According to Intel IoT is expected to be a multi-trillion-dollar market, with 50 billion devices creating 44 zettabytes (or 44 trillion gigabytes) of data annually by 2020. But that widely cited 50 billion IoT devices in 2020 number is clearly not correct! Forecast of 50 Billion Devices by 2020 Is Outdated. In 2017 we should be talking about about some sensible numbers. The current count is somewhere between Gartner’s estimate of 6.4 billion (which doesn’t include smartphones, tablets, and computers), International Data Corporation’s estimate of 9 billion (which also excludes those devices), and IHS’s estimate of 17.6 billion (with all such devices included). Both Ericsson and Evans have lowered their expectations from 50 billion for 2020: Evans, who is now CTO of Stringify, says he expects to see 30 billion connected devices by then, while Ericsson figures on 28 billion by 2021.
Connectivity and security will be key features for Internet of Things processors in 2017. Microcontroller (MCU) makers will continue to target their products at the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2017 by giving more focus on battery life, more connectivity of various types, and greater security. The new architectures are almost sure to spawn a multitude of IoT MCUs in 2017 from manufacturers who adopt ARM’s core designs.
ARM will be big. Last year, ARM’s partners shipped 15 billion chips based on its architectures. The trend toward IoT processors will go well beyond ARM licensees. Intel rolled out the Intel Atom E3900 Series for IoT applications. And do not forget MIPS an RISC-V.
FPGA manufacturers are pushing their products to IoT market. They promise that FPGAs solve challenges at the core of IoT implementation: making IoT devices power efficient, handling incompatible interfaces, and providing a processing growth path to handle the inevitable increase in device performance requirement.
Energy harvesting field will become interesting in 2017 as it is more broadly adopted. Energy harvesting is becoming the way forward to help supplement battery power or lose the need for it altogether. Generally researchers are eyeing energy-harvesting to power ultra-low-power devices, wearable technology, and other things that don’t need a lot of power or don’t come in a battery-friendly form factor.
Low power wide area networks (LPWA) networks (also known as NarrowBand IoT) will be hot in 2017. There is hope that f LPWA nets will act as a catalyst, changing the nature of the embedded and machine-to-machine markets as NB-IoT focuses specifically on indoor coverage, low cost, long battery life, and enabling a large number of connected devices. The markets will become a kind of do-it-yourselfers paradise of modules and services, blurring the lines between vendors, users and partners. At the same time for years to come, the market for low power wide area networks (LPWA) will be as fragmented and is already in a race to the bottom (Sigfox, said to be promising costs approaching $1 per node per year). Competing technologies include Sigfox, LoRa Alliance, LTE Cat 1, LTE Cat M1 (eMTC), LTE Cat NB1 (NB-IoT) and other sub-gigahertz options almost too numerous to enumerate.
We are starting to see a battle between different IoT technologies, and in few years to come we will see which are winners and which technologies will be lost in the fight. Sigfox and Lora are currently starting well, but telecom operators with mobile networks NB-IoT will try hit the race heavily in 2017. Vendors prep Cat M1, NB1 for 2017: The Cat M1 standard delivers up to 380 Kbits/second over a 1.4 MHz channel. NB-1 handles up to 40 Kbits/s over 200 kHz channels. Vendors hope the 7-billion-unit installed base of cellular M2M modules expands. It’s too early to tell which technologies will be mainstream and which niche. It could be that cellular NB-IOT was too late, it will fail in the short term, it can win in the long term, and the industry will struggle to make any money from it. At $2 a year, 20 billion devices will contribute around 4% of current global mobile subscription revenues.
New versions of communication standards will be taken into use in 2017. For example Bluetooth 5 that adds more speed and IoT functionality. In 2017, we will see an increase in the number of devices with the new Bluetooth 5 standard.
Industrial IoT to gain traction in 2017. Industrial applications ultimately have the greater transformative potential than consumer products, offering users real returns on investment (ROI) rather than just enhanced convenience or “cool factor”. But the industrial sector is conservative and has been slow to embrace an industrial IoT (IIoT), but is seems that they are getting interested now. During the past year there has been considerable progress in removing many of the barriers to IIoT adoption. A global wide implementation of an IIoT is many years away, of course. The issues of standards and interoperability will most likely remain unresolved for several years to come, but progress is being made. The Industrial Internet Consortium released a framework to support development of standards and best practices for IIoT security.
The IIoT market is certainly poised to grow. A Genpact research study, for instance, indicates that more than 80% of large companies believe that the IIoT will be essential to their future success. In a recent market analysis by Industry ARC, for instance, the projected value of the IIoT market will reach more than $120 billion by 2021. Research firm Markets and Markets is even more optimistic, pegging IIoT growth at a CAGR of 8% to more than $150 billion by 2020. And the benefits will follow. By GE’s estimate, the IIoT will stimulate an increase in the global GDP of $10 to $15 trillion over the next 20 years.
Systems integrators are seeking a quick way to enter the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market. So expect to see many plug and play IoT sensor systems unveiled. There were many releses in 2016, and expect to see more in 2017. Expect to see device, connectivity and cloud service to be marketed as one packet.
IoT analytics will be talked a lot in 2017. Many companies will promise to turn Big Data insights into bigger solutions. For industrial customers Big Data analytics is promised to drive operational efficiencies, cut costs, boosting production, and improving worker productivity. There are many IIoT analytic solution and platform suppliers already on the market and a growing number of companies are now addressing industrial analytics use.
In 2016 it was all bout getting the IoT devices connected to cloud. In 2017 we will see increased talk about fog computing. Fog computing is new IoT trend pushed by Cisco and many other companies. As the Internet of Things (IoT) evolves, decentralized, distributed-intelligence concepts such as “fog computing” are taking hold to address the need for lower latencies, improved security, lower power consumption, and higher reliability. The basic premise of fog computing is classic decentralization whereby some processing and storage functions are better performed locally instead of sending data all the way from the sensor, to the cloud, and back again to an actuator. This demands smarter sensors and new wireless sensor network architectures. Groups such as the Open Fog Consortium have formed to define how it should best be done. You might start to want to be able to run the same code in cloud and your IoT device.
The situation in IoT security in 2016 was already Hacking the IoT: As Bad As I Feared It’d Be and there is nothing that would indicate that the situation will not get any better in 2017. A veritable army of Internet-connected equipment has been circumvented of late, due to vulnerabilities in its hardware, software or both … “smart” TVs, set-top boxes and PVRs, along with IP cameras, routers, DSL, fiber and cable modems, printers and standalone print servers, NASs, cellular hot spots, and probably plenty of other gear. IoT world at the moment is full of vulnerable devices, and it will take years to get then replaces with more secure devices. Those vulnerable devices can be used to make huge DDoS attacks against Internet services. The 2016 October 21 cyberattacks on Dyn brought to light how easily many IoT devices can be compromised. I expect that kind of incidents will happen more in 2017 as DDoS botnets are pretty easy to build with tools available on-line. There’s no question that everyone in the chain – manufacturers, retailers and consumers – have to do a better job securing connected devices.When it comes to IoT, more security is needed.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Otto debuts $699, keyless smart lock, that uses Bluetooth for automatically detecting when doors need opening, available for preorder now, shipping in fall — The device echoes Apple’s elegant design and functionality. Will it sell? — As lead engineer for Apple Inc.’s smart-home technology …
These Former Apple Engineers Built a $700 Digital Door Lock
The device echoes Apple’s elegant design and functionality. Will it sell?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/these-former-apple-engineers-built-a-700-digital-house-lock
As lead engineer for Apple Inc.’s smart-home technology, Andrew Burks spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs working on thermostats, lights and other products that can be controlled via smartphone. One day he visited Otto, a San Francisco startup building a digital door lock. Burks was blown away by what he saw and before long had joined the Otto team, which at one point was mostly comprised of Apple alums.
“I love Apple, and it was really hard decision for me to leave,” Burks says. “This was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss.”
The Otto team decided to re-invent the entire lock because they thought they could improve security and privacy as well as bring better design to a device that’s has changed remarkably little in hundreds of years.
Typically digital locks rely on a central hub to work—a bridge that connects appliances, lights and more to a phone or computer. They also usually include an old-fashioned key in case the technology fails. Some use location-based triangulation to know when someone is home in order to unlock the door.
The Otto has no key, works directly with a smartphone and uses Bluetooth to figure out when a resident needs to be let in. Echoing Apple’s relentless focus on security, the designers added encryption to keep intruders at bay. By the way, in the event homeowners forget their phone or are out of juice, they can turn the lock like a knob and input a four-digit code. (The lock doesn’t currently work with smart-home technology from Apple, Amazon, Samsung and other mainstream tech companies; that will come later.)
“Your phone is the key,” Burks says. “You walk up to the door, it knows that you’re there, you press the button on the outside, and you get in.”
Otto is looking to Nest for inspiration.
