathing rate from within the gastrointestinal tract. This type of sensor could make it easier to assess trauma patients, monitor soldiers in battle, and perform long-term evaluation of patients with chronic illnesses. For the military, this kind of ingestible device could be useful for monitoring soldiers for fatigue, dehydration, tachycardia, or shock. When combined with a temperature sensor, it could also detect hypothermia, hyperthermia, or fever from infections. The new sensor calculates heart and breathing rates from the distinctive sound waves produced by the beating of the heart and the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs. Through characterization of the acoustic wave, recorded from different parts of the GI tract, the MIT researchers found that they could measure both heart rate and respiratory rate with good accuracy. The entire sensor is about the size of a multivitamin pill and consists of a tiny microphone packaged in a silicone capsule, along with electronics that process the sound and wirelessly send radio signals to an external receiver, with a range of about 3 meters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wearable Sensors to Monitor Environmental Triggers for Asthma and More
http://www.techbriefs.tv/video/Wearable-sensors-to-monitor-tri
Researchers from the National Science Foundation-supported Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) for Advanced Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) at North Carolina State University are using nanotechnology to develop small, wearable sensors that monitor a person’s immediate environment, as well as the wearer’s vital signs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
First Amazon Dash-Powered Devices Go Live, Will Automatically Reorder Supplies For You
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/19/first-amazon-dash-powered-devices-hit-the-market-will-automatically-reorder-supplies-for-you/
Your household appliances are getting smarter: think printers that re-order ink when you’re low, or washers that dispense just the right amount of detergent then send you more before you run out. This is the promise of Amazon’s “Dash Replenishment”-powered devices, the first group of which is becoming Dash-enabled today, the company says. That includes select Brother printers, a GE washing machine, and the Gmate SMART blood glucose monitor.
In some cases, customers may have already purchased devices that are compatible with Amazon Dash Replenishment, but couldn’t yet take advantage of the feature. That’s now changing, as those with supported printers, Gmate devices, or GE washers will be able to activate Dash Replenishment using either the company’s website or app, depending on how the manufacturer configured access to the program.
For example, in the case of the Brother connected printers that measure toner or ink levels, customers are instructed to sign up for automatic re-ordering through the Brother website. For those buying these printers new, that sign-up will be part of the printer’s setup instructions.
For example, in the case of the Brother connected printers that measure toner or ink levels, customers are instructed to sign up for automatic re-ordering through the Brother website. For those buying these printers new, that sign-up will be part of the printer’s setup instructions.
However, instead of buying inks from the manufacturer directly, Brother’s new connected printers are placing Amazon orders on your behalf. Brother says it has over 45 models immediately compatible with Amazon’s service.
Dispatcher (1)GE’s new washer works similarly. Not only does it offer its own “smart” technology that knows how much detergent to use per load, and dispenses it for you, it also knows when you need to order more. But that’s not just based on number of loads, but also on what customers themselves enter in the associated mobile app as their preferred pre-order level, Amazon says.
And Gmate’s SMART Blood Glucose Meter, which connects with a smartphone for its blood sugar testing service, will also include a feature that sends you more testing strips and lancets when your supplies run low.
To date, Amazon has announced deals with a number of device makers, including Samsung, Brita, Oster, Obe, Petnet, Clever Pet, Sutro, Thync, and Sealed Air.
Today, Amazon is also announcing an expanded relationship with Whirlpool, which previously committed to integrating Dash Replenishment into its Smart Top Load Washer and Dryer. Now Whirlpool says its Smart Dishwasher will be Dash-powered, too.
And Purell maker GOJO will link up its touch-free hand sanitizer dispensing systems using GOJO SMARTLINK Technology with Amazon Dash as well. Unlike many of the current Dash-powered devices – like smart pet bowls or washers – touch-free dispensing systems are not found in the home. With the ability to also serve the business customer base, Amazon is able to better compete with office supply companies.
Amazon’s Dash Replenishment program doesn’t only involve smart machines that place orders for you – the company also sells cheap “Dash” buttons that are associated with SKUs for common household items like paper towels, diapers or gum (!!). When pressed, the buttons will place an Amazon order for you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 reasons Fitbit is being sued for inaccurate heart-rate monitors
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/sensor-ee-perception/4441200/4-reasons-Fitbit-is-being-sued-for-inaccurate-heart-rate-monitors?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160119&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160119&elq=502b498700014c749cc9bfc5a3e4d1f7&elqCampaignId=26567&elqaid=30374&elqat=1&elqTrackId=6f4bd158176543ab81427dc985bb5050
There are at least four reasons Fitbit was just hit with a class-action lawsuit over the inaccuracy of its $150 Charge HR and $250 Surge heart-rate monitors. Oddly, it has almost nothing to do with engineering, design, or software.
The first two have to do with questionable tort laws, and consumer and lawyer greed (combined with a little anger). Third is tied to a bad marketing mistake by Fitbit, while the fourth is more interesting, having to do with the difficulty of accurate heart-rate (HR) monitoring on a consistent basis.
Consumers don’t like to feel deceived. A company usually gets one chance to make it right: when the customer calls to complain. In this case, Fitbit blew it on both levels.
When the users called to gripe about the HR accuracy, they should have accepted the complaint, also known as “free customer survey response” and offered a refund.
Instead, Fitbit chose to stand behind their product, the engineering of which was completely undermined by an awful marketing mistake: they should never have said “every beat counts.” Once that statement got out, even if Fitbit isn’t claiming to be able to measure every beat, the consumers are led to the assumption that the device can measure every heart beat, and anything short of that is a “bad” product. Ooops!
That simple tagline, combined with poor customer service, opened the door to a class action lawsuit that may well be settled before it ever gets to court, but the damage is done. This is one reason it’s hard to be an engineer. Not because the job is hard, that’s a given, but because really good work can easily get undermined by something as inane as a marketing tagline.
Companies like Polar have been doing accurate HR monitoring for eons using sensors on a chest strap. Serious athletes don’t mind the hassle. Casual exercisers are a different story: it’s awkward and uncomfortable, so wrist-based monitoring is the technique of choice for Fitbit, and for many other consumer HR monitoring OEMs, including Apple for its watch.
Odland made a good point: Fitbit was using photoplethysmography (PPG). This technique measures light absorption through blood and correlates that with the heartbeat as blood volume increases and decreases. Green light (530 nm) is typically used, as that wavelength has been shown to give the most accurate results when compared to an electrocardiogram (ECG), the gold standard.
