Here is a list f IoT predictions for year 2018. With the number of connected devices set to top 11 billion – and that’s not including computers and phones – in 2018, Internet of Things will clearly continue to be a hot topic. Here is my prediction list:
1. Artifical Intelligence – it will be talked a lot
2. Blockchain – blockchain will be hyped to be a solution for many IoT problems, and it will turn out that it is not the best solution for most of problems it is hyped for – and maybe it will find few sensible uses for it in IoT. Blockchain can add immutability and integrity to some IoT transactions.
3. 4G mobile for IoT: NB-IoT and LTE-M are ready to be tested or used in many markets
4. 5G will be hyped a lot for IoT applications but it is nowhere near for any real big IoT use cases
6. Security issues will be talked a lot. IoT security is far from solved issue.
7. Privacy issues of IoT will be talked a lot when our homes and pockets are starting to be filled with ever listening digital assistants.
8. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will be massive
9. More CPU power will be added or used in the edge. Pushing processing power to the “edge” brings a number of benefits and opportunities.
10. Hardware based security: Hardware based security on microprocessors will be talked a lot after “Meltdown” and “Spectre” disaster
Links to more predictions:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2017/12/19/the-top-8-iot-trends-for-2018/#17a9943267f7
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/internet-of-things/top-5-iot-trends-in-2018/
https://www.inc.com/james-paine/3-internet-of-things-trends-to-watch-in-2018.html
https://www.i-scoop.eu/iot-2018-1/
https://dzone.com/articles/iot-trends-for-2018
1,393 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT in Action: 3 considerations for securing everyday IoT devices
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332906
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Eats Embedded with Security, AI
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1333000
The Internet of Things is eating the embedded systems market, and it’s hungry for more security and some AI sauce to go with it.
I talked to just three of the 30,000 engineers descending on Nuremberg for Embedded World this week, a small but significant sample. Michael Barr, CTO of the Barr Group, is presenting the results of his 2018 Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey at the event.
The survey of 1,700 people found that 61% of all embedded designs are now at least occasionally connected to the internet. Surprise: They are not all secure.
The good news is that 67% of respondents said that security is a design consideration, up six points from the 2016 survey. But 22% said that security is not a product requirement; many admitted that they are not using best practices such as conducting regular code reviews — and less than half of all embedded engineers designing for the IoT encrypt their data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Security Needs OEM, User Partnerhips
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1332985
Manufacturers and network administrators need to come together and weave a security defense for the Internet of Things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Experts Disdain Blockchain in Spain
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333005
“Trust” and “security” were the two words most oft uttered during a discussion here Monday at the Mobile World Congress entitled “IoT and the Security Blockchain,” but they were spoken — for the most part — either wishfully or in tones of outright sarcasm.
The explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, said moderator Ian Hughes, an IoT analyst for 451 Research, “has created a massive ballooning of risk” to the security of systems dependent on Internet communications.
“The proliferation of IoT devices,” said Rashni Misra, Microsoft’s general manager for IoT and AI solutions, “has basically opened a new surface for attack, to an extraordinary degree.15
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI Comes to Sensing Devices
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333003
GreenWaves Technologies, a startup based in Grenoble, France, launched an apps processor designed to do image, sound and vibration AI analysis on battery-operated sensing devices. The processor, called GAP8, is built on the RISC-V and PULP open-source projects.
Greenwaves’ first sample chip just came back last week from TSMC, which built it using its 55nm low power process. With this brainchild in hand, the company is pitching its GAP8 processor and GAP8 software development kit this week both at Mobile World Congress here and Embedded World in Nürnberg, Germany.
Mike Demler, senior analyst at the Linley Group, told us, “It’s the first time I’ve seen someone add a neural engine to an MCU-class processor.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
PUF up your IoT security
https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/bakers-best/4460356/PUF-up-your-IoT-security-?utm_source=Aspencore&utm_medium=EDN&utm_campaign=social
IoT technology is an essential landmark for smart cities, manufacturing, and phone usage growth. This is very exciting as I look around at the IoT’s enormous capability. Without human or computer supervision, data exchanges occur between unique multiple IoT objects. IoT combines disparate technologies such as wireless communication, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and sensor technologies to exchange critical system information. It also appears in manufacturing, energy management, medical and health systems, transportation, and building and home automation.