The Otto lock’s main hurdle is price. Here, too, the company echoes Apple’s philosophy. Otto didn’t set out to build a $700 lock, says marketing chief Wendy Harrington. That’s simply what it costs to build a lock of this quality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU’s future cyber-farms to utilise drones, robots and sensors
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/eu-s-future-cyber-farms-utilise-drones-robots-and-sensors_en.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steven Melendez / Fast Company:
A look at projects by Mozilla and Google to make large, open-source datasets containing crowdsourced voice samples available to developers
Google, Mozilla, And The Race To Make Voice Data For Everyone
The voice-control platform wars are getting open sourced.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40449278/google-mozilla-and-the-race-to-make-voice-data-for-everyone
A voice-controlled virtual assistant–Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or Google Home–is only as good as the data that powers it. Training these programs to understand what you are saying requires a whole lot of real-world examples of human speech.
That gives existing voice recognition companies a built-in advantage, because they have already amassed giant collections of sample speech data that can be used to train their algorithms.
Google acknowledged as much on Thursday, in releasing a crowdsourced dataset of global voice recordings. The 65,000 one-second audio clips include people from around the world saying simple command words–yes, no, stop, go and the like. This comes just a couple of weeks after Mozilla, the organization behind the open source Firefox browser, recently introduced a new project called Common Voice. Their goal is to build a freely available, crowdsourced dataset of voice samples from around the world, speaking a wide variety of sample words and sentences.
Google’s recordings were collected as part of the AIY do-it-yourself artificial intelligence program, designed to enable makers to experiment with machine learning.
In full, it’s more than a gigabyte of sound, but that’s just a tiny fraction of the total amount of voice data Google has collected to train its own AI systems. The company once opened an automated directory assistance service which, it turned out, was primarily a way for them to gather human voice data.
Amazon’s Alexa transmits voice queries from its users to a server, where they’re used to further train the tool. Apple teaches Siri new languages and dialects by hiring speakers to read particular passages of known text, and by having humans transcribe snippets of audio from the service’s speech-to-text dictation mode. Microsoft has reportedly set up simulated apartments around the world to grab audio snippets in a homelike setting to train its Cortana digital assistant.
All of that is privately held, and generally unavailable to academics, researchers, or would-be competitors. That’s why Mozilla decided to launch its Common Voice project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
James Redmayne / Reuters:
Drones with AI-powered shark detection software to patrol Australian beaches; studies show humans are 20-30% accurate at spotting sharks, AI is ~90% accurate — SYDNEY (Reuters) – Drones equipped with a shark detection system powered by artificial intelligence will start patrolling …
Shark-detecting drones to patrol Australian beaches
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-sharkdrone-idUSKCN1B51KB
Drones equipped with a shark detection system powered by artificial intelligence will start patrolling some Australian beaches from next month in a bid to improve safety.
The battery-powered drones will provide a live-video feed to a drone operator who then uses the shark-spotting software to identify sharks in real time and with more accuracy than the human eye.
Studies have shown that people have a 20-30 percent accuracy rate when interpreting data from aerial images to detect shark activity. Detection software can boost that rate to 90 percent
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Week In Review: IoT
ASE aids IoT startup; Qualcomm extends NXP tender; IoT analysis.
https://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-iot-60/
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering was selected by zGlue as its strategic manufacturing partner. The ASE Group will make the zGlue Integrated Platform, which is said to enable customization for consumer and industrial IoT markets. The ZiP integrates hardware and software in a modular 3DIC-based platform.
A Qualcomm subsidiary has extended its tender offer for shares of NXP Semiconductors to September 22, 2017.
More than 400 companies are currently offering IoT platforms, while only 14% of these IoT platforms are enterprise-ready, the Boston Consulting Group reports. IoT platforms should orchestrate applications, data, devices, processes, and systems with a scalable framework
More than 80% of manufacturers surveyed for The MPI Internet of Things Study say they are confident or very confident in their cyber risk management program
Helios Wire, which is developing a satellite-based IoT service, reported receiving an additional $4 million in private funding
SiFive will work with Rambus on providing cryptography cores and services to bolster IoT endpoint security in custom open source-based silicon implementing the RISC-V instruction set architecture. Rambus, SiFive, and others will collaborate under the DesignShare model to offer low-cost or no-cost IP to emerging companies.
Sequans Communications and Wistron NeWeb are making the IMS2 LTE-M module available through AT&T’s IoT Accelerator Program. The IMS2 is based on the Monarch LTE-M/NB-IoT Platform from Sequans.
The Linux-based Raspberry Pi is now supported by 42Gears Mobility Systems through its enterprise mobility management platform.
Telit has introduced the LM940 Full PCI Express Mini Card module for gateways and routers supporting LTE Advanced Category 11. IHS Markit forecasts gateway shipments will increase from almost 2 million units shipped last year to more than 6 million units shipped in 2021, with the value of industrial cellular IoT gateways shipped in 2021 exceeding $1.6 billion.
Incedo has launched its IoT NXT portfolio of services for IoT implementations. These services include Smart Energy Management, Smart Fleet Management, and Smart Oil Field Management.
Frost & Sullivan forecasts the total number of IoT devices will increase from about 12.44 billion devices in 2016 to more than 45.31 billion devices by 2023, for a compound annual growth rate of 20.3%. The market research firm predicts these IoT developments in the next 12 to 18 months: Transition from connected devices to the use of cognitive or predictive computing and sentient tools; use of artificial intelligence to transform smart devices so they can react to changes in the environment without human intervention; increased commoditization of platforms; a boom in drone delivery and the use of drones to monitor remote wildfires, cell towers, and electric lines; and unsecure devices and malware escalate cyberattacks, making IoT a national security hazard.
Research and Markets predicts the worldwide IoT market in oil and gas will be worth $30.57 billion by 2026.
Tomi Engdahl says:
More than 400 companies are currently offering IoT platforms, while only 14% of these IoT platforms are enterprise-ready, the Boston Consulting Group reports. IoT platforms should orchestrate applications, data, devices, processes, and systems with a scalable framework, this analysis notes.
What Makes An Internet Of Things (IoT) Platform Enterprise-Ready?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2017/08/17/what-makes-an-internet-of-things-iot-platform-enterprise-ready/#57303de31c9a
IoT platforms account for €15B ($17.6B) of the €250B ($293.3B) that will be spent on IoT in 2020.
The IoT platform market is projected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 40% through 2020.
Just 14% of IoT platforms are enterprise-ready according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
More than 400 companies offer IoT platforms today.
Answering the question of what makes an IoT platform scalable enough to excel in an enterprise needs to take into account application enablement, connectivity management and data aggregation and storage.
The following key takeaways offer a glimpse into the IoT platform landscape and how enterprises can determine if IoT platforms of interest will be able to scale to their needs:
Enterprise software & services (22%) and IoT start-ups (32%) offer the largest amount of IoT platforms today. 18% of IoT platforms are being developed and sold by industrial technology providers who are looking to shift away from their hardware-centric business models. Superior design, extensibility, intuitive user experience and incentives for developers to support their IoT platforms are what’s need to excel in the enterprise. BCG found that 65% of enterprise buyers have a strong preference for purchasing their IoT platforms from enterprise software and services providers.
The real test of any vendor’s IoT platform is to see if it supports application enablement, data aggregation and storage, and connectivity management. Ideally, IoT platforms orchestrate applications, data, devices, systems, and processes providing business strategists with a scalable framework they can rely on to accomplish long-term goals. In reality the majority of IoT platforms today can’t provide this level of support to business strategies. BCG found that a scalable enterprise-ready IoT platform provides application enablement, data aggregation and storage, and connectivity management. The following graphic provides an overview of core IoT platform requirements.
Just 14% of IoT platforms are enterprise-ready. IoT pure-play companies/startups lead all providers of enterprise-wide IoT platforms today. Enterprise software & service providers are next at 36% of all platform providers meeting all three criterion. In the next three years, the pace of IoT pure-play companies/startup acquisitions is going to accelerate as enterprise software & service providers look to gain needed new technologies quickly.
IoT platform providers who earn developer loyalty have the best chance of dominating the market for years to come. Creating an open source IoT platform supported by a vibrant, growing community that excels at knowledge sharing is the most effective strategy for attracting developers. Additional criterion developers evaluate IoT platforms on are the potential to gain platform knowledge and improve their career prospects, and availability of high-quality APIs and available tools.
RELATED EXPERTISE TECHNOLOGY & DIGITAL
Who Will Win the IoT Platform Wars?
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/technology-industries-technology-digital-who-will-win-the-iot-platform-wars.aspx
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT chip startup zGlue recently announced its technology, dubbed the zGlue Integrated Platform (ZiP). In ZiP, chip customers select and configure their designs based on chiplets. Chiplets are proven silicon IP from existing vendors. Then, the technology automatically generates potential implementations of a design. As part of the effort, zGlue has selected Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) as its strategic IC packaging and assembly partner. ASE is a key manufacturing partner for the ZiP technology. ASE provides multiple options for assembling zGlue-certified chiplets, which are automatically interconnected through the zGlue Smart Fabric, a silicon interposer platform, onto the ZiP hardware to create an IoT system.