Odland’s point was that while PPG is good in a steady state, it’s at the end of an arm, which moves up and down as we walk, like a big, honking pendulum. This causes large variations in blood volume due to centrifugal force, so it becomes increasingly difficult to separate out high volume in a blood vessel due to systolic pressure versus centrifugal force acting on the blood.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IoT Library: To Better Living Through Biosensors
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1328702&
New biosensors and bioelectronics systems work with smartphones and wearables. How are you designing with these sensors and where can we find the best information about them?
The future of healthcare may be glimpsed at the edges of wearable and sensor technology.
New biosensors and bioelectronics systems, many designed to work with smartphones, span a range of advanced technologies: optics, surface plasmon resonance, electrochemistry, and near-field communication among them. While not exactly considered “wearables,” smartphones are portable, are always with us, and can serve as an ideal platform for the system integration of health sensors such as test strips, sensor chips, and hand-held detectors, all for biochemical detections purposes.
With high technologies come high expectations: we have a growing, aging population worldwide; higher standards of living in the developing countries, more sophisticated medical consumers.
The health care industry has invested heavily in patient technology research and development over the years, especially in pursuit of easily worn, unobtrusive treatment devices that help patients and care providers monitor physical conditions constantly and over longer periods. That’s a fundamental change; previously health monitoring was only possible as infrequent events.
The intersection of demand and available technology is an explosive mixture; a huge market looms. Based on long-term electronics technology trends, this industry segment is poised to see a significant return on that investment. The technology at the core of it all: Semiconductors, integrated circuits, software, Moore’s Law. We’re seeing a significant portfolio unfolding of advanced designs and application breakthroughs that health care systems in the U.S. and other advanced countries are just beginning to market. Things like miniaturized, wearable health detection and monitoring devices, all using the same, core IC electronic and design technologies common to the Internet of Things.
Where does it all go from here?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless Brain Sensor Monitors Then Dissolves
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328722&
A team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has created implantable electronic sensors that can measure intracranial pressure and temperature before being absorbed into the body.
This has the advantage of negating the need for surgery to remove the devices and the researchers believe the approach can be extended to monitoring activity throughout the body.
The devices are made mainly of polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) and silicone, and they can transmit accurate pressure and temperature readings, as well as other information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gabriel Avner / GeekTime:
Neura raises $11M for its privacy-focused consumer IoT automation platform, announces SDK — Israeli Neura raises $11M to bring privacy back to IoT — Internet of Things personalization innovators Neura announced today that they have closed their Series A funding round, pulling in an impressive $11 million in new financing.
Israeli Neura raises $11M to bring privacy back to IoT
http://www.geektime.com/2016/01/18/israeli-neura-raises-11m-to-bring-privacy-back-to-iot/
This startup has aspirations to forge a new deal and protect user privacy through smarter IoT – as well as offer incentives to do so
Internet of Things personalization innovators Neura announced today that they have closed their Series A funding round, pulling in an impressive $11 million in new financing. New investor AXA Strategic Ventures joined with Pitango Venture Capital to lead the round, with Lenovo Group and Liberty Israel Venture Fund also taking part.
With offices in Herzliya and Sunnyvale, the company was co-founded in 2013 by CEO Gilad Meiri and VP of Product Ori Shaashua.
The crew over at Neura wants to bring IoT into the next generation with smarter integrations that learn from the user’s behavior and provide a new level of services and conveniences. It means connecting with the apps and smart devices we use to improve our interactions with them through machine learning of context.
For example, if the user has smart locks on their door, then Neura can learn that when the phone is plugged in overnight, it should lock the door. This automation takes IoT and makes it smarter.
They are now releasing their SDK to developers who can begin to incorporate it into their own consumer-facing products.
Bringing privacy back into the mix
There is a strong element of truth to the idea that ,“If you’re not paying, then you’re the product.” Neura’s business model is to give their users a smart solution for interacting with their IoT space, and selling data gleaned from their actions and preferences to their partners.
While competitors like Google offer a similar model of service for data, this is where the comparison ends. Neura wants to rewrite the contract that says that users have to give their blanket permission to textbook length terms of use agreements written in legalese if they want to enjoy modern technology.
Instead, they look to present users with a choice of exactly which data they are willing to share and for what purpose in exchange for incentives.
Transparency and trust are the key to their product’s success.
“In exchange for this slice of information, I will deliver tangible value.”
In a market where user data has become common currency, Meiri says that their commitment to maintaining their standards of respect for their users has cost them along the way. He tells Geektime that, “We have lost and will lose deals that will not allow us to provide this level of process to the user.”
“Out of our respect for the users, we want to enable the users to understand what and why they’re being asked to give information, and then enable them to manage it, pulling their permission layer if they choose to.”
Thoughts and concerns
Neura’s vision of providing great service to their users while putting them in control of their own data represents an important clash in the tech world that should have come a long time ago.
In conversations with Meiri, it is clear that they have placed a serious emphasis on security, which has often been found lacking in the IoT space. The other companies can only access the data within Neura’s secure ecosystem, helping to ensure user privacy.
My only concern at this point is that they face an uphill battle to convince the public of the necessity to negotiate a new deal with the corporate data miners.
As a user of Google, Facebook, and a number of other services, I have understood that I am opening my data for them to use and sell in exchange for access to their products and networks. This arrangement is far from ideal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Security for Gateways and Edge Devices
https://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/events/iot-security-for-gateways-and-edge-devices?contactid=1&PC=L&c=2016_01_20_esd_webinar_secure_gateway_2of2
Providing complete IoT security not only requires that the communication from the gatewayto the cloud is secure, but requires that the gateway can participate in the secure communication and management of connected edge node devices, which themselves must be secured.
Topics covered include secure boot and firmware anti-tamper, authentication and authorization strategies, certificate and key management, intrusion detection and prevention using an embedded firewall, encrypting data in transit, how to leverage system partitioning for enhanced security and the importance of event recording, system auditing and reporting, and device policy management tools and procedures to meet stringent security requirements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Metaverse Lab
https://hackaday.io/project/5077-metaverse-lab
Seamlessly pull content from various sensors into a decentralized multiuser 3D internet via JanusVR and create cool social VR experiences.
various experiments in infrastructure, media, neural networks, and inspired art within virtual reality.
