The Internet of Things revolution started in 2015 and will continue to be strong in 2016. 2015 was the year everyone talked about the Internet of Things. (So was 2014. And 2013.) But unlike before, it was the year everyone started making plans, laying groundwork, and building the infrastructure. Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. The premise of IoT is that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been called the next Industrial Revolution — it will change the way all businesses, governments, and consumers interact with the physical world. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer the data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
and the Internet. IoT is also called the Internet of Everything. A critical component for the IoT system to be a success will be secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization services.
In the future, everything will be connected. It won’t just be our phones that access the Internet; it will be our light bulbs, our front doors, our microwaves, our comforters, our blenders. You can call it the Internet of Things, The Internet of Everything, Universal Object Interaction, or your pick of buzzwords that begin with Smart. They all hold as inevitable that everything, everything will be connected, to each other and to the Internet. And this is promised to change the world. Remember that the objects themselves do not benefit us, but what services and functions they make it possible to obtain. We will enjoy the outcome, hopefully even better quality products, informative and reliable services, and even new applications.
There will be lots of money spend on IoT in 2016, the exact sum is hard to define, but it is estimated that nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years. IoT is now a very large global business dominated by giants (IBM, Intel, Cisco, Gemalto, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Bosch, GE, AT&T, T-Mobile, Telefonica and many others). I see that because it is still a young and quickly developing market, there will be lots of potential in it for startups in 2016.
There will be a very large number of new IoT devices connected to Internet in the end of 2016. According to Business Insider The Internet of Things Report there was 10 billion devices connected to the internet in 2015 and there will be will be 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devicesw ill comprise 10 billion (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.). Juniper research predicted that by 2020, there will be 38.5 billion connected devices. IDC says it’ll be 20.9 billion. Gartner’s guess? Twenty-five billion. The numbers don’t matter, except that they’re huge. They all agree that most of those gadgets will be industrial Internet of Things. The market for connecting the devices you use all day, every day, is about to be huge.
Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions because they see ways the IoT can improve their bottom line: lowering operating costs, increasing productivity, expand to new markets and develop new product offerings. Sensors, data analytics, automation and wireless communication technologies allow the study of the “self-conscious” machines, which are able to observe their environment and communicate with each other. From predictive maintenance that reduces equipment downtime to workers using mobile devices on the factory floor, manufacturing is undergoing dramatic change. The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling increased automation on the factory floor and throughout the supply chain, 3D printing is changing how we think about making components, and the cloud and big data are enabling new applications that provide an end-to-end view from the factory floor to the retail store.
Governments are focused on increasing productivity, decreasing costs, and improving their citizens’ quality of life. The IoT devices market will connect to climate agreements as in many applicatons IoT can be seen as one tool to help to solve those problems. A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C was agreed at the climate change summit in Paris in December 2015. Sitra fresh market analysis indicates that there is up to an amount of EUR 6 000 billion market potential for smart green solutions by 2050. Smart waste and water systems, materials and packaging, as well as production systems together to form an annual of over EUR 670 billion market. Smart in those contests typically involves use of IoT technologies.
Consumers will lag behind businesses and governments in IoT adoption – still they will purchase a massive number of devices. There will be potential for marketing IoT devices for consumers: Nine out of ten consumers never heard the words IoT or Internet of Things, October 2015! It seems that the newest IoT technology extends homes in 2016 – to those homes where owner has heard of those things. Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous in homes in so many parts of the world that you can now really start tapping into that by having additional devices. The smart phones and the Internet connection can make home appliances, locks and sensors make homes and leisure homes in more practical, safer and more economical. Home adjusts itself for optimal energy consumption and heating, while saving money. During the next few years prices will fall to fit for large sets of users. In some cases only suitable for software is needed, as the necessary sensors and data connections can be found in mobile phones. Our homes are going to get smarter, but it’s going to happen slowly. Right now people mostly buy single products for a single purpose. Our smart homes and connected worlds are going to happen one device, one bulb at a time. The LED industry’s products will become more efficient, reliable, and, one can hope, interoperable in the near future. Companies know they have to get you into their platform with that first device, or risk losing you forever to someone else’s closed ecosystem.
The definitions what would be considered IoT device and what is a traditional computing devices is not entirely clear, and I fear that we will not get a clear definition for that in 2016 that all could agree. It’s important to remember that the IoT is not a monolithic industry, but rather a loosely defined technology architecture that transcends vertical markets to make up an “Internet of everything.”
Too many people – industry leaders, media, analysts, and end users – have confused the concept of
“smart” with “connected”. Most devices – labeled “IoT” or “smart” – are simply connected devices. Just connecting a device to the internet so that it can be monitored and controlled by someone over the web using a smart phone is not smart. Yes, it may be convenient and time saving, but it is not “smart”. Smart means intelligence.
IoT New or Not? YES and NO. There are many cases where whole IoT thing is hyped way out of proportion. For the most part, it’s just the integration of existing technologies. Marketing has driven an amount of mania around IoT, on the positive side getting it on the desks of decision makers, and on the negative generating ever-loftier predictions. Are IoT and M2M same or different? Yes and no depending on case. For sure for very many years to come IoT and M2M will coexist.
Nearly a dozen contenders are trying to fill a need for long distance networks that cut the cost and power consumption of today’s cellular machine-to-machine networks. Whose technology protocols should these manufacturers incorporate into their gear? Should they adopt ZigBee, Apple’s HomeKit, Allseen Alliance/AllJoyn, or Intel’s Open Interconnect Consortium? Other 802.15.4 technologies? There are too many competing choices.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, two pioneers of the Internet of Things are expanding their platforms and partnerships. Crowdfunding sites and hardware accelerators are kicking out startups at a regular clip, typically companies building IoT devices that ride Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Bluetooth Special Interest group is expected to release in2016 support for mesh networks and higher data rates.
Although ZWave and Zigbee helped pioneer the smart home and building space more than a decade ago, but efforts based on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 6LoWPAN are poised to surpass them. Those pioneering systems are actively used and developed. Zigbee Alliance starts certification for its unified version 3.0 specification in few months (includes profiles for home and building automation, LED lighting, healthcare, retail and smart energy). EnOcean Alliance will bring its library of about 200 application profiles for 900 MHz energy harvesting devices to Zigbee networks. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities. The Z-Wave Security 2 framework will start a beta test in February and Z-Wave aims to strike a collaboration withleading IoT application framework platforms. Zigbee alredy has support Thread.
The race to define, design and deploy new low power wide area networks for the Internet of Things won’t cross a finish line in 2016. But by the end of the year it should start to be clear which LPWA nets are likely to have long legs and the opportunities for brand new entrants will dim significantly. So at the moment it is hard to make design choices. To protect against future technology changes, maybe the device makers should design in wireless connectivity chips and software that will work with a variety of protocols? That’s complicated and expensive. But if I pick only one technology I can easily pick up wrong horse, and it is also an expensive choice.
Within those who want to protect against future technology changes, there could be market for FPGAs in IoT devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) is broken and needs ARM-based field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to fix it, an expert told engineers at UBM’s Designers of Things conference in San Jose. You end up with a piece of hardware that can be fundamentally changed in the field.
There seems to be huge set of potential radio techniques also for Internet of Things even for long distance and low power consumpion. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities in February based on the 802.15.4g standard for metro networks. It will compete with an already crowded field of 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz networks from Sigfox, the LoRa Alliance, Ingenu and others. Weightless-P is an open standard announced by Weightless SIG, which operates at frequencies below one gigahertz. Weightless-P nodes and development cards will be expected to be in the market already during the first quarter of 2016, at the moment Weightless IoT Hardware Virtually Unavailable.
I expect LoRa Technology is expected to be hot in 2016. The LoRaWAN standard enables low-data-rate Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) wireless communication with a range of up to 10 miles, a battery life of 10 years, and the ability to connect millions of wireless sensor nodes to LoRaWAN gateways. LoRa® technology works using a digital spread spectrum modulation and proprietary protocol in the Sub-GHz RF band (433/868/915 MHz). I see LoRa technology interesting because lots of activity around in Finland in several companies (especially Espotel) and I have seen a convincing hands-in demo of the LoRa system in use.
It seems that 3GPP Lost its Way in IoT and there is fragmentation ahead in cellular standards. In theory 3GPP should be the default provider of IoT connectivity, but it seems that it has now failed in providing one universal technology. At the moment, there are three major paths being supported by 3GPP for IoT: the machine-type version of LTE (known as LTE-M) and two technologies coming from the Cellular-IoT initiative — NB-IoT and EC-GSM. So here we are with three full standardization efforts in 3GPP for IoT connectivity. It is too much. There will like be a base standard in 2016 for LTE-M.
The promise of billions of connected devices leads everyone to assume that there will be plenty of room for multiple technologies, but this betrays the premise of IoT, that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency. Too many standard will cause challenges for everybody. Customers will not embrace IoT if they have to choose between LTE-M and Sigfox-enabled products that may or may not work in all cases. OEM manufacturers will again bear the cost, managing devices at a regional or possibly national level. Again, we lose efficiency and scale. The cost of wireless connectivity will remain a barrier to entry to IoT.
Today’s Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts, quite propably supplied by different companies. An Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts. One is the end device that gathers data and/or executes control functions on the basis of its communications over the Internet. Another is the gateway or network interface device. Once on the Internet, the IoT system needs a cloud service to interact with. Then, there is the human-machine interface (HMI) that allows users to interact with the system. So far, most of the vendors selling into the IoT development network are offering only one or two of these parts directly. Alternatives to this disjointed design are arising, however. Recently many companies are getting into the end-to-end IoT design support business, although to different degrees.
Voice is becoming more often used the user interface of choice for IoT solutions. Smartphones let you control a lot using only your voice as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung have their solutions for this. For example Amazon, SoundHound and Nuance have created systems that allow to add language commands to own hardware or apps. Voice-activated interface becomes pervasive and persistent for IoT solutions in 2016. Right now, most smart home devices are controlled through smartphones, and it seems like that’s unlikely to change. The newest wearable technology, smart watches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce – it learns from its users, and generate as responses in real time appropriate, “micro-moments” tied to experience.
Monitoring your health is no longer only a small group oriented digital consumer area. Consumers will soon take advantage of the health technology extensively to measure well-being. Intel Funds Doctor in Your Pocket and Samsung’s new processor is meant for building much better fitness trackers. Also, insurance companies have realized the benefits of health technologies and develop new kinds of insurance services based on data from IoT devices.