Source: https://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-manufacturing-169/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lawsuit Filed Against Logitech For Delaying Warranty Claims, Hiding EOL
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/08/27/2147229/lawsuit-filed-against-logitech-for-delaying-warranty-claims-hiding-eol
A U.S. man has filed a lawsuit against Logitech, a Swiss-based manufacturer of electronic devices, on accusations that Logitech had intentionally delayed and tried to discourage warranty claims for defective products, falsely advertised products, and even hid an End-Of-Life (EOL) announcement from customers. The product at the heart of this lawsuit is a high-definition digital video home security systems named Logitech Alert Systems…
The lawsuit alleges that Logitech knew its product had a high rate of failure, but instead of issuing a callback, it “responded by designing and implementing a strategy to avoid its express warranty obligations… As a result, Logitech strategically left customers without operable security systems during the warranty period while it ran out the clock.”
Lawsuit Filed Against Logitech for Delaying Warranty Claims, Hiding EOL Decision
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/lawsuit-filed-against-logitech-for-delaying-warranty-claims-hiding-eol-decision/
A US man has filed a lawsuit against Logitech, a Swiss-based manufacturer of electronic devices, on accusations that Logitech had intentionally delayed and tried to discourage warranty claims for defective products, falsely advertised products, and even hid an End-Of-Life (EOL) announcement from customers.
The product at the heart of this lawsuit is a high-definition digital video home security systems named Logitech Alert Systems. Logitech advertised these IP-based security cameras as a way that users could keep an eye on their properties by accessing a public IP via their desktops, smartphones, and tablets.
The plaintiff claims that Logitech “aggressively marketed and sold” these products, making bold claims that in hindsight the product did not live up to.
The lawsuit alleges that Logitech’s cameras had “a high-rate of failure” and the software running on the IP cameras “was rife with bugs and glitches that made the systems unreliable and inoperable.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automation in the pot industry is picking up with unforeseen speed
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/08/27/seed-sale-unforeseen-speed-automation-pot-industry/#.tnw_MVOPaepx
When Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, few could have predicted the scale of the growth which would bloom across the industry. Legal marijuana sales in the US and Canada are now expected to pass $20.2 billion by 2021 at a predicted annual growth rate of 25 percent, accounting for larger and faster industry growth than witnessed during the dot-com era.
The growth is not just being facilitated by sale of pre-rolled joints in dispensaries. Entrepreneurs, innovators and investors have jumped headfirst across a range of industries. A recent report estimated that by 2020 the marijuana industry will provide more jobs than each of the manufacturing, utilities or government sectors.
But while hundreds of thousands of Americans may be dreaming of long, lucrative careers as ‘greenfingers’, we are witnessing an unforeseen level of automation in the industry. The process of growing, packaging, selling and monitoring the sale of the plant is increasingly leaning on fully automated, ‘high’ technologies utilizing big data, the IoT, AI-powered robots, and drones, which could well limit humans’ roles in the future
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Fochica Alerts You
http://hackaday.com/2017/08/26/hackaday-prize-entry-fochica-alerts-you/
It seems like no one should need to be reminded about the importance of not leaving children in cars, but it still happens. The Fochica project is a Hackaday Prize entry that equips the family minivan with car seat monitors—the name comes from FOrgotten CHild in Car Alert.
It’s an Open Source project consisting of a Bluetooth LE-equipped Arduino that monitors whether the seat is empty or occupied. Paired with a phone app, Fochica monitors pressure sensors and the seat belt’s reed switch to determine whether there’s a kid there.
Fochica – Forgotten Child in Car Alert
https://hackaday.io/project/20902-fochica-forgotten-child-in-car-alert
Fochica, forgotten child in car alert, is a no hassle, low cost and extensible system that helps prevent forgetting children in vehicles
Fochica™ is comprised of a Fochica open hardware, open software, Arduino-based device that is installed in a car and a Fochica app that is installed on the driver’s smartphone. Sensors monitor whether the child car seats are occupied or empty and send the data to the device. The device communicates with the app via BLE passing the information to the driver. When the driver’s smartphone goes out of range and a seat is occupied an alarm will sound on the smartphone.
Fochica is an alert, not a reminder. Meaning it will not nag you to “not-forget” your kid when you turn off the car or when you exit the vehicle. It is designed to alert when you have forgotten, which Fochica considers as being out of BLE range while a seat is occupied.
At this time, the prototype uses capacitive sensor and a magnetic reed sensor. You can use different sensors and hack away on the basic design.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Elderly Autonomous Fall Detection
https://hackaday.io/project/26983-elderly-autonomous-fall-detection
For only $10, sense if a senior citizen falls and be alerted, or they could just press a button to send an alert as well.
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This device can sense a fall and send a text or email to anyone you wish- a caregiver, loved one, or friend. There is also the option of pressing a button to alert whomever you want. In the case that someone is knocked unconscious from a fall and can’t press a button, they would still be able to receive help. This device uses an ESP8266, MPU6050, and MyDevice’s Cayenne IoT service to bring increased security and quality of life to senior citizens.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Determining Kibble Level Via Time-of-Flight
http://hackaday.com/2017/08/26/determining-kibble-level-via-time-of-flight/
[WTH] is building an IoT kitty food dispenser. There are a few of these projects floating around that measure out portions very sensibly — some use screws to dispense a set amount of food at a time, some measure the weight of the remaining stockpile. This build is definitely not that. This kitty food monitor uses a time of flight sensor to determine the remaining level of food in a hopper.
This reports the kibble level in centimeters, which is good enough for [WTH]’s purposes. Sensor data is logged to a Google Drive spreadsheet, published as a graph through M2X (AT&T’s IOT service), and texted to [WTH]’s smart watch via IFTTT.
ToF Laser to Monitor Cat Food Levels
http://www.whiskeytangohotel.com/2017/08/tof-laser-to-monitor-cat-food-levels.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
No Batteries Required: Energy-Harvesting Yarns Generate Electricity
http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2017/8/25-32663_No-Batteries-Required-Energy-Harvesting-Yarns-Gene_story-wide.html?WT.mc_id=NewsHomePage
Coiled carbon nanotube yarns, created at The University of Texas at Dallas and imaged here with a scanning electron microscope, generate electrical energy when stretched or twisted.
An international research team led by scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and Hanyang University in South Korea has developed high-tech yarns that generate electricity when they are stretched or twisted.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fluke Expands their Condition Monitoring System
https://www.eeweb.com/news/fluke-expands-their-condition-monitoring-system
Fluke Corp. has expanded the capabilities of its Condition Monitoring system to include thermal monitoring with the addition of the new Fluke® 3550 FC Thermal Imaging Sensor. Maintenance managers can now collect a more comprehensive variety of key-indicator data — thermal imaging, voltage, current, temperature, and power — on critical equipment to build a real-time picture of an asset’s condition. With the right mix of data all in one place, managers can implement planned maintenance and decrease the frequency of preventive rounds.
Fluke Condition Monitoring is a cloud-based software platform in combination with rugged electrical, temperature, and power quality monitoring sensors to support condition-based maintenance programs. The software aggregates data pooling measurements from Fluke wireless tools with real-time condition monitoring data and historical records for a complete picture of asset health.
The new Fluke 3550 FC Thermal Imaging Sensor is the first thermal imaging condition monitoring sensor to visualize thermal patterns on multiple assets. Alarms can be set to notify the user when the center-point temperature exceeds preset parameters.
The sensor can operate in high-performance mode to capture the most accurate images over a 11-14 hour period or in energy-saving mode to capture sequential images for up to three days.
Tomi Engdahl says:
RELATED EXPERTISE TECHNOLOGY & DIGITAL
Who Will Win the IoT Platform Wars?
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/technology-industries-technology-digital-who-will-win-the-iot-platform-wars.aspx
More than 400 companies offer IoT platforms today. Enterprise software and service companies and IoT startups account for the largest portion (22% and 32%, respectively) of companies that claim to offer IoT platforms. In addition, industrial technology providers (at 18%) are offering IoT platforms in an effort to shift away from a hardware-centric business model. Internet companies and telcos make up the remainder of the IoT platform vendors.
Although some companies are emerging from the pack as possible leaders, choosing the right provider from the plethora of companies vying for the platform market remains a challenge. Buyers are looking for insight into how to make the best choice when selecting an IoT platform today. The most useful approach, we believe, includes analyzing the ecosystem from the vendor’s perspective and identifying the key factors that will determine which companies win the IoT platform wars.