AVALON: Anonymous Virtual/Augmented Local Networks
AVALON is inspired by PirateBox to run your own private Virtual/Augmented reality world. The clients connect using JanusVR, a collaborative 3D web browser with support for devices such as Oculus Rift and Leap motion. JanusVR allows a spatial walk through the internet, inspired by the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson who detailed a metaverse. The analogy is that webpages are rooms, and links connect rooms via portals (doorways which seamlessly connect rooms). It’s social — multiple people can navigate virtual spaces together, communicating via voice or text, sharing portals to discover new areas as a group.
PirateBox has been making good progress with wireless mesh networking with successes in connecting small arrays of PirateBoxes using the BATMAN protocol.
https://piratebox.cc/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pro Trinket USB Keyboard by Stefan Lochbrunner
https://hackaday.io/project/8252-me-building-projects-from-hackadayio/log/27275-pro-trinket-usb-keyboard-by-stefan-lochbrunner
When [Stefan] asked for one of my #Ignore this ESP8266 board ‘s, he send me one of his #Breadboard Widgets and I also asked for one of his Pro Trinket boards, since I had one or two trinkets in my drawer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sending sensor data to a web server
http://arduinotronics.blogspot.fi/2015/12/sending-sensor-data-to-web-server.html
Build your own IOT service! Collect sensor data and send it to a web/database server.
Today’s project uses an Arduino equipped with a Ethernet shield, and a DHT-11 temperature / humidity sensor.
The Arduino reads the DHT-11, and submits the data to a php script on a hosted web server. That php page inserts the data into a mySQL database, and another php page creates a web page displaying the data
See the data live at http://green-trust.org/sandbox/templog/
Every 5 minutes the Arduino submits a new data packet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Restful IO
A quick and easy way of analog digital io via restful web services & usb
https://hackaday.io/project/9210-restful-io
ways to interface my software as quick and flexible as possible with hardware projects.
Rest IO is a USB device driven by a lightweight Jetty application server running on USB host pc, which allows 8 general purpose IO ports to be controlled over restful web services. Server also hosts a fancy Angular based web client which provides a convenient monitoring and control panel.
You can get the finished device from https://www.tindie.com/products/gorky/restio-model-o/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Web Connected Breathalyser with Phone Display
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/20/web-connected-breathalyser-with-phone-display/
[spillsman] is working on a IoT startup and wanted to work and play while he tested their hardware. His company, WifiThing, is bundling the Texas Instruments toolchain and mesh networking with a sort of plug-and-play web interface. The board uses a MSP430 and two other TI Networking chips to make setting up, logging data, and controlling outputs simpler.
Though, there are some projects where you would like a simple way to log data from multiple sensors, if this can do that easily (and more importantly, cheaply) it might be very cool. We are interested to see if the open source software is easy to integrate without buying their hardware. Either way, after setting up a simple circuit to heat the coil in the breathalyzer, and translate the data into a signal usable for the chip, [spillsman] was able to record alcohol levels and even keep a, perhaps unwise to record, high-score from his phone.
Web connected breathalyser with phone display!
http://imgur.com/gallery/GpBNW
Using readily avaliable components a panStamp NRG2 with custom firmware and the WiFithing device, alcohol breath measurements are sent up to a web app and shown on a gauge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things security is so bad, there’s a search engine for sleeping kids
Shodan search engine is only the latest reminder of why we need to fix IoT security.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/how-to-search-the-internet-of-things-for-photos-of-sleeping-babies/?utm_source=digg
Shodan, a search engine for the Internet of Things (IoT), recently launched a new section that lets users easily browse vulnerable webcams.
The feed includes images of marijuana plantations, back rooms of banks, children, kitchens, living rooms, garages, front gardens, back gardens, ski slopes, swimming pools, colleges and schools, laboratories, and cash register cameras in retail stores, according to Dan Tentler, a security researcher who has spent several years investigating webcam security.
“It’s all over the place,” he told Ars Technica UK. “Practically everything you can think of.”
We did a quick search and turned up some alarming results:
The cameras are vulnerable because they use the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP, port 554) to share video but have no password authentication in place. The image feed is available to paid Shodan members at images.shodan.io. Free Shodan accounts can also search using the filter port:554 has_screenshot:true.
Shodan crawls the Internet at random looking for IP addresses with open ports. If an open port lacks authentication and streams a video feed, the new script takes a snap and moves on.
While the privacy implications here are obvious, Shodan’s new image feed also highlights the pathetic state of IoT security, and raises questions about what we are going to do to fix the problem.
Of course insecure webcams are not exactly a new thing. The last several years have seen report after report after report hammer home the point. In 2013, the FTC sanctioned webcam manufacturer TRENDnet for exposing “the private lives of hundreds of consumers to public viewing on the Internet.”
So why are things getting worse and not better?
The curse of the minimum viable product
Tentler told Ars that webcam manufacturers are in a race to bottom. Consumers do not perceive value in security and privacy. As a rule, many have not shown a willingness to pay for such things. As a result, webcam manufacturers slash costs to maximize their profit, often on narrow margins. Many webcams now sell for as little as £15 or $20.
“The consumers are saying ‘we’re not supposed to know anything about this stuff [cybersecurity],” he said. “The vendors don’t want to lift a finger to help users because it costs them money.”
If consumers were making an informed decision and that informed decision affected no one but themselves, perhaps we could let the matter rest. But neither of those conditions are true. Most consumers fail to appreciate the consequences of purchasing insecure IoT devices. Worse, such a quantity of insecure devices makes the Internet less secure for everyone. What botnet will use vulnerable webcams to launch DDoS attacks? What malware will use insecure webcams to infect smart homes?
“The bigger picture here is not just personal privacy, but the security of IoT devices,” security researcher Scott Erven told Ars Technica UK. “As we expand that connectivity, when we get into systems that affect public safety and human life—medical devices, the automotive space, critical infrastructure—the consequences of failure are higher than something as shocking as a Shodan webcam peering into the baby’s crib.”
Admiring the problem is easy. Finding solutions is harder. For his part, Tentler is sceptical that raising consumer awareness will be enough to solve the problem. Despite tons of press harping on about the privacy implications of webcams, it’s pretty clear, according to Tentler, that just telling people to care more about security isn’t going to make a difference.
Instead, he argues it’s time to start arm-twisting vendors to release more secure products.
FTC to the rescue?
The FTC takes action against companies engaged in deceptive or unfair business practices, she explained. That includes IoT manufacturers who fail to take reasonable measures to secure their devices.
“The message from our enforcement actions is that companies can’t rush to get their products to market at the expense of security,” she said. “If you don’t have reasonable security then that could be a violation of the FTC Act.”