Particularly, you will find that as you design or use these systems, you need a high degree of security. In other words, unknown or known sources can have access to your data or contribute to your data without your knowledge, and under the worst conditions, contaminate your systems
Dedicated, hardware-based security ICs and the cryptographic solutions currently exist to address these threats. However, the security ICs themselves can become the target of attack by the bad actors attempting to circumvent or break chip security to gain access of the protected system.
Physically unclonable functions
A decisive technology that protects security chips against invasive attacks is the physically unclonable function (PUF). PUF is a digital fingerprint that is unique to each IC with an output value that cannot be reverse-engineered. The PUF-generated value differs physically from chip to chip due to manufacturing variations.
In one case, the PUF output becomes a secret that is used to encrypt.
Should a bad actor be successful in getting at this data, given the encrypted state it is useless. In another case, the PUF output becomes the private key component of a public-private key pair for signing data using the elliptic-curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA).
Secure authenticators are a class of security ICs which are used to protect the system from the attacks mentioned earlier. Integrating PUF into these devices makes sense given the value of the system assets to be protected. An example of a PUF-protected secure authenticator is the DS28E38 (Maxim Integrated).
I am finding that HW-based security ICs are a proven solution to protect your valuable application assets from theft, snooping, counterfeiting, etc. PUF technology protects the security chip itself against invasive types of attack threats. PUF technology, based on the random electrical properties of IC devices, produces a unique and repeatable root cryptographic key for each IC. As a result, no two PUF coding are the same. Additionally, the generation of a key happens when needed, and the chip never stores this valuable key.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Make Your Sensors Smarter
Building the Internet of Things from Smarter Sensors
https://blog.hackster.io/how-to-make-your-sensors-smarter-9437835b9ac7
To fulfill the real promise of the Internet of Things there needs to be computing and sensing in each and every object in your home. In your office. In your neighborhood.
But not only would that be impractical, and expensive, it would be intrusive, and awkward. So what if, instead of deploying thousands of sensors in a room, you could install just a single sensor that could indirectly monitor the whole room?
A single sensor board with multiple sensors monitors a number of sensor data streams. But instead of all this low-level sensor data being presented to the user from the individual sensors—such as accelerometers, pressure, temperature, humidity, electro-magnetic, and acoustic sensors—data from all these different sensors are joined together into ‘synthetic sensors.’
The raw sensor events are combined, using machine learning to automatically recognise distinct patterns of sensor activation and expose these as higher level events. These are events that have meaning in the real world, like you turning on a faucet in the kitchen, or opening and closing the door of the microwave.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wi-Fi testing: More than compliance
https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/rowe-s-and-columns/4460342/Wi-Fi-testing–More-than-compliance?utm_source=Aspencore&utm_medium=EDN&utm_campaign=social
You probably have a Wi-Fi router at home and probably in your office as well. While all access points, routers, computers, phones, and other devices must comply with IEEE 802.11 and Ethernet Alliance standards, that’s no assurance the device will meet your expectations. The UNH-IOL has announced Wi-Fi testing services that go beyond 802.11 specifications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon is buying smart doorbell maker Ring
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/27/amazon-is-buying-smart-doorbell-maker-ring/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
How the growth of IoT is changing data management
http://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/blog/how-growth-iot-changing-data-management
Data management is a discipline that’s remained relatively unchanged and, to put it bluntly, somewhat stagnant over the past 10 or 20 years.
Since the dawn of the Internet of Things (IoT), these trends have already reversed.
With estimates predicting 50 billion interconnected devices within IoT by 2020, and the fact that there were only four billion smartphone users in mid-2017, it’s easy to see that we’re staring down a deluge of new data in the next few years.
This newfound growth is affecting data management in profound and significant ways.