THE IOT PLATFORM MARKET IS NOT AS CROWDED AS IT LOOKS
Despite the abundance of IoT platform vendors, most offer only partial solutions. In our view, partial solutions shouldn’t be called IoT platforms at all. A product that simply manages connectivity or enables applications is a connectivity management platform or an application enablement platform, but it’s not a comprehensive IoT platform. The term platform is so loosely defined and overused that it has lost its significance, contributing to buyers’ confusion.
Fundamentally, an IoT platform connects devices, applications, and data so that users can focus on their use case rather than on the wiring linking the various platform components. A comprehensive IoT platform delivers three main capabilities: application enablement (to customize IoT solutions), data aggregation and storage (to capture and store data that will generate insights), and connectivity management (to automatically connect systems, networks, and devices).
This view of a core IoT platform excludes technology layers where reliance on multiple vendors may be desirable (such as network management) or where a one-size-fits-all enterprise solution (such as security or analytics) is unlikely.
In our analysis of vendors that claim to offer an IoT platform, only a small percentage (less than 15%) met the criteria we have defined.
In our survey, developers reported being roughly evenly divided in their use of the top six platforms. But history tells us that two or three IoT platforms will ultimately prevail, as happened with Windows and Mac OS in computer operating systems, Android and iOS in mobile phone operating systems, and PlayStation and Xbox in gaming systems.
First and foremost, developers want a platform to be open (and the industry is certainly moving that way these days), giving them access to communities and knowledge sharing. Survey respondents also highlighted four other criteria that they look for in a platform: it should improve their future work prospects, be easy to learn and use, offer rich application program interfaces (APIs) and developer tools, and fit with their current skills. Some businesses have effectively used financial incentives, as well, to attract developers to a specific platform.
KEY FACTORS IN SELECTING THE RIGHT IOT PLATFORM
These guidelines can help buyers narrow the field and zero in on the IoT platform that best suits their business needs.
Select a fully capable platform. The first priority is to select a vendor that offers all three IoT capabilities outlined previously: application enablement, data aggregation and storage, and connectivity management.
Evaluate your risk appetite. Startups are responsible for a significant portion (40%) of comprehensive IoT platforms. In 2015, startups offering IoT platforms attracted $450 million in funding. A number of them have developed attractive products. They also move quickly and are responsive to customers’ needs—but they have a common vulnerability with regard to stability and staying power. By their nature, startups tend to be untested, and their long-term potential is unclear.
Match the platform to your developers’ skills. Companies should ensure that the core IoT platform fits with their development team’s skills, bearing in mind that even comprehensive platform offerings will require some implementation work. IoT platforms may require proficiency in a specific programming language. If developers are expert Java programmers but need to become proficient in Python for the new IoT platform, for example, the skills gap will slow implementation. In our survey, 40% of developers reported that they were never consulted during the IoT platform selection process. But most developers (69%) rated the difficulty of filling gaps in their current IoT platform as “moderate” or “hard,” and a fair share (40%) found learning a new IoT platform harder than learning other programming frameworks.
Consider openness and ease of integration. Companies should select an IoT platform that meets their business needs and permits deployment with minimal disruption to existing systems. Buyers should consider up front whether the IoT platform features openness and ease of integration. An open framework will be modular, with easy-to-use APIs, and an easy-to-integrate framework will fit smoothly with existing IT architecture.
Select the platform business model that fits your needs. Although several leading platforms offer horizontal connectivity, as well as application and data capabilities, others add a number of vertical-specific applications and services. These services can help shorten the time to value
With so much change occurring in the IoT space, the platform ecosystem will continue to be fragmented for the foreseeable future. But companies stand to lose more than they gain by waiting for the dust to settle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet providers could easily snoop on your smart home
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/28/study-tracks-what-smart-home-activity-can-be-seen-by-internet-providers/
We’ve mostly moved past the point where our Internet of Things devices leak private information to anyone watching via unsecured connections, but that doesn’t mean you can stop being afraid. Never, ever stop being afraid. To top up your paranoia reserves, a new study finds that internet providers can, if they so choose, monitor all kinds of things from your smart home’s traitorous metadata.
The paper, from a team at Princeton’s computer science school led by grad student Noah Apthorpe, gets straight to the point: “we demonstrate that an ISP or other network observer can infer privacy sensitive in-home activities by analyzing internet traffic from smart homes containing commercially available IoT devices even when the devices use encryption.”
It’s a pretty straightforward attack: the IoT devices often identify themselves voluntarily, usually by connecting to specific domains or URLs. Even if they didn’t, there are simple ways of profiling them based on observation and some known data. The researchers demonstrated this by showing that various devices show distinct patterns of data transmission:
Spying on the Smart Home: Privacy Attacks and Defenses on Encrypted IoT Traffic
https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.05044
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cypress IoT
Partner Solutions
http://eu.mouser.com/new/Cypress-Semiconductor/cypress-iot-solutions/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=august2017&utm_campaign=md-cypress-partnersolutions-epost-en
Cypress IoT Partner Solutions deliver hardware solutions featuring Cypress wireless technology to enable Bluetooth® and Wi-Fi® connectivity. The WICED® Studio SDK is an integrated development environment for IoT that combines Wi-Fi and Bluetooth into a single solution. WICED Studio uses many common industry standards and provides WICED APIs and an application framework designed to abstract complexity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analysis vs. Analytics: Past vs. Future
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1332172&
What’s the difference between analysis and analytics? One looks at the past while the other tries to predict the future.
The distinction between analysis and analytics is often blurred and more often misunderstood. Indeed, engineers may think that analytics is for marketers, while engineers do analysis. While there’s some truth to that, engineers can perform analytics that can help with manufacturing and reliability.
With the continuing shift toward the collection of massive amounts of data and more powerful tools to extract hidden insights, it can be worthwhile to revisit the definitive and separate contributions of “analysis” versus “analytics.” As we look ahead toward new advanced analytical capabilities, such as predictive and prescriptive analytics, solidifying these fundamental terms can be a good starting point in understanding what is possible.
What about individual product quality?
Analytics are now at a juncture where the questions being asked were not previously considered because there wasn’t the prospect of finding an answer. Big-data analytics are now able to examine enormous data sets, detect hidden patterns, and identify “needle-in-the-haystack” correlations that can provide an unprecedented knowledge base that gives answers to previously unanswerable questions.
One of the new questions that can be answered with big data analytics is, “Is my product quality really good?” Much of the analytical focus to date has been on process improvement, but real-time product analytics is proving to be a critical and useful complement to the traditional process-improvement analytics
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alwyn Scott / Reuters:
Sources: GE to cut costs and expand partnerships for its software business as its Predix platform faces delays, retrenches from building own data centers, more
GE shifts strategy, financial targets for digital business after missteps
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-digital-outlook-insight-idUSKCN1B80CB
General Electric Co wants its industrial software business to cut costs and lift profits next year under new chief executive John Flannery, and is considering expanded partnerships and the possible sale of some equity in the unit, according to people familiar with the business.
Former chief executive Jeffrey Immelt spent six years and more than $4 billion transforming 125-year-old GE into a “digital industrial” company. But GE has had technical problems and delays with its software platform, known as Predix, which connects equipment like turbines and elevators to computers that can predict failures and reduce operating costs.
This spring, GE called an unusual, two month “time-out” to tackle the Predix problems, which have not been previously reported.
“Our resources will go to our fastest-selling markets,”
The company now expects $12 billion in digital revenue in 2020, compared with $15 billion under the old definition. GE’s total revenue hit nearly $124 billion last year.
RIVALS TAKE AIM
The competition is not standing still. Large rivals such as Siemens AG and a crop of nimble startups are pressing to gain market share in GE’s main areas of energy, aviation, locomotives, health care and oil and gas.
Ruh said that while GE faces competitors in every deal, many startups are not true competitors because Predix includes unique applications and is available globally.
“No other competitor has these capabilities on their platforms,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet providers could easily snoop on your smart home
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/28/study-tracks-what-smart-home-activity-can-be-seen-by-internet-providers/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
We’ve mostly moved past the point where our Internet of Things devices leak private information to anyone watching via unsecured connections, but that doesn’t mean you can stop being afraid. Never, ever stop being afraid. To top up your paranoia reserves, a new study finds that internet providers can, if they so choose, monitor all kinds of things from your smart home’s traitorous metadata.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP8266 Adds Slick Touchscreen Controls to a Stretch Limo
http://hackaday.com/2017/08/29/esp8266-adds-slick-touchscreen-controls-to-a-stretch-limo/
The popularity of the ESP8266 WiFi module has a lot to do with its ability to inexpensively connect to the Internet. However, [hwhardsoft]’s stretch limousine environmental control system explores another use for these modules: a simple way to tie together disparate systems with a common user interface.
Because of its low-cost, support for Wi-Fi, serial, and GPIO, ESP8266 boards are a reasonable candidate to create a unified control system for multiple devices. This is even more true for the ESP32, as it adds Bluetooth support.
Each touchscreen sends commands over Wi-Fi using UDP to a control board that switches relays to control the different devices, as we’ve seen previously.