This is all sensible, top-notch security advice. The FTC even followed up with an official guidance document in June and a series of workshops for businesses on improving their security posture.
Erven told us that these new guidance documents are a warning to businesses to improve—or else. “The thing that really does come next after guidance is regulation, if they don’t pick up their game and implement [the official security guidance].”
Start with Security: A Guide for Business
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/start-security-guide-business
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony acquires Israeli chip company Altair Semiconductor’s US $ 212 million, an increase of approximately EUR 195 million in the price. The electronics and entertainment giant aims to strengthen its position in the industrial services market.
Altair develop modern chip technology and software 4g lte around the standard. Sony hopes to be able to connect them to their respective technologies such as GNSS navigation system and image recognition.
The result could be a more intelligent, environment observing and recognizing devices.
LTE is considered as one of the most relevant industrial standards for the wireless Internet.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/sony-osti-siruyhtion-tahtaa-alykkaampiin-laitteisiin-6247887
Tomi Engdahl says:
The death of the light switch
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/led-zone/4441234/The-death-of-the-light-switch?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160125&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160125&elq=6ffce467ad80433180d65d235df5ea1d&elqCampaignId=26642&elqaid=30474&elqat=1&elqTrackId=853d41d7bc8947fb832dfe6b1d38a116
Throughout history there have been a few specific inventions that ultimately changed our daily routines. Obviously, in the last decade, the smartphone was one of the biggest game changers. Think back to just ten years ago; who would have thought we needed one?
Our lives are greatly impacted by technology as it enables us to do things faster and easier than ever before. Not only have certain things become more convenient and sophisticated, but we all consciously seek to improve our quality of life and well being. Would you ever imagine a light switch could be a game changer for you too? Think about how many minutes you spend each day looking for the light switches for your 20 or so light fixtures in an apartment or 50 or so in a house. Is this big enough of a problem for you to even worry about?
We all know we need lighting; it’s as basic as it gets. We need it to perform any task in environments that are void of sunlight or if we want to feel safe. We also like to create comfortable and cozy spaces to spend time in.
The more light fixtures and dimming possibilities we have in an environment, the more complicated it gets with additional settings to choose from that need to be composed and coordinated. Traditional wired lighting control systems are price-prohibitive, complicated, and inflexible, and require expert knowledge to set everything up. The advantage with a lighting control system is that your light switch becomes a multi-tasker: it combines countless light fixtures into just one button, which can create lighting scene moods such as “relax,” “late night,” “movie time,” or “work”
It eliminates the need to get up from the couch and manually adjust any one light out of the five fixtures an average room has. This new mobile control system now gives you simple one-button choices of well-tuned, composed “lightmospheres” for all the lights in the room
The exciting part is when lighting gets “smart,” therefore rendering the light switch irrelevant. When we incorporate lighting intelligence inside lighting technology, the benefits of lighting go way beyond just enhancing the feel of a room. Certain light settings and lights will affect your emotions, biology, and hormones such as melatonin.
Imagine a world where lighting automatically adapts to your moods and adjusts according to your activity. This is when lighting becomes exciting and smart. This is when you don’t need to look for the light switch as your presence is automatically detected in the space and lights turn on.
The user cases might be as simple as turning on the lights when you are coming home in the dark carrying heavy grocery bags so you don’t need to drop your bags to turn on that switch. It might also be as sophisticated as when you are coming from a redeye flight across multiple time zones and the lighting automatically calculates the light shift settings to help you with jet lag when you enter your hotel room.
There are countless user cases that we haven’t even thought of yet, but will be possible through the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled lighting technology and the use of LEDs. Static lighting will become dynamic and constantly evolving, changing and responding to its environment. Lighting will become fluent and organic rather than being a sharp contrast that switches on and off for one light at a time
LumiFi, a smart lighting control company, has already filed extensive patents around learning patterns and creating algorithms to enable dynamic user cases, similar to the NEST learning thermostat.
Open standards drive smart lighting and the Enterprise IoT
http://www.edn.com/design/led/4440361/Open-standards-drive-smart-lighting-and-the-Enterprise-IoT
Tomi Engdahl says:
VTT has developed IoT-based sensor solution in order to adjust the temperature of the premises on the basis of people’s Chill. The purpose of the solution is to get rid of offices where one sweats and a second freezing.
VTT has developed a unique solution for IoT will automatically adjust the temperature to the apartments as the ideal mode based on their Chill. The solution is particularly suitable for offices, hospitals, hotels and retirement homes that require individual circumstances.
VTT Chief Scientist Pekka Tuomaala of the western countries people spend a day more than 90 percent of the time indoors. Thermal comfort is also affected by a significant work effort.
- If the internal temperature of the property provides 1-3 degrees, higher labor productivity per cent from April to July. And if the inner conditions are good, the value of the property and the recent market studies, utilization can rise to 10 per cent, Tuomaala claims.
VTT Technical Research Centre used the Internet of Things, based on the IoT ruling printed and conventional sensors whose data can be transferred to the printed conductors of structures over long distances communication unit, which in turn transmits the data wirelessly to the cloud. The cloud service developed by VTT, the composition of the human body, clothing and activity level based on thermal model (HTM, Human Thermal Model), calculates the optimal settings building automation system. The thermal model required, individually assigned identification information is fed to a predetermined system.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3892:enta-jos-toimistossa-ei-palelisi-eika-hikoilisi&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia demonstrated the new LTE-M technology
Internet of Thing equipment to get to the network so that they are burdened as little as possible existing connections. Nokia is now testing these LTE-M connections to the Korean KT’s commercial network.
M-LTE technology also known eMTC (enhanced Type Machine Communications). Its advantage is that the link uses only 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz LTE carrier channel. The rest of the channel in the normal data traffic. LTE M-link data can be transferred to up to one megabit per second. This is more than enough for the majority of potential IoT applications.
Network used commercial Flexi Multi Radio Base Station 10 – only software update was needed.
The terminals are considerably simpler than conventional LTE devices.
eMTC technology is part of the 3GPP Release 13 specification (that is to be called LTE-Advanced Pro).
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3890:nokia-demosi-uutta-lte-m-tekniikkaa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
2015 Industrial Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Information Integration Study
http://www.controleng.com/media-library/research/2015-iiot-industry-40-information-integration-study.html
IIoT, Industry 4.0
Familiarity: Six in 10 respondents are “very” or “somewhat” familiar with the IIoT framework, while only 33% are familiar with the Industry 4.0 platform.
Future funding: On average, respondents expect funding levels at their facilities to increase over the next year by 32% as a direct result of IIoT and Industry 4.0 discussions.
Product areas: The top three product areas expected to improve as a result of IIoT and Industry 4.0 discussions are human-machine interface hardware, operator interface, control panels, alarms, annunciators, etc. (45% IIoT, 35% Industry 4.0); computers, industrial PCs, PC-based control (44%, 33%); and programmable logic controllers, programmable action controllers (40%, 37%).
IIoT vs. Industry 4.0: Forty percent of respondents’ facilities are currently using elements of both IIoT and Industry 4.0, while 20% say IIoT better fits their situation, and 16% say the same of Industry 4.0.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Custom Siri Automation with HomeKit and ESP8266
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/17/custom-siri-automation-with-homekit-and-esp8266/
Knowing where to start when adding a device to your home automation is always a tough thing. Most likely, you are already working on the device end of things (whatever you’re trying to automate) so it would be nice if the user end is already figured out. This is one such case. [Aditya Tannu] is using Siri to control ESP8266 connected devices by leveraging the functionality of Apple’s HomeKit protocols.
HomeKit is a framework from Apple that uses Siri as the voice activation on the user end of the system. Just like Amazon’s voice-control automation, this is ripe for exploration. [Aditya] is building upon the HAP-NodeJS package which implements a HomeKit Accessory Server using anything that will run Node.
Once the server is up and running (in this case, on a raspberry Pi) each connected device simply needs to communicate via MQTT. The Arduino IDE is used to program an ESP8266, and there are plenty of MQTT sketches out there that may be used for this purpose.
ESP8266 based HomeKit accessories
http://adityatannu.com/blog/post/2015/12/13/ESP8266-based-HomeKit-accessories.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Well Watcher
https://hackaday.io/project/4724-well-watcher
An Arduino and Raspberry Pi system to monitor the water level in my residential tanks and pump fill times and system water leak detection.
Living on stored well water, I’m always watching the level to be sure there is no leak in the system. Some time ago a toilet stuck open and cost me hundreds of gallons of water over night. So I’m putting my water supply system on the Internet Of Things!
I’m developing a remote Arduino driven sensor that will measure water height in the tank with Ultrasonics and use a current sensor to determine when the well pump is on and pumping water into that tank. From this I will be able to determine water usage and well pump on-time, and associated electricity costs. This remote Arduino will communicate to another Arduino, using RFM69 transceivers, that is hosted by a Ubuntu notebook running Openhab/Habmin, here in my house. The distance is approximately 300 feet or so.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Enable IoT ASIC Design Using Platforms
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4441162/Enable-IoT-ASIC-Design-Using-Platforms?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20160121&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20160121&elq=e6bca7be6f3943b4a58f51b75bad6169&elqCampaignId=26617&elqaid=30437&elqat=1&elqTrackId=742998a8c8834235a6c90646c91dee76
The Internet of Things (IoT) hype is now getting real. This, in turn, is creating the opportunity to move from off-the-shelf chip designs to custom silicon. The key to creating cost-effective, custom silicon for the IoT will be the platform approach.
It is fair to say that IoT is now living up to the hype. There has been a significant uptick in activity over the past year with the IoT ecosystem, the end customers, the hardware and software vendors, the system integrators and the startup community. Yes, IoT implementations are definitely happening, although not at the same rate as first expected, and certainly not the 50 billion devices or a trillion sensors by 2020. Nevertheless, it is an encouraging sign for ASIC design companies as they become an important and differentiating cog of the IoT supply chain.
Historically the industry has been churning out custom silicon for the cloud side of IoT for years, specifically in the networking, telecommunication, storage and computing arenas. However, devices on the edge of the IoT network have, so far, been designed using stock components rather than custom silicon. Using a platform approach to custom silicon design can substantially enhance functionality and offer greater design flexibility.
An IoT edge device typically performs three functions: sensing/actuating, processing and communication. Depending on various factors, like cost, schedule and application, a custom silicon implementation in these IoT edge devices could be a low-end/low-cost, mid-level or highly integrated solution.
At the start of the IoT era, most designers were satisfied using standard ICs/ASSPs to make edge products. Custom silicon for these devices did not cut it, either because of the NRE cost (although unit price can be way cheaper) or the product schedule would kill an ASIC plan.
Recently, however, designers across vertical markets like healthcare, industrial and smart utilities, want custom silicon to differentiate their products and future-proof them as much as possible. In many cases, these designers are working on their second- or third-generation product lines and they have hit sufficient volumes to justify the NRE investment required for ASICs. In other cases, customers feel that ASSPs don’t offer the differentiation they desire, or they have an IP, or secret sauce, that needs to go in hardware form.
Done right, platforms can speed custom design while retaining the ability to differentiate. An IoT edge device, based on an ASIC platform, should cater to the following goals:
Use FPGA setup to provide:
A ready-to-use development setup to meet the needs of both hardware and software developers.
A vehicle to demonstrate a proof of concept including, in some cases, a gateway and cloud back-end.
A scalable evaluation setup for trying out different HW-SW partitioning or a custom HW/SW IP.
Provide an ASIC environment that allows power benchmarking and evaluation of different power management schemes.
Creating IoT ASIC platforms requires thinking like a system company, or even like a startup, and requires the consideration of end use-cases in the various IoT vertical markets.
Creation of IoT ASIC platforms for the industrial use case, for example, requires a two-phase approach. The first phase is to create an end-to-end IoT setup with gateway and cloud back-end, using standard ICs/ASSPs to design the edge device hardware. This approach enables creating demo scenarios quickly, putting hardware and software pieces at the edge, gateway, and cloud together
The second phase calls for replacing the ASSP-based edge device hardware with FPGA-based platforms, creating reference SoC designs, along with complete software stacks and peripheral devices, to address different use-case scenarios. The figure below shows an FPGA platform for use in developing reference designs.
In parallel, to address the low power requirement, the platform needs an ASIC RTL design database (from the same SoC specification used for an FPGA platform). The idea is to create a power benchmarking setup to evaluate different power management schemes, such as power domains, always-on subsystem, custom ultra-low power memory, cells and more.
Implementing reference designs on the FPGA platform requires an ecosystem around hardware IP vendors, including partnerships, such as the one shown below. The software side includes leveraging from the open-source community.
Such platforms will help IoT edge device design teams to quickly create differentiated designs targeting a custom silicon implementation, while fostering knowledge re-use in future designs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Build bluetooth prototype without soldering
Nordic Semiconductor says that its Bluetooth radio chip 16-pin module ready for the development of prototypes is carried out. The module sits directly on the so-called. -protokorttiin bread board without soldering.
Such a bread board has many developers and builders whose popularity. It is sometimes called the “bread board”.
Nordic Semin circuit of OSHChip module can be connected directly to the prototype card pin-holes.
OSH refers to an open iron (Open Source Hardware). OSHChip module comes from the American company of the same name, which is specialized builders whose components.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3861:rakenna-bluetooth-proto-ilman-juottamista&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Research Analysys Mason has predicted alaneen year’s most important developments in telecommunications. LTE-Advanced networks of development and popularization of the result in the best mobile data connection speeds in excess of 500 megabits per second.
More data rate is needed, since the household in the Western world download data via the network on average more than a hundred gigabytes per month. Data from the use of equipment is also increasing: this year the cars will be the most important sector of M2M connections, Research predicts.
This year also starts in earnest show of what technology will IoT links de facto standard. Analysys Mason, the race will shrink this year, contrary to the two technologies, the 3GPP-defined NB-IoT and Lora technology will rise to other popular.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3860:4g-vauhti-kiihtyy-parhaimmillaan-500-megabittiin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg Business:
Sony agrees to buy Israel’s Altair Semiconductor, maker of LTE communication chips for IoT, for $212M — Sony to Buy Chipmaker Altair in Internet of Things Push — Sony to pay $212 million, close deal in early February — Semiconductor firm makes chips for ‘Internet of things’
Sony to Buy Chipmaker Altair in Internet of Things Push
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-26/sony-agrees-to-buy-chipmaker-altair-in-internet-of-things-push
Sony Corp. agreed to buy Altair Semiconductor Ltd. for $212 million, acquiring technology to power the next generation of smart appliances as the firm looks for growth beyond chips for smartphone cameras.
Altair, with modem chips for fourth-generation cellular technology, will help the company make component devices featuring both sensing and communication capabilities, Sony said in a statement Tuesday.
Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai is moving the Tokyo-based company away from consumer electronics to focus on growth in image sensors, video games and movies. It agreed to buy Toshiba Corp.’s image sensor operations last year to build up its chip business with growth in its devices unit contributing to the company’s return to profit.
“More and more ‘things’ are expected to be equipped with cellular chipsets, realizing a connected environment in which ‘things’ can reliably and securely access network services that leverage the power of cloud computing,” Sony said in the statement.
“Japanese companies are more active in looking for innovative and disruptive Israeli technology,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nanopower IoT power supply accurately monitors battery discharge
http://www.edn.com/design/power-management/4441220/Nanopower-IoT-power-supply-accurately-monitors-battery-discharge?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160126&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160126&elq=7ddbc7199b6649ef829a8083570d479f&elqCampaignId=26680&elqaid=30513&elqat=1&elqTrackId=8197a0ad97a044ff91fc330d94f397a0
The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the growing number of interconnected devices that monitor everything from heart rates to room temperatures or building occupants. New applications are created every day to measure and report all types of data via wireless local networks which in turn may connect via gateways directly to the Internet. If the pundits are correct, we will soon have the ability to monitor the health and operating status of every appliance in our homes, turn off all the lights, and learn the exact location of our pets, all with a few finger swipes on our smart phones. Ubiquitous wireless monitoring will enable observation and control of our surroundings anytime, anywhere.
On a more utilitarian note, the Internet of Things has also manifested itself in industrial settings in the form of wireless sensors arrayed in vast mesh networks. Such wireless sensor networks are used in factories, industrial sites and on vehicles and machinery around the world to monitor critical parameters and improve safety, reliability and timely maintenance. Regardless of their intended use, such wireless devices all share a common problem: how do they get their power?
Clearly, there are many alternatives to consider. Wireless monitors should be small and unobtrusive, and they should require minimal maintenance. In the IoT world of tomorrow, experts suggest that many of these devices will be self-powered via optimized energy harvesters capable of providing an endless source of power. While such a prospect sounds ideal, and considerable progress has been made to improve the practicality of energy harvesting, solutions today often fall short in terms of size and performance, and there will always be cases where power is needed and no harvestable energy is available. Fortunately, battery technologies exist which are optimized for long lifetime, low average power applications such as those on the IoT spectrum.
IoT applications tend to have similar power and energy requirements. The average power for remote monitors is typically very low, with an occasional need to measure and broadcast data in a bursty fashion. The ideal battery for such applications would therefore favor energy density over power density.
An excellent battery technology for such applications is lithium thionyl chloride (Li-SOCL2).
Realizing the lifetime (capacity) benefits of Li-SOCL2 batteries requires particular care when designing the application circuitry.
lithium thionyl chloride batteries have a very high output impedance. The chemical reaction that enables extremely low self-discharge and long shelf life (passivation formation) has the unwanted effect of limiting the available output current.
Hence, applications requiring momentary high peak currents must employ capacitor storage in parallel with the battery to handle the periodic short-term power bursts, as well as some form of battery current limiting during peak loads in order to maximize available capacity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eight ways manufacturers can use strategic IoT solutions
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/eight-ways-manufacturers-can-use-strategic-iot-solutions/c13ce3a992e22c5ca8338e5001fc72ca
Developments in monitoring power and performance data allow manufacturers to provide better service and preventive maintenance packages. Learn about the eight ways the Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming the way medical equipment manufacturers do business.
The health care landscape is changing fast, and many medical device organizations are seeking ways to make improvements amidst the evolution. In an industry where knowing is half the battle, medical equipment manufacturers have a lot to gain by incorporating the Internet of Things (IoT) into their sales, customer service, and product support strategies.
With new technologies and competitive pressures to consider, manufacturers are forced to ask some serious questions about the future of their business: How will IoT shape how manufacturers engage with equipment after-market? How will increasing customer demands affect how medical equipment manufacturers produce and service new devices?
How medical device manufacturers benefit from IoT
The IoT is producing volumes of machine data that businesses have never had access to before. For manufacturers, all of this additional equipment information opens a range of sales, consulting, service, and development possibilities.
1. Increase first-time fix rates and grow service margins
2. Improve customers’ operational efficiency
3. Reduce equipment costs by leveraging predictive maintenance
4. Connect devices and optimize patient outcomes with big data
5. Provide additional insight and advice for equipment end users
6. Sell a system of devices and services rather than individually
7. Ensure machines are used equally
8. Inform (and improve) the production of new devices
Conclusion
Smart, connected equipment and new product capabilities introduce tremendous advantages for medical device manufacturers incorporating a strategic IoT plan into their service solution. Not only do they experience reduced costs to maintain and support medical equipment, they’re also able to increase equipment uptime and offer customers high levels of product support.
The health care industry is headed toward a more transparent, connected environment. Both patients and health care providers stand to gain from continuous access to increasingly connected devices, and they’ll be willing to pay for it. By keeping equipment functioning and providing the data that allows end users to monitor things like patient health, manufacturers stand to see huge benefits if they’re ready to adapt to the changing business environment and new technologies to help them succeed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building the machine health matrix: baselining and trending data
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/building-the-machine-health-matrix-baselining-and-trending-data/66071c5a8f759b56ec7f1cf020657e3e.html
Using applications of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), plant managers can collect and analyze equipment life-cycle data to weed out flaws and failures.
Out of necessity, many plants run a patchwork of strategies to maintain systems, relying on run-to-fail strategies or scheduled preventive calibration along with periodic troubleshooting of glitch-prone components.
Short of refitting the whole plant with new devices, there is an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) strategy suitable for nearly any plant: bootstrapping a condition-based program to identify anomalies.
This kind of strategy employs wirelessly connected hand-held test instruments connected to smartphones and to the cloud. Managers, engineers, and technicians can then employ software to organize the data into a machine health matrix that, along with associated analytical tools, aids in preventive and predictive maintenance. This kind of condition-based program can also aid troubleshooting and root cause determination.
How to create a baseline with connected test instruments
A team is assigned to create and catalog test points of each individual piece of equipment in web-based software—painted targets on motors and near belts where infrared images are taken, voltage inputs and outputs on the PLC, motor couplings, and power to the compressor. Those test points are associated with their respective equipment in the software.
Technicians are then equipped with test instruments-vibration meters, infrared cameras, voltage or current modules, handheld oscilloscopes-even power quality analyzers-as well as software that can organize, store, and correlate data around multiple test points and multiple pieces of equipment.
Four tips to capture data in one place
Each test point is associated with equipment for identification online, and all data from individual equipment is stored in cloud-based, secure data servers.
At a specified time, the technician takes the same measurements at the same point on the PLC and the other connected equipment. For the best results to create comparisons, the measurements are made under consistent, repeatable, operating conditions-ideally at the same time of day.
When there is a problem on the line, record measurements not only from the device under test, but also other machinery that might be impacting that device.
In the software, use analytical tools to compare the measurements and asset performance over time and use that information to make more informed predictive decisions.
Comparison and analysis
Check status changes and thresholds set that were exceeded and check change in state from baseline.
Compare the measurement trends, identifying any abnormal conditions such as overcurrent or events that correlate to a system stress condition.
Use the software’s ability to compare data from the various technologies side-by-side and correlate it to specific events occurring with the PLC and associated devices.
Answer questions such as:
Were the voltage waveforms on the PLC outputs malformed?
Did infrared inspection test points show temperature spikes?
Did the level of vibration increase on the motor powering the conveyor?
Wireless test tools and cloud-based software
Aggregate all data without the errors prone with manual data collection or the cost of labor associated with collecting and organizing the data.
Gather historic performance data and establish valuable performance baselines.
View all the data on one screen, trying to avoid managing multiple pieces of software.
Correlate multiple data points, such as voltage, current, and thermal images, to allow the spotting of irregularities quickly.
Get multiple data points and trend graphs to compare each piece of equipment, which helps preventive maintenance planning and meets uptime goals.
Access immediate updates on asset status from the field because techs can use their mobile phones to change the status of suspect equipment from normal to at risk.
No matter what shift works on a problem every technician will, with consistency, collect system characteristics and supporting information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Overcoming 5 Challenges with Over-the-Air Updates Using MCUs
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328740&
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=279531&itc=dn_analysis_element&dfpPParams=ind_186,kw_cloud-computing,kw_43,aid_279531&dfpLayout=blog
The ability to update an embedded system using a bootloader is an important skill to master, especially in the IoT age filled with connected systems using microcontrollers.
Challenge #1 – Code Size
Microcontroller-based applications used to be very small, on the order of eight to 16 kilobytes at most. Modern microcontrollers can have upwards of 1,024 kilobytes worth of application code space available to developers. Despite this explosion in capacity and capability, code size poises the first obstacle to embedded programmers looking to update their firmware over-the-air.
Challenge #2 – Bandwidth
In general, when a developer is considering bandwidth in relation to a bootloader, the bandwidth is used to determine the maximum flash time required to update an application. Updating an embedded system over-the-air potentially adds a couple of additional challenges.
The first challenge concerns bootloaders that are required to work over a wireless link that may have a cost associated with transmitting and receiving data. In many cases over-the-air updates would probably be performed over WiFi or Ethernet, but what about mobile devices that use cellular data links?
Challenge #3 – Robustness
One of the bootloader temptations facing many development teams is to use the bootloader solutions that are provided by the chip manufacturer. The problem with chip manufacturer solutions is that they often reside within ROM space and cannot be customized.
Robustness needs to be built into a bootloader solution from the beginning. A bootloader should have capabilities to verify the integrity of the onboard application.
Challenge #4 – Security
Many microcontroller-based bootloaders ignore security, which is a critical challenge facing developers performing over-the-air updates. One of the simplest security measures that a developer can take is to simply lock the flash system.
Developers who are performing over-the-air updates might consider encrypting the application image to prevent anyone from gaining insights into proprietary firmware or even reverse engineering and hacking the system. An over-the-air bootloader should have built-in methods to authenticate the update process.
Challenge #5 – Version Management
The final challenge facing developers of over-the-air bootloaders is version management. Managing the version of firmware that will be distributed to potentially millions of devices is no small task. Odds are, firmware updates won’t be pushed all at once but rather in controlled batches. Even more importantly, chances are that different versions of hardware will exist at some point and potentially even different application sets for different end users. Keeping track and making sure that firmware rollouts go smoothly can be a major challenge.
Conclusion
Bootloaders are usually ignored until the end of the development cycle, yet they play an absolutely critical role in an embedded system
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Shoots for the Stars
$15 million VC propels arrayent
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328748&
The inventor of the connected platform for Internet of Things (IoT) brands such as Whirlpool, Pentair, Maytag, Salus, Osram, Braeburn, Schumacher, Chamberlain, Monster, LiftMaster and more landed $15 million in Series C funding today from ORIX Ventures (Dallas, Texas).
“Arrayent’s Connect Platform enables major consumer brands to transform traditional products into connected devices that make life safer, more convenient and better for users,” Arrayent’s chief executive officer (CEO) Cyril Brignone told EE Times.
Arrayent has certainly sold that message to companies across the globe who have chosen itsplatform to cost effectively, according to Brignone, add Internet connectivity to their products and cultivate a closer relationship with their customers.
“We are a Gartner Cool Vendor for the IoT space,” Brignone said. “And provide connected product capabilities to leading brands across the globe.”
Although $15 million seems to be more money than they need for the job, Arrayent claimed it needed the Series C funding round to expand its existing presence in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Arrayent’s secret sauce is “a rapid time-to-market for trusted brands to launch a product line in 6 months,” Brignone said. “Clouds can use appliance bus ‘language’ to enable us to get you connected quickly. And we already have proven our ability to scale for high volumes when connecting products ranging from LED to thermostats to complex appliances.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technologies, services: Key products that use or connect with mobility, Ethernet, or wireless technologies include programmable logic controllers (PLCs) or programmable automation controllers (PACs, 67%); computers, industrial PCs, or PC-based control (62%); and human-machine interface (HMI) hardware, operator interfaces, or control panels (58%).
Interfacing with technologies: Plant floor and reaching into the enterprise are the most common areas of interface; information technology (IT) rules are most often used for security by a large majority.
Increased use, productivity: Use of mobility, Ethernet, and wireless devices continues to increase, and there remains a strong correlation between spending and productivity in these areas.
Mobile device permissions: Seven in 10 respondents’ facilities have plant networks, and 74% of them allow mobile devices on the networks.
Source: http://www.controleng.com/single-article/six-key-findings-on-mobility-ethernet-wireless/01d90258e9438e4b466ca562314ba335.html
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.
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.
Oriental Motor
Telematics allow manufacturers, dealers, and end users to support each other’s efforts when they have access to the equipment performance and operation information. For example, dealers can use the incoming equipment data to trigger alerts when the equipment isn’t working. With this information, they can sell more accurate and proactive service contracts to end users. End users benefit because they don’t have to worry about their equipment breaking down. Dealers benefit from new service sales revenue. Manufacturers benefit from having more profitable dealers and loyal customers.
Manufacturers access real-time data
Manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to streamline their organization and increase sales. Specifically, they want to see how their equipment is performing in the field, how successful their preventive maintenance programs are, and review general end-user complaints.
Dealers offer consistent service experience
Manufacturers see an opportunity for dealers to capitalize on increasing revenue from service by using telematics to inform the service programs they sell. Access to telematics data also helps dealers meet increasing service demands and quotas from manufacturers. They gain insight into when equipment needs to be serviced and use that information to inform proactive preventive maintenance visits.
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.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Restful IO
A quick and easy way of analog digital io via restful web services & usb
https://hackaday.io/project/9210-restful-io
With a software development background and being a hardware enthusiast, it was always quite time consuming and painful to get some quick interfacing between complex software and relatively simpler hardware. So I started looking up ways to interface my software as quick and flexible as possible with hardware projects.
Rest IO is a USB device driven by a lightweight Jetty application server running on USB host pc, which allows 8 general purpose IO ports to be controlled over restful web services. Server also hosts a fancy Angular based web client which provides a convenient monitoring and control panel.
You can get the finished device from https://www.tindie.com/products/gorky/restio-model-o/
Years of java web application development also took its toll on me so the server side which simply said translates rest service calls to USB hid commands, is a java application using Jetty for jax/rs implementation. I also wanted to try consuming these services and needed a fancy client and put together dashboard with AngularJS. Also used Bootstrap just for fun.
While coding the server, I decided to stick with a good old fashioned test driven development approach as it was hard for me to resist the temptation to start with unit tests for rest service calls. Those JUnit tests later also covered without me noticing integration tests of hardware.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Truly Versatile ESP8266 WiFi Webcam Platform
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/24/truly-versatile-esp8266-wifi-webcam-platform/
[Johan Kanflo] built a sweet little ESP8266-based wireless camera. It’s a beautiful little setup, and that it’s all open and comes with working demo code is gravy on the cake! Or icing on the potatoes. Or something.
[Johan]’s setup pairs an ESP8266-12 module with an Arducam, which looks like essentially an SPI breakout board for the ubiquitous small CMOS image sensors. The board naturally has a power supply and headers for programming the ESP module as well as connectors galore. Flash in some camera code, and you’ve got a custom WiFi webcam. Pretty slick.
Building a low cost wifi camera
http://johan.kanflo.com/building-a-low-cost-wifi-camera/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital Sensors, the Path Forward
https://www.arrow.com/en/research-and-events/articles/te-digital-sensors-the-path-forward?utm_source=eewebcom&utm_medium=email&utm_content=amcr.gi00.392qd4&utm_campaign=amca.sm00.384n12
For years, the sensor products industry has been primarily analog focused. Sensors operated using analog circuits and components, due in part to the analog front ends found in almost all electronic measurement devices. Analog sensors have been fairly straightforward devices, sometimes providing basic analog outputs, and in some cases adding amplification or gain, and signal conditioning before the output is sent to a measurement or control system. Today, these systems are becoming more sophisticated, and as a result, demand additional signal processing to achieve the desired system performance.
In the past, sensor system engineers were reluctant to move to digital products due to the challenges presented by adding digitization to existing analog sensor signal paths. The R&D costs of making these changes were out of reach for many small sensor companies that focused on single product types, applications, and markets. Over the past couple decades, a few digital sensors have entered the market, but the lack of any standard interface or communication protocols made the effort expensive and risky. Needless to say, digital adoption was slow.
Due to the increased availability of low cost electronic components that can process and convert analog signals to digital formats, the migration of analog sensors into the digital world is now underway in earnest. Over the past few years, sensor manufacturers have been starting to integrate sensor elements, A/D conversion, processing capability, memory, power management, and digital communications capability into just a few chips that easily fit into the sensor package. In addition, the proliferation of standard communication protocols like I2C and SPI have made it easy to integrate sensors fitted with these capabilities into electronic monitoring and control systems.
The digitization of sensor products has benefits far beyond the ability to easily communicate with digital control systems. As an example, most digital sensors include a “sleep mode” feature that turns the sensor off when it’s not needed for system functions. By reducing the power required, the battery life improves for remote and mobile systems that rely on energy harvesting or battery power.