Samsung’s betting big on the internet of things and wants the TV to sit at the heart of this strategy. Samsung believes that people will want to activate their lights, heating and garage doors all from the comfort of their couch. If smart TVs get a reputation for being easy to hack, then Samsung’s models are hardly likely to be big sellers. After a year in which the weakness of smart TVs were exploited, Samsung goes on the offensive in 2016. Samsung’s new Tizen-based TVs will have GAIA security with pin lock for credit card and other personal info, data encryption, built-in anti-malware system, more.
This year’s CES will focus on how connectivity is proliferating everything from cars to homes, realigning diverse markets – processors and networking continue to enhance drones, wearables and more. Auto makers will demonstrate various connected cars. There will be probably more health-related wearables at CES 2016, most of which will be woven into clothing, mainly focused on fitness. Whether or not the 2016 International CES holds any big surprises remains to be seen. The technology is there. Connected light bulbs, connected tea kettles, connected fridges and fans and coffeemakers and cars—it’s all possible. It’s not perfect, but the parts are only going to continue to get better, smaller, and cheaper.
Connectivity of IoT devices will still have challeges in 2016. While IoT standards organizations like the Open Interconnect Consortium and the AllSeen Alliance are expected to demonstrate their capabilities at CES, the industry is still a ways away from making connectivity simple. In 2016 it will still pretty darn tedious to get all these things connected, and there’s all these standards battles coming on. So there will be many standards in use at the same time. The next unsolved challenge: How the hell are all these things going to work together? Supporting open APIs that connect with various services is good.
Like UPnP and DLNA, AllJoyn could become the best-kept secret in the connected home in 2016 — everyone has it, no one knows about it. AllJoyn is an open-source initiative to connect devices in the Internet of Things. Microsoft added support for AllJoyn to Windows in 2014.
Analysis will become important in 2016 on IoT discussions. There’s too much information out there that’s available free, or very cheaply. We need systems to manage the information so we can make decisions. Welcome to the systems age.
The rise of the Internet of Things and Web services is driving new design principles. The new goal is to delight customers with experiences that evolve in flexible ways that show you understand their needs. “People are expecting rich experiences, fun and social interactions… this generation gets bored easily so you need to understand all the dimensions of how to delight them”
With huge number of devices security issues will become more and more important. In 2016, we’ll need to begin grappling with the security concerns these devices raise. The reality of everything being connected can have unintended consequences, not all of them useful – Welcome to the Internet of stupid (hackable) things.
Security: It was a hot topic for 2015 and if anything it will get hotter in 2016. The reason is clear. By adding connectivity embedded systems not only increase their utility, they vastly increase their vulnerability to subversion with significant consequences. Embedded systems that add connectivity face many challenges, of which the need for security is both vital and misunderstood. But vendors and developers have been getting the message and solutions are appearing in greater numbers, from software libraries to MCUs with a secure root of trust.
Bruce Schneier is predicting that the IoT will be abused in conjunction with DMCA to make our lives worse instead of better. In theory, connected sensors will anticipate your needs, saving you time, money, and energy. Except when the companies that make these connected objects act in a way that runs counter to the consumer’s best interests. The story of a company using copy-protection technology to lock out competitors—isn’t a new one. Plenty of companies set up proprietary standards to ensure that their customers don’t use someone else’s products with theirs. Because companies can enforce anti-competitive behavior this way, there’s a litany of things that just don’t exist, even though they would make life easier for consumers.
Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. Maybe it’ll be 2016, maybe the year after, but the train is coming. It’ll have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and probably eight other things, and you’ll definitely get a push notification when it gets here.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Stickers emerge as EU’s weapon against dud IoT security
Whitegoods-inspired security rating scheme under discussion
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/10/eu_commission_preps_iot_security_privacy_rules/
The European Commission is readying a push to get companies to produce labels that reveal the security baked into internet-of-things things.
The labelling effort is part of a broader push to drive companies to better handle security controls and privacy data in the notoriously insecure and leaky devices.
Deputy head of cabinet Thibault Kleiner told Euractiv the Commission may push companies to develop labelling for secure internet-of-things devices.
The stickers plan is modelled on labels applied to white goods and other domestic appliances, as consumers apparently understand this kind of labelling.
The risk posed by sloppily-secured things was demonstrated neatly by a recent DDoS attack, rated the world’s largest to date, which emerged from a large internet of things botnet.
Commission plans cybersecurity rules for internet-connected machines
http://www.euractiv.com/section/innovation-industry/news/commission-plans-cybersecurity-rules-for-internet-connected-machines/
The European Commission is getting ready to propose new legislation to protect machines from cybersecurity breaches, signalling the executive’s growing interest in encouraging traditional European manufacturers to build more devices that are connected to the internet.
A new plan to overhaul EU telecoms law, which digital policy chiefs Günther Oettinger and Andrus Ansip presented three weeks ago, aims to speed up internet connections to meet the needs of big industries like car manufacturing and agriculture as they gradually use more internet functions.
But that transition to more and faster internet connections has caused many companies to worry that new products and industrial tools that rely on the internet will be more vulnerable to attacks from hackers.
EU lawmakers want to dispel those fears by creating rules that force companies to meet tough security standards and go through multi-pronged certification processes to guarantee privacy.
“That’s really a problem in the internet of things. It’s not enough to just look at one component. You need to look at the network, the cloud. You need a governance framework to get certification,”
Kleiner said the Commission would encourage companies to come up with a labelling system for internet-connected devices that are approved and secure.
There are currently around 6 billion internet-connected devices in use worldwide, and that figure is predicted to soar to over 20 billion by 2020, according to research by consultancy Gartner.
The internet of things is a catchphrase that has caught on with Brussels legislators and lobbyists, who use it to describe devices that haven’t used internet connection up until now—but will in the future, like connected cars that predict traffic or calculate ways to save fuel, or refrigerators that alert a person when they’re running out of food.
The EU labelling system that rates appliances based on how much energy they consume could be a template for the cybersecurity ratings: Kleiner pointed to that as “something I’d apply to the internet of things”.
Some hardware manufacturers are sceptical of the Commission’s plans to require certification for different parts of internet-connected devices and instead want hardware like SIM cards to be approved as security guarantees that can be used with appliances, Kleiner acknowledged.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why 2016 Is a Little Like 1984
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1330581&
The vision of artificial intelligence is becoming a reality in a different and more nuanced way than technologists once imagined.
Wafer-thin smartphones more powerful than a 486 PC are common, and everyone assumes they can connect to one big network that holds all the world’s information. It’s amazing, and a little scary.
At least for today, it turns out those intelligent agents people talked about are the products of a handful of companies that own giant collections of data centers. They include Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google — and the world’s largest governments.
Most of the agents are what spy novels call double agents. They serve two masters — a consumer like you and me and their owner with the big data center.
Ostensibly the agents come free with an iPhone, a Facebook account or an Amazon Echo. Their real cost is they share their data with their vendor who resells it to his paying customers. As Peter Clarke, my colleague from EE Times Europe, puts it, “these days you are either selling or being sold.”
Few expected it would turn out this way. The visionaries weren’t predicting a World Wide Web, massively parallel distributed computing or the current kerosene — an emerging family of neural networking algorithms that run on those distributed data centers.
Today’s agents are still in their infancy.
So in 2016, the landscape seems set for a battle among a handful of intelligent agents poised to become giants. Consumers and OEMs need to decide carefully which they will partner with and on what terms.
Arguably science fiction writers like George Orwell saw this coming long before the PC arrived. It took folks like Edward Snowden to make it clear that 2016 is in a way 1984.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup Takes Wireless Patch to Hospital
ST co-designs triple-band SoC
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330566&
Startup HMicro Inc. comes out of stealth mode today with a plan to create a high volume market for disposable wireless patches. Its HC1100 SoC, co-developed with STMicroelectronics, uses Wi-Fi and other techniques to link sensors to patient monitors in hospitals.
Hospitals buy as many as six billion wired electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors every year, 4.5 billion of them from two big medical OEMs — 3M and Covidien. The sensors are sold in small volumes for less than $20 when paired with increasingly popular disposable lead wires.
Aiming to deliver ease-of-use and patient mobility, HMicro’s wireless patch will sell for a small premium over the costs of the wired sensors and wires
Tomi Engdahl says:
Free Hardware and IoT Ebooks
http://www.oreilly.com/iot/free/
Creating great hardware and IoT products requires cutting-edge insight on design, engineering, logistics, marketing, and management. These free ebooks compile knowledge from the experts who write our books and speak at the Solid conference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Centre Arrow Data Networking
Disney’s light-bulb moment: build TCP into LEDs for IoT comms
It’s going to be the year of Linux in the light socket
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/14/disneys_lightbulb_moment_iot_comms_in_led_lamps/
Since lights are everywhere, and LED lamps are The Way of The FutureTM, it makes sense that they be used for communications. Now, boffins working for Disney Research have taken LED-based comms a step further, adding a Linux TCP/IP network stack to a consumer lamp.
Their work, published here, pushes visible light communication (VLC) beyond research that has focussed on physical- and MAC-layers with a custom-built board the researchers reckon could be cheaply and easily integrated into existing LED lamps.
https://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/Linux-Light-Bulbs/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software Predicts Power Component Failure
Algorithms to monitor universal power supplies
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330578&
Eaton Corp. (Raleigh, N.C.) claims its cloud-based software ensures that universal power supplies (UPSes) will keep your computers up and running 24/7/365.
Called PredictPulse Insight, the software monitors the UPS’s components with a rule-based algorithm that tracks the batteries’ discharge history and determines when “80-to-90 percent of the UPS’s lifetime has been used up for the battery, capacitors, fans, air filters, and, if equipped, the power module [inverter, rectifier and the insulated gate bipolar transistor],” said Art Mulligan, product line manager at Eaton Corp.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Dahua’s IoT devices, largely responsible for Krebs DDoS attack, have default passwords hardcoded in firmware; EU is working on IoT device security regulations
Europe to Push New Security Rules Amid IoT Mess
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/europe-to-push-new-security-rules-amid-iot-mess/
The European Commission is drafting new cybersecurity requirements to beef up security around so-called Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as Web-connected security cameras, routers and digital video recorders (DVRs). News of the expected proposal comes as security firms are warning that a great many IoT devices are equipped with little or no security protections.
According to a report at Euractive.com, the Commission is planning the new IoT rules as part of a new plan to overhaul the European Union’s telecommunications laws. “The Commission would encourage companies to come up with a labeling system for internet-connected devices that are approved and secure,”
In last week’s piece, “Who Makes the IoT Things Under Attack?,” I looked at which companies are responsible for IoT products being sought out by Mirai — malware that scans the Internet for devices running default usernames and passwords and then forces vulnerable devices to participate in extremely powerful attacks designed to knock Web sites offline.
One of those default passwords — username: root and password: xc3511 — is in a broad array of white-labeled DVR and IP camera electronics boards made by a Chinese company called XiongMai Technologies. These components are sold downstream to vendors who then use it in their own products.
“The issue with these particular devices is that a user cannot feasibly change this password,” said Flashpoint’s Zach Wikholm. “The password is hardcoded into the firmware, and the tools necessary to disable it are not present.
Flashpoint says the majority of media coverage surrounding the Mirai attacks on KrebsOnSecurity and other targets has outed products made by Chinese hi-tech vendor Dahua as a primary source of compromised devices. Indeed, Dahua’s products were heavily represented in the analysis I published last week.
For its part, Dahua appears to be downplaying the problem.
Dahua said the company’s investigation determined the devices that became part of the DDoS attack had one or more of these characteristics:
-The devices were using firmware dating prior to January 2015.
-The devices were using the default user name and password.
-The devices were exposed to the internet without the protection of an effective network firewall.
Dahua also said that to the best of the company’s knowledge, DDoS [distributed denial-of-service attacks] threats have not affected any Dahua-branded devices deployed or sold in North America.
Flashpoint’s Wikholm said his analysis of the Mirai infected nodes found differently, that in the United States Dahua makes up about 65% of the attacking sources (~3,000 Internet addresses in the US out of approximately 400,000 addresses total).
Dahau’s statement that devices which were enslaved as part of the DDoS botnet were likely operating under the default password is duplicitous, given that threats like Mirai spread via Telnet and because the default password can’t effectively be changed.
Dahua and other IoT makers who have gotten a free pass on security for years are about to discover that building virtually no security into their products is going to have consequences. It’s a fair bet that the European Commission’s promised IoT regulations will cost a handful of IoT hardware vendors plenty.
Also, in the past week I’ve heard from two different attorneys who are weighing whether to launch class-action lawsuits against IoT vendors who have been paying lip service to security over the years and have now created a massive security headache for the rest of the Internet.
Commission plans cybersecurity rules for internet-connected machines
https://www.euractiv.com/section/innovation-industry/news/commission-plans-cybersecurity-rules-for-internet-connected-machines/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Creating JARVIS – Smart microphones enabling the digital butler
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4442807/Creating-JARVIS—Smart-microphones-enabling-the-digital-butler?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20161010&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20161010&elqTrackId=699419adf8ee4f8eb26002498fad2bcb&elq=db66a391d2644c798950cb756a5e6d9a&elqaid=34281&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=29917
The voice interface sector has been driven by the rapidly accelerated developments of cloud-based automated speech recognition (ASR) systems and smart microphones. ASR systems are now adding context to voice queries to enable searches that far outstrip the capabilities offered by current browser-based search, and adding the ability to control home automation and entertainment systems with a voice interface. Smart microphones are allowing these systems to work in a free-form environment. Together, they will soon enable the creation of a digital butler.
Zuckerberg was suitably vague about what his version of JARVIS will be and how it would work, but very clear what the outcome should be. He wants the ability to use his voice to control much of his home. Zuckerberg must also have seen the project as an opportunity to get a better understanding of the Amazon Echo. In particular, he probably wanted to understand the integrated control of IoT devices around the home, such as lights/thermostats/locks, and the development of Alexa Web Information Service (AWIS) Skills that developers can use to automate repetitive tasks like making an entry in a diary or booking a ticket.
Consumer interest in voice interface is growing rapidly. Less than 18 months ago Gartner reported that 30% of our interactions with technology will be through ‘conversations’ with smart machines by 2018. Yet by June 2016 Ben Barjin concluded in Creative Strategies that the release of the Amazon Echo had already pushed voice to the mainstream
Certainly the pace of innovation and development has been impressive. Since its launch in March 2015, Alexa Skills for the Amazon Echo have gone from 70 at launch to more than 2000 today. Also, during the last six months, Google has announced a competitor to the Echo and a similar product is expected from Apple, while Facebook and Microsoft have announced chatbot initiatives based around Messenger and Cortana. Each company is trying to work out a way to position their technologies to take best advantage of ecosystems based around voice.
So how close is Zuckerberg’s JARVIS?
These challenges represent a significant level of work. But there are a lot of people out there trying to achieve the same objective, and they have large development teams working on it. In a recent interview in August, Zuckerberg said he should be ready to demo “the AI sometime in the month of September”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Think IIoT Design
http://iiot.think-onsemi.com/?utm_campaign=ON+Semi+Nurturing+EN&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=35484417&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_8k6vrWeqTFQaA7avWZyAFfc6mV-x5GX0ckV_cY3_tEFOMUJkeAf1qskNr6J-_hyyAbzQfAGPLyh0G0RhXos9S3o3PuO5Pbg-Lsd0WSpiXC40sIsk&_hsmi=35484418
Welcome to ON Semiconductor’s Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) design resource center. Here you’ll find information to support the design process for applications like security and surveillance, smart city, smart home, industrial automation, smart lighting and more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Torvalds said similar things about the internet of things (IoT). Asked about efforts to shrink Linux to run on very modest computing devices, he said the Linux development community won’t make the effort to do so because “because most of the small devices tend to be very locked down.”
“I would like to say there are lots of IoT devices people will care about but when they are closed only people in companies care about them.” Which means the kernel won’t include code to make them work well.
In any case, he feels that shrinking Linux may not be the way to advance the IoT, as even cheap hardware will get better. “People who want to fit things into 512k will find it hard to find chips with embedded SRAM because people will grow the hardware.”
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/10/linus_torvalds_says_arm_just_doesnt_look_like_beating_intel/
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM cent Torvalds said he was disappointed. Not so much a command position, but the fact that the hardware platform with its not pleasant to work with.
When the code should be developed so many devices, it takes a different way.
- In this sense, the IoT is a problem. Often the devices are self-contained, so the improvement of the code is only interested in those companies.
Some dream that the linux shrunk for small devices up to, even IoT nodes. In this respect, Torvalds is not worried. – Although it seems that Moore’s law will disappear within 10 years, I hope that the hardware is growing all the time. IoT from the network must be so cheap and vähävirtasta that there will never be driven right operating system.
- Those who want to match linux 512 KB, will soon realize that it is difficult to find embedded devices with 512 KB of embedded SRAM memory, because it is simply cheaper to increase hardware.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5188:torvalds-usein-ajurit-ovat-todella-huonoa-koodia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Video:
LAS16-500K3: Fireside Chat with David Rusling and Linus Torvalds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuAebQvFnRI
Tomi Engdahl says:
Where Are The IoT Industry Standards?
http://semiengineering.com/where-are-the-iot-industry-standards/
While some Internet of Things groups are proceeding with setting standards, connectivity and other aspects are still up in the air.
Are you ready for some Internet of Things standards? Good, because you can help make them.
The IoT is proceeding apace as a business, eagerly embraced by such corporate behemoths as Cisco Systems, General Electric, IBM, and Verizon Communications. What’s lacking is the codification of industry standards for the IoT, as many companies have aligned with groups that have competing agendas and goals, like the AllSeen Alliance (which is disbanding), the Industrial Internet Consortium, the IPSO Alliance, the Open Connectivity Foundation, and the Thread Group.
There’s also IEEE P2413, an IoT architecture working group within the IEEE Standards Association
It is possible that some of the competing IoT standards groups could consolidate
Some steps have been taken by the IoT groups. The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) last month released the initial version of its Industrial Internet Security Framework, opening the specification to industry and academic discussion
In July, the Thread Group and the OCF said they would work together on adoption of connected-home products. The standards silos are getting connected, so to speak.
While IoT is leading to certain successful products, such as fitness bands, Internet-connected appliances, and home automation systems, there are “many different standards for different applications,” Gwennap said. He predicted, “Over time, things will settle down.”
Bluetooth, in its various flavors, is “the most popular low-power standard,” he noted, the Bluetooth Smart/Bluetooth Low Energy version in particular. The Bluetooth Classic specification offers more bandwidth
“Bluetooth mesh is on the horizon,”
“Wi-Fi is the most popular WLAN protocol” for IoT, the industry analyst and consultant noted.
While ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, and Thread have their advocates, the wide-area network field is abuzz with technologies under development, such as cellular IoT, IEEE 802.11ah (a Wi-Fi standard), the LoRa Alliance, narrowband Long-Term Evolution (NB-LTE), and 5G wireless communications. Like the IoT in many ways, 5G is a grab-bag of technologies, also lacking in widely accepted standards.
“No one standard fits all,”
Bluetooth, ZigBee, and IEEE 802.15.4 are among the connectivity standards being widely used in IoT
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Has Always Been With Us
http://semiengineering.com/iot-has-always-been-with-us/
By most accounts, Kevin Ashton of the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology coined the term “the Internet of Things” in 1999, referring to a system of ubiquitous sensors connecting the Internet with the physical world.
We were well into the 21st century before the Internet of Things, as a marketing term or a short description of a certain technology, came to be widely adopted, for better or for worse.
Truth be known, people have been saying “connected devices” and similar, generic phrases for many years. Only now, when you say “connected devices,” people almost immediately think, “IoT.” It’s kind of like cloud computing (an element of IoT technology), which has been around for many years under different names, and now it is transitioning to “fog computing” or “edge computing.”
Dennis Crespo, product marketing director for the Tensilica Processor Group at Cadence Design Systems, said in an interview, “We’re agnostic about this type of application segment. It’s a large percentage of our sales, but it has been for the past 15 years, even before the IoT name came into play. We were getting designs for controller-type processors that go into things like thermostats or HomePlugs or these communications DSPs that go into the same sort of platforms. We’ve been in this market for quite a long time. Recently, we have specialized our DSP and processor offerings for some hotter segments in the market, meaning that communications segment. This is a DSP than can do a variety of different stacks for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or Ethernet, as well.”
Internet of Things has been present in our lives for a long, long time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Free Hardware and IoT Ebooks
http://www.oreilly.com/iot/free/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Week In Review: IoT
http://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-iot-21/
BM invests $200M in Watson for IoT; Silicon Labs buys Micrium; Renesas IoT Sandbox bows.
IBM announced that it will spend more than $200 million on its new Watson Internet of Things center in Munich, Germany, focusing on how artificial intelligence and IoT connect with blockchain technology, the distributed database tech at the heart of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Big Blue revealed several customers for its Watson IoT Platform, such as Aerialtronics, Kouvola Innovation, Schaeffler, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals.
Silicon Laboratories acquired Micrium, a top supplier of real-time operating systems and other embedded software tools;
AT&T and Amazon Web Services will integrate their Internet of Things platforms, enabling the almost 29 million devices connected to AT&T’s worldwide network to securely transmit data into the AWS public cloud with ease.