While relays are arguably not the ideal solution here, these control boards already existed and were functional, so it would have been wasteful to throw them out. An easy improvement suitable for future projects would be to use NPN transistors to simulate button presses on the remote controls. This works quite well and lowers cost, power, and parts count, while being faster, more reliable, and quiet.
ESP8266 controlled stretch limousine
IoT solution to control the interior of a stretch limousine
https://hackaday.io/project/26879-esp8266-controlled-stretch-limousine
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI Watches You Sleep; Knows When You Dream
http://hackaday.com/2017/08/29/ai-watches-you-sleep-knows-when-you-dream/
If you’ve never been a patient at a sleep laboratory, monitoring a person as they sleep is an involved process of wires, sensors, and discomfort. Seeking a better method, MIT researchers — led by [Dina Katabi] and in collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital — have developed a device that can non-invasively identify the stages of sleep in a patient.
Approximately the size of a laptop and mounted on a wall near the patient, the device measures the minuscule changes in reflected low-power RF signals. The wireless signals are analyzed by a deep neural-network AI and predicts the various sleep stages — light, deep, and REM sleep — of the patient, negating the task of manually combing through the data.
New AI algorithm monitors sleep with radio waves
Patients with sleep disorders could be studied nonintrusively at home using wireless signals.
http://news.mit.edu/2017/new-ai-algorithm-monitors-sleep-radio-waves-0807
More than 50 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders, and diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s can also disrupt sleep. Diagnosing and monitoring these conditions usually requires attaching electrodes and a variety of other sensors to patients, which can further disrupt their sleep.
To make it easier to diagnose and study sleep problems, researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have devised a new way to monitor sleep stages without sensors attached to the body. Their device uses an advanced artificial intelligence algorithm to analyze the radio signals around the person and translate those measurements into sleep stages: light, deep, or rapid eye movement (REM).
Tomi Engdahl says:
ASC – Alexa Sprinkler Controller
Low cost, Alexa Enabled IoT 8 zone sprinkler controller based on the ESP8266
https://hackaday.io/project/26850-asc-alexa-sprinkler-controller
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ‘Smart’ in Smart Manufacturing Shows Up in Off-the-Shelf Appliance
Rockwell has created a digital analytics tool to spot and solve maintenance problems faster.
https://www.designnews.com/automation-motion-control/smart-smart-manufacturing-shows-shelf-appliance/161598168757323?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=788&elq_cid=876648
One of the remarkable automation trends in recent years is vendor community’s ability to embed plant intelligence into the control system and its devices. The embedded digital intelligence frees control personnel from the considerable burden of original programming. To some extent, the equipment and its software have closed the skills gap by making the system smarter.
A recent example is Rockwell Automation ’s tools that enable teams on the plant floor to make better, faster decisions by using an Analytics for Devices appliance and app. These off-the-shelf tools are designed to require minimal configuration while helping to solve common maintenance problems faster. The goal is to keep unplanned downtime to a minimum. The tools are intended to monitor the health of equipment and improve reaction time for maintenance.
Ease of Use on the Plant Floor
Rockwell sees this appliance as a step in the trend of automation technology that deploys quickly and offers clear value. “We are playing into the macro trend of creating products that are instantly digestible. In the past, it took years for people to get value out of the system,” said Reissner. “Right out of the gate, this appliance provides descriptive analytics. Over the next 12 to 18 months, it will move into predictive analytics.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nick Wingfield / New York Times:
Amazon and Microsoft partner to let Alexa summon Cortana, and vice versa, by year’s end — In an unusual partnership, Amazon and Microsoft are working together to extend the abilities of their voice-controlled digital assistants. — SEATTLE — The crowded pack of voice-controlled digital assistants …
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/technology/amazon-alexa-microsoft-cortana.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Google Assistant coming to new speakers from Anker, Mobvoi, and Panasonic, will be integrated with LG home appliances
Google Assistant coming to more speakers and home appliances from LG
“Ok Google, start vacuuming.”
http://searchengineland.com/google-assistant-coming-speakers-home-appliances-lg-281673
Earlier today, at German consumer electronics and appliances show IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) in Berlin, Google announced that the Google Assistant will be coming to new smart speakers and home appliances. With the move Google is more aggressively competing with Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana for third party hardware and software integration.
The company said that a range of new speakers will get the Assistant:
Zolo Mojo by Anker
TicHome Mini by Mobvoi
GA10 by Panasonic
These devices will be able to deliver the capabilities and functionality of Google Home and will be available in the US and Canada, Australia, Germany and France. On a smaller scale (right now), this is analogous to Google’s Android OS strategy, with the Assistant powering third-party hardware. Alexa and Cortana are also pursuing a similar strategy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud of Things (CoT)
https://www.cloudofthings.com/
What is the Cloud of Things?
https://m2m.telekom.com/our-offering/cloud-of-things/
Connecting machines is the technical basis of digitization under Industrie 4.0. It opens up new business models for companies, optimizes production processes, and improves service. The Cloud of Things is Deutsche Telekom’s contribution to the management and control of connected devices. It is an IoT platform that collects sensor data from different machines and evaluates and visualizes them. That takes the user just a few steps. A special mobile gateway is registered and configured on the Cloud of Things, reads out the machine data and sends it to the cloud, where it is shown on the platform’s dashboard.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud of Things
http://cloudofthings.org/
the 4th “Cloud of Things” (CoT17) workshop in conjunction with the 13th International Intelligent Environments Conference in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
This workshop will continue to explore the synergy offered by combining the user-centric approach to Internet of Things, Web services, Cloud Computing, Smart Sensing and Environments and embedded computing which are often discussed separately, each at their own specialist conference. However, practical deployments of these system are likely to be combinations of techniques from these hitherto separate research areas; the Cloud-of-Things workshop is an opportunity to bring together researchers from these areas to enable them to discuss the issues i
Background
The next wave of Internet applications, will move beyond managing data to empower people to interact with the physical world which forms the essential fabric of our lives. It promises to facilitate connecting everything in a person’s life from bathroom scales through cookers to cars (facilitating smart-homes and cities), through environmental sensing (enabling government, company and citizen led enterprises) all of which have the potential to have a massive impact on society as a whole. There are formidable challenges in delivering this vision that vary from technology to sociology and political issues. The key technology enablers of this new wave of internet applications are the Internet of Things, Web services, Cloud Computing, Intelligent Environments and embedded computing which are often research as separate topics. In order to provide an opportunity for researchers from the often diverse research communities involved to meet and explore research synergy, we have organized this workshop which we have labelled the “Cloud of Things“.
As such the coverage of this workshop is relatively broad and covers topics such as (but not limited to, we encourage submissions to any area that has relevance to the CoT):
Personalisation techniques
End-user programming techniques
Pervasive health applications
Software Tools
System framework architectures
Energy Harvesting systems
Intelligent systems for Smart Environments
Digital Ecosystems
Virtual and mixed realities
Social issues
Business models
Education
Internet-enabled Embedded systems
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud of Things
IoT Solution to Make Any Device a Connected Device
https://finder.startupnationcentral.org/c/cloud-of-things
Cloud of Things is the creator of DeviceTone, a ready-to-run IoT product-enablement solution designed to make any device a connected device. DeviceTone provides companies with everything they need to get their products online, managed, and into production on the cloud platform of their choice using Cloud of Things’ patented technologies.
DeviceTone’s integrated capabilities make it easy to connect, control, and manage devices without complicated development.
Homepage
http://www.cloudofthings.com
Cloud of Things Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxPyOHJtkio
Cloud of Things offers a future-proof, end-to-end IoT solution for home appliance and consumer electronics manufacturers, which can be up and running within hours. The solution is based on a versatile IoT Application Enablement Platform (AEP) and a smart plug-on firmware that can be used within Cloud of Things’ own Wi-Fi module or combined with Wi-Fi modules from industry manufacturers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How It Works: Internet of Things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIPNhOiMoE
The Internet of Things gives us access to the data from millions of devices. But how does it work, and what can we do with all that data? Find out in this animated tutorial from IBM’s Think Academy. For more information on IBM and the Internet of Things, please visit: http://www.ibm.com/IoT
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teleoperator Orange Business Services supports the internationalization of Tamper Yepzone through a three-year agreement. The collaboration includes global IoT connections and SIM cards for 100,000 tracking devices. They can be used even for finding your own pet.
In just three years, Tamperel Yepzon has developed from a glamorous idea to a successful international business that is gearing towards the global market. The newest company can offer its service through Orange in 220 countries.
Orange Business Services’ IoT services are part of the modular Datavenue IoT and analytics solution. Orange already supports more than 12 million active IoT objects, including smart cities, healthcare, transport and industry.
Source: https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2017/08/31/koirakin-saa-iot-paikannuksen-toimii-220-maassa/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Synopsys’ Robert Vamosi considers recently proposed legislation which seeks to mitigate the risk of botnets commandeering IoT devices used in the U.S. government, including limiting the use of hard-coded passwords and certifying there are no known security defects.
How will new IoT legislation strengthen the future of cyber security?
https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/software-security/iot-legislation-strengthen-cybersecurity/
New legislation proposed this month in U.S. Congress seeks to mitigate the risk of botnets commandeering Internet of Things (IoT) devices used in the U.S. government. The Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 is a proposal from Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), co-chairs of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, along with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Wash.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.). It aims to mitigate risks and increase security in IoT products. The bill is limited to U.S. government-purchased devices. Since the U.S. government is such a large consumer, it is reasonable to assume that these improvements will eventually find their way into commercial products as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Philips’ Hue lights will soon sync with movies, games and music
To celebrate its fifth birthday, Philips is extending the compatibility of its smart lights.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/31/philips-hue-entertainment-lights-movies-games-music/
The new feature will be called Hue Entertainment and works very similarly to Philips’ other entertainment lighting technology: Ambilight. Instead of utilizing just a multicolored strip of LED lights, Entertainment will link the company’s extensive range of bulbs with supported TVs, media players and consoles to match exactly what you’re seeing on the screen.
The announcement doesn’t come as much of a surprise: the company has been trialing what it calls “surround sound for the eyes” for a number of years. In 2014, we were invited to test Syfy’s Sync app, which we are able to successfully pair with our Hue lights and add an extra dimension to cult classic Sharknado.
In addition to the launch of Entertainment, Philips will also enhance Hue’s Apple HomeKit compatibility in October. Accessories including Hue Tap, Hue Motion Sensor and wireless dimmer switch can be integrated into Apple’s smart home platform, allowing users to create additional app scenes inside their home.
Moving forward, Philips says it intends to keep supporting Zigbee’s lighting standard, allowing devices made by other manufacturers to interact with Hue kit. That means Zigbee 3.0 will be present in its new lighting products, scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2018.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nest’s Thermostat E has a new design, a cheaper price, and almost all the same features
Designed to be forgettable
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/31/16225644/nest-thermostat-e-announced-cheaper-redesign
Nest is debuting a new version of its thermostat today, the first truly different model since the product was introduced in 2011. It’s called the Nest Thermostat E, and it can do nearly everything the regular Nest Thermostat can do, except it’s cheaper and housed in a brand new design — one that’s intentionally much, much plainer.
But that’s the point: Nest is trying to make a version of its thermostat with appeal beyond the gadget-loving crowd. It wants this to be a thermostat that you buy and forget about, but still get all the benefits that come with having some built-in intelligence. Namely, a reduced heating bill.
To make the Nest Thermostat E more forgettable, Nest has hidden its display behind a frosted glass that blocks some light from coming through. Rather than a detailed interface, you’ll see big, bubbly numbers and notches shine through when you spin the thermostat’s ring around to set the temperature.
The simplified interface is really nice, although the display itself looks a bit fuzzy.
Like other Nest Thermostats, this new one is connected to the internet and can also be controlled through a smartphone app. The thermostat will also use your phone to tell whether you’re home or away, so that it can adjust the temperature accordingly. Nest claims that its thermostats save homeowners between 12 percent and 15 percent on their heating and cooling bills on average each year, which is really the feature it’s going to try to sell new customers on.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How I replicated an $86 million project in 57 lines of code
When an experiment with existing open source technology does a “good enough” job
https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-i-replicated-an-86-million-project-in-57-lines-of-code-277031330ee9
Victoria Police is the primary law enforcement agency of Victoria, Australia. With over 16,000 vehicles stolen in Victoria this past year — at a cost of about $170 million — the police department is experimenting with a variety of technology-driven solutions to crackdown on car theft.
To help prevent fraudulent sales of stolen vehicles, there is already a VicRoads web-based service for checking the status of vehicle registrations. The department has also invested in a stationary license plate scanner — a fixed tripod camera which scans passing traffic to automatically identify stolen vehicles.
Don’t ask me why, but one afternoon I had the desire to prototype a vehicle-mounted license plate scanner that would automatically notify you if a vehicle had been stolen or was unregistered. Understanding that these individual components existed, I wondered how difficult it would be to wire them together.
But it was after a bit of googling that I discovered Victoria Police had recently undergone a trial of a similar device, and the estimated cost of roll out was somewhere in the vicinity of $86,000,000. One astute commenter pointed out that the $86M cost to fit out 220 vehicles comes in at a rather thirsty $390,909 per vehicle.
Surely we can do a bit better than that.
The Success Criteria
Before getting started, I outlined a few key requirements for product design.
The image processing must be performed locally
Streaming live video to a central processing warehouse seemed the least efficient approach to solving this problem. Besides the whopping bill for data traffic, you’re also introducing network latency into a process which may already be quite slow.
Although a centralized machine learning algorithm is only going to get more accurate over time, I wanted to learn if an local on-device implementation would be “good enough”.
It must work with low quality images
Since I don’t have a Raspberry Pi camera or USB webcam, so I’ll be using dashcam footage — it’s readily available and an ideal source of sample data.
It needs to be built using open source technology
Solution
At a high level, my solution takes an image from a dashcam video, pumps it through an open source license plate recognition system installed locally on the device, queries the registration check service, and then returns the results for display.
The data returned to the device installed in the law enforcement vehicle includes the vehicles make and model (to verify if only the plates have been stolen), the registration status, and notification if the vehicle is reported stolen.
If that sounds rather simple, it’s because it really is. For example, the image processing can all be handled by the openalpr library.
A Minor Caveat
Public access to the VicRoads APIs is not available, so license plate checks occur via web scraping for this prototype. While generally frowned upon — this is a proof of concept and I’m not slamming anyone’s servers.
Results
I must say I was pleasantly surprised.
I expected the open source license plate recognition to be pretty rubbish. Additionally, the image recognition algorithms are probably not optimised for Australian license plates.
The solution was able to recognise license plates in a wide field of view.
As you can see in the above two images, processing the image a couple of frames later jumped from a confidence rating of 87% to a hair over 91%.
The $86,000,000 Question
To be fair, I have absolutely no clue what the $86M figure includes — nor can I speak to the accuracy of an open source tool with no localized training vs. the pilot BlueNet system.
I would expect part of that budget includes the replacement of several legacy databases and software applications to support the high frequency, low latency querying of license plates several times per second, per vehicle.
On the other hand, the cost of ~$391k per vehicle seems pretty rich
Future Applications
While it’s easy to get caught up in the Orwellian nature of an “always on” network of license plate snitchers, there are many positive applications of this technology.
Using open source technology and existing components, it seems possible to offer a solution that provides a much higher rate of return — for an investment much less than $86M.
https://gist.githubusercontent.com/taitems/7c56e6e1b51906f9158281bda3839545/raw/e61cf55fdcc7443f34d198bc08be13dca33b1a70/plate-snitch.js
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automatic License Plate Recognition library http://www.openalpr.com
https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Assistant coming to more speakers and home appliances from LG
“Ok Google, start vacuuming.”
http://searchengineland.com/google-assistant-coming-speakers-home-appliances-lg-281673
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Introduce Reliability and Security into an IIoT System of Systems
https://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/resources/overview/how-to-introduce-reliability-and-security-into-an-iiot-system-of-systems-4b9dd7b3-4352-40da-baea-612ff3103603?contactid=1&PC=L&c=2017_08_31_esd_newsletter_update_v8_august
As the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) continues to transform businesses, factories, and entire industries across the globe, key enabling technologies must also evolve to address the ever-increasing complexities within these IIoT systems of systems. New technologies not only need to secure network endpoints, but also allow data communication across system layers. A complete end-to-end security approach is required. In this paper, readers will learn about a layered databus architecture using Data Distribution Service (DDS). The paper provides real-world examples of how DDS is propelling the IIoT forward and offers practical solutions for scaling and securing an IIoT system of systems.
https://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/techpubs/request/how-to-introduce-reliability-and-security-into-an-iiot-system-of-systems-102045
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon debuts first Alexa skills for children alongside new parental verification feature, to comply with government data protection regulations
Amazon adds parental consent to Alexa skills aimed at children, launches first legal kids’ skills
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/31/amazon-adds-parental-consent-to-alexa-skills-aimed-at-children-launches-first-legal-kids-skills/
Amazon today is launching the first Alexa skills specifically aimed at children, which will go live with a new Verified Parental Consent feature in order to operate within the confines of child data protections, like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This move opens the door to larger children’s media brands who have, until now, avoided building apps for Alexa’s voice platform because of potential legal issues.