As industry professionals attempt to rein in big data, they’re using a mixture of deployment strategies, hardware configurations and software packages.
Tomi Engdahl says:
professionals turn to platforms like Xively, ThingSpeak, Plotly, Carriots, Exosite, AMEE, Axeda and Connecterra to use the cloud for big data storage, processing and management.
Enterprises that maintain their own IoT-connected servers and hardware also have options. Some of the most popular operating systems include:
Windows 10 for IoT. Microsoft’s product is a little rushed in that it was hurried to the market to compete with several existing brands. But unlike most of its competitors, Windows 10 for IoT comes with the reputation, usability and comprehensive technical support that is already familiar to most mainstream users.
Google Brillo. Focused on the development of Android apps and Android-based embedded systems, Brillo is an excellent alternative to Microsoft or any of the other products on the market today.
RIOT OS. Highly popular due to its open source design, RIOT OS is a free-to-use system that supports various embedded devices, sensors and PCs.
Although Apple doesn’t have a specific IoT-oriented platform or operating system available for public consumption, its HomeKit framework provides rudimentary access and is likely a key building block for a future system from the popular developer.
With the ability to capture and process data in real-time, generate intuitive data models and automate decision-making tasks, these next-gen file architectures and operating systems represent a monumental shift in the way professionals approach the field of data management.
Source: http://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/blog/how-growth-iot-changing-data-management
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Kovach / Business Insider:
Source: after Amazon refused to sell newer Nest products like its latest thermostat and alarm system, Nest decided to stop selling any of its products on Amazon
Amazon will stop selling Nest smart home devices, escalating its war with Google
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/amazon-wont-sell-nest-products-from-google-2018-3?op=1&r=US&IR=T
Amazon decided not to sell any of the newer products from Google’s smart home division Nest.
Amazon currently sells a limited number of Nest products, but those will disappear from the site after it sells the inventory it has left. Nest decided to no longer work with Amazon selling the limited number of products it was selling on the site.
Amazon’s move heats up its war with Google over the future of the smart home. The two are also battling over video devices and services.
Amazon’s decision not to sell Nest products has huge implications as it strives to carve out a new computing platform – and as it continues to clash with Google over the future of computing.
After missing out on smartphones and finding limited success with its line of Fire tablets, Amazon is betting big on Alexa as a new computing platform. Alexa is both Amazon’s AI assistant and its platform for smart home gadgets, including connected lights, door locks, and music speakers. The company has gotten more aggressive with competitors recently – especially Google, the owner of Nest, which is Amazon’s biggest competitor in the smart home with its own Google Assistant platform. Amazon also announced in February that it would buy Ring, the maker of camera-equipped doorbells and other connected home security devices, in a deal said to be worth about $1 billion.
It’s possible you may be able to find Nest products on Amazon in the future through Amazon’s Marketplace program, which lets third-party retailers sell items through Amazon. But it’s unclear if Amazon plans to restrict Nest sales from its Marketplace partners too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Front-door tech is hot, and it’s not just Amazon who wants in
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/03/front-door-tech-is-hot-and-its-not-just-amazon-who-wants-in/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
Most of us tend to think people trying to open the door when we’re away want to steal stuff. Amazon.com would like to change that assumption.
The e-commerce giant shelled out a reported $1.1 billion this week to acquire Ring, a developer of Wi-Fi-connected door bells. The move follows the rollout last year of Amazon Key, a smart lock and camera system for in-home deliveries to customers who don’t want packages sitting outside.
In the age of on-demand delivery, service providers have long seen the typical low-tech door as an impediment to expansion. Smart-lock developers and home security companies also
For one, to a large degree, lock and building access-related investments are an extension of the connected home space, and growing adoption of connected home systems provides a major entry point for key and door tech.
Many legitimate businesses also want an easier way to get through the door.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Understanding The Protocols Behind The Internet Of Things
http://www.electronicdesign.com/iot/understanding-protocols-behind-internet-things?code=UM_Classics02118&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=15650&utm_medium=email&elq2=5d57535c6a254ed1a557490adc377cd7
Devices must communicate with each other (D2D). Device data then must be collected and sent to the server infrastructure (D2S). That server infrastructure has to share device data (S2S), possibly providing it back to devices, to analysis programs, or to people.