Comcast will work with Semtech and other companies to support machineQ, a business-to-business offering and an Internet of Things platform. Semtech will provide its LoRa wireless radio-frequency technology for Comcast trials in Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Machina Research forecasts machine-to-machine connections around the world will increase from 6 billion in 2015 to 27 billion in 2025, with 20% of those M2M connections originating in the U.S.
Renesas Electronics America brought out the Renesas IoT Sandbox, a cloud-based offering for customers and partners to create IoT prototypes.
Maxim Integrated Products has introduced the DS28C36 DeepCover secure authenticator chip for IoT, industrial, and medical applications. The IC provides device integrity and intellectual property protection, and can be paired with Maxim’s DS2476 as a co-processor.
Smart Utility Meters 2016
about 48 million smart meters are deployed each year, representing a mature IoT market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Renesas IoT Sandbox
https://www.renesas.com/en-us/solutions/proposal/iot-sandbox.html
The fastest path from IoT concept to prototype
IoT Sandbox Enabled Kits
Synergy SK-S7G2 Starter Kit
Synergy S3A7 IoT Fast Prototyping Kit
Renesas IoT Sandbox
https://www.renesas.com/en-us/docs/solutions/proposal/Sandbox_flyer_100316_Final.pdf
The Renesas IoT Sandbox is a
no-cost, no-installation developer
area that provides cloud
connectivity with Renesas products,
smartphones, and third-party web
services (OpenWeatherMap, Twilio
SMS, Mandrill Email, etc.)
Once logged into their Renesas IoT Sandbox accounts, users will find
powerful IoT capabilities such as identity management, data storage,
ability to visualize data with dashboards and, most importantly, the
ability to derive intelligence from the data using flexible workflows, which
unlike rules engines are 100% programmatic. Deriving intelligence from
IoT data is a difficult problem to solve, but the cloud-based IDE makes it
as easy as possible. Users have access to pre-built workflows in the
library, or they can create their own custom workflows by writing Python
scripts. With the Renesas IoT Sandbox, users can build cloud-enabled
IoT prototypes in a matter of hours and no external rules engines are
required to make it happen.
Time-series event data in JSON format
is ingested into the Renesas IoT Sandbox
using secure REST or MQTT APIs
The Renesas IoT Sandbox
includes an integrated analytics-based
data store. It’s no-SQL, Schema-less
and saves JSON documents into
developer-defined collections.
To visualize your event data or workflow
derived data, you can create dashboards
and use real-time widgets to see the data
flowing live.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Prototype to production: Connecting to the cloud
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-basics/4442782/Prototype-to-production–Connecting-to-the-cloud?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20161011&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20161011&elqTrackId=e38be64c16844c0fb83ba29c4a2a13bf&elq=88cece835f3042909dbb0b1389f87c6c&elqaid=34303&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=29932
Connecting embedded systems to the internet is not by any means a new endeavor; engineers have been connecting embedded systems pretty much from the internet’s beginning. In the early days, these embedded systems were quite large and not very portable. They have become a whole lot smaller, and easier to set up, as our continuing project demonstrates.
In Prototype to Production: An Industrial HVAC Monitor using Shields, I mentioned quite a few shields that I will be discussing in the coming months as we pull an example IoT device together. The first, and possibly the most interesting, type is a Sparkfun ESP8266 Wi-Fi shield. The ESP8266 has turned out to be quite the intriguing Wi-Fi module.
The shield contains a Wi-Fi chip with an integrated microcontroller and TCP/IP stack produced by Espressif Systems. ESP8266 break-out boards and modules can cost as little as $5, so developers purchasing them in large quantities can undoubtedly get a great price and drastically simplify their Wi-Fi communication and system. Beyond the abstractions and cost benefits the shield offers, developers can even install Micro Python on it!
Connecting the ESP8266 Wi-Fi shield to a microcontroller is easy. All that is needed is Vcc, Ground, and a Tx/Rx pair for serial communication.
The ESP8266 uses a specialized AT command interface to get onto a network and communicate over TCP/IP.
Communication with the shield is a great first step, but in order to really connect to the internet we need to adjust the radio mode and set the SSID and password.
Getting a connection up and running isn’t too difficult. There is a big difference, however, between prototyping a connection and creating a production connection. Developers should be thinking through the reset procedure, for instance. What happens if the device resets? Can it detect the cause? What steps need to be taken to ensure the system is in a known and safe state? Developers also need to consider how many times to retry a connection and if a timeout is appropriate for the application. Further, a developer should think through a fault tree and how the system can recover from each type of fault. Does the device recover automatically or does it require human intervention?
The ESP8266 is just a single example of how connecting an embedded system to the internet is becoming easier and easier. A quick search reveals that there are many modules on the market designed to ease this common system crutch. With them, developers can get on track to easily communicating with the cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Home Connectivity and Wireless Sensing at electronica 2016
https://www.eeweb.com/news/smart-home-connectivity-and-wireless-sensing-at-electronica-2016
Silicon Labs will demonstrate its latest embedded and wireless sensing innovations for the Internet of Things (IoT) at electronica in Munich, Nov. 8-11,
provider of mesh networking silicon and software, Silicon Labs will showcase a comprehensive home automation mesh network, enabling smart home connectivity without complexity.
Silicon Labs Demos
Discover how to create Bluetooth-enabled wearable heart rate measurement (HRM) devices, featuring Silicon Labs’ best-in-class optical sensors, advanced HRM algorithm, Bluetooth low-energy wireless stack, and the company’s latest Blue Gecko module providing a complete Bluetooth connectivity solution including the antenna in an ultra-small form factor.
Explore Silicon Labs’ latest home automation reference designs based on our EFR32 Mighty Gecko multiprotocol wireless SoC and best-in-class Zigbee and Thread mesh networking technologies connecting an array of wireless sensor nodes in a smart home. Learn how to use Silicon Labs’ innovative mobile app to monitor environmental conditions and energy usage and control LED lights, occupancy and contact sensors, smart outlets and switches.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth® low energy or Sub-1 GHz? Connecting to a smartphone or a longer distance? Ultra-low power or wide area coverage? Why compromise when you can have it all? The SimpleLink™ dual-band CC1350 wireless microcontroller (MCU), newest member of the Texas Instruments (TI) SimpleLink ultra-low power wireless MCU platform integrates dual-band Sub-1 GHz + Bluetooth low energy connectivity on a single chip in a tiny package and is the lowest power, longest distance dual-band solution on the market. The CC1350 wireless MCU is fully available in production quantities today with hardware tools, software and support allowing developers to unleash their imagination and creativity for their next Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) application design.
Source: https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=reg20.jsp&referrer=&eventid=1240255&sessionid=1&key=EBCC43F59046A94147B8C053C9C5A235®Tag=&sourcepage=register
Tomi Engdahl says:
NextThingCo Introduces C.H.I.P. Pro, GR8 System On Module
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/12/nextthingco-introduces-c-h-i-p-pro-gr8-system-on-module/
NextThingCo, makers of the very popular C.H.I.P. single board Linux computer, have released the latest iteration of their hardware. It’s the C.H.I.P. Pro, an SBC designed to be the embedded brains of your next great project, product, or Internet of Things thing.
The C.H.I.P. Pro features an Allwinner R8 ARMv7 Cortex-A8 running at 1 GHz, a MALI-400 GPU, and either 256 MB or 512 MB of NAND Flash. The Pro also features 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, and is fully certified by the FCC. This board will be available in December at supposedly any quantity for $16.
The GR8 module includes an Allwinner R8 ARMv7 Cortex-A8 running at 1 GHz, a MALI-400 GPU, and 256 MB of DDR3 SDRAM. Peripherals include TWI, two UARTS, SPI (SD cards support is hacked onto this), two PWM outputs, a single 6-bit ADC, I2S audio, S/PDIF, one USB 2.0 Host and one USB 2.0 OTG, and a parallel camera interface. This isn’t really a chip meant for video out, but it does support TV out and a parallel LCD interface.
The Smarter Way to Build Smart Things
Scalable Hardware, Software, and Infrastructure for only $16.
Available Dec 2016. Dev kits on sale now.
https://getchip.com/pages/chippro
Tomi Engdahl says:
Blooming Flower Lamp Will Test Your 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/11/blooming-flower-lamp-will-test-your-3d-printer/
[ossum] has a baby on the way. He admits that he got a bit carried away, brimming with parental excitement. What resulted is a fully articulated LED WiFi lamp that blooms and glows dramatically in the friendly confines of the oncoming baby’s room.
Blooming Marvelous Flower Lamp
http://www.instructables.com/id/Blooming-Marvelous-Flower-Lamp/
I decided to make a 3D printed night-light for my soon-to-be-born baby girl’s room and, as is the norm with my projects, I got a bit carried away, so I present to you the fully-articulated, wifi-enabled, 3d-printed night-light (patent not pending).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia and Sonera experimented with 4G network NB-IoT technology
Nokia and Sonera have tested a commercial mobile network custom new IoT to meet the needs of the 4G network technology. Narrow Band IoT technology (NB-IoT) is a standardized this year, and it will continue to make more widespread use of new IoT devices and services, in particular the introduction of property maintenance.
A new type of NB-IoT network technology allows you to connect a reliable 4G network a very large number of devices that emit, for example, temperature, location information or data related to the fault situations.
NB-IoT technology to complement existing mobile networks operators, and all the major networks, component and equipment manufacturers support the standard. Sonera is developing NB-IoT-related services together with partners.
One of Sonera’s partners have Asan Security, which is a Finnish network-based video solutions developer.
The test was sent to temperature, humidity and barometric pressure sensor related data NB-IoT devices using Sonera’s 4G network in the 800 MHz frequency.
The test was conducted commercially available in the Nokia Flexi Multi Radio Base Station 10, which supports the NB-IoT technology. The test was verified by the NB-IoT technology functionality roaming connections first in the world. Thanks to the incumbent operators’ roaming networks can be contacted IoT devices around the world.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/10/12/nokia-sonera-kokeilivat-esineiden-internetin-4g-teknologiaa-ensimmaisena-suomessa/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Such is the intelligent city
The future of the planet settled by how urbanization can be done, says the London-based Future Cities Catapult (FCC) of fresh technology and innovation leader Jarmo “Beast” Eskelinen.
Eskelinen in the spring of 2016 moved to London after leading Finland to promote the digitization of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Forum Virium ten years.
London-based Smart Cities Future Cities Catapult specializes in helping cities to solve the problems caused by rapid urbanization and the development of urban life by bringing innovations-keeping companies, researchers and urban decision-makers together.
FCC collect data, analyze it and develop a research-based prototypes to be tested in cities with agility. The FCC’s headquarters in London is a demo of the University of Glasgow campus, which will learn to adapt to their users and their needs.
“Smart City is one that is able to utilize data across sectoral boundaries.”
Intelligence retrofit is expensive
Intelligent cities in the hope of salvation expandable urban problems. Every second resident of the planet lives in the city. The UN forecasts that in 2050 two out of three is packed cities.
The growth forecast to set wildly pressure for the development of cities. However, simple solutions do not exist, and no single model can be duplicated everywhere, Eskelinen says.
In the future, smart cities will be built like software: small modules for maximum flexibility entity.
Before smart cities being built, has yet to prove that the construction of smart cities is a worthwhile thing to do. In particular, the retrofitting of intelligent technologies, or retro fitting involves costs.
“It is not yet proven that smart cities would save money and energy. So far, the use of technology will increase emissions, but I believe in a world in which it is changing. It requires the optimization of physical services, “says Eskelinen.
One of the first services are optimized traffic. Movement when designing systems, it makes sense to build on-demand, ie the movement of the service-providing solutions
“Choose rather self-steering buses than private cars. Not transported thousand pounds of stuff for one person’s mobility needs, ”
In addition, light traffic routes should be optimized
smarter cities street lights dim when the street does not pass people and homes cooler when no one is at home. Intelligence extends to infrastructure and homes in neighborhoods of the cities, so that the service experience is seamless.
“London is leaking in the soil of millions of liters of water a day, it is a terrible and huge expensive environmentally damaging loss. But if the water supply network would have sensors all along the way, to be able immediately to see where the leak is. ”
“IOT’s side speaks smartdust. The sensors are so small that they can not be confused with a goal, to embed in concrete or let fly with the wind. Nanotechnology is developing so that the networks can be retrofitted so that they receive the data layer. ”
When the technology, such as mesh networks, is beginning to be sufficiently stable, builders and administrators must still believe in its benefits.
In order to make cities smarter shopping system, the public procurement process should be agile. Our business model is still under development, but it is clear that the experiment should be easier.
“How valuable is a resident of the old information systems data is? Is it really integrate the old to the new system? What if you take out the data, but, given its cleaning robot and the input of the new system? Retro fitting instead of a source of a clean slate, so both were Estonia “,
The collection and analysis of data is a key element of urban cities making smarter. Cities have finally noticed that companies can build a business on open data, open data and the cities of their race.
“When everything is integrated, all are also breakable.”
“We challenge the current paradigm of smart city, which is top-down ”
“We always think that modernity is a development end point, but it’s not.”
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/tallainen-on-alykas-kaupunki-6589827
Tomi Engdahl says:
Future engineers: It’s not just about circuits and code
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/rowe-s-and-columns/4442817/Future-engineers–It-s-not-just-about-circuits-and-code?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20161012&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20161012&elqTrackId=227f0546a08c463781230ba39594dc17&elq=56eaa3fff0144487b1eb76c9f31f701a&elqaid=34321&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=29947
Many employers are looking for graduates with system-level skills. Yes, students still need a solid grasp of the fundamentals, but to build systems that solve real-world problems, they need to think beyond circuits and code.
Solving real-world problems means that engineers need to see the world beyond their major. “As more embedded systems come out, leading to IoT,” said Gennert “there will be a shortage of people with systems skills.” Millenials seem to be answering the call. “Millennials are driven by making the world better, people living longer, and making a better environment. It’s not just about making money.”
The proliferation of open-source hardware (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc.) makes it easier to design systems that are closer to the customer because the lower-level engineering is already done. You become a system integrator, or dare I say, a “maker.” That’s fine, until something doesn’t work. Then, you need the depth of an engineering education.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A robot kitchen? Whatever. Are you stupid enough to fall for this?
Stump up £30k for a year of grocery deliveries and some sketchy promises
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/13/moley_robot_kitchen_nonsense/
Are you the sort of gullible idiot with millions of pounds or dollars to splurge on a “robot kitchen”? No, us neither. Hey, when you have a vaporware “startup” offering something like this, what’s reality got to do with it?
Moley – for that is this startup’s name – is punting a robotic kitchen, which it claims can rival Michelin-starred chefs without involving humans.
“Moley Robotics has created what we feel is the world’s first fully-automated and integrated intelligent cooking robot. It is designed to learn recipes, prepare and cook them and clear up after itself,” gurgles its Seedrs profile.
How does Moley’s robo-kitchen work? A Medium.com blog post by Oleynik states: “The basic concept of the invention is that the machine records the motions of a human chef, then recreates them. So the robot will only do what a human chef did.”
“We will have a standard food safety control procedure that will allow to detect and exclude all risks,” he adds, using the future tense and thereby bringing one to the conclusion that he doesn’t yet have a food safety control procedure.
What actual work has he done, then? “On R&D level, we finished work on product’s architecture and product pack specifications. We completed the visual version of the model, which requires completing a big number of tests of the technology in the simulation mode. We created the data exchange protocol and made the final database for that data. We signed some licensing agreements for the technologies that we will use in the development.”
In plain English, El Reg assumes all that means is he’s scribbled some ideas on the back of a fag packet, mocked it up in a CAD suite and asked an actual robotics firm if he can help himself to some of their tech.
Somehow, this project claims to have gained £600,000 of crowdfunded investment already.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Good ideas are generated outside of the company” – Nokia is looking for new insights into the IoT startups with contest
Twelve Startup or finds himself competing for a team victory Nokia’s Internet of Things Challenge competition. The race reflects how the network technology giant, like many other company believes it will find valuable ideas from outside its own walls,.
The official name of the competition is the Nokia Open Innovation Challenge. Seven series came to a total of 410 proposals were received following multi-stage qualifier finals survived twelve o’clock growth company or a team.
Finland became an abundance of suggestions, but none of them did not reach the climax. The United States is four finalists, two from France and Sweden, the Netherlands, Britain, Germany and Taiwan each one.
“We want to be involved in the creation of ecosystems, which are included as well as suppliers, customers and startups. More generally, the more and more innovation and good ideas will be generated outside the company, and of course we should take advantage of them, ”
“Ideas speed up product development”
This is the fourth consecutive year, while Nokia to organize a similar competition. Every year the number of entries has doubled.
The main sponsor and the judging of Nokia Growth Partners is a private equity fund, which this year began to rotate a $ 350 million investment fund IoT.
“Ideas have helped us to speed up product development, and always races left something in your hand. My staff is inspired by ideas coming from outside, “Niemi says.
“IoT is this umbrella, because it is part of Nokia’s strategy. We are IoT things in many places and in many different parts of the organization team. ”
Nokia produces itself suitable network communication technology IoT communication. However, the company also aims to look at the side, which sends the data to the network.
“Essential IOT operators is the ease of joining the network, sufficient network capacity, the need to collect data and transmit the content.”
Cash prizes will not be shared at all. Instead there is two days practical training in a business and technology mentoring, an open door to Nokia’s ecosystem, as well as contacts with private equity investors and the market in different countries.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/hyvia-ideoita-syntyy-yrityksen-ulkopuolella-nokia-etsii-uusia-oivalluksia-startupien-iot-kisalla-6589775
Tomi Engdahl says:
Silicon Labs Acquires Leading RTOS Company Micrium
http://news.silabs.com/press-release/corporate-news/silicon-labs-acquires-leading-rtos-company-micrium?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=september2016newsletter&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWVRRNE1XTXpOV1poWmpBdyIsInQiOiJEQmVqYlwvZ3NRR09yMXlBVTdMc2oxaDZQcEEwbDI0QjcrZkxwTVBsOXNzR1ozWjRZa3JKUHJNNmZSS1NrTmttZWhYNndtM3lQbEhvSnJXdnBWY2V0QTJ5XC9LdzE1ZDRVb2x3WnR4bTdBOVNvPSJ9
Developers Gain Complete Embedded Solution for the IoT Combining RTOS with Multiprotocol Silicon, Tools and Software Stacks
acquisition of Micrium, a leading supplier of real-time operating system (RTOS) software for the Internet of Things (IoT). This strategic acquisition helps simplify IoT design for all developers by combining a leading, commercial-grade embedded RTOS with Silicon Labs’ IoT expertise and solutions. Micrium’s RTOS and software tools will continue to be available to all silicon partners worldwide, giving customers a wide range of options, even when using non-Silicon Labs hardware. Micrium will continue to fully support existing as well as new customers.
“With an installed base of millions of devices, Micrium’s RTOS software has established itself as one of the most reliable and trusted platforms over the last 10 years,”
Micrium’s widely deployed RTOS software has been ported to more than 50 microcontroller architectures and has a global footprint with more than 250,000 downloads across all embedded vertical markets, with solutions certified to meet safety-critical standards for medical electronics, avionics, communications, consumer electronics and industrial control.
Tomi Engdahl says:
From Concept to Market in Just 3 Weeks: IoT Hero Microtronics Breaks Down Development Barriers
http://community.silabs.com/t5/Official-Blog-of-Silicon-Labs/From-Concept-to-Market-in-Just-3-Weeks-IoT-Hero-Microtronics/ba-p/176537?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=september2016newsletter&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWVRRNE1XTXpOV1poWmpBdyIsInQiOiJEQmVqYlwvZ3NRR09yMXlBVTdMc2oxaDZQcEEwbDI0QjcrZkxwTVBsOXNzR1ozWjRZa3JKUHJNNmZSS1NrTmttZWhYNndtM3lQbEhvSnJXdnBWY2V0QTJ5XC9LdzE1ZDRVb2x3WnR4bTdBOVNvPSJ9
I like your emphasis on “meaningfully” connecting to the IoT. Can you elaborate?
Of course. We don’t want our customers to just throw some sensors on any and every product they have, to succumb to this pressure that maybe everything they do has to be smart. We want to help our customers focus on their best and brightest potential entrants into this space, to bring the best of their business thought alive in the IoT, making their participation really relevant in the process. It’s all about creating true value for what really matters—the end-users—and not losing focus on that.
We also like helping our customers be nimble in terms of their overall IT solution for their connected devices. We often see companies that are trying to force their smart devices to fit into existing networks and classic IT infrastructures to their detriment. The IoT requires scalability, and we want to see people deploy solutions that can painlessly scale and show real stability as well.
We’ve been using GSM modules from Silicon Labs since the beginning. And starting about four years ago, we’ve been using the EFM32 Giant Gecko 32-bit MCU and have built our rapidM2M product family on this device.
Connectivity has become critical for staying competitive for many companies, can you walk us through the process you go through with customers?
Today, improving upon a product usually means adding some level of connectivity. Soon when you see an everyday object, a coffee maker for example, that isn’t connected to the Internet you will wonder why that is.
With customers, we start with the concept. They bring us an idea and we discuss the business model, either their existing model or potential ways to address the market. This is where we define requirements and get an idea of what to expect. After that, we move to proof-of-concept. This is where the application script is developed and we’ll demo a web app. Finally, we’ll pilot the project by integrating the module and application script into the customer’s product. After this, it’s ready for production.
Fears about security are obviously always a huge component of IoT development and discussion, especially for new entrants to the space. How do you educate your customers about security?
We are very much in the camp that security is not a distinct step, that it’s an ongoing, continuous, layered process. We also advise our customers that if they stack two or three IoT vendors together as their solution—all with different interfaces, updates, etc.—that they could be opening themselves to vulnerabilities in the long term versus having one secured solution where we’re controlling the whole software stack end to end continuously and fluidly.
What market trends have you observed in your company in terms of particular industries making really pertinent strides in IoT right now? Any trends you expect in the future on that topic as well?
Honestly, we have a very diverse client base. I can’t say there seems to be more innovation right now in any one segment now or in the foreseeable future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Days of Thunderboard Derby
http://community.silabs.com/t5/Official-Blog-of-Silicon-Labs/Days-of-Thunderboard-Derby/ba-p/176302?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=september2016newsletter&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWVRRNE1XTXpOV1poWmpBdyIsInQiOiJEQmVqYlwvZ3NRR09yMXlBVTdMc2oxaDZQcEEwbDI0QjcrZkxwTVBsOXNzR1ozWjRZa3JKUHJNNmZSS1NrTmttZWhYNndtM3lQbEhvSnJXdnBWY2V0QTJ5XC9LdzE1ZDRVb2x3WnR4bTdBOVNvPSJ9
We’re committed to building a more connected world by enabling the bright minds of today with innovative technology. That mission comes through loud and clear with our new Thunderboard React, a cloud-connected, Bluetooth-enabled, sensor-driven platform that lets customers demo, evaluate, and develop their own projects.
Introducing the Cloud-Connected Thunderboard React
https://silicon-labs-thunderboard.firebaseapp.com/
Introducing the Cloud-Connected Thunderboard React
At Silicon Labs, we live to make awesome hardware and software to power the Internet of Things. This is why we created the bad*ss Thunderboard React Car Kit, a mini smart car that senses what’s happening in the world around it, transmits that data to the cloud via your mobile device, and displays the data in real-time so you can respond to the big picture!
Thunderboard React shows you the science behind measuring inertia, UV light, temperature and humidity, or RPMs. It has built-in Bluetooth low energy technology for connectivity, accelerometer, biometric sensors, a hall effect sensor for rotation and magnetism, and it comes with all the smartphone apps and server tools you need to start developing cloud-based applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I lead the Silicon Labs IoT Business. Ask Me Anything.
http://community.silabs.com/t5/General-Discussions-and/I-lead-the-Silicon-Labs-IoT-Business-Ask-Me-Anything/m-p/175891?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=september2016newsletter&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWVRRNE1XTXpOV1poWmpBdyIsInQiOiJEQmVqYlwvZ3NRR09yMXlBVTdMc2oxaDZQcEEwbDI0QjcrZkxwTVBsOXNzR1ozWjRZa3JKUHJNNmZSS1NrTmttZWhYNndtM3lQbEhvSnJXdnBWY2V0QTJ5XC9LdzE1ZDRVb2x3WnR4bTdBOVNvPSJ9#M841
Tomi Engdahl says:
Grant Gross / PCWorld:
White House to invest $65M in smart-city technologies and $50M in small-satellite tech for broadband and more, as part of $300M innovation package
White House releases money for small-satellite broadband, smart cities
The government will release $65 million for smart-city technology, $30 million for small satellites
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3131048/white-house-releases-money-for-small-satellite-broadband-smart-cities.html
The U.S. government will invest tens of millions of dollars in smart-city technologies and in small-satellite broadband as part of a US$300 million package focused on innovation.
The package of new investments, announced Thursday, will include $65 million in government funding and $100 million in private funding for smart cities technologies. Two new government grant programs will focus on easing traffic congestion and on creating new on-demand mobility services, including smartphone-enabled car sharing, demand-responsive buses, and bike-sharing.
“From automated vehicles to connected infrastructure to data analytics, technology is transforming how we move around our country, and some of the most exciting innovation is happening at the local level,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement.
“Advancing smallsat technology and adoption could, for example, allow companies to provide ubiquitous high-speed Internet connectivity and offer continuously updated imagery of the Earth,”
“While we’ve made great progress, there’s no shortage of challenges ahead: Climate change. Economic inequality. Cybersecurity. Terrorism and gun violence. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and antibiotic-resistant superbugs,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Knowing the future: predictive maintenance and risk mitigation
Predictive technology proves to be the answer to help prevent plant downtime, safety, and environmental risks.
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/knowing-the-future-predictive-maintenance-and-risk-mitigation/802bd5f79a4ae9dad2c851284d61e126.html?OCVALIDATE&ocid=101781
The advent of monitoring and predictive technology has to this day averted a myriad of accidents and millions of dollars in equipment failures and plant downtime. At a time when asset optimization is the word of order and when security and environmental concerns are higher than ever before, predictive maintenance can prove to be the answer to the prayers of managers, health and safety executive directors, and engineers alike.
“The biggest challenge in the oil and gas industry today is the identification and forecasting of hidden risk development,” said Henk Smith, director of key accounts for Europe and South America at GP Rovsing Dynamics, a GP Strategies Company.
“In our experience, operators that engage with predictive maintenance technology are astonished at the results, but the principle strategy we apply is in fact quite basic. It is just a pragmatic approach to problem solving with technology that has been available for quite some time but [one] that companies have so far been slow to implement,” Smith added.
Let’s consider this: As the manager in charge of maintenance and reliability at an industrial plant, between the choice of running your equipment to exhaustion and then replacing it (reactive maintenance), replacing the equipment periodically according to manufacturer instructions whether it is damaged or not (preventive maintenance), or having a system that would tell you in advance what kind of damage your equipment is suffering and when is the optimal time to replace it (predictive maintenance), which option would you choose? It depends.
For cheap, noncritical and easy-to-replace equipment, installing high-tech sensors that flood your servers with performance indicators might be unjustifiably expensive and useless. It is just easier to replace it once it stops working. Noncritical equipment that has a long lifecycle that is subjected to little stress and degradation might also not justify constant monitoring if it were replaced periodically. However, if you could predict when the moving parts of a gas processor would start to degrade and have the ability to act on it at an optimal time to reduce costs and prevent catastrophic failure, then your investment might be well worth it.
Implementing predictive maintenance technology
Timing is key when applying predictive maintenance systems and naturally, the earlier the better. ”
Benefits of predictive maintenance technology
Industry players suggest that the average period of return on investment for these systems is 12 months, with escalating financial benefits over time. That seems, however, not always to be the main concern for operators.
Through analysis and cross industry comparison, today these companies are capable of developing:
Risk analysis
Aggregation of all mechanical faults detections in operations
Scored mechanical fault detections by severity and potential impact for disrupting production and operational continuity
An overarching view of the system’s potential benefits for risk aversion.
As concerns for human security rise in oil and gas operations, these approaches can be instrumental in saving lives and promoting operational uptime.
“The monitoring approach with full automation of diagnostic data evaluation, fault diagnosis, and fault forecasting revealed major problems in several plants that could be addressed before a critical situation would be reached, avoiding unscheduled downtime. This changed the operation from reactive to proactive, the key objective of the project, and realized a short return on investment,” Smith said.
The objectives of the intervention included:
Online condition monitoring covering both the gas turbines
Gearboxes and compressors
Online performance monitoring covering the gas turbines and compressors
Online reliability monitoring covering the compressor lines and 30 less critical machines
Offline condition monitoring of electric motor driven fans and pumps.
The most common uses of predictive maintenance technology, including oil analysis, infrared thermography, and vibration analysis, have been around for over 3 decades, but have failed to attract the attention of managers that tended to see maintenance issues as minor, technical affairs. The industry still finds it hard today to send the correct message to decision makers in operating companies, but that might be changing.
“Communication between technicians and management is always an issue in many organizations, and that is the case in the application of these technologies as well,” Wheelhouse said. “The major obstacle to optimization is the difficulties of communication between the plant floor and the decision-making board. That will not change quickly. In our experience, the flow of communication between the technical side of the operation and management is very dependent on the company’s culture. If the company upholds an old-fashioned culture, they will be very protective of the information they share even amongst themselves, to the extent that the technicians will not want management to see how well or how poorly they are operating. They are asked to do a lot without very much. They will be asked to implement a strategic predictive maintenance program without enough funds to do it and with no specific strategic objectives,” Hurlock said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Balancing Performance And Energy Consumption For IoT Applications Processors
Why processor selection and configuration are so critical.
http://semiengineering.com/balancing-performance-and-energy-consumption-for-iot-applications-processors/
Processor requirements in IoT applications continue to grow to support more human interaction. Functions such as detecting speech and faces or delivering a voice message are being added to existing tasks the processors already perform such as system communication and control. Since these applications operate from batteries with defined size and life expectations, not only is the energy consumption budget not growing, but it’s getting smaller as energy harvesting or smaller batteries are considered.
System architects face difficult challenges to meet these increasing requirements. The right processor and the ability to configure it can enable them to address these seemingly conflicting goals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Startup Taps Blockchain
Industrial end nodes ride Bitcoin, LoRa
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330620&
A startup is now in trials with a novel design for Internet of Things nodes targeting industrial uses. Filament wrote its own mesh networking protocol to significantly expand the range of LoRa networks and tapped the Bitcoin blockchain as part of its approach to security.
The company started four years ago as a crowdfunded maker of Arduino mesh networking boards. About two-and-a-half years ago, the now 35-person company started getting calls from potential Fortune 100 customers.
Filament’s engineers faced several probes figuring out how to keep track of end nodes that might sometimes be off-line. After several investigations, “we found we could solve it with aspects of blockchain, so we used the Bitcoin blockchain to establish trust — it was a practical solution,” he said.
Separately, Filament embeds a hardware root-of-trust in every node. The simple controller can encrypt and store keys and decrypt digital signatures. “You can’t have any security without a secure element, and the one we use only costs 48 cents at scale,” he said.
The other novel part of Filament’s design is a mesh protocol for LoRa that supports as many as ten hops with reasonable latency and distances of up to nine miles between line-of-sight hops. LoRa’s native protocol supports a star network topology with one hop and distances of about a mile between hops.
The net result is a network that could cover the equivalent of a large city with a handful of devices.
The so-called Tap nodes are being tested for applications such as securely connecting residential solar panels to a utility.
The Tap nodes build in Bluetooth Low Energy and USB links so they can be provisioned from a smartphone or industrial computer. The also include five industrial sensors and a Javascript interpreter running on a Cortex M0 microcontroller with 32 Kbytes RAM.
The startup plans to use a service model, charging customers $10-25 per device per month.
Filament
https://filament.com/
Deploy a long-range wireless network anywhere.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MQTT eases development of software for Industrial Internet of Things
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/mqtt-eases-development-of-software-for-industrial-internet-of-things/3010d0bd717bcc5338693c61d1619a3d.html
Serving as a universal message transport for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) application development, MQTT can be used to decouple devices from applications, thereby freeing infrastructures from any single operating system, application, or hardware platform, according to explanations offered at Inductive Automation’s Ignition Community Conference 2016.
MQTT enables IIoT in two steps:
1. Decoupling: MQTT allows devices to be connected to the infrastructure as needed, not to specific applications.
Fluke
2. Superior operations technology (OT): MQTT allows proponents of IIoT software upgrades to demonstrate an OT solution superior to the legacy approach.
Complexity impedes innovation, Nipper said; and protocols are difficult if not impossible to change or extend. Development tools and debug tools are expensive, and choices are limited. Technologies are now in silos, and access is limited to a few individuals.
The Sparkplug MQTT specification defines how to use MQTT in a mission-critical, real-time environment, defining the topic namespace, payload definition, state management with high availability, redundancy, and scalability, Nipper said. Reference implementations are available in C, Java, JavaScript, Python, and Node Red. While HTTP is used more widely as a messaging transport, he said, HTTP cannot control valves, for instance, because it has no state.
MQTT use has expanded rapidly in a year
MQTT servers are available from Cirrus Link, Mosquitto, Microsoft, AWS, IBM, Red Hat, HiveMQ, and numerous other message-oriented middleware providers. Clients include Ignition from Inductive Automation, Sparkplug, Java, JavaScript, Python, MQTT.fx, and Node Red (visual tool for wiring IoT). Device ecosystems using MQTT, as shown at the ICC, include B+B SmartWorx (Advantech), Elecsys, Hilscher, Magnetrol, Moxa, Opto 22, and Tyrion Integration.
Among the messaging standards in use, according to the Eclipse Foundation IoT Developer survey, as cited by Nipper, MQTT is near the top with 61% HTTP, 52% MQTT, 21% CoAP, and 19% HTTP/2, among others. The MQTT server and client architecture enables users to connect, subscribe, and publish, facilitating easy real-time implementation over gateways and native devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sparkplug
https://github.com/Cirrus-Link/Sparkplug
Sparkplug is a specification for MQTT enabled devices and applications to send and receive messages in a stateful way. While MQTT is stateful by nature it doesn’t ensure that all data on a receiving MQTT application is current or valid. Sparkplug provides a mechanism for ensuring that remote device or application data is current and valid.
The examples here provide reference implementations in various languages and for various devices to show how the device/remote application must connect and disconnect from the MQTT server. This includes device lifecycle messages such as the required birth and last will & testament messages that must be sent to ensure the device lifecycle state and data integrity.
The Sparkplug specification which explains these examples can be found here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/cirrus-link-com/Sparkplug+Specification+Version+1.0.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sparkplug Specification Device and Application Integration
http://www.cirrus-link.com/oem-device-data-integration/
Cirrus Link provides open source software, tools and reference specification(Sparkplug) to facilitate clients to enable their applications, sensors, devices or gateways to seamlessly integrate with the Inductive Automation Ignition Platform utilizing the Cirrus Link MQTT modules. The Sparkplug specification provides the necessary details for any MQTT enabled device to connect to MQTT servers and integrate with zero configuration into Ignition via the Cirrus Link MQTT Engine Module.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tremble, Uber! “The stupid button” Finland gives traditional taxis new weapon
You are in Paris or at the hotel bar in Espoo, but going away. You press the big button respassa the hotel or at the bar. Button flanked by roving green LED light turns on, and as soon as you step into a taxi. This is a Finnish start-up truck Bttn simple invention.
Startup office in Vallila, Helsinki is constant buzz. Box Stack feature packed client awaiting delivery Bttn-buttons
Wireless Bttn-buttons are purchased, for example, taxi firms in Europe, America and Oceania.
“A clear target group are also digital marketing agencies,”
Bttn tends extreme simplicity.
“The button is a dumb device that anyone can use and which can communicate or ask for help,” said Pesola.
The idea is that the button works without the use of training and that it always does just one thing.
Parisian taxi company Taxi Le Bleu, who wanted to go to the fight against Uber: Just over a year ago ordered a taxi company for more than 500 Bttn button, which was provided mainly in hotels. The best places has been ordered more than a hundred a day a taxi, and a total of about a year was commissioned more than 80 000 cars.
“Hotels-saving push the price back about a week, when they shall avoid service center payment of taxis,”
A single push of the current price Bttn does not publish, but something can be inferred from a couple of years ago, led by Indiegogo number of financial campaign. In the one-button got 99 dollars
Bttn has gained success in the taxi sector in the United States, where it opened an office a year ago.
The button of the intellect in the cloud
Button is a wireless network connection, and there are several different types of connections. The newest option is designed for the Internet of Things Sigfox, which has the advantage of very low power consumption and years of battery life.
a simple button intellect gets in the cloud. On the Dashboard, the buyer sees it owns buttons and defines what happens on pressing a button. Available options include email, SMS, tweet, http, ifttt, zapier and the REST API.
“In product development, a lot of resources have been used in server logic, authentication services, data security and user interface as simple as possible,”
The starting point was the Raspberry Pi
Bttn founder Harri Rautio was born the idea to simplify things extremely cheap computer Raspberry mini-pin using.
Finnkino took the keys to the movie theater for that movie viewers can press the button to summon the staff representative. Taxi company Kajo acquired buttons for restaurants orders.
The pilot phase glorified, that simple idea to carry. for a fixed period, given a first contingent financing, investors were convinced.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/vapise-uber-tyhma-nappi-suomesta-antaa-perinteisille-takseille-uuden-aseen-6589675
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Military Things
http://intelligentsystemssource.com/internet-of-military-things/
For a technology editor like me, the responsibility of being careful with words and their meanings could be considered an occupational hazard. But since I delight in that side of my job I see it as a joy. An interesting part of that is acknowledging when terminologies become so pervasive they rarely need to be used. Such was the case with “electronics”, and then more recently “embedded”-and today even the term “COTS” isn’t necessary since at some level everything in the defense industry uses COTS components or systems.
Today, the latest buzzword gaining steam in the technology world is Internet-of-Things (IoT). When I first heard the term a couple years back I was pretty sure the defense industry would shy away from it. Perhaps the “things” part seemed out of place in the defense world. Fast forward to today and the military is very much interested in the technologies and capabilities of IoT. And it some ways it has been way before the term IoT surfaced. In its basic sense an IoT network is a connection of sensors, embedded devices and systems. That’s really the same sort of architecture is essentially what the DoD has been calling “net-centric” operations for more than a decade now.
It’s been an ongoing goal of U.S. military operational strategy to grow an interconnected network of sensors, shooters, command, control and intelligence. This network-centric idea includes programs to build joint architectures and roadmaps for integrating joint airborne networking capabilities with the evolving ground, maritime and space networks. That sounds very IoT-substitute “Global Information Grid” for “cloud” and you’re pretty much there.
in 1987 it was a Cisco MGS router that became the DoD’s first widely fielded Internet Protocol (IP) component
Cisco’s routing, switching, unified communications, and security technologies enabled all the wired and wireless (SATCOM) infrastructures necessary for the DoD’s global coverage.
Airborne platforms using Cisco technologies include the Navy P3 and TRITON Air Force AWACS, JSTARS, VIP Aircraft, C130s, and Global Hawk.
In many ways a desire to use gear from the IT and telecom industries has been driven the types of form factor choices made in some military programs. The emergence of 1U rackmount servers on vehicle mounted systems for example happened I believe because system developers needed computing systems to work alongside 1U rackmount routers from Cisco and other comms gear from various vendors.
To reflect where were are today with IoT, Cisco has been using the term The Internet of Everything (IoE)-the concept being that with each new person, process, piece of data, or thing that comes online, the connection possibilities between all these elements grow exponentially.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Search Engines and Smart Phones Drive the Industrial Internet: The Rise of Connected Controls
http://www.geautomation.com/blog/search-engines-and-smart-phones-drive-industrial-internet-rise-connected-controls
As I think about this new era of “futurized controls” and the Internet of Things (IOT) I wonder: What new technologies have propelled us to this Digital Industrial era and what does it mean for the controls industry?
What enabled the Industrial Internet? Was it smaller, more powerful computers? New cyber technologies? Perhaps modeling of OEM assets has been perfected? I don’t think the era of Big Data started due to any singular technological advancement; it was a culmination of several smaller things.
First, we are now reaching a point where we can’t individually maintain the growing number of assets. For example, there are 50,000 wind turbines in the U.S. Five years ago, there were half that many and two years before that, there were one quarter. In the 2000s wide-scale data was unnecessary. At the time, the industry could operate on a 1-to-1 scale. That’s no longer possible with such a large industrial asset population.
Secondly, because these industrial assets are so complex, they require numerous digital controls to operate them efficiently. And as the result of low-cost controls, these individual systems become siloed within the sub-components of an asset. The result? Controls components become downgraded with less features and lower interconnectivity. A given industrial asset could have 7-10 digital systems with no inter-communication.
The emergence of the IOT promises these interconnections, at a small cost. And, it brings customer value back to a holistic view rather than a collection of unmanageable, individual subsystems.
Finally, in the age of the smart phone, customers demand simplicity and easy to access data.
We’re close to this digital harmonization. Because of this tipping point toward value-added connectivity over low-cost “sub-components,” there has been a shift to communizing platforms in an integrated control system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Reasons Why Governments Should Create IoT strategy
http://intelligentsystemssource.com/5-reasons-why-governments-should-create-iot-strategy/
Internet of Things (IoT) can be defined as a system of computing devices, digital machines, people or objects that are interrelated and interconnected through the Internet. They are provided with unique identifiers and have an ability to transfer data or information over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
T. Let us look at five reasons why governments should put serious effort into creating national strategies for Internet of Things.
1. Regulations To Support Innovation: If the regulations are poorly designed, they will greatly slow down the progress and growth of Internet of Things.
2. Give Public Sector a Boost: There are a number of facets of Internet of Things that needs to utilize public goods that cannot be adequately provided by the private sector.
3. Minimize the Uncertainty: Let’s be honest, IoT isn’t an established model yet, which is why there will be skepticism around it. Businesses and local governments will tend to question its potential and won’t try to adopt the technology quickly.
4. Assist in Gaining Global Competitive Edge: Internet of Things provides a great international platform and presents innumerable opportunities for businesses to gain advantage in the global market. This advantage won’t just benefit the organizations but also the country’s economy.
5. Inter-Operability Between the Public and Private Sector: The private sector can take the responsibility of developing and adopting the standards for the Internet of Things. At the same time, standards coordination holds importance in public-sector applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Triggy – Cloud Connected Trigger
https://hackaday.io/project/12829-triggy-cloud-connected-trigger
Tiny smart device which triggers a cloud-based action on a displacement, a temperature change, a proximity… unlimited possibilities!
Triggy allows to automate any cloud based action from a physical event, using an Android powered device (phone or tablet) as the internet gateway. Events and actions mapping is done thanks to the IFTTT service. IFTTT allows to define rules (aka Recipes) such as “If This Then That”
Triggy offers new possibilities for the “This”, enabling powerful and useful rules. A key differentiator from existing solutions is that only an Android device is required with the Triggy board, making automation very simple and cheap.
To some extent Triggy can be seen as a “transportable” home automation system, however not limited to home applications. Few examples of what Triggy will make it possible:
Turn off a smart light bulb (e.g. Philips Hue) when you open the window shutters
Get a notification on your phone each time the home front door (or the cat flap) is opened or closed
Receive an email when the postman delivers physical mail
Be alerted in case the freezer door is opened for more than one minute
Automatically put your phone on vibrate mode when arriving at work office
When it starts to rain, receive an SMS reminding you to close the roof windows or to pick up the clothes drying outside
Today one can easily buy and install a more or less expensive smart home solution. Some of them allows a connection to the cloud, others also support the IFTTT service. With Triggy, we want to enable new possibilities, new usages, and not only limited to the home automation
HOW IT WORKS
Here are the components required in the proposed system:
A smartphone or a tablet connected to the internet (in WiFi or 3G/4G) and operated by Android 4.3 or higher, having inside the Bluetooth 4.0 or higher. The application is not available on iOS for now.
At least one Triggy module, possibly with an expansion board plugged.
An Android application installed on the smartphone which is used as the gateway. It will also be used to indicate and configure nearby Triggy modules.
An IFTTT account (the creation is free) and the IF application in order to get the notifications. The Maker channel will be used to create the “events”.
The module is 25 mm of side and mainly embeds the following parts:
The nRF52832 micro-controller (Cortex-M4) from Nordic, takes care of the BLE link and sensors management. This is the last chip of the nRF series, with more processing power and less consumption.
LSM303D accelerometer/magnetometer from STMicroelectronics, for the movement detection
Pushbutton switch
Bi-color LED
2.4 GHz antenna
Miniature expansion connector (pitch 2 mm)
Tomi Engdahl says:
weather ticker
It continuously displays the weather conditions, and the weather forecast for the next few days
https://hackaday.io/project/15832-weather-ticker
This is a fun project for a beginner. It has a hardware side (buying components, soldering, connecting wires) and well as using shell scripts, crontabs, and some Python code.
Components
1 × raspberry pi zero
1 × wifi usb dongle
2 × MAX7219 4 in 1 dot matrix arrays
1 × wood ruler
1 × micro SD card >= 8Gb
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Dash Reboots Your Pi
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/15/amazon-dash-reboots-your-pi/
We all know feature creep can be a problem in almost any project. A simple idea can often become unusable if a project’s scope isn’t clearly defined in the beginning. However, the opposite problem sometimes presents itself: forgetting to include a key feature. [Zach] had this problem when he built a Raspberry Pi magic mirror and forgot to build a physical reset/shutoff switch. Luckily he had a spare Amazon Dash button and re-purposed it for use with his Pi.
There’s already a whole host of applications for the Dash button, so with a little Node.js work on the Raspberry Pi he was able to configure a remote-reset button for his mirror.
Reboot or shut down your Raspberry Pi using an Amazon Dash Button
https://howchoo.com/g/ymy4nza0nzb/reboot-your-raspberry-pi-using-an-amazon-dash-button
This guide will show you how to use an Amazon Dash Button to restart or shut down your Raspberry Pi. I had this idea after building my Raspberry Pi magic mirror and failing to install a reset or power button. Whenever I needed to reboot or shut down the mirror, I had to log into it and do it manually.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Weather Ticker Shows How Easy It Can Be
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/15/weather-ticker-shows-how-easy-it-can-be/
[Petru] seems to have designed his weather ticker project with beginners in mind. Leveraging the inexorable forces of both the Raspberry Pi and cheap online auction house modules
Behind the simplicity is actually a clever architecture. An installation script makes installing the right Raspbian distro simple, and installs a few scripts that automatically update the user code from a GitHub repository. To change the code running on the machine, you can upload a new version to GitHub and press the reset button. (We would also want a way to push up code changes locally, for speed reasons.) Something like this is a great idea for a permanent Pi-based IoT device.
Weather Ticker
It continuously displays the weather conditions, and the weather forecast for the next few days
https://hackaday.io/project/15832-weather-ticker
This is a fun project for a beginner. It has a hardware side (buying components, soldering, connecting wires) and well as using shell scripts, crontabs, and some Python code.
Still what makes this project ‘beginner friendly’ is the ‘zero setup’ feature: you prepare the micro SD card exclusively on your PC (running a provided install.sh script) , and… you are done.
You just insert the memory card in your raspberry pi, and the startup.sh script / crontab do the rest (install packages, upgrade code: no need to ssh into the raspberry pi)
The ‘zero setup’ also helps you quickly switch from one project to another by simply reinstalling everything on the memory card.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A DIY, Visual Alexa
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/17/a-diy-visual-alexa/
Talking to computers is all the rage right now.
Today, most voice-enabled systems are like taking to a computer over the phone. It gets the job done, but you don’t always get the most benefit. To that end, [Youness] decided to marry an OLED display to his Alexa to give visual feedback about the current state of Alexa.
A Raspberry Pi provides the horsepower and the display. A Python program connects to the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) to understand what to do. AVS provides several interfaces for building voice-enabled applications:
Speech Recognition/Synthesis – Understand and generate speech.
Alerts – Deal with events such as timers or a user utterance.
AudioPlayer – Manages audio playback.
PlaybackController – Manages playback queue.
Speaker – Controls volume control.
System – Provides client information to AVS.
Amazon Alexa GUI
http://youness.net/alexa/amazon-alexa-gui
Tomi Engdahl says:
ionSign from Rauma Finland develops data collection devices, which collected data can be transferred directly to the commercial Amazon, IBM or Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
Gluon GMU491 solution is wired to the process:
- The signal can be in industry standard current or voltage signal, digital pulse or switch data, Pt1000 temperature signal or fieldbus data. We support the Modbus fieldbus
The device is suitable for many kinds of data collection, as the signal source can be a sensor, gauge, programmable logic controller (PLC) or automation system. – We are currently developing solutions for the wireless sensor data acquisition device.
ionSign device integrated with the ability to export data directly to commercial cloud servers. The solution is intended for industrial and commercial IoT applications requiring the measurement data, and which is not ready “online” or available on the IP network.
- Techniques technologies are applied, for example, system integrators, data analysis houses, energy and real estate management service providers.
IonSign is a good example of the fact that Finland can make a distinct market products. The company manufactures equipment Rauma partner and used industrial designers are found in Satakunta.
- This makes the operation flexible and, at least at current volumes also cost-effective.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5245:raumalainen-ionsign-iot-data-suoraan-kaupalliseen-pilveen&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: The Internet Of Casts
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/16/hackaday-prize-entry-the-internet-of-casts/
The CastMinder is a simple electronic device embedded inside an orthopedic cast. Attached to this tiny bit of electronics are a few sensors, relaying pressure, moisture, temperature, and of course the battery level to an iOS app. The use case for this device is actually very simple; the pressure sensor is a great idea if you have a cast and you’re unconscious in a hospital. A moisture sensor will at least tell you how many trash bags wrapped around your broken arm are necessary to take a shower.
The entire device is based on the LightBlue Bean, a tiny Bluetooth-enabled device that can be powered by a CR2032 battery.
CastMinder – The Cast and Splint Monitoring System
https://hackaday.io/project/13284-castminder-the-cast-and-splint-monitoring-system
The CastMinder system can detect complications in orthopedic casts and splints while healing patients faster and with less pain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Week In Review: IoT
http://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-iot-22/
Kilopass Technology uncorked its new eNVM, which includes vertical layered thyristor DRAM technology. The key advantages, according to the company, is that it eliminates the need for DRAM refresh, can be manufactured using existing processes, and improves power and area efficiency.
Mentor Graphics inked a partnership with Real-Time Innovations, which develops embedded middleware for the Industrial IoT.
The AllSeen Alliance and the Open Connectivity Foundation opened the week with the announcement that the two organizations will merge and will be known as the Open Connectivity Foundation. The OCF will develop and support the open-source AllJoyn and IoTivity standards in tandem through The Linux Foundation.
The Cloud Security Alliance’s new report, Future-proofing the Connected World: 13 Steps to Developing Secure IoT Products, is available as a free download. Brian Russell of Leidos said in a statement, “We hope to empower developers and organizations with the ability to create a security strategy that will help mitigate the most pressing threats to both consumer and business IoT products.”
Software AG brought out an Internet of Things Analytics Kit as part of its Apama Community Edition, available for free as open-source software under the Apache License, version 2.0. The kit can run on Raspberry Pi single-board computers for IoT application development.
CEVA this week introduced the CEVA-X1 IoT processor IP core. Will Strauss of Forward Concepts said in a statement, “The 3GPP’s recent launch of the Cat-M1 and Cat-NB1 standards paves the way for billions of IoT devices to connect via the cellular networks in the coming years. “
Tomi Engdahl says:
Medical biosensors need no wires
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4442831/Medical-biosensors-need-no-wires?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20161017&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20161017&elqTrackId=1ea65585118d403e981da796daa7f43a&elq=192aba49fe1f428986e8be0fe198dc2c&elqaid=34394&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=30007
HMicro and STMicroelectronics have teamed to create disposable clinical-grade biosensor patches that communicate wirelessly, freeing patients from wires and cables. These smart single-use devices seek to replace wired wearable sensors in such applications as electrocardiogram leads and vital-sign monitors.
Based on HMicro’s WiPoint technology, the HC1100 embeds three low-power radios for WiFi, Ultra-wideband, and MBAN (Medical Band); multiple sensor interfaces; an ARM Cortex M0 application processor; 352 kbytes of RAM; and power-management circuits in a single chip. The dual-core ARM Cortex M0 architecture leverages ST’s ultra-low-power design and wireless-connectivity IP to ensure long, reliable operation.