Out of the gate, two major kids’ brands are launching on Alexa using the new feature. Viacom-owned Nickelodeon is debuting a SpongeBob skill, while Sesame Street has a new Elmo skill.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: ESPMetric, a Simple and Easy Matrix
https://hackaday.com/2017/08/31/hackaday-prize-entry-espmetric-a-simple-and-easy-matrix/
There’s a lot you can do with a bunch of LEDs connected to the Internet. You can display the time, the weather, the bus schedule, or any one of a number of important data points in your life. Custom matrices are a pain in the butt to set up, which is why we like to see one looking rather polished and clean. [Faire-soi-meme] prettied up an 8×32 NeoPixel matrix with some diffusers and a grid bezel. It’s the ESPMetric, and it’s also an entry for this year’s Hackaday Prize.
The NeoPixel matrix is controlled by a NodeMcu using elements from [squix78]’s ESP82666 weather station code as well as Adafruit’s NeoMatrix library. There is a photoresistor to control brightness as well as 3 buttons to control its various modes. Tapping the buttons brings you by various settings like the time, WiFi status, stock market, and so on.
ESPMetric
https://hackaday.io/project/20712-espmetric
ESPMetric is a matrix LEDs screen driven by an ESP8266 with Arduino. It can be use for smarthome domain or others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Competing on Speed: Bringing Intelligence into the Customer Experience
https://www.aricent.com/tech-vision-2017/overview
Combined, these trends are the basis for creating revolutionary products that learn what their customers want before they know themselves.
Energize The Core: Focus on what matters
Sustainable growth requires investment in core products to keep them relevant and refreshed, as well as in R&D to develop the next generation of products and services that will replace the core.
Digital Services Supercycle: Generate predictable growth from platforms
The digital economy is being built on platforms. The imperative is to keep pace with rapidly evolving platforms and to attract and empower a new generation of digital developers to build your products.
AI Stimulus: Optimal is the new functional
Artificial intelligence will soon be at the core of just about every product and service. The critical question leaders must ask is: “What is the problem we are trying to solve with AI?”
Frictionless Design: Effortless and surprising experiences
Friction is why customers change brands. Good design eliminates friction, opening possibilities for more natural interactions. Designing for security is critical for building trust and reducing friction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tracking Sleepers By Analyzing Radio Waves Around Them
http://www.mwrf.com/software/tracking-sleepers-analyzing-radio-waves-around-them?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20170810_MWRF-001_3&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=12416&utm_medium=email&elq2=efc4f63dbaa8451290bfdc3817a10496
An algorithm devised by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can closely monitor sleeping patterns by analyzing radio waves reflected off the human body.
The software, described in a paper presented this week at the International Conference of Machine Learning, measures frequency changes that occur when radio waves emitted from specialized sensors reflect off a person’s body. That could let anyone analyze their sleep patterns at home without wearing smart wristbands and rings to bed.
“Our vision is developing health sensors that will disappear into the background and capture physiological signals and important health metrics,” said Dina Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who led the development of the home-router-sized sensors.
In addition to monitoring and tracking treatments for disorders like sleep apnea and insomnia, Katabi and her colleagues suggested that the technology could be used to study Parkinson’s, which is associated with complex sleep deficiencies, as well as other diseases like Alzheimer’s.
http://sleep.csail.mit.edu/files/rfsleep-paper.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ease of use: Programmable controllers
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/ease-of-use-programmable-controllers/2660de8d89116f9335bc12194e449a72.html
With “ease of use” blowing like wind through the branches of automation and control, standard programming has abstracted into configuration, as wizards become more intelligent, and libraries of code are embedded into intuitive objects. Controller hardware touts modularity, flexibility, and connectivity.
Programming someday may consist entirely of humans talking to computers, but since humans often misunderstand humans, this may take awhile. For now, however, many simple programs or common goals can be achieved through the use of abstraction, wizards, libraries of objects, and other intuitive tools, avoiding programming for simple functions. This comes as programmable controller hardware—whether in something that looks like a traditional programmable logic controller (PLC) or another form factor—becomes more powerful, more economical, and easier to integrate. This seems to apply for devices using traditional standards, such as IEC 61131-3 programming languages, or more IT-familiar languages, or both.
when engineers draw something, it usually includes boxes and arrows. Software that uses those conventions naturally is more intuitive.
having industrial software that empowers customers to swiftly turn great ideas into reality by removing technological and economic obstacles. The software is said to install in four minutes, is scalable from a Raspberry Pi board-level controller to enterprise servers, is intuitive, and has a fixed (simpler, more economical) pricing structure.
you think again about how programmable controllers are adapting for ease of use, greater flexibility, modularity, easier upgrades, greater safety and security, with wider and simpler interconnections with legacy and IT systems. The long-discussed benefits of optimal, ideal automation and controls have become the mantra of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industrie 4.0 platforms. As we’ve said for years, don’t wait until it’s too late to integrate automation, controls, and instrumentation. Evaluate new technologies’ capabilities, redesign processes, and implement opportunities to augment better decisions, higher productivity, and more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Readying robots and the workforce for Industrie 4.0
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/readying-robots-and-the-workforce-for-industrie-40/9594b970b13bdc60a18e4bc607eb4def.html
Industrie 4.0 is not a distant vision for the factory of the future. Already networks of robots are connecting to the cloud and contributing massive amounts of insightful data to simplify asset management and maintenance, maximize equipment and process efficiency, and improve product quality.
Industrie 4.0 may seem more conceptual than real. For many manufacturers, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), cyber-physical systems, cloud robotics, fog computing, and big data, can be intimidating. Visions of a smart factory can make us feel pretty dumb.
The smart factory connects the digital world of information technology with the physical world of operational technology, what many call information technology/operations technology (IT/OT) convergence. But Industrie 4.0 is not a distant vision for the factory of the future. It is here and it is now. Networks of robots are connecting to the cloud and contributing massive amounts of insightful data. Today, manufacturers are using these information pipelines to simplify asset management and maintenance, maximize equipment and process efficiency, and improve product quality.
Stop downtime before it occurs
General Motors (GM) is putting IoT and the building blocks of Industrie 4.0 to work-today. The automaker’s robot supplier and strategic partner, Fanuc America Corporation, is helping GM build a strong foundation for smart manufacturing. GM, Fanuc, and Cisco together developed the zero down time (ZDT) solution, which uses a cloud-based software platform to analyze data collected from robots across GM’s factories in order to detect potential problems that could lead to production downtime.
Return on investment (ROI)
ZDT continues to make a difference on the plant floor for the company. Linn said GM has been able to avoid over 100 significant unscheduled downtimes since the program’s inception.
“That avoids on the order of six to eight hours of unscheduled downtime, depending on what was going to fail. You can do the math. It’s a lot. It’s a big deal to us for any of our facilities, but especially in our high-volume truck and SUV plants, where each downtime event is significant.”
With thousands of robots connected and communicating with the cloud, it wasn’t long before GM began realizing their return on investment (ROI).
“This is not ‘Jetsons’ technology,” Linn said. “This is using Big Data, the internet of things, new algorithms, computer capacity, all those things that have evolved over the past years, and using them in the most efficient way. Preventing downtime, and anticipating or even forgoing maintenance until it’s needed, is huge.”
Maintenance only when needed
“For example, a robot might be designed to have routine scheduled maintenance at 1,000 hours. So we would plan to maintain it at that time,” says Linn. “But it might actually last 1,250 hours before it needs maintenance. So we’re working on getting away from fixed maintenance schedules to instead schedule as needed. This is one of the major ways you can find significant savings going forward.”
Machine learning
ZDT doesn’t only apply to robots. It’s also applicable to process equipment. Processes that are directly controlled by the robot, such as welding, painting, and some dispensing applications. Linn cited GM’s automotive paint shop as an example.
“Looking at air pressures, looking at downdraft pressures, the speeds of the actuators that are dispensing the paints, looking at a lot of the paint processes and the parameters that go into that, we’re able to monitor the health of the equipment and therefore the quality of the job,” Linn said.
Finish quality is crucial in the automotive paint shop. All of Fanuc’s paint robots are ZDT-ready, which means they can monitor a variety of functions including paint canisters, spray applicators, regulators, and drive health.
Automotive and beyond
Fanuc’s analytics solution is monitoring over 10,000 cloud-connected robots at customers’ facilities around the world, and growing every day. While it is currently used in the automotive industry, Fanuc plans to release software and hardware support for general industry, non-automotive customers in late 2017.
“Industrie 4.0 is not just a dream. It’s real,” Tsai said. “It’s an exciting time for automation.”
Exciting indeed, as more robot manufacturers introduce their own IIoT solutions for embracing the level of connectivity heralded by Industrie 4.0.
Robot data at your fingertips
Kuka Connect is a cloud-based software platform that allows customers to easily access and analyze data from their Kuka robots on any device, anywhere at any time. The solution provides three main functions: asset information management, condition monitoring, and maintenance alerts.
“If you are a big OEM customer, you may have thousands of robots in one facility,” said Andy Chang, director of product marketing, Americas, at Kuka. “The way they manage asset information management today is by using giant Excel spreadsheets that are manually maintained. The information on the spreadsheet may or may not be accurate and they may not actually know what type of robots they have.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
If Not This Then Stringify
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/if-not-then-stringify?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+linuxjournalcom+%28Linux+Journal+-+The+Original+Magazine+of+the+Linux+Community%29
I love IFTTT (If This Then That), but although it usually works well, it’s more and more common for triggers to fail. Sometimes they don’t fail, but take several minutes to activate. When you want a light to turn on as you enter a room, several minutes of delay clearly can be a deal-breaker. I’m not sure if the problem is capacity issues or individual API problems, but I no longer feel confident that IFTTT will fire reliably. Although it’s still in beta, Stringify aims to be more reliable, but also more robust.
With IFTTT, simplicity is king. You have a single trigger (If…) and a single action (then that…). With Stringify, you have “flows”, which allow multiple results along with conditionals. Basically, you write a logical flow of triggers and results using the same sorts of triggers and results IFTTT offers. Granted, the number of connected services is significantly smaller, but the number is growing all the time. There’s also no web-based interface for the Stringify building process, which bums me out. I would rather have a big screen to build flows, but it’s only possible to manipulate your account on a mobile device (Android or iOS).
It’s not clear whether Stringify will end up being more popular and/or more reliable than IFTTT. It certainly has the promise to surpass the usefulness of IFTTT though.
https://www.stringify.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Fighting Dehydration One Sip at a Time
https://hackaday.com/2017/09/02/hackaday-prize-entry-fighting-dehydration-one-sip-at-a-time/
Humans don’t survive long without water, and most people walk around in a chronic state of mild dehydration even if they have access to plenty of drinking water. It’s hard to stay properly hydrated, and harder still to keep track of your intake, which is the idea behind this water-intake monitoring IoT drinking straw.
Dehydration is a particularly acute problem in the elderly, since the sense of thirst tends to diminish with age. [jflaschberger]’s Hackaday Prize entry seeks to automate the tedious and error-prone job of recording fluid intake, something that caregivers generally have to take care of by eyeballing that half-empty glass and guessing. The HydrObserve uses a tiny turbine flowmeter that can mount to a drinking straw or water bottle cap. A Hall sensor in the turbine sends flow data to a Cypress BLE SoC module, which totalizes the volume sipped and records a patient identifier.
HydrObserve – stopping dehydration deaths
https://hackaday.io/project/25397-hydrobserve-stopping-dehydration-deaths
An automated system that helps the elderly to stay hydrated and therefore prevents hospitalizations and deaths. Saving millions $.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fight Mold and Mildew with an IoT Bathroom Fan
https://hackaday.com/2017/09/02/fight-mold-and-mildew-with-an-iot-bathroom-fan/
Delicious sheets of wallboard coated with yummy latex paints, all kept warm and moist by a daily deluge of showers and habitually forgetting to turn on the bathroom exhaust fan. You want mildew? Because that’s how you get mildew.
Fed up with the fuzzy little black spots on the ceiling, [Innovative Tom] decided to make bathroom ventilation a bit easier with this humidity-sensing IoT control for his bathroom exhaust fan. Truthfully, his build accomplishes little more than a $15 timer switch for the fan would, with one critical difference — it turns the fan on automatically when the DHT11 sensor tells the WeMos board that the relative humidity has gone over 60%. A
https://github.com/Innovativetom/Automatic-Bathroom-Sensor-
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dumb STB gets smart
https://hackaday.com/2017/09/01/dumb-stb-gets-smart/
[Vincent Deconinck] gave a fresh lease of life to an old set top box by adding a few Euro’s worth of hardware and some software smarts. The device in question is an old VOOcorder – a Cisco set-top box provided by VOO, his cable service provider in Belgium.
The VOOcorder doesn’t have any WiFi hardware or browser / app based interfaces. It’s a simple device controlled either via an IR remote or front panel buttons. [Vincent] added an ESP8266 and hooked it up to the IR receiver on the set-top box. He also set it up as an SPI slave to the front panel VFD display controller and connected it to the debug serial interface of the VOOcorder as well. The software, on the other hand, required a lot more work consisting of code running on the ESP itself, several HTML pages and JavaScript code for the browser front end, and a few scripts running in the background.
Introducing the WAHOOcorder
http://blog.deconinck.info/post/2017/06/05/Introducting-the-WAHOOcorder
Tomi Engdahl says:
Need to Jumpstart IoT Security? Consider Segmentation
http://www.securityweek.com/need-jumpstart-iot-security-consider-segmentation
The Internet of Things (IoT) holds great promise for business collaboration and innovation through connections unimaginable a decade ago.
In the healthcare industry, medical devices connecting patients, care givers, and systems across facilities are being used to save lives and find cures. Manufacturers embarking on their digital transformation journey are connecting devices on the factory floor to increase uptime, productivity, and competitive advantage. And connected meters, switches, and circuit breakers are allowing utilities to deliver power with the reliability and reach necessary to keep the economy moving. In fact, the number of connected things is expected to reach more than 20 billion by 2020 according to Gartner.
But as the IoT grows so too does security risk. Organizations often aren’t aware of all the IoT devices connected to their network and expanding the attack surface. Adversaries are taking advantage of these weaknesses and are using these devices to establish a presence in an environment and move laterally across networks quietly and with relative ease until they accomplish their mission. WannaCry held medical devices for ransom at hospitals and shut down factories. Attacks on power grids compromised devices to infiltrate and disrupt critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, botnets like Mirai have infected hundreds of thousands of IoT devices, turning them into a collective weapon capable of launching coordinated attacks to incapacitate websites and take down parts of the Internet itself.
IoT devices cannot protect themselves, either lacking the system resources to run any significant security capabilities or never designed with security in mind. Yet they need to be secured so that they can perform their functions unimpeded while making it harder for threat actors to use them for malicious activity.
Software-based, extensible segmentation at an IoT scale, along with a segmentation strategy driven by security controls, can prevent lateral movement and effectively improve security.
As you outline your segmentation strategy, here are three important aspects to keep in mind:
• Identity and Trust – Establishing identity and the assignment of trust to users and devices
• Visibility – To network, system, applications, and devices that drive security analytics and auditability
• Availability – Establishment of resilience and availability mechanisms to meet business requirements
Let’s take a quick look at how these elements come together.
Electric utilities can have hundreds to thousands of power substations in geographically remote and difficult-to-reach locations. Therefore, any work that may be done remotely will help keep operational costs down by saving time and effort. Of course, that access must be secure. Additionally, if a technician is required to visit a substation, network access must be restricted to approved devices. Similarly, manufacturers often must allow remote access to their network from multiple vendors that provide remote support to their equipment. But they often lack visibility as to when the vendors are accessing their networks and what actions the vendors are taking during that time. A strategic segmentation approach ensures alignment to business goals while allowing only permitted, profiled devices access be it to the network at the substation, or to machinery on the factory floor.
In a hospital setting, equipment moves around; an array of devices are connecting to the network; patients and care givers need network access; electronic medical records must be protected; and campuses and regional clinics need to be connected.
Segmentation is an important element of any security strategy to mitigate risk from IoT-based attacks, but it has to be done right.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart meters: ‘Dog’s breakfast’ that’ll only save you ‘a tenner’ – report
£390 per meter… £420 … pff, it’s public money, who cares?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/04/smart_meters_more_expensive_fewer_savings/
Smart meters will cost each British household £420 and save people just “a tenner a year”, according to reports.
Cost-benefit estimates for the British smart meter programme vary hugely, with figures ranging from modest savings of around £26 a year (as we reported last year) to the Mail on Sunday’s latest guess coming from Gordon Hughes, an economist at the University of Edinburgh.
“The introduction of the smart meter is a dog’s breakfast. At best it is misconceived and an astonishingly expensive project. For those claiming it will bring major savings, I say they need to grow up,” Hughes dutifully raged for the Sunday newspaper.
The £11bn project, which came about in part because of European Union directive 2009/72/EC, snappily titled “Directive 2009/72/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 July 2009 concerning common rules for the internal market in electricity and repealing Directive 2003/54/EC (Text with EEA relevance)”, along with a similar directive on gas meters, is supposed to put smart meters into 80 per cent of households by the year 2020.
An EU webpage last updated a couple of weeks ago says the UK is on track to meet this target, though the source of its claim is unclear. The same page states: “While cost estimates vary, the cost of a smart metering system averages between €200 and €250 [£184 - £230] per customer, while delivering benefits per metering point of €160 [£147] for gas and €309 [£284] for electricity along with, on average, three per cent energy savings.”
Four years ago a British report revealed that the cost of installing smart meters in the UK is £390 per household, while more recent estimates are that the benefits are now as low as £11 per household
With the UK slated to leave the EU by 2020, it is unlikely that any financial penalties will result if the target is missed.
Smart Metering deployment in the European Union
http://ses.jrc.ec.europa.eu/smart-metering-deployment-european-union