• MQTT: a protocol for collecting device data and communicating it to servers (D2S)
• XMPP: a protocol best for connecting devices to people, a special case of the D2S pattern, since people are connected to the servers
• DDS: a fast bus for integrating intelligent machines (D2D)
• AMQP: a queuing system designed to connect servers to each other (S2S)
Each of these protocols is widely adopted.
Nonetheless, they are very different indeed! Today’s Internet supports hundreds of protocols. The IoT will support hundreds more. It’s important to understand the class of use that each of these important protocols addresses.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Interagency Report on Status of International Cybersecurity Standardization for the Internet of Things (IoT)
https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/nistir/8200/draft/documents/nistir8200-draft.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Testing and Optimizing Efficiency in the Smart Grid
http://www.electronicdesign.com/power/testing-and-optimizing-efficiency-smart-grid?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20180305_ED-
003_323&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=15700&utm_medium=email&elq2=359f5b8c9ed54e699621ed6b515f79
e2
As more intelligent devices crowd into the smart-grid network, the ability of supporting technologies to optimize end-to-end system efficiency becomes vital.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT and Industry 4.0 are bringing analog components into a new flight. “Data becomes a new oil and we can help customers develop solutions, whether it’s security, signal processing, or programming,” Hellström says.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7631&via=n&datum=2018-02-28_14:22:22&mottagare=31202
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stamping out IoT security bugs
http://www.broadbandtechreport.com/articles/2018/03/stamping-out-iot-security-bugs.html?cmpid=enl_btr_weekly_2018-03-06&pwhid=6b9badc08db25d04d04ee00b499089ffc280910702f8ef99951bdbdad3175f54dcae8b7ad9fa2c1f5697ffa19d05535df56b8dc1e6f75b7b6f6f8c7461ce0b24
One of the topics to emerge from the vastness of Mobile World Congress was Internet of Things (IoT) security and the challenges surrounding it as more and more devices come online. The complex traditional method of providing security for devices isn’t compatible with some new genres of connectivity and or the sheer volume expected.
Kyrio, a subsidiary of CableLabs, announced that it is the first certificate authority and a Microchip Security Design Partner. Together, Microchip and Kyrio will work to offer a solution that embeds digital certificates in the secure hardware of IoT devices in an integrated way with the manufacturing process flow. The goal is to eliminate the need for device manufacturers to be security experts.
Kyrio hopes that the strong managed public key infrastructure (PKI) represents a move closer to standardization for the IoT industry.
“Kyrio’s backend security infrastructure fits well with Microchip’s secure chips that can be used to put in device security,” said Ronald Ih, Kyrio director of business development.
Cloud service providers and network providers want to be able to know devices belong on the network. For example, a commercial lighting company might have a management system for 2,000-plus lights. They want to know everything that shows up on the network is a correct and authorized device, and not an interloper with a laptop in the parking lot, Ih said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Forces Amazon vs. Google Choice
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1333036
The IoT industry is forcing your average consumer to take sides before buying into any connected home concept. Who are you with: Amazon or Google?
Over the last several years, we’ve often blamed market fragmentation for the chronically slow growth in the consumer IoT business. Lately, however, it looks like “connected home” devices are coalescing around a handful of “ecosystems” developed by the internet giants — Amazon, Google, Apple, and maybe Microsoft.
For sure, reducing chaos in smart homes is a good thing. In theory, devices native to one ecosystem should connect well and work together. But when ecosystem companies start gobbling up small startups, as we witnessed last week in Amazon’s $1 billion acquisition of Ring, we should all start worrying. Companies like Amazon are in the catbird seat, picking winners and losers among hundreds of IoT device vendors, and will start competing with their own ecosystem “partners.”
Socialistic mantras like “Let a thousand flowers bloom” are creepily common in the nascent smart-home market.
Capitalists prefer fewer, bigger flowers that block the sun from the little flowers, and besides, they want to buy the whole garden.
Startups competing with Ring or even established security vendors like ADT might say that the Amazon-Ring deal validates their security product/service concept. In theory, yes. But again, set kidding aside. It’s only a matter of time before Amazon starts undercutting competitors in its effort to become the biggest damn smart-home security flower you ever smelled.
Ecosystem battle
Meanwhile, the smart-home ecosystem battle — Amazon versus Google in particular — is already unfolding into a full-fledged war.
Amazon, fully aware of Google’s smart-home consolidation, decided not to sell any of the newer products from Google’s Nest. As a result, Nest decided to stop selling its products through Amazon, limiting the number of Nest devices listed on Amazon today. Nest is expected to disappear from the site once current inventory is sold out, according to recent press reports.
If it was up to me, I’d say that I’d just hold off buying anything ’til after the dust settles. And I might just think: Do I really need a house that’s smarter than me?
I don’t trust Amazon or Google or, for that matter, any of today’s big profit-first, damn-the-consumer corporations. I’m suspicious because of security and, more importantly, my privacy.
Big internet companies already know too much about me. Why should I — purely by virtue of living in a “connected” home — disclose more about my tastes and preferences, what I’m doing today, where I plan to go next, and when I am not at home?
Seriously, all of that personal exposure so that I can remotely unlock the door for an Amazon delivery to get inside, drop a package, look around, see where I hang my spare door key, and check out whatever goodies I keep in my hall closet?
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Security Concerns Push Vendors to the Edge
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333044
NUREMBERG, Germany — Doing more processing at the edge to avoid sending sensitive data to the cloud emerged as a common theme among vendors at the Embedded World conference here last week. Whether this is a result of forthcoming GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws coming into force across the European Union on May 25, or whether there it is simply a lack of sufficient security in current devices is difficult to tell.
A recent report on IoT cybersecurity readiness certainly points to the latter. Lawrence Munro, vice president SpiderLabs at Trustwave, who released the IoT Cybersecurity Readiness Report, said, “As IoT adoption continues to proliferate, manufactures of IoT are sidestepping security fundamentals as they rush to bring products to market. We are seeing lack of familiarity with secure coding concepts resulting in vulnerabilities, some of them a decade old, incorporated into final designs. Because updating IoT devices by nature is more challenging, many remain vulnerable even after patches are issued, and often patches are not even developed. Organizations need to properly document and test each internet-connected device on their network or face introducing potentially thousands of new attack vectors easily exploitable by cybercriminals.”
He added, “”Any device or sensor with an IP address connected to a corporate network may open the doors to a devastating security incident.”
The report finds that while IoT use is growing rapidly — by the end of 2018, five in six organizations will be using at least a minimal level of IoT technology — security concerns are cited as the top barrier to increased IoT adoption.
Given this, it’s not surprising that there were several announcements and demos around IoT edge computing and security at Embedded World. On top of this, major vendors were also keen to announce their full IoT ecosystems or platforms, presumably to contain the security risks in a closed loop environment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon has a fix for Alexa’s creepy laughs
Wait, what?
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/7/17092334/amazon-alexa-devices-strange-laughter
Over the past few days, users with Alexa-enabled devices have reported hearing strange, unprompted laughter. Amazon responded to the creepiness today in a statement to The Verge, saying, “We’re aware of this and working to fix it.”
Later on in the day, Amazon said its planned fix will involve disabling the phrase, “Alexa, laugh,” and changing the command to “Alexa, can you laugh?” The company says the latter phrase is “less likely to have false positives,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Investors Back IoT Startups
https://semiengineering.com/investors-back-iot-startups/
Total private funding was more than $1.35B in 2H 2017, but investors also are showing more caution about where they put their money.
Internet of Things startups took in more than $1.35 billion from corporate and private investors during the latter half of 2017, for a total of about $2.2 billion in the full year.
“We’re on a growth trajectory now where there is virtually nothing standing in our way from being the predictive analytics market leader across every heavy industry, from oil & gas to mining and beyond,” Uptake CEO Brad Keywell said in a statement. “The opportunity is too significant for us to not double down right now.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
So is wifi for IoT applications?
Even a couple of years ago, no one thought wifi would be suitable for IoT devices. After that, however, companies have offered wifi solutions with less and less power. Demonstration of Silicon Labs last week’s Embedded World fair in Nuremberg tells us how Wi-Fi is doing for power consumption.
SiLabs developed its own chipset for IoT. In Embedded World, the company introduced the WFM200 modules for the first time. Wifi circuits are needed in many of the IoT applications that need a higher data rate. According to Riku Mettälä, responsible for SiLabs wifi products, surveillance cameras should be able to get a picture at 5-8 megabits. This is not possible with Bluetooth.
ccording to the article, the current consumption of circuits and modules is 138 milliamps. This is up to 40-50 percent less than the wifi of competitors.
The most important thing in a battery-powered device is the average power consumption. The SiLabs circuits listen to the wifi at 300 milliseconds (DTIM = 3) to achieve an average power consumption of 200 microamperes.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/7673-siis-kayko-wifi-iot-sovelluksiin
Tomi Engdahl says:
47.3 million U.S. adults have access to a smart speaker, report says
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/07/47-3-million-u-s-adults-have-access-to-a-smart-speaker-report-says/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
Nearly one in five U.S. adults today have access to a smart speaker, according to new research out this week from Voicebot.ai. That means adoption of these voice-powered devices has grown to 47.3 million U.S. adults in two years – or 20 percent of U.S. adult population.
To clarify, “access to a smart speaker” means the adults have one in their home, but they may not be a primary user.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Connected Mind: How the Internet of Things Becomes The Internet of Awareness
https://blog.paessler.com/connected-mind-chris-dancy?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Burda-Blog-Global&utm_content=ChrisDancyConnectedMinds
connected mind chris dancy
By Chris Dancy • Mar 5, 2018
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING
Connected Mind: How the Internet of Things Becomes The Internet of Awareness
Ray Kurzweil, author, computer scientist and inventor has publicly speculated in his 2005 book “The Singularity Is Near” that by the year 2045 a runaway self-aware, super intelligence will bring unfathomable changes to human civilization.
This superintelligence will rise from the computing power that we take for granted today and continue to accelerate and comingle with other forms of artificial intelligence or AI.
Ray Kurzweil isn’t the only “singularitarian” out there; today’s business and political leaders from Elon Musk to Vladimir Putin have all labelled the existential threat of AI as critical for the survival of our species.
Examination of today’s media and technology feedback loops give every indication that we are programming ourselves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ABB Introduces Your Digital Assistant
https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/it/abb-introduces-your-digital-assistant
Tomi Engdahl says:
PUF up your IoT security
https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/bakers-best/4460356/PUF-up-your-IoT-security-?utm_source=Aspencore&utm_medium=EDN&utm_campaign=social
Dedicated, hardware-based security ICs and the cryptographic solutions currently exist to address these threats. However, the security ICs themselves can become the target of attack by the bad actors attempting to circumvent or break chip security to gain access of the protected system.
Physically unclonable functions
A decisive technology that protects security chips against invasive attacks is the physically unclonable function (PUF). PUF is a digital fingerprint that is unique to each IC with an output value that cannot be reverse-engineered. The PUF-generated value differs physically from chip to chip due to manufacturing variations. Inside an integrated PUF core, it is possible to generate a completely random code. The key length is scalable, being in line with the application’s requirements. The probing of a PUF circuit modifies the electrical properties. This probing then renders the PUF core useless. In this manner, the hardware-generated PUF output is tamper-proof. The PUF output is used as a unique key/secret to support cryptographic algorithms and services that include encryption/decryption, authentication, and digital signature.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Security Concerns Push Vendors to the Edge
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333044
NUREMBERG, Germany — Doing more processing at the edge to avoid sending sensitive data to the cloud emerged as a common theme among vendors at the Embedded World conference here last week. Whether this is a result of forthcoming GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws coming into force across the European Union on May 25, or whether there it is simply a lack of sufficient security in current devices is difficult to tell.
He added, “”Any device or sensor with an IP address connected to a corporate network may open the doors to a devastating security incident.”
The report finds that while IoT use is growing rapidly — by the end of 2018, five in six organizations will be using at least a minimal level of IoT technology — security concerns are cited as the top barrier to increased IoT adoption.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intelligence At The Edge Is Transforming Our World
https://semiengineering.com/intelligence-at-the-edge-is-transforming-our-world/
Machine learning already plays a part in everyday life, but efficient inference will keep it moving forward.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SENSING AND ANALYTICS OF AIR QUALITY
MegaSense: Scalable real-time 5G air pollution sensing as a service for megacities
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/sensing-and-analytics-of-air-quality
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Week in Review: IoT
Startup funding; AT&T & IoT; Cisco cybersecurity.
https://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-iot-88/
Toronto-based Ecobee, which markets smart thermostats, raised $61 million in its Series C funding, bringing the total funding for the 11-year-old company to $146 million. Energy Impact Partners led the new round and was joined by Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Relay Ventures, and Thomvest. Ecobee counts Nest Labs, the Google subsidiary, as its chief rival.
AT&T has introduced the Multi-Network Connect cloud platform, aiming at IoT applications in manufacturing, the public sector, and transportation. The product is in beta testing and will have a commercial release later this year. It allows businesses to monitor IoT endpoints on a worldwide basis, using AT&T’s cellular connectivity or another operator’s network.
ACL Airshop and CORE Transport Technologies are working together on Bluetooth-based automated tracking of unit load devices in the air cargo business. The cargo tracking system enables cargo carriers to provide electronic unit control receipts, using Bluetooth tags, according to the companies.
Cybersecurity
Cisco Systems sees securing IoT devices like keeping data centers secure. “There are some unique problems, and we are thinking about those, but we are also taking our existing technologies and applying them to these new use cases,” says Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Internet of Things and Applications Division. He adds in this interview, “It’s a traditional computer security problem … so we are doing that same kind of thing for cars and for other kinds of devices, and some of that security lives in the network itself.”
Datacentre security techniques transferable to IoT: Cisco
http://www.zdnet.com/article/datacentre-security-techniques-transferable-to-iot-cisco/
The networking giant says because it is good at securing datacentre traffic, it can do the same for Internet of Things devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cyclicality in the Age of IoT
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=40&doc_id=1333057
Could the rise of the Internet of Things and other new opportunities for electronics actually minimize the volatility of semiconductor industry cycles? At least one exec thinks so.
The semiconductor industry has been enjoying something of a renaissance as of late. After establishing a new high-water mark for revenue in 2017 — growing by more than 20% and passing the $400 billion mark for the first time — market watchers are predicting more market expansion for 2018.
Some parts — particularly memory chips — are in short supply, lead times are getting longer across the board, and chip suppliers have found amid boom times a swagger that seemed to have been missing for years.
What’s more, even as PC shipments continue to spiral downward, prospects for the future look bright, with evermore semiconductor content being designed into cars and technologies associated with artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things opening up whole new swaths of applications.
It’s the best of times, right? Except that anyone who has been around the semiconductor industry for any length of time is just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Inevitably, healthy cynicism tells us, euphoria will lead chipmakers to expand production capacity too fast, lead times will shrink, market drivers will stall, and the industry will suddenly find itself in that dreaded state of overcapacity. The sunlight of prosperity will slip below the horizon, plunging the industry into another dark, dreary downturn.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Datacentre security techniques transferable to IoT: Cisco
http://www.zdnet.com/article/datacentre-security-techniques-transferable-to-iot-cisco/
The networking giant says because it is good at securing datacentre traffic, it can do the same for Internet of Things devices.
If a connected car is simply a datacentre on wheels, then why not trust a networking giant to help secure it and transfer its existing knowledge into a new realm of security?
At least that is the idea put forward by SVