The Internet of Things revolution started in 2015 and will continue to be strong in 2016. 2015 was the year everyone talked about the Internet of Things. (So was 2014. And 2013.) But unlike before, it was the year everyone started making plans, laying groundwork, and building the infrastructure. Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. The premise of IoT is that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been called the next Industrial Revolution — it will change the way all businesses, governments, and consumers interact with the physical world. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer the data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
and the Internet. IoT is also called the Internet of Everything. A critical component for the IoT system to be a success will be secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization services.
In the future, everything will be connected. It won’t just be our phones that access the Internet; it will be our light bulbs, our front doors, our microwaves, our comforters, our blenders. You can call it the Internet of Things, The Internet of Everything, Universal Object Interaction, or your pick of buzzwords that begin with Smart. They all hold as inevitable that everything, everything will be connected, to each other and to the Internet. And this is promised to change the world. Remember that the objects themselves do not benefit us, but what services and functions they make it possible to obtain. We will enjoy the outcome, hopefully even better quality products, informative and reliable services, and even new applications.
There will be lots of money spend on IoT in 2016, the exact sum is hard to define, but it is estimated that nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years. IoT is now a very large global business dominated by giants (IBM, Intel, Cisco, Gemalto, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Bosch, GE, AT&T, T-Mobile, Telefonica and many others). I see that because it is still a young and quickly developing market, there will be lots of potential in it for startups in 2016.
There will be a very large number of new IoT devices connected to Internet in the end of 2016. According to Business Insider The Internet of Things Report there was 10 billion devices connected to the internet in 2015 and there will be will be 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devicesw ill comprise 10 billion (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.). Juniper research predicted that by 2020, there will be 38.5 billion connected devices. IDC says it’ll be 20.9 billion. Gartner’s guess? Twenty-five billion. The numbers don’t matter, except that they’re huge. They all agree that most of those gadgets will be industrial Internet of Things. The market for connecting the devices you use all day, every day, is about to be huge.
Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions because they see ways the IoT can improve their bottom line: lowering operating costs, increasing productivity, expand to new markets and develop new product offerings. Sensors, data analytics, automation and wireless communication technologies allow the study of the “self-conscious” machines, which are able to observe their environment and communicate with each other. From predictive maintenance that reduces equipment downtime to workers using mobile devices on the factory floor, manufacturing is undergoing dramatic change. The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling increased automation on the factory floor and throughout the supply chain, 3D printing is changing how we think about making components, and the cloud and big data are enabling new applications that provide an end-to-end view from the factory floor to the retail store.
Governments are focused on increasing productivity, decreasing costs, and improving their citizens’ quality of life. The IoT devices market will connect to climate agreements as in many applicatons IoT can be seen as one tool to help to solve those problems. A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C was agreed at the climate change summit in Paris in December 2015. Sitra fresh market analysis indicates that there is up to an amount of EUR 6 000 billion market potential for smart green solutions by 2050. Smart waste and water systems, materials and packaging, as well as production systems together to form an annual of over EUR 670 billion market. Smart in those contests typically involves use of IoT technologies.
Consumers will lag behind businesses and governments in IoT adoption – still they will purchase a massive number of devices. There will be potential for marketing IoT devices for consumers: Nine out of ten consumers never heard the words IoT or Internet of Things, October 2015! It seems that the newest IoT technology extends homes in 2016 – to those homes where owner has heard of those things. Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous in homes in so many parts of the world that you can now really start tapping into that by having additional devices. The smart phones and the Internet connection can make home appliances, locks and sensors make homes and leisure homes in more practical, safer and more economical. Home adjusts itself for optimal energy consumption and heating, while saving money. During the next few years prices will fall to fit for large sets of users. In some cases only suitable for software is needed, as the necessary sensors and data connections can be found in mobile phones. Our homes are going to get smarter, but it’s going to happen slowly. Right now people mostly buy single products for a single purpose. Our smart homes and connected worlds are going to happen one device, one bulb at a time. The LED industry’s products will become more efficient, reliable, and, one can hope, interoperable in the near future. Companies know they have to get you into their platform with that first device, or risk losing you forever to someone else’s closed ecosystem.
The definitions what would be considered IoT device and what is a traditional computing devices is not entirely clear, and I fear that we will not get a clear definition for that in 2016 that all could agree. It’s important to remember that the IoT is not a monolithic industry, but rather a loosely defined technology architecture that transcends vertical markets to make up an “Internet of everything.”
Too many people – industry leaders, media, analysts, and end users – have confused the concept of
“smart” with “connected”. Most devices – labeled “IoT” or “smart” – are simply connected devices. Just connecting a device to the internet so that it can be monitored and controlled by someone over the web using a smart phone is not smart. Yes, it may be convenient and time saving, but it is not “smart”. Smart means intelligence.
IoT New or Not? YES and NO. There are many cases where whole IoT thing is hyped way out of proportion. For the most part, it’s just the integration of existing technologies. Marketing has driven an amount of mania around IoT, on the positive side getting it on the desks of decision makers, and on the negative generating ever-loftier predictions. Are IoT and M2M same or different? Yes and no depending on case. For sure for very many years to come IoT and M2M will coexist.
Nearly a dozen contenders are trying to fill a need for long distance networks that cut the cost and power consumption of today’s cellular machine-to-machine networks. Whose technology protocols should these manufacturers incorporate into their gear? Should they adopt ZigBee, Apple’s HomeKit, Allseen Alliance/AllJoyn, or Intel’s Open Interconnect Consortium? Other 802.15.4 technologies? There are too many competing choices.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, two pioneers of the Internet of Things are expanding their platforms and partnerships. Crowdfunding sites and hardware accelerators are kicking out startups at a regular clip, typically companies building IoT devices that ride Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Bluetooth Special Interest group is expected to release in2016 support for mesh networks and higher data rates.
Although ZWave and Zigbee helped pioneer the smart home and building space more than a decade ago, but efforts based on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 6LoWPAN are poised to surpass them. Those pioneering systems are actively used and developed. Zigbee Alliance starts certification for its unified version 3.0 specification in few months (includes profiles for home and building automation, LED lighting, healthcare, retail and smart energy). EnOcean Alliance will bring its library of about 200 application profiles for 900 MHz energy harvesting devices to Zigbee networks. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities. The Z-Wave Security 2 framework will start a beta test in February and Z-Wave aims to strike a collaboration withleading IoT application framework platforms. Zigbee alredy has support Thread.
The race to define, design and deploy new low power wide area networks for the Internet of Things won’t cross a finish line in 2016. But by the end of the year it should start to be clear which LPWA nets are likely to have long legs and the opportunities for brand new entrants will dim significantly. So at the moment it is hard to make design choices. To protect against future technology changes, maybe the device makers should design in wireless connectivity chips and software that will work with a variety of protocols? That’s complicated and expensive. But if I pick only one technology I can easily pick up wrong horse, and it is also an expensive choice.
Within those who want to protect against future technology changes, there could be market for FPGAs in IoT devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) is broken and needs ARM-based field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to fix it, an expert told engineers at UBM’s Designers of Things conference in San Jose. You end up with a piece of hardware that can be fundamentally changed in the field.
There seems to be huge set of potential radio techniques also for Internet of Things even for long distance and low power consumpion. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities in February based on the 802.15.4g standard for metro networks. It will compete with an already crowded field of 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz networks from Sigfox, the LoRa Alliance, Ingenu and others. Weightless-P is an open standard announced by Weightless SIG, which operates at frequencies below one gigahertz. Weightless-P nodes and development cards will be expected to be in the market already during the first quarter of 2016, at the moment Weightless IoT Hardware Virtually Unavailable.
I expect LoRa Technology is expected to be hot in 2016. The LoRaWAN standard enables low-data-rate Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) wireless communication with a range of up to 10 miles, a battery life of 10 years, and the ability to connect millions of wireless sensor nodes to LoRaWAN gateways. LoRa® technology works using a digital spread spectrum modulation and proprietary protocol in the Sub-GHz RF band (433/868/915 MHz). I see LoRa technology interesting because lots of activity around in Finland in several companies (especially Espotel) and I have seen a convincing hands-in demo of the LoRa system in use.
It seems that 3GPP Lost its Way in IoT and there is fragmentation ahead in cellular standards. In theory 3GPP should be the default provider of IoT connectivity, but it seems that it has now failed in providing one universal technology. At the moment, there are three major paths being supported by 3GPP for IoT: the machine-type version of LTE (known as LTE-M) and two technologies coming from the Cellular-IoT initiative — NB-IoT and EC-GSM. So here we are with three full standardization efforts in 3GPP for IoT connectivity. It is too much. There will like be a base standard in 2016 for LTE-M.
The promise of billions of connected devices leads everyone to assume that there will be plenty of room for multiple technologies, but this betrays the premise of IoT, that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency. Too many standard will cause challenges for everybody. Customers will not embrace IoT if they have to choose between LTE-M and Sigfox-enabled products that may or may not work in all cases. OEM manufacturers will again bear the cost, managing devices at a regional or possibly national level. Again, we lose efficiency and scale. The cost of wireless connectivity will remain a barrier to entry to IoT.
Today’s Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts, quite propably supplied by different companies. An Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts. One is the end device that gathers data and/or executes control functions on the basis of its communications over the Internet. Another is the gateway or network interface device. Once on the Internet, the IoT system needs a cloud service to interact with. Then, there is the human-machine interface (HMI) that allows users to interact with the system. So far, most of the vendors selling into the IoT development network are offering only one or two of these parts directly. Alternatives to this disjointed design are arising, however. Recently many companies are getting into the end-to-end IoT design support business, although to different degrees.
Voice is becoming more often used the user interface of choice for IoT solutions. Smartphones let you control a lot using only your voice as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung have their solutions for this. For example Amazon, SoundHound and Nuance have created systems that allow to add language commands to own hardware or apps. Voice-activated interface becomes pervasive and persistent for IoT solutions in 2016. Right now, most smart home devices are controlled through smartphones, and it seems like that’s unlikely to change. The newest wearable technology, smart watches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce – it learns from its users, and generate as responses in real time appropriate, “micro-moments” tied to experience.
Monitoring your health is no longer only a small group oriented digital consumer area. Consumers will soon take advantage of the health technology extensively to measure well-being. Intel Funds Doctor in Your Pocket and Samsung’s new processor is meant for building much better fitness trackers. Also, insurance companies have realized the benefits of health technologies and develop new kinds of insurance services based on data from IoT devices.
Samsung’s betting big on the internet of things and wants the TV to sit at the heart of this strategy. Samsung believes that people will want to activate their lights, heating and garage doors all from the comfort of their couch. If smart TVs get a reputation for being easy to hack, then Samsung’s models are hardly likely to be big sellers. After a year in which the weakness of smart TVs were exploited, Samsung goes on the offensive in 2016. Samsung’s new Tizen-based TVs will have GAIA security with pin lock for credit card and other personal info, data encryption, built-in anti-malware system, more.
This year’s CES will focus on how connectivity is proliferating everything from cars to homes, realigning diverse markets – processors and networking continue to enhance drones, wearables and more. Auto makers will demonstrate various connected cars. There will be probably more health-related wearables at CES 2016, most of which will be woven into clothing, mainly focused on fitness. Whether or not the 2016 International CES holds any big surprises remains to be seen. The technology is there. Connected light bulbs, connected tea kettles, connected fridges and fans and coffeemakers and cars—it’s all possible. It’s not perfect, but the parts are only going to continue to get better, smaller, and cheaper.
Connectivity of IoT devices will still have challeges in 2016. While IoT standards organizations like the Open Interconnect Consortium and the AllSeen Alliance are expected to demonstrate their capabilities at CES, the industry is still a ways away from making connectivity simple. In 2016 it will still pretty darn tedious to get all these things connected, and there’s all these standards battles coming on. So there will be many standards in use at the same time. The next unsolved challenge: How the hell are all these things going to work together? Supporting open APIs that connect with various services is good.
Like UPnP and DLNA, AllJoyn could become the best-kept secret in the connected home in 2016 — everyone has it, no one knows about it. AllJoyn is an open-source initiative to connect devices in the Internet of Things. Microsoft added support for AllJoyn to Windows in 2014.
Analysis will become important in 2016 on IoT discussions. There’s too much information out there that’s available free, or very cheaply. We need systems to manage the information so we can make decisions. Welcome to the systems age.
The rise of the Internet of Things and Web services is driving new design principles. The new goal is to delight customers with experiences that evolve in flexible ways that show you understand their needs. “People are expecting rich experiences, fun and social interactions… this generation gets bored easily so you need to understand all the dimensions of how to delight them”
With huge number of devices security issues will become more and more important. In 2016, we’ll need to begin grappling with the security concerns these devices raise. The reality of everything being connected can have unintended consequences, not all of them useful – Welcome to the Internet of stupid (hackable) things.
Security: It was a hot topic for 2015 and if anything it will get hotter in 2016. The reason is clear. By adding connectivity embedded systems not only increase their utility, they vastly increase their vulnerability to subversion with significant consequences. Embedded systems that add connectivity face many challenges, of which the need for security is both vital and misunderstood. But vendors and developers have been getting the message and solutions are appearing in greater numbers, from software libraries to MCUs with a secure root of trust.
Bruce Schneier is predicting that the IoT will be abused in conjunction with DMCA to make our lives worse instead of better. In theory, connected sensors will anticipate your needs, saving you time, money, and energy. Except when the companies that make these connected objects act in a way that runs counter to the consumer’s best interests. The story of a company using copy-protection technology to lock out competitors—isn’t a new one. Plenty of companies set up proprietary standards to ensure that their customers don’t use someone else’s products with theirs. Because companies can enforce anti-competitive behavior this way, there’s a litany of things that just don’t exist, even though they would make life easier for consumers.
Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. Maybe it’ll be 2016, maybe the year after, but the train is coming. It’ll have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and probably eight other things, and you’ll definitely get a push notification when it gets here.
More interesting material links:
1,510 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teardown: Misfit Shine 2 and the art of power management
http://www.edn.com/design/sensors/4441289/Teardown–Misfit-Shine-2-and-the-art-of-power-management?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160127&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160127&elq=d0775e13f06d49f79fb287153ca03348&elqCampaignId=26686&elqaid=30525&elqat=1&elqTrackId=186cc190c424405eb747d57af31d283a
At DesignCon 2016 in Santa Clara, we put the Misfit Shine 2 Fitness + Sleep monitor under the knife, and exposed the latest in low-power technology, processes, and power management techniques.
The Misfit Shine 2 is thinner, stronger, and smarter than, well, the original Shine. As per the maker’s advertisements, it really is beautiful.
A vibration alarm provides status feedback and notifications/alerts, which is useful for phone calls and texts from the paired Apple (iOS 7 or above) or Android (Jelly Bean) phone whenever they’re in a bag or in mute mode. Audio feedback comes from an alarm that’s almost, well, pleasant to hear.
Connectivity to the phone is achieved using a Bluetooth 4.1 radio and motion sensing is accomplished using a three-axis accelerometer and magnetometer working together. Also, by downloading the Misfit Link app you can connect using IFTTT recipes to control your mobile device to play music, take a selfie, or tap the Shine to control one of a plethora of home connect services, called IFTTT “channels,” such as a WeMo switch, Nest thermostat, or even Twitter feeds.
Aside from aesthetics and ease of use, the Shine 2 stands out because the company addressed the common issue of battery life by opting for a coin cell that can last up to six months. This gets around the annoyance of having to recharge all too frequently and hoping it’s done before you leave the house. Having used the first iterations of the Fitbit for a period of time, this was definitely a drawback.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES 2016: It’s all about smartphones
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4441266/CES-2016–It-s-all-about-smartphones?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160127&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160127&elq=d0775e13f06d49f79fb287153ca03348&elqCampaignId=26686&elqaid=30525&elqat=1&elqTrackId=8e93109ffd8041469550d0d60512a061
Smartphones were at the center of many innovations (Congratulations Apple and Android for your vision!) at the Sands/Venetian at CES 2016.
The Sands/Venetian was where it’s at as far as I am concerned regarding innovations in electronics. The Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) was not even close as far as analog and power technology (except for my visit to the NASA booth; I did not expect to see them there!). The LVCC was more of a place to make deals for distributors and reps with the many new consumer-related innovations; after all it is the Consumer Electronics Show.
Here are only a select few of the smartphone innovations I saw:
Smart phone stabilizers for video or still camera photography by DelTron Intelligence Technology Limited, which announced the launch of Vimble.
Marvell introduced its NFC controller, which enables the smallest antennas for mobile.
GreenPeak Technologies’ smart home solutions, including non-intrusive senior monitoring capability via sensors through a hub for smartphone monitoring, were on display. The Family@Home consists of easily installed interoperable sensors, wirelessly connected, that talk to each other and to the Web, and have cloud intelligence and special algorithms to enable this network to recognize, assess, and make decisions regarding what the smart home should be doing. All managed over the Web on a single dashboard app on a smartphone, users can keep an eye on their family members and pets and monitor their home; their most valuable asset.
Semtech and myDevices partnered for a platform open to all hardware manufacturers with LoRa-enabled device
Bosch’s sensors are in 75% of all mobile phones.
The ZigBee Alliance and EnOcean Alliance came together at CES to combine the benefits of energy harvesting wireless with ZigBee 3.0.
There were so many more like smartphones plugging into the smart car and connecting with the smart home using MirrorLink, and smartphones snapping into augmented reality systems to view your smartphone videos in true stereo, with realistic sound location, even when you turn your head.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensor board promotes 96Boards CE
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4441284/Sensor-board-promotes-96Boards-CE?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160127&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160127&elq=d0775e13f06d49f79fb287153ca03348&elqCampaignId=26686&elqaid=30525&elqat=1&elqTrackId=4b80a5b33a5b461cb0b12271d04f2791
Among the first on the market, STMicroelectronics’ B-F446E-96B01A STM32-based mezzanine board meets the 96Boards Consumer Edition (CE) open-platform specification for the ARM ecosystem. The board is outfitted with embedded sensors for movement, pressure, and sound, aiming to simplify the development of low-cost, context-aware smart mobile, embedded, and digital-home devices.
The B-F446E-96B01A plugs directly on top of a 96Boards CE board. It is powered by a 180-MHz STM32F446 microcontroller with an ARM Cortex-M4F core and smart peripherals, along with an onboard MEMS 9-axis accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, pressure sensor, and microphone. Arduino Uno and Seeedstudio Grove connectors allow expansion using boards and modules from either ecosystem. Developers also have access to the same ecosystem as ST’s STM32 Nucleo boards.
Open Platform Specifications and
Reference Software for the ARM ecosystem
For software developers ● For the maker community ● For embedded OEMs
http://www.96boards.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Augmented Reality Becomes Useful, Real
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/27/augmented-reality-becomes-useful-real/
The state of augmented reality is terrible. Despite everyone having handheld, portable computers with high-resolution cameras, no one has yet built ‘Minecraft with digital blocks in real life’, and the most exciting upcoming use for augmented reality is 3D Dungeons and Dragons. There are plenty of interesting things that can be done with augmented reality, the problem is someone needs to figure out what those things are. Lucky for us, the MIT Media Lab knocked it out of the park with the ability to program anything through augmented reality.
The Reality Editor is a simple idea, but one that is extraordinarily interesting. Objects all around you are marked with a design that can be easily read by a smartphone running a computer vision application. In augmented reality, these objects have buttons and dials that can be used to turn on a lamp, open a car’s window, or any other function that can be controlled over the Internet. It’s augmented reality buttons for everything.
This basic idea is simple, but by combining it by another oft-forgotten technology from the 90s, we get something really, really cool. The buttons on each of the objects can be connected together with a sort of graphical programming language. Scan a button, connect the button to a lamp, and you’re able to program the lamp with augmented reality.
The Reality Editor is already available on the Apple app store, and there are a number of examples available for people to start tinkering with this weird yet interesting means of interacting with the world.
http://www.realityeditor.org/
Comments:
The way it can link up actions reminds me of IFTTT but with a control interface based in an augmented reality. I can see that it could make some things easier (if you couldn’t remember what you’d called the items) but does restrict you to only being able to configure the sequences up in person.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ST Exits Set-Top Box Chip Biz, Plans Layoffs
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328795&
LONDON—STMicroelectronics NV has said it will stop developing products for the set-top box and home gateway markets and plans to lay off up to 1,400 workers out of its total headcount of more than 43,000.
In 2016 that workforce “re-alignment” is expected to affect about 1,000 employees of which about 150 are based in France. Going forward ST intends to focus on automotive and industrial applications and the Internet of Things including such areas as smart home and smart city applications.
Although ST has eliminated its digital products group and is exiting STB and home gateway it is continuing with its digital ASICs and imaging business, which have been moved into the new microcontrollers and automotive groups.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IoT Library: For Industrial Man-Machine Interfaces, Keep It Simple
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328781&
One trick for easing the interface between human and machine is to match the complexity of the part you use to the complexity of the job in hand.
The complex connection between man and machine is the domain of modern industrial control, otherwise known as the science of how to communicate with machines—home of the man-machine interface challenge.
Machine communication input devices are ubiquitous: toggle switches, rotary switches, thumbwheels, slider and rotary potentiometers; simple navigation joysticks, and potentiometer-based joysticks. Buzzers, bells, lights and sounders help us monitor machines with our eyes and ears.
Security has also emerged as a top industrial control design theme. It’s a topic that inspired NIST’s Guide to Industrial Control Systems Security, a how-to guide to securing industrial control systems. It covers supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, distributed control systems (DCS), and other control system configurations such as programmable logic controllers (PLC).
The NIST document provides an overview of ICS and typical system topologies, and it identifies typical threats and vulnerabilities to these systems and provides recommended security countermeasures to mitigate the associated risks. It’s all a matter of good design and developing a thorough understanding of all aspects of the man-machine interface
Switches, for example, seem pretty straightforward, but the switch you use for an emergency machine stop must be specially engineered for high reliability.
Guide to Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Security
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Systems,
Distributed Control Systems (DCS),
and Other Control System Configurations such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC)
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/800-82r2/sp800_82_r2_second_draft.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cheap WiFi Devices are Hardware Hacker Gold
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/27/cheap-wifi-devices-are-hardware-hacker-gold/
Cheap consumer WiFi devices are great for at least three reasons. First, they almost all run an embedded Linux distribution. Second, they’re cheap. If you’re going to break a couple devices in the process of breaking into the things, it’s nice to be able to do so without financial fears. And third, they’re often produced on such low margins that security is an expense that the manufacturers just can’t stomach — meaning they’re often trivially easy to get into.
Case in point: [q3k] sent in this hack of a tiny WiFi-enabled SD card reader device that he and his compatriots [emeryth] and [informatic] worked out with the help of some early work by [Benjamin Henrion]. The device in question is USB bus-powered, and sports an SD card reader and an AR9331 WiFi SOC inside. It’s intended to supply wireless SD card support to a cell phone that doesn’t have enough on-board storage.
The hack begins with [Benajmin] finding a telnet prompt on port 11880 and simply logging in as root
From here [q3k] and co. took over and ported OpenWRT to the device and documented where its serial port and GPIOs are broken out on the physical board. But that’s not all.
Nice hack!
Hacking the Zsun WiFi SD Card Reader
https://wiki.hackerspace.pl/projects:zsun-wifi-card-reader
The goal of this project is to learn as much as possible about the Zsun WiFi card reader and run OpenWrt on it to turn it into an awesome wifi device.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AND!XOR DEFCON 24 Badge
Building our own electronic badge. ARM Cortex M3 and Arduino based
https://hackaday.io/project/9064-andxor-defcon-24-badge
We’re building our own electronic badge. Goal is to provide some great hardware and a free tool chain for easy hacking.
Basic features include LEDs, RF, and an OLED screen plus anything else people want to add.
Building a hackable, open badge for use at DEFCON and other conferences. Purpose is to put some really awesome hardware around the necks of a bunch of hackers and see what they come up with. The badges will have blinky lights, an awesome MCU, RF, and lots of IO.
Hardware and software will be published as we finish functional testing components and start prototyping.
As a stretch goal, we want the badge to interact with other badges such as HADGE and the DEFCON 24 badge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Web powered antique wind gauge
https://hackaday.io/project/3451-web-powered-antique-wind-gauge
An antique volt meter paired with a Raspberry Pi to display real time wind data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT devices flexibly together
In order to realize the potential of älytilojen, must make it possible Jussi Kiljander According to the report of the semantic level of interoperability between devices.
In practice, this means that the mediated communication devices information is presented in such a way that the meaning and context information can be interpreted and inferred from other devices even if those devices are not necessarily being designed to handle all the words used in that message. This kind of interoperability allows for a more flexible, expandable and intelligent devices and systems development.
The use of existing technologies by Kiljander is, however, difficult, because they are not as such suitable for simple devices nor the real-time communication between devices.
Kiljander the need for a true semantic interoperability framework, which would consist of the interoperability architecture, compact hundred data distribution protocol and semantic web based on smart space configuring.
The Internet of Things and smart spaces are hoped to provide solutions for future business with, but also to societal many challenges such as the aging of the population and healthcare development.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/01/25/iot-laitteet-joustavammin-yhteen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacking a coffee machine
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/28/hacking-a-coffee-machine/
The folks at Q42 write code, lots of it, and this implies the copious consumption of coffee. In more primitive times, an actual human person would measure how many cups were consumed and update a counter on their website once a day. That had to be fixed, obviously, so they hacked their coffee machine so it publishes the amount of coffee being consumed by itself. Their Jura coffee machine makes good coffee, but it wasn’t hacker friendly at all. No API, no documentation, non-standard serial port and encrypted EEPROM contents. It seems the manufacturer tried every trick to keep the hackers away — challenge accepted.
The folks at Q42 found details of the Jura encryption protocol from the internet, and then hooked up a Raspberry-Pi via serial UART to the Jura.
Particle Photon. The Photon is put on a bread board and stuck with Velcro to the back of the coffee machine, with three wires connected to the serial port on the machine.
Hacking the coffee machine
https://q42.com/blog/post/138082491543/hacking-the-coffee-machine
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacking the Internet of Things: Decoding LoRa
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/31/hacking-the-internet-of-things-decoding-lora/
Getting software-defined radio (SDR) tools into the hands of the community has been great for the development and decoding of previously-cryptic, if not encrypted, radio signals the world over. As soon as there’s a new protocol or modulation method, it’s in everyone’s sights. A lot of people have been working on LoRa, and [bertrik] at RevSpace in The Hague has done some work of his own, and put together an amazing summary of the state of the art.
LoRa is a new(ish) modulation scheme for low-power radios. It’s patented, so there’s some information about it available. But it’s also proprietary, meaning that you need a license to produce a radio that uses the encoding
DecodingLora
https://revspace.nl/DecodingLora
This page is about understanding the LoRa RF modulation format.
LoRa is an abbreviation of Long Range, meaning it is an radio modulation format that gives longer range than straight FSK modulation. This is achieved by a combination of methods: it uses a spread spectrum technique called Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) and it uses forward error coding (in combination with whitening and interleaving).
To transmit or receive LoRa signals, you need to buy hardware that supports this modulation format.
The goal of this project is to collect more detailed information on the LoRa modulation and packet format. A concrete result could be that someone writes software which makes it possible to receive and decode LoRa signals with a cheap software defined radio, like rtlsdr.
Tomi Engdahl says:
London Tries Smart Cities
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/31/london-tries-smart-cities/
What’s a smart city? According to Wikipedia, a smart city uses ICT (information and communication technologies) to enhance quality, performance, and interactivity of urban services while reducing costs and resource consumption. Hackers have been using technology to enhance all sorts of things for years.
London is joining forces with cities across Europe to demonstrate smart city technology, mostly in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The project is in conjunction with the EU Horizon 2020 project, which is still soliciting proposals for funding. It seems like some Hackaday readers–especially in the EU–ought to have some ideas worth funding.
Among the initiatives announced already are:
300 smart parking bays that aim to optimize parking spaces and help drivers find a space quickly and conveniently
Testing shared electric bikes to see if these support a shift from private cars
Electric vehicles tested for local deliveries and car sharing
Using the River Thames as a renewable energy source to provide affordable heat to local homes
Installing solar panels on homes to provide green energy and improve energy efficiency.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A little over a month ago, [Renier] won the Hackaday Prize Best Product competition with the Vinduino, a device that cuts water usage of vinyards (and orchards, I guess) by 25%. Now he’s won the IoT awards for Best DIY Project.
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/31/hackaday-links-january-31-2016/
http://iotawards.postscapes.com/winners/2015-16-iot-award-winners
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IoT Library: For Industrial Man-Machine Interfaces, Keep It Simple
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328781&
One trick for easing the interface between human and machine is to match the complexity of the part you use to the complexity of the job in hand.
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&
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.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Frameworks Dig in for Battle
Sides race at CES to be the de facto leader
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328808&
Application frameworks for the Internet of Things competed for which were running in more systems at the Consumer Electronics Show this year. Analysts ruled it nearly a draw and called for warring camps to come together to avoid prolonged fragmentation.
The frameworks specify interfaces that abstract away details of underlying physical transports, making it easier for developers to write applications and access systems services. Among the more influential alternatives are Google’s Weave protocol for its smart home OS Brillo and Apple’s HomeKit, which allows Siri to control smart home devices along with the Intel-led Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) and the AllSeen Alliance originally created by Qualcomm as AllJoyn.
The winner will be the group that attracts the most support in consumer products, said Moor Insights and Strategy analysts Mike Krell and Patrick Moorhead. But that winner did not emerge at CES, raising fears consumer fragmentation could spill into industrial IoT markets.
“Ultimately, for the industry to grow to a large, mainstream market OIC and [AllSeen] need to either find a way to work together or the market will decide for them which one lives,” the analysts wrote. “The industry is being done a disservice by having duplication of effort for very similar goals,”
“Currently, [AllSeen] seems to have a lead. I would like to predict that both OIC and [AllSeen] will continue down their own paths for a while, start agreeing on sub-issues and then ultimately merge efforts,” Krell and Moorhead wrote. “No one is served by having two different groups with the same charter. Right now, I’m not sure I can see that result.
OIC and AllSeen representatives said consolidation and collaboration are necessary for IoT to take off with both developing bridges to communicate with devices on other frameworks. However both organizations are racing to get devices in market so their frameworks will become de facto standards.
“Our goal is to deliver as much inter-operability as we can in the short term with a path to some consolidation,” said OIC Chair David McCall, a strategy and technology planner for Intel who works on IoT frameworks. “I don’t think you get there by mandating [a standard], but if the OIC framework is adopted widely then it will get to a point where developers would like to start making their own plugins.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Cisco says it agrees to pay $1.4B for Jasper, a platform to connect Internet-of-Things devices
Cisco To Buy Jasper Technologies For $1.4 Billion
http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/03/cisco-buys-jasper-technologies-for-1-4-billion/
Cisco announced today it was buying Jasper Technologies, a company that sells an Internet of Things cloud platform, for $1.4 billion.
With Jasper, Cisco gets a company that understands the burgeoning Internet of Things market. While the IoT term gets bandied about quite a bit, it simply means connected machines talking to one another over the internet. This could be industrial automation equipment on a shop floor, a connected car, a connected wind turbine or even a smart thermostat.
What Jasper is doing is providing a platform to build these connected devices and deliver them to market much faster and with less friction, Jahangir Mohammed, CEO of Jasper said at a press event announcing the purchase today.
As Cisco tries to fight off disruptive forces, one of the industries it’s been concentrating on is Internet of Things, especially with a cloud bent. Jasper gives the company an industrially focused company with a broad international customer catalogue of 3500 customers including Ford, GM, Heineken and Boston Scientific to name but a few.
This is not a fixed market either, Mohammed pointed out. He sess growth in areas such as the connected car industry, industrial automation and security (like connected home and building security) in the coming years.
Cisco is making a big move into software and this move makes sense in the context of the company’s core networking strength, explained R Ray Wang, founder at Constellation Research.
“The battle in IOT is ultimately about the network. Sensors, stacks and platforms will be commoditized in the network. But you need them for the foundation in the network. It’s a very smart and calculated move by Cisco,” Wang told TechCrunch.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vortex 2.0 the Intelligent Data Sharing Platform for the Internet of Things
http://www.opensplice.org/
The VORTEX Platform connects Industries around the Globe
IoT Tech Expo Europe 2016
10 February 2016
London, United Kingdom
PrismTech will be exhibiting the Vortex Intelligent Data Sharing Platform in Booth 8 at IoT Tech Expo Europe 2016. The Internet of Things (IoT) Tech Expo Europe Event will bring together key industries from across Europe for two days of top level content and discussion. Industries include Manufacturing, Transport, Health, Logistics, Government,…
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IoT Library: Sensor Design & Fusion in the Age of Smart
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1328850&
IoT designers need to learn how to integrate entire databases of “perceptual information” from data-rich sensors into future products.
Smart sensors, widely distributed throughout our network of devices, are becoming the eyes and ears of the Internet of Things: Connected devices that measure monitor, transmit, and control vast amounts of vital data, wirelessly, in an always-on mode.
So designers will be happy to know that an A-team of researchers, Grenoble-based authors James L Crowley and Yves Demazeau, recently published an authoritative, forward-looking paper that addresses all of these issues and topics: Principles and Techniques for Sensor Data Fusion.
The paper presents perception “as a process of dynamically maintaining a model of the local external environment,” noting that sensor fusion and the “fusion of perceptual information is at the heart of this process.”
So what, exactly, is sensor fusion?
According to the comprehensive overview article Smarter Sensors Save Space and Power, sensor fusion combines the outputs of multiple sensors in a system to monitor complex or rapid movements accurately for purposes such as gesture controls or body-motion capture for gaming or research purposes.
Depending on the application, sensor fusion may be best performed in the main processor, or an external sensor hub, or in the sensor itself.
Principles and Techniques for Sensor Data Fusion
http://www-prima.imag.fr/Prima/jlc/papers/SigProc-Fusion.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco is buying Internet of Things company Jasper Technologies for $1.4 billion
http://uk.businessinsider.com/cisco-buys-jasper-for-14-billion-2016-2?r=US&IR=T
Jasper makes a cloud-based network service for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
It has raised $205.3 million in venture funds.
New CEO Chuck Robbins has been saying that Cisco’s next big bet will be in IoT (or as Cisco calls it, the Internet of Everything). That’s when everyday objects get sensors and apps and join the Internet from your automobile to your toothbrush. Cisco has predicted that IoT will become a $19 trillion market in the next decade.
Jasper has been doing well in this young IoT network market. It has more than 3,500 enterprises customers, Cisco says.
Its claim to fame is that it allows IoT devices to connect to the internet over cell networks offered by global service providers. Jasper’s customers can then manage the devices through Jasper’s software-as-a-service cloud platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software expands wireless test set for M2M, IoT
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4441315/Software-expands-wireless-test-for-M2M–IoT
nritsu has added support for 802.11p, Bluetooth DLE, and Z-Wave to its measurement software product line for the MT8870A Universal Wireless Test Set, covering a frequency range from 10 MHz to 6 GHz.
The rapid expansion of the IoT/M2M applications market is increasing the need for wireless testing of communications terminals and modules. The majority of these products support both mobile wireless systems, such as LTE and W-CDMA, as well as short-range 802.11a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth in one unit, requiring a fast, all-in-one, test set for measuring multiple wireless systems.
The Universal Wireless Test Set MT8870A has been specifically designed for the high volume manufacturing test of all common cellular and short range wireless technologies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Accsensorizing the world securely and scalably: Q&A with Electric Imp’s Hugo Fiennes
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/sensor-ee-perception/4441307/Accsensorizing-the-world-securely-and-scalably–Q-A-with-Electric-Imp-s-Hugo-Fiennes?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160202&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160202&elq=ad0381294d1549d19ec8a243473ff60d&elqCampaignId=26790&elqaid=30634&elqat=1&elqTrackId=b92bbd5b5e3840788f6d8e8c066d6753
Earlier this week, Electric Imp announced a deal with Pitney Bowes that would see the industrial-strength company place Internet-connected sensors in its stamp-making machinery to alert the company when ink is running low or when issues arise so they can be addressed quickly.
The deal is a huge win and validation for Electric Imp’s approach and security capabilities, as well as being a real-world proving ground for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Before the deal was announced, Hugo Fiennes (right), founder and CEO of Electric Imp, sat down with EDN to discuss his career and the industry.
That last part is key to Electric Imp’s reason for being: Internet connectivity for hundreds or thousands of devices is hard to do and maintain over time, and if it’s not your core mission in life, you may be better off leaving it to the experts. That said, there’s the question of how long companies like Electric Imp, Ayla Networks, Zentri ThingWorx, and others will be around to support you, or of they’ll be bought up and you get left hanging, so it’s a tradeoff and much depends on the company you choose to partner with and your own level of comfort “rolling your own” IoT connectivity solution.
EDN: What did you learn at Apple?
Fiennes: At Apple, I actually brought the hardware team and the embedded software team much closer together. I managed to win back their trust after probably many years of people losing their trust in hardware. We had a great relationship with core OS at Apple. We made really good hardware that they would not have to do any ugly work to support, so I’ve got a bit of background in both [hardware and software].
EDN: Why did you form Electric Imp?
Fiennes: I felt that they [Nest] were missing the point on IoT. They were making some boutique products, which applied for certain areas of the world only, and they didn’t have the right approach really on software. [Many companies] really couldn’t handle the software complexity that is required to make a good connected product. I came up with the idea of Electric Imp, which was to essentially address those problems — and address them really well in a service model.
EDN: In what way were they missing the point?
Fiennes: Well, I mean really they went about stuff in an Apple fashion. They’d fixate on the hardware, and tool all the software to make that hardware work. So they aren’t thinking about the software as a platform independently.
EDN: Why not just go all software then?
Fiennes: Well, some will still want to just hit the hardware directly all the time. Even if it’s harmful for their business. Part of that is because there are a lot of vendors trying to lock everyone in to a hardware platform. Give [developers, aka: you] some free software, and then your software becomes linked with their software over time, and it becomes very hard to leave the platform, especially if they’re all shipping basically the same CPU core.
But yet, if you look at the cost proposition between a couple of different Cortex-M3s, and there’s almost nothing in it. There’s cents in it usually. People get locked into one or the other. There’s no reason you couldn’t have a standard platform.
EDN: So how do you differentiate from other sensor-to-IoT connectivity options?
Fiennes: I think differentiation is all on the cloud side really; the quality of the application. It’s not the sensor. I mean, it’s interesting, in that I designed the Sensirion sensor into the original Nest. That was the only reasonably priced digitally interfaced pre-calibrated temperature/humidity sensor you could buy at the time. Now everyone has it, Silicon Labs has one, STMicro has them, and Sensirion is still making them, and a whole load of new brands that I’ve never heard of before make them now as well. Some are even pin compatible for drop-in replacements. There’s not much differentiation to be had there.
Of course, Nest wasn’t the first connected thermostat by any means. However it’s been the most successful because they really value the application user experience. That’s mostly a software thing, not a hardware thing.
Also, the actual sensor power is not the dominating factor. You could roll it up with the average power consumption of this device. Maybe the sensor’s on for 50 milliseconds every hour. Really if it was twice as efficient, it’s going to be nothing compared to the leakage on the power supply, or the average RF power to transmit one sensor reading or whatever.
DN: So you’re hardware and application agnostic, where do you add value?
Fiennes: The reason we want to separate the application from the OS is because we want to take the burden of security away from our customers. When I say take it away, I mean completely take it away. Our customers do not ever have to think about patching a TLS stack, or a network stack, or any security issues at all. Because the OS and the application are separated, even on a small chip like the XM3, we can update the OS and push our updates underneath our customers’ applications. That is very unusual for the embedded world. Usually an OS vendor provides you with an OS drop. You integrate it, QA it, and then push it back to the customers. With us we push OS update for our customers to all connected devices.
The customers’ job is to deploy new software and devices, and build more devices essentially. We look after the service, the load balancing, security, messaging in and out, and all the keys and key management. We deal with everything that isn’t in the application.
EDN: But you work with IC vendors on hardware security?
Fiennes: Essentially on the hardware side, you can never say anything is unhackable. If you get a scanning electron microscope you can probably read out a public key. I have bought consumer devices with some of our competitors’ platforms, and downloaded the data sheet for it. I can manage to extract that part of the key.
We do asymmetric cryptography, encrypted boot. All of the storage is encrypted no matter what platform it’s on, just to try and get a basic level of security. Then the main thing is security maintenance: If in five years time there’s a problem, we can fix it, and push an update out to every device in the field, and everyone is secure again.
EDN: What wireless interface do you prefer?
Fiennes: We don’t mind, as long as they’re the right cloud connection, which tends to rule out Bluetooth. IPv6 on Bluetooth is not really [there] yet, and it would be very low performance. We don’t particularly do meshing, as we’re direct-to-cloud, so right now it’s Internet over Wi-Fi. There will be cellular coming shortly.
EDN: What about LoRA?
Fiennes: We talk to customers who actually have looked to SigFox [LoRA’s main deployment operator] and run away from it because they want to deploy application updates to devices. There is just not enough bandwidth.
EDN: How many devices are currently connected via Electric Imp?
Fiennes: We have well over half a million to 600,000 devices on our platform, and that will increase very quickly in the near future. We’ve just signed some big contracts [Pitney Bowes].
EDN: How would you suggest that engineers, or startups evaluate Electric Imp versus anybody else out there?
Fiennes: We’ve only talked about half the solution — the device side. The other side is the cloud side. Every other cloud provider, without exception in this case, basically provides an end point, which your device can connect to and exchange data with in some format. They’ll provide some sort of device management, and they’ll provide APIs to access this data.
We provide every single device in the field with its own VM in the cloud, a one-to-one relationship. If I ship a million devices, you will have a million VMs within our cloud. We do massively multi-tenant VM hosting on our server side. What that means is that every customer can write their own integration with whatever they want. They can integrate with whatever they want and they don’t even need to tell us they’re doing it.
Lifecycle management is also important. Once you deploy, the “pointy end” of the thing is how do we commission these in the field securely? How do you apply updates? Is that secure? How do you manufacture it, is that secure? There are many, many aspects.
EDN: Can you give some examples of current deployments?
Fiennes: We have everything from tumbling rock crushers, to talking toys that are actually in stores places, to irrigation systems, to beehive monitors, to pig troughs. We’ve never even spoken to the people, they’ve just done it.
EDN: Can you do a quick lift of the things that you think that the engineers should be looking for from their silicon vendor? You mentioned some of them, like asymmetric boot, what else?
Fiennes: The secure boot is huge, and some level of key management onboard. It’s like right now you have to trust someone in the chain. Be it the silicon vendor or the module vendor. You shouldn’t have to have that.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spice up your Pi for IoT development
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4441309/Spice-up-your-Pi-for-IoT-development?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160201&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160201&elq=48199414c3614221b155e0b546e6d14f&elqCampaignId=26773&elqaid=30614&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0fb40011cdc84f56b8dac86f97661c35
Developers seeking to enter the IoT market quickly discover that creating a nifty device is not enough. No matter how clever, the device is only one part of a larger system that includes such things as gateways, servers, analytics, web services, and even mobile apps. Developers without the resources to provide all these elements must find them elsewhere, which can make for integration challenges. Something new has entered the market, though, which will solve those challenges for you, especially if your device design is based on the Raspberry Pi.
Platforms that IoT developers can leverage to support their device designs are not new. Companies like ThingWorx, Google, and Apple along with consortia like the Allseen Alliance are offering platforms that they hope will attract users and build an ecosystem of interoperable devices around their platform as a common standard. But nearly all of the platforms available require the IoT device be custom designed and programmed to operate with that platform.
A company called myDevices offers an alternative. Its platform, released in October, is device-agnostic, supporting a wide variety of wireless technologies as well as standard data communications protocols such as CoAP, MQTT, and the REST API. The platform will adapt to the device rather than forcing the device to conform to it. It will also let devices using the platform talk with one another, serving as a translator.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Analog Design Center > How To Article
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and its impact on the design of automation systems
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4439432/Industrial-Internet-of-Things–IIoT–and-its-impact-on-the-design-of-automation-systems
The Internet of Things, or the IoT, is a current buzzword gaining traction in a number of industries. A variation, the Industrial IoT (IIoT), is quite the rage within automation companies seeking to add a high-margin software component to their traditional businesses. Coming from a semiconductor chip company whose devices enable much of the automation equipment out there, we at Maxim Integrated have a unique perspective on how automation system architectures are evolving to support the IIoT.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things enters the food stores
In the future, start a physical grocery store comes with a digital experience.
Avanade, Accenture, Microsoft and Intel have developed a concept for the future of the supermarket. The shop is equipped bulletin, the motion sensors presentation tables, responsive to gestures älyhyllyjä customers and information products narrative digital displays.
BY shelves of screens can be presented to each consumer the right personalized promotions. In addition, he or she may just advertise his products suitable for their diet. Guests can also be used to obtain information on their own phones.
Improving the shopping experience for mobile devices and web services by exploiting attracts Seamless Retail Accenture survey,
The first new concept is realized in Italy’s largest retail chain Coop stores in Italy.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/esineiden-internet-saapuu-ruokakauppoihin-6250470
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is How You Run a Hackathon: Tech Valley Center of Gravity
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/04/this-is-how-you-run-a-hackathon-tech-valley-center-of-gravity/
What’s not to love about a hackathon? The junk food and caffeine that fuel the weekend; the highs that come with success and the lows that come when the blue smoke is released; the desperate search for inspiration as the clock ticks away; nerve-wracking pitches to the judges, hoping against hope that everything works in the demo. Hackathons are the contact sport of the hacker world, bringing in top competitors and eager upstarts, and when done well you just might attract interested “civilians” and other newbies that will catch the hacking bug from what they witness.
Such was the scene at the Tech Valley Center of Gravity in Troy, NY over the last weekend of January. New for 2016, the CoG is hosting a series of four hardware hackathons this year, each with a different theme. This event’s theme was “Internet of Things”, and the call went out to any and all to come compete for bragging rights and over $1,000 in prizes. Incentives to compete included some big name corporate sponsors, like AT&T, and judging and mentoring provided by the likes of SparkFun’s [Jeff Branson].
Such above-ground working conditions might disquiet a few hackers, but I could instantly see the benefit to the arrangement: people just walk in off the street and look around to see what all the hubbub is. There’s immense value in that connection to the community, both in terms of recruiting new dues-paying members, but also in “normalizing” the public perception of hacking.
What if They Held a Hackathon and No One Showed Up?
CoG did well with their PR efforts in the run-up to the hackathon. [Erica Iannotti], the CoG’s board chairperson, headed the effort to get the Hackathon noticed, which included reaching out to Hackaday early in the run-up to the event.
Local media coverage was key to the event’s success as well. Not only were news outfits invited in during the hackathon, but there was good coverage beforehand too. The local morning TV news show set up a remote the day before to do cutaways every half hour,
Thirteen Teams, Five Awards
Thirteen teams formed up for the competition. Some of these were ad hoc teams where people just sort of showed up and pulled other folks in to work on ideas that were only half-baked at the start of the event. Some teams had a good idea of what they were going to work on and even had a bit of kit put together to start.
The big winner of the night was Flame Warden, which won the award for “Best Smart Building Solution” and “Most Likely to be Commercially Successful”. Inspired by the recent tragic carbon monoxide deaths
Basically an amped-up smoke detector with a suite of sensors, Flame Warden would watch a room for signs of fire – CO levels, smoke particles, and image analysis of visible flames.
Another of my favorites and winner of the “Best Smart Transportation Solution” was the 4G Earth Rover by the one-man team of [Drew Pilcher].
Other awards were the “Best Smart Healthcare Solution”, awarded to [Chris] and [Robert] for their Photon-based WiFi-enabled air quality monitoring system; “Best Smart City Solution” for [Amanda], [Arsal], [Htoo] and [Gab] for their “Noisy or Nice” street noise monitoring device;
Tomi Engdahl says:
Leveraging IIoT-ready solutions helps connectivity, data access
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/leveraging-iiot-ready-solutions-helps-connectivity-data-access/9884c7297849021b340e976747b67ef8.html
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) provides the ability to analyze data and gain comprehensive insights from assets, processes, and products.
To run a reliable operation that continues to improve performance, industrial organizations need to install smarter field devices, achieve more connectivity with automation systems and applications, collect more data, and find ways to use that data throughout the plant.
Today, intelligent field devices, digital field networks, Internet Protocol (IP)-enabled connectivity and Web services, historians, and advanced analytics software are providing the foundation for an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
Finding IIoT’s value
In a typical industrial plant, the mere connectivity of intelligent instrumentation already supports remote service and predictive maintenance; but, ultimately, the value in IIoT can be found in the ability to analyze data and gain comprehensive insights from assets, processes, and products.
IIoT has been developed as a means of leveraging smart, connected field instruments, enterprise-integrated automation, secured cloud-based data, and advanced analytics. The strength of this solution is that everything down to end devices can be accessed using the Internet infrastructure.
How IIoT improves operations: Impact of OPC UA
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/how-iiot-improves-operations-impact-of-opc-ua/3d9ca6ac8357caf18d04908bbe47af0d.html
The Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) will change many aspects in manufacturing as well as the rest of the industries of the world, including how we conduct day-to-day life. Managing asset models is one of the parts of the industry that is already adopting the change the IIoT brings with it.
Initiatives for harnessing the power of data associated with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Industrie 4.0 (Europe), and Internet Plus (China) are expected to transform not only the manufacturing industry but the global economy, as well. One estimate, based on a report by Accenture written earlier this year, estimated the technology could add $14.2 trillion to the world economy over the next 15 years.
Impact on industry will be profound, but only those who take a holistic view of its potential will benefit the most. IIoT is not just a new technology; it is a catalyst for fundamental change in the way companies operate and individuals work.
Take, for example, traditional asset models, where businesses buy equipment with a warranty insuring against failure within a particular period, which is supported by scheduled maintenance. The ability to share and analyze more data from deeper in the shop floor, such as detecting rising lubricant temperature as a sign of increased friction on bearings in real time, can facilitate businesses towards condition-based maintenance, helping the company avoid costly unscheduled downtime.
Likewise, IIoT has the potential to radically decentralize decision-making within plants, with high levels of information and context no longer restricted to the central control room. It argues for a shift from task-based workers to value-finding workers, with technology augmenting rather than replacing workers’ thinking by simultaneously giving them deeper insight and broader context into the plant and process.
The connectivity challenge
Reliable, secure connectivity is central to these efforts and is the function of the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) protocol.
A key part of the Industrie 4.0 foundation, OPC UA runs on most anything such as: servers; networked sensors; mainstream operating systems (OSs) such as Linux and Microsoft Windows; real-time operating systems (RTOSs); or devices without any OS. OPC UA enables the connectivity and data sharing between the devices and systems that provide the deep-shop-floor visibility required by digital enterprises.
As expected, manufacturers are embedding OPC UA in all types of devices ranging from small networked sensors to controllers, helping accelerate the IIoT revolution by expanding the data sharing space. However, the scale of transformation necessarily suggests that the adoption of OPC UA (and the move to an effective IIoT architecture) will take time, as businesses have large existing investments in legacy architectures which, cannot simply be replaced wholesale. An easy, coordinated migration path to IIoT technologies such as OPC UA is a key factor for device vendors and end users alike.
The answer for systems using classic OPC is the use of OPC UA proxies or UA wrappers: technologies enabling new OPC UA enabled client applications to communicate with classic OPC servers, and classic OPC clients to communicate with new OPC UA servers. For example, a human-machine interface (HMI) that is still using classic OPC could be adapted to interface with UA devices. As a result, operators can continue to use their current systems, while gaining the additional insights and connectivity with UA-enabled devices as they are added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensor board promotes 96Boards CE
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4441284/Sensor-board-promotes-96Boards-CE?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160204&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160204&elq=44f90067c62e4daf8b5ad0077f30539f&elqCampaignId=26833&elqaid=30682&elqat=1&elqTrackId=58dc2efadee7446bbcbead91cb9286c6
Home> Tools & Learning> Products> Product Brief
Sensor board promotes 96Boards CE
Susan Nordyk -January 25, 2016
inShare
Save Follow
PRINT
PDF
EMAIL
Among the first on the market, STMicroelectronics’ B-F446E-96B01A STM32-based mezzanine board meets the 96Boards Consumer Edition (CE) open-platform specification for the ARM ecosystem. The board is outfitted with embedded sensors for movement, pressure, and sound, aiming to simplify the development of low-cost, context-aware smart mobile, embedded, and digital-home devices.
The B-F446E-96B01A plugs directly on top of a 96Boards CE board. It is powered by a 180-MHz STM32F446 microcontroller with an ARM Cortex-M4F core and smart peripherals, along with an onboard MEMS 9-axis accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, pressure sensor, and microphone. Arduino Uno and Seeedstudio Grove connectors allow expansion using boards and modules from either ecosystem. Developers also have access to the same ecosystem as ST’s STM32 Nucleo boards.
B-F446E-96B01A
Sensor board with STM32F446VET6 MCU, supports 96Boards CE connectivity
http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM116/CL1620/SC959/SS1532/LN1199/PF262772?icmp=tt3226_gl_pron_jan2016&sc=mezzanine-pr
Tomi Engdahl says:
1000 sensors, one line, using optical fiber
http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4441298/1000-sensors–one-line–using-optical-fiber?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160204&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160204&elq=48ae8e1f7f4d4f5d9f8dcd88aa32e03d&elqCampaignId=26837&elqaid=30686&elqat=1&elqTrackId=41a27b1e6463479dacf3cfdf3f8fadee
Adding sensors to systems for purposes such as predictive maintenance is an application of growing interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) era. But if wireless sensors are not appropriate, developers can quickly run into a massive wiring problem as they try to connect large arrays of individual strain gauges, temperature sensors, and other sensor types. Happily, there is an emerging technology that employs optical fibers.
Home> Systems-design Design Center > How To Article
1000 sensors, one line, using optical fiber
Richard Quinnell -January 27, 2016
inShare8
Save Follow
PRINT
PDF
EMAIL
Adding sensors to systems for purposes such as predictive maintenance is an application of growing interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) era. But if wireless sensors are not appropriate, developers can quickly run into a massive wiring problem as they try to connect large arrays of individual strain gauges, temperature sensors, and other sensor types. Happily, there is an emerging technology that employs optical fibers.
When most systems developers think of fiber optics, they generally envision fiber’s ability to carry extremely high speed data over long distances with little loss and no Emi issues. But at the VITA Embedded Tech Trends forum earlier this month, I learned about the use of fiber as a sensor array. A specially configured optical fiber with a powerful back-end processor can be used to measure such diverse things as mechanical strain, temperature, the presence of liquids, and even the fiber’s 3D position at thousands of points along its length. And the best news was, such a sensor system is commercially available.
There are two keys to this fiber optic sensing system (FOSS) technology. One is the use of a specialty fiber that has fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) inscribed along its length. The other is the use of optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR).
Optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) is a technique for determining the distance to a reflection point along a fiber through the use of light with a varying wavelength. The more well-known optical time domain reflectometer measures such distance directly by looking at the time delay between transmission and reflected return of an optical pulse sent along the fiber. OFDR sends a swept-wavelength signal and examines the time-varying interference patterns that result from mixing the return signal with a reference signal. A reflection point at a fixed distance along the fiber will yield an interference pattern that oscillates with a frequency proportional to the reflection point’s position along the fiber.
Using OFDR on a fiber containing FBGs allows a system to locate each such grating individually. Each grating reflects more strongly at a specific wavelength – called the central frequency — which the system can also determine. Together, these features form the basis of a distributed sensor series. Depending on the system’s ability to resolve the various optical wavelengths and interference pattern frequencies involved, the distribution of FBG sensor points can virtually continuous along the length of the fiber.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP8266 and Relay Control Using Smartphone
ESP8266 & SUPLA
https://hackaday.io/project/9517-esp8266-and-relay-control-using-smartphone
ESP8266 microcontroller start-up to control by smartphone a relay connected to the ESP. In a separate project I will try to present a similar case, but instead of the ESP8266 microcontroller we will use Raspberry PI version B+.
Open building automation is now coming!
https://www.supla.org/
Building automation systems available on the market are usually very complex, closed and expensive. In many cases they must be installed on the very early stages of house construction. SUPLA is simple, open and free of charge. It gives an opportunity to build elements based on RaspberryPI, Arduino or ESP8266 platforms and then join them either through LAN or WiFi. Through SUPLA you can, among others, control the lighting, switch on and off household appliances and media, open and shut gates and doors, or control room temperature. All the above can be done with just touch of a finger. SUPLA is available from any place on Earth if you just have a smartphone or tables available as well as Internet access. SUPLA is developed based on an Open Software and Open Hardware . This way, you can also develop this project!
Tomi Engdahl says:
RFGeiger
Remote sensor of ionizing radiation, temperature, humidity and pressure.
https://hackaday.io/project/2965-rfgeiger
Some time ago I’ve build remote sensor of ionizing radiation, temperature, humidity and air pressure, I decided to utilize Ethernet network as transport layer. Ethernet is great, but it has some serious disadvantages. First of all, it not always easy to run cable wherever you want
Soon after I began to look for wireless alternative. At the beginning I excluded WiFi modules, then I came across RFM69 modules. They are small, cheap and even offer hardware AES support.
This way EtherGeiger was reincarnated into RFGeiger project.
This is basically the same sensor, with ENC28J60 chip replaced with RF module. Additionally I decided do use FT232 chip for configuration and debugging purposes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoTek
Connected I\O and Sensors with unlimited global data transfer and web services
https://hackaday.io/project/5988-iotek
Packed with Inputs/Outputs, Sensors, Global GSM connectivity and Web Services, IoTek is an IoT platform aimed at non-technical as well as technical people.
Using IoTek a user can monitor sensor levels and capture them on the cloud without any programming knowledge. Based on user defined rules the board can then perform necessary actions.
IoTek provides different types of sensors connected using propriety global connectivity GSM technology allowing the user to detect events or changes in its environment, and then provide a corresponding output.
The board is powered by a Cortex-M0+ MCU from NXP.
The main feature of this board is the M2M connectivity that comes with it. The board is equipped with a GSM modem and a Global sim-card that works all around the world. The data transfer is not limited by data caps no matter where you are in the world. Once might think that this kind of connectivity comes with a big bill to pay, well that is not the case here. The final pricing is not set yet since a deal is not yet set with the provider.
The board will come with some free WEB services, I didn’t finalize the list yet for these services. But the user will surely have a dashboard and webpage to display the collected data. The user can then make the webpage available to the public or keep it private.
No Technical Background :
The board is aimed at people who do not have any technical background as well as technical people. The board programming will be done easily using a graphical web platform, the firmware is then transferred to the board using the M2M connectivity without any need to connect the board to the PC at any time.
Modular Design:
Many variations of the board should be available. Not all users need the same sensors
The device will have a TI wireless MCU.
The board will be equipped with a wireless connectivity. The aim of having a wireless connectivity is to save the user from buying multiple subscriptions. With the wireless connectivity the boards will communicate with each other and only the one equipped with the GSM modem will transfer the data to the server.
The proposed dimensions of the board are to be 5×5 cm.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT lacking that je ne sais quoi? Try the IoTSP
When a networked toaster just isn’t enough
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/05/iotsp/
You know how it is – you’ve hooked up a networked drone-sensing doorbell, Java-enabled remote control toaster and Bluetooth toothbrush, and can now determine the degree of browning of your morning slice via smartphone app from the other side of the kitchen, while commanding Smartbrush™ to order extra teeth-whitening paste for automated UAV delivery once your teeth fall below a predetermined level of brightness, but you’re still missing that certain interconnected je ne sais quoi.
Well, for when the IoT just doesn’t measure up, try pushing the envelope and the acronym with the Internet of Things, Services and People (IoTSP) – a paradigm-redefining concept from “global leader in power and automation technologies” ABB.
This remarkable extension of the Internet of Stuff’s reach would have slipped under our radar were it not for the reader who alerted us to ABB’s involvement in helping “three vessels safely carry out construction and maintenance tasks up to 5 kilometers under water”.
Specifically, the ships “will be equipped with ABB’s OCTOPUS software that uses sensors and the Internet of Things, Services and People (IoTSP) to interpret weather conditions, allowing the crew to make informed decisions during sensitive operations”.
BB’s Octopus for Ultra Deep’s Newbuilds
http://subseaworldnews.com/2016/02/01/abbs-octopus-for-ultra-deeps-newbuilds/
ABB will provide the technology that would help three vessels safely carry out construction and maintenance tasks up to 5 kilometers under water, the company said Monday.
Namely, the vessels will be equipped with ABB’s OCTOPUS software that uses sensors and the Internet of Things, Services and People (IoTSP) to interpret weather conditions, allowing the crew to make informed decisions during sensitive operations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Learn Bluetooth or Die Trying
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/06/learn-bluetooth-or-die-tryin/
Implementing a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) device from scratch can be a daunting task. If you’re looking for an incredibly detailed walkthrough of developing a BLE project from essentially the ground up, you’ve now got a lot of reading to do: [Jocelyn Masserot] takes you through all the steps using the ARM-Cortex-M0-plus-BLE nRF51822 chip.
The blog does what blogs do: stacks up in reverse-chronological order. So it’s best that you roll on down to the first post at the bottom and start there.
DIY IOT
BLE application with nRF51822: Advertising data
https://diyiot.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/ble-application-with-nrf51822-advertising-data/
One of the feature (let’s say most important feature) brought by BLE specifications is the advertisement principle. BLE advertising allows a device to periodically broadcast data to every devices around it. Between each advertisement (the interval time can be set from 20ms to 10 seconds) the device can go in sleep mode, that helps to drastically reduce the power consumption.
A BLE device can be either a Peripheral or a Central. The Peripheral is mostly the battery powered up device that needs to keep its power consumption low such as a temperature sensor or a heart rate monitor. Since its power consumption has to remains low, it needs to send data to a much powerful device (a smartphone, computer etc…) to process the data, called the Central. BLE advertising is by definition unidirectional that means only the Peripheral can transmit data to the Central. If the Central needs to transmit data to the Peripheral as well, a connection needs to be done between both devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Very, Very Low Power Consumption
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/05/very-very-low-power-consumption/
We’re pretty far away from a world full of wall-warts at this point, and the default power supply for your consumer electronics is either a microUSB cable or lithium batteries. USB ports are ubiquitous enough, and lithium cells hold enough power that these devices can work for a very long time.
USB devices are common, and batteries are good enough for most devices, not all of them. There is still a niche where& extremely long battery lifetimes are needed and tapping into mains power is impractical. Think smoke detectors and security systems here. How do power supplies work for these devices? In one of the most recent TI application notes, TI showed off their extremely low power microcontrollers with a motion detector that runs for ten years with a standard coin cell battery.
Low Power Wireless PIR Motion Detector Reference Design Enabling 10 Year Coin Cell Battery Life
(ACTIVE) TIDA-00489
http://www.ti.com/tool/tida-00489?DCMP=TIDA00489&HQS=sys-ind-ba-TIDA00489Email-adh-rd-null-wwe&sp_rid_pod4=MTE1NzI4MTUxMTgzS0&sp_mid_pod4=50483164&detailID=22265120&spMailingID=50483164&spUserID=MTE1NzI4MTUxMTgzS0&spJobID=842317024&spReportId=ODQyMzE3MDI0S0
The TIDA-00489 TI Design uses nano-power operational amplifiers, comparators, and the SimpleLink™ ultra-low power sub-1GHz wireless microcontroller (MCU) platform to demonstrate a low power wireless motion detector implementation. These technologies lead to an extremely long battery life, over 10 years with a standard CR2032 lithium ion coin cell battery, which could be used for applications including motion detection or lighting control through occupancy detection. The PIR sensor has sensitivity of up to 30-feet with standby current of 1.65-µA. The design guide includes techniques for system design, detailed test results, and information to get the design up and running quickly.
Use of Nano-Power Analog for Ultra-Low Power Design Resulting in 10 Year Battery Life from single CR2032 Coin Cell
Interrupt Driven Sub-1GHz Wireless Communication of Motion for Increased Power Savings
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Wireless Wood Stove Monitor
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/08/a-wireless-wood-stove-monitor/
[Michel] knows that by carefully monitoring the temperature of the gases in the chimney, he can hit the sweet spot where his fire burns hot enough to keep the creosote under control and cool enough that it doesn’t burn down the house. To that end, he built a wireless wood stove monitor.
Wireless wood stove monitor
Wirelessly monitor the combustion gases temperature inside a wood stove’s chimney.
https://hackaday.io/project/9531-wireless-wood-stove-monitor
Wood stoves are a great secondary heating source but care must be taken. It is extremely important that you use your stove in such a way that you do not lower the temperature of the combustion gases inside the chimney too much. Over a period of time, it may result in creosote build-up in the chimney (which could lead a chimney fire). There are two types of chimney thermometers: surface and probe.
With probe thermometers (INSIDE the chimney), the gases temperature must be kept between 204 and 482C (400 and 900F). Too low you get creosote build-up, too high you burn the house.
The new version uses an EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature) thermocouple and measures the gases inside the chimney. An nRF24L01+ transmits the data from downstairs to a battery operated remote display. The downstairs module has an Adafruit’s RGB backlit LCD which changes color depending of the temperature measured. The thermocouple is interfaced with an Adafruit’s MAX31855 breakout board. This chip has an internal cold-junction temperature sensor for compensation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Broken Things (or, Why am I so Cold?)
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/08/the-internet-of-broken-things-or-why-am-i-so-cold/
Although the Internet of Things (IoT) is a reasonably new term, the idea isn’t really all that new. Many engineers and hackers have created networked embedded systems for many years. So what’s different? Two things: the Internet is everywhere and the use of connected embedded systems in a consumer setting.
there are some very practical IoT items like the Nest thermostat.
However, the Nest recently had a hiccup during an upgrade and it has made many of their customers mad (and cold).
Problems arise, though, when you consider that programmers (and sometimes hardware guys) are relatively optimistic.
Once you start connecting to the real world, though, things get more complicated and riskier.
Even if your system works great in the lab (like mine did), you can still get unexpected problems during installation or just the environment
test over a broad range of environments and circumstances. Even then, you won’t get them all. You need to think about how to do updates in the way that is least likely to break.
Then there’s security. If you can update something in the field–especially over the network–how can you be sure an update is legitimate and not an attack. Digital signatures, encryption, and other techniques can do that, but how many of us worry about things like that.
As end users, we have a vested interest in knowing our IoT devices are safe, even after an update. We also should worry that the update is legitimate.
Designing for Graceful Failure
Fault tolerance, graceful degradation – and failing in a not-so-painful way.
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1674
we should design technology to fail gracefully. Because, quite frankly, you need to be prepared for your design to fail. I know, I know — your code is perfect, your hardware choices impeccable and you are thorough in your assembly and review. But it happens to even the most well-designed and well-built projects.
Unfortunately, clumsy failures are all over the place.
What processes do you use to design your projects to fail with all the elegance of a ballerina?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Friday Product Post: Simply Simblee!
A whole new line of BLE Internet of Things products are ripe for the picking!
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/2028
Hey guys, it’s Friday and you know that means new products! This is a very special Friday, because we’re releasing a new line of Internet of Things products. So without further ado, we are pleased to present: Simblee!
Simblee is intended to make embedded devices using Bluetooth Low Energy connections easier for everyone: hardware hackers, app developers, students, makers, engineers, and anyone else who wants to leverage their smartphone via BLE. Unlike other BLE solutions, the Simblee requires no specialized app development skills to realize the phone-side interface: all the necessary coding is done in the Arduino IDE and then uploaded to a browser app on the phone.
First up is the SparkFun Simblee BLE Breakout board. This breakout is a programmable board that allows you to add mobile app functionality via Bluetooth Low Energy to your embedded projects. You get access to all the Simblee pins (with the module end compatible with RFDuino/Simblee shields!) as well as an FTDI header, a reset button, an LED and a user accessible button
If you like your PCBs round, thin and purple the Lilypad Simblee BLE Board is for you. Our LilyPad line is designed for wearable electronics and includes pads big enough to sew into a project with conductive thread. If you prefer to solder to your boards, the LilyPad board does provide that option open as well.
Similar to its predecessor, the RFduino Simblee DIP is a finger-tip sized, Arduino compatible, wireless enabled microcontroller. When used in conjunction with the RFduino USB shield, simply plug the RFduino into a USB port of any computer and use the Arduino IDE to load your Arduino sketch
Tomi Engdahl says:
Particle Electron – The Solution To Cellular Things
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/10/particle-electron-the-solution-to-cellular-things/
Just over a year ago, Particle (formerly Spark), makers of the very popular Core and Particle Photon WiFi development kits, released the first juicy tidbits for a very interesting piece of hardware. It was the Electron, a cheap, all-in-one cellular development kit with an even more interesting data plan. Particle would offer their own cellular service, allowing their tiny board to send or receive 1 Megabyte for $3.00 a month, without any contracts.
Thousands of people found this an interesting proposition and the Electron crowdfunding campaign took off like a rocket. Now, after a year of development and manufacturing, these tiny cellular boards are finally shipping out to backers and today the Electron officially launches.
Small microcontroller dev boards are nothing new. The technology to turn a hat, belt buckle, or bicycle into something that receives data from a cellphone tower has been around for more than a decade now,
More recently, Sparkfun and Adafruit have been putting together their own cellular modules for Arduinos and other similar boards. These modules, like SparkFun’s Cellular Shield, Adafruit’s FONA, and Seeed’s RePhone all provide easy-to-use cellular modules that plug into an Arduino. The problem is phone companies historically didn’t want to deal with a bunch of Arduinos blinking LEDs through their network.
The success of a carrier in the eyes of shareholders depends on ARPU, average revenue per user, or the total revenue divided by the number of subscribers.
While the ARPU is great when AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon are selling multi-Gigabyte plans to smartphone users, it’s a terrible measure if a company is selling a lot of cheap one Megabyte plans.
Instead of going through the usual cellular carriers, Electron users will be getting their service directly through Particle. It’s a setup called a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, or MVNO, that allows carriers to work through Particle to provide plans without much data but at a very low price.
The Hardware and Development Toolkit
UndersideParticle already has a few hardware products under their belt, such as the Particle Photon and Core, a very popular ARM and WiFi development board. It’s incredibly useful for people who don’t want to futz around with bare ESP8266 modules. To anyone who has ever used a Photon or Core, the Electron will quickly become very familiar.
Tucked away on the bottom of the Electron is the STM32F205 microcontroller, presenting 36 total pins to the outside world. The functions presented on these pins include UART, SPI, I2C, and CAN bus. In total, there are 12 ADC channels, 3 UARTs, 2 SPIs, 1 I2C, 2 CAN, 2 DACs, and 13 PWM channels. 1 MB of Flash is included, and 128k of RAM is available. It’s an extremely capable board if you compare it to the Arduinos of a few years ago, and can go toe to toe with slightly more modern boards such as the Teensy 3.2.
As for development for the Electron, choices abound. The easiest by far is a web-based Arduino-like development environment, Particle Build.
Particle’s Tinker app, a smartphone-based development environment is also available for the Electron. This app will allow you to read and write individual pins in a strange, ‘you know what’s cool? Visual programming’ way.
Javascript is possible on all of Particle’s devices, CLIs are easy, and if you’re coding for iDevices, your SDK is right here.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Guardian:
US intelligence chief James Clapper says IoT vulnerabilities may be exploited to improve surveillance
US intelligence chief: we might use the internet of things to spy on you
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/09/internet-of-things-smart-home-devices-government-surveillance-james-clapper
James Clapper did not name specific agency as being involved in surveillance via smart-home devices but said in congressional testimony it is a distinct possibility
The US intelligence chief has acknowledged for the first time that agencies might use a new generation of smart household devices to increase their surveillance capabilities.
As increasing numbers of devices connect to the internet and to one another, the so-called internet of things promises consumers increased convenience – the remotely operated thermostat from Google-owned Nest is a leading example. But as home computing migrates away from the laptop, the tablet and the smartphone, experts warn that the security features on the coming wave of automobiles, dishwashers and alarm systems lag far behind.
“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper said.
Clapper did not specifically name any intelligence agency as involved in household-device surveillance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT technology comes in clean technology
Federation of clean technology solutions and digitalisation can provide Finnish companies with global growth outlook.
A good example of the possibilities of digital technology has brought the Finnish Enevon IoT system that tracks the waste and recycling containers filling degrees
The technology is needed, but it is Kekäläinen the tool in solving problems. ” If it were only the technology, the problems would be resolved as early as yesterday. Ultimately, however, solve the problems of motivated people, ”
companies to apply for the purpose of solving problems of existence. ” The idea is found in what the company does, but why is it that makes ”.
The technology is needed, but it is Kekäläinen the tool in solving problems. ” If it were only the technology, the problems would be resolved as early as yesterday. Ultimately, however, solve the problems of motivated people, “Kekäläinen said.
Marko Vanninen,Connected Finland’s founders, presented purely for communication between machines focused on mobile network based on a new Sigfox-tekniology, which should cover the whole of Finland by the end of the year. The becoming Sigfox network is especially designed for the transmission of sensor data cheaply.
“When the meter and intelligent machines life cycle costs come down, they should be used for transmitting the low-value data,”
Up to 15 years without battery exchange work, for example, sensors can monitor the water consumption and water leaks, energy consumption, soil or concrete moisture, or the movement of vehicles and goods.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/02/10/iot-tekniikka-tulee-puhtaaseen-teknologiaan/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Swiss u-blox has introduced a new module which, despite its small size, for example, connected to the vehicle, as well as 2G and 3G network. Sara-U201 module is the smallest of the market to the two network technologies module.
The module has a size of 16 x 26 x 3 mm. It will GSM connection area mainly in four different frequency and UMTS connections to the five. In addition, the module has been pre-approved everywhere, so it can be used to quickly develop telematics every corner of the world.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3954:pienin-datamoduuli-seka-2g-etta-3g-verkkoon&catid=60&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automate product support through the IIoT
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/automate-product-support-through-the-iiot/9766a5338b46123ef5e49b59230f3444.html
Engineering and service firms need to take advantage of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to be able to analyze the mass of data coming in and get creative in their approach to service offerings and customer engagement.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is taking industrial industries by storm, impacting everything from how products are designed to how they’re serviced to how organizations interact with customers.
Specifying, designing, and building IIoT capabilities require skillsets already offered by engineering firms: deep understanding of facility spaces and the knowledge to connect legacy systems with new technology. That makes IIoT a low-hanging fruit, which opens numerous opportunities to enable clients to achieve higher efficacies and more reliable systems by better managing, controlling, maintaining, diagnosing issues, and optimizing their facilities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT module promises WiFi-LoRa-BLE triple play
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4441340/IoT-module-promises-WiFi-LoRa-BLE-triple-play?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20160211&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20160211&elqTrackId=48fcba8ad7f640ef8b4300c6bbb9ab42&elq=47c0069f95944aad8205fdc33fe9724d&elqaid=30798&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=26939
There are many radio options when building an IoT device. WiFi is ubiquitous, BLE offers mesh networking, and LoRa provides an operating range that the other two cannot touch. But blending three radios together in a single design is beyond the capability of most development teams. That promises to change, however.
Pycom, a startup launched at CES this year, is the driving force behind development of the LoPy, an IoT development module that incorporates pre-certified Bluetooth, LoRa, and WiFi together with a processor running a real-time version of Python.
This is actually the second product from the team behind Pycom. Its founders ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last year to fund development of the WiPy, a WiFi-enabled MCU module running Python. Leveraging that success and responding to feedback from supporters, the team formed Pycom, partnered with Texas Instruments and others, and came up with the triple-play LoPy to expand the range of options available to IoT developers. The LoPy, too, is the subject of a Kickstarter campaign, one that launched this month.
The development module is fairly complete but includes an expansion board connection for the addition of other resources. One of the module’s processor cores handles the WiFi and BLE connectivity along with IPv4/IPv6s stacks with hash and encryption while the main processor core handles the LoRa connectivity and user application code. The module has both internal chip antennas and external antenna connections for the radios, UART, SPI, and camera interfaces, and up to 24 GPIOs. The module features battery operability, claiming to need less than 2% the power of an Arduino Mega.
Because a device is only part of an IoT system, Pycom joined the LoRa Alliance and has established relationships with the network company SENET as well as The Things Network to give module users a way to connect their devices directly to LoRa. Alternatively, one module can be used as a LoRa nano gateway to establish your own local LoRa network with a 5km range.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Agam Shah / PCWorld:
Qualcomm bringing LTE connectivity to wearables with new Wear platform — With LTE connectivity, Qualcomm is trying to break the pattern of tethering wearables with smartphones — Wearables today are overwhelmingly tethered to smartwatches. Qualcomm wants to change that by bringing LTE connectivity …
Qualcomm’s bringing LTE connectivity to wearables with new Wear platform
With LTE connectivity, Qualcomm is trying to break the pattern of tethering wearables with smartphones.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3032344/wearables/qualcomm-bringing-lte-connectivity-to-wearables-with-new-wear-platform.html
Wearables today are overwhelmingly tethered to smartphones. Qualcomm wants to change that by bringing LTE connectivity to wearables with its new Snapdragon Wear platform.
With the Wear platform, Qualcomm wants to drive the development of sleek wearables like smartwatches, smartbands and smartglasses that offer long battery life. With Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and LTE, Qualcomm is enabling more ways for wearables to connect and transfer data over the Internet, other than using the smartphone as an interface.
At the core of the new wearable platform, available now, is the Wear 2100 chip to which an LTE module can be attached. It is the first in a new family of chips the company will release for wearables.
LG Electronics said it would launch smartwatches and other wearables with the Wear 2100 chip by year end. LG last year announced the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, but scrapped the product due to hardware issues. That product could be launched with the Wear 2100 this year.
There are already wearables with cellular connectivity, but most have 2G/3G connectivity. LTE modems tend to be power hungry, and using the 2G/3G network is a more power-efficient way to transfer data using a cellular connection.
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
Qualcomm announces Snapdragon X16 LTE modem supporting 1 Gbps downloads and 150 Mbps uploads
Qualcomm promises gigabit LTE speeds with its new Snapdragon X16 modem
And there are new low-end phone and wearable Snapdragon chips for later in 2016.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/qualcomm-promises-gigabit-lte-speeds-with-its-new-snapdragon-x16-modem/
Qualcomm’s lead in the mobile SoC and modem market is no longer as unassailable as it once was, but the company continues to be out in front when it comes to pushing new LTE technologies. Case in point: its new Snapdragon X16 modem, which together with the WTR5975 transceiver boasts Category 16 LTE download speeds of up to 1Gbps. Most of today’s phones top out at 300Mbps or 450Mbps, and the upcoming Snapdragon 820 will only go up to 600Mbps. The X16 will also support upload speeds of up to 150Mbps, which is equal to or only slightly higher than upload rates supported by current LTE modems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Particle Electron – The Solution To Cellular Things
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/10/particle-electron-the-solution-to-cellular-things/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Analog Design Center > How To Article
How to choose a wireless technology
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4441392/How-to-choose-a-wireless-technology?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160211&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160211&elqTrackId=9745e2b866bf4c0f80481367e1f1c82c&elq=f0494f38262c40d39c188fb19b43bdf7&elqaid=30786&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=26927
Great ideas for cloud-connected devices are popping up every day. Choosing the right wireless solution to connect your device to the Internet can be challenging in a fragmented market of standards and technologies. The good news is that the number of good choices you can make for your application increases year over year. This article aims to point you in the right direction based on some fundamental properties of the technologies involved.
Infrastructure devices
Devices whose functions naturally belong to a house/building/location rather than to a person are infrastructure devices. We can loosely separate those again into house/building and outdoor infrastructure due to differences in range requirements between the two.
Can you count on Wi-Fi coverage and access to the Internet through that network? If that’s the case, Wi-Fi is usually the simplest and cheapest way to connect your device to the Internet. You can now get Wi-Fi chipsets that in some applications can survive for a year on two AA batteries like the SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3200/CC3100 family from TI. An advantage of Wi-Fi over other protocols discussed here is that it can achieve very high throughput when needed and it supports all the commonly used Internet protocols and security out-of-the-box.
If you cannot count on Wi-Fi coverage or your network includes devices that are too energy constrained for Wi-Fi, you should look at alternatives.
you should consider a 2.4 GHz low-power mesh network such as ZigBee or 6LoWPAN.
To 6LoWPAN or not to 6LoWPAN?
Whether or not to use IPv6 addressing all the way to low-power end nodes (6LoWPAN) depends on how much intelligence you want to put in your gateway and on the capabilities of the end devices.
If your gateway has a complete application level overview of the devices on the network and their functions and encrypts and decrypts all messages, 6LoWPAN does not provide much value. This is generally the case if you’re building a network that needs to continue to provide functionality when the Internet connection is not available.
If, on the other hand, the service that your network provides is of little value without the Internet connection, you can use 6LoWPAN with a much simpler application on your gateway and have it simply pass messages between your end nodes and the Internet much like your Wi-Fi router does. The advantage is that authentication and encryption can be end-to-end so data does not have to be decrypted and re-encrypted in the gateway.
The burden of establishing an https connection or similar is moved to the end node.
Do you need interoperability at the application level?
Back to the example of the wireless light, simply by choosing Wi-Fi for example, the standard does not dictate how the light should connect to the server or what a “turn on” message should look like. This means that two Wi-Fi lights are not likely to be interoperable at a local level. You cannot expect that if you buy a Wi-Fi light switch from one vendor, it will be able to successfully control a light from another vendor without passing through translation at an application-aware server. ZigBee is one of the few infrastructure protocols that have endeavored to make certified interoperable products at an application level. It’s a brave undertaking and has not been without its challenges, but some of the profiles have reached a considerable rate of adoption.
To mesh or not to mesh?
One of the challenges with mesh networks is that the network topology is complex and requires route discovery with healing, addressing, mesh over or mesh under routing algorithms and handover mechanisms to deal with mobile nodes that physically and topologically move through the network. This adds significant memory requirements to routing nodes in the network and complicates testing and debugging significantly.
A good alternative in networks with a central node/gateway is to go with a simple star network topology with range to cover the whole house/building. To get the required range and penetration of walls and floors with a low-power network, the Sub-1 GHz frequencies are ideal. The 868 MHz band in Europe and 915 MHz band in the North America offer a good compromise between penetration, data rate, and required antenna size for indoor applications. This is how most alarm and security networks are built for example.
The new thing is that there are devices that support standards based PHY’s for Sub-1 GHz operation based on IEEE 802.15.4g.
Bluetooth SIG has announced that it will add functionality in its 2016 version of the standard that makes Bluetooth Smart more suitable for infrastructure applications such as long range and mesh.
Outdoor installations
Considerations for outdoor installations are much like the ones for indoor infrastructures. Can I get the range I need on the power budget I have? Can I take advantage of existing infrastructures?
If you can rely on cellular coverage, are willing to bear the cost of the connection and meet the power requirements, the simplest way to connect a node to the Internet is through a cellular modem. If your network includes nodes that for cost, form factor, or power budget reasons should not be directly connected to a cellular tower, a good option is to look into a hybrid solution
An alternative to the cellular infrastructures are the new low-power, long-range infrastructure subscription networks like SIGFOX. The end nodes can be implemented with low-power, low-complexity narrowband radios and coverage grows at a fast pace. The data throughput is limited
Personal devices
If your device is personal, portable, or wearable, it is natural to consider a phone to be the ideal gateway to the Internet. Phones generally support Bluetooth BR/EDR and Bluetooth Smart in addition to its upstream facing Wi-Fi and phone modem. If your application includes audio streaming, Bluetooth BR/EDR is ideal with its high throughput and ready to use A2DP solutions. If you do not have high throughput requirements (less than ~150 kbps), Bluetooth Smart is the right way to go.
A good example application of sensors connected to the cloud through a phone is the SimpleLink SensorTag ecosystem.
Implementation considerations
Regardless of the wireless technology you end up choosing, if you are not making a large number of units right away and do not have special form factor requirements, it is always a good idea to consider buying a pre-certified module.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Is Embedded Security So Difficult?
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=279564&cid=nl.x.dn16.edt.aud.dn.20160208&dfpPParams=ind_184,industry_consumer,industry_gov,industry_machinery,industry_medical,kw_43,aid_279564&dfpLayout=blog
As security has become a hot topic in IoT, engineering teams building connected devices are beginning to put it much higher on their list of priorities. While this is clearly good news, it doesn’t mean that concerns over embedded device security will soon be over or that headlines of attacks against embedded devices will suddenly disappear.
Engineers designing devices for the IoT face a significant set of challenges. Security is a complex subject: Hackers continue to develop new exploits; they only need to find one way in. Worst of all, attacks against embedded devices are highly replicable. Embedded devices are mass produced to be virtually identical. A vulnerability, once discovered, can be used to exploit any device of that type.
Challenges in Security Embedded Devices
Why exactly is it so hard to keep bad guys out? We are pretty good at preventing bank robberies, and at limiting what they get when they actually do rob a bank. Why can’t we do this with embedded devices?
This question was put to me recently by a friend who works in the physical security business making sure people don’t break into banks, casinos, chemical processing plants, and other highly secure facilities.
There are a number of reasons that embedded security is hard. A few of the top challenges include:
The low cost of attack
The weakest link problem
A lack of expertise and training
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Is Industry 4.0 So Scary But Necessary At the Same Time?
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=279826&
Change is hard. People don’t like change, but as did the three industrial revolutions before it, Industry 4.0 will deliver painful change and irrecoverable harm to those that don’t adapt.
But what does Industry 4.0 really mean? Am I being left behind? How do I get started?
Those were the questions Keith Kersten, industry marketing team manager for Omron Automation, said he has heard repeatedly from concerned manufacturers, speaking in a conference session, “Fear Not the Smart Plant: Exploring Manufacturing Trends in the Digital Age”,
There are unknowns about Industry 4.0, of course, but inevitability isn’t one of them. “Customers are affecting how we manufacture,”
In addition to the customer-driven forces giving push to the smart, automated, changeable manufacturing of the future, product makers will require the power of information in order to know how and where to distribute scarcer resources, including skilled workers.
Kersten said the best entrée into Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing is to make a plan and set both short-term and long-term goals that are aligned with your customer and manufacturing situation.
One reason why smart manufacturing seems daunting is the premise of going from high-volume/low-mix to low-volume/high-mix, Kersten said. “The frequent changeovers and accommodating a variety of products mean downtime, which takes away OEE and requires a total rethinking of Henry Ford’s assembly line approach.”
Most of our automation and robotics systems today are predicated on that century-old manufacturing method, but the flexible factory won’t have linear flows.
As the line begins to blur and definitions of manufacturing are being shattered, Kersten said: “What is the factory anymore? You’re not looking at production lines but the whole enterprise and the integrated value chain.”
going from discrete I/O to connected networks and the need to send data from the PLC on up to the business.
Besides figuring a way out of the industrial communications protocol entanglement, Kersten noted that the smart plant age needs as much cultural change as it does a technological shift. “Don’t forget, it’s about people, too. They have to embrace the [sudden flood of] data. The controls guys are going to need to go to lunch with the IT guys.”
The key is to start collecting production data and then attempt to analyze it through tools that are emerging and becoming available. “This is the way of the future,” Kersten said. “Give the customers what they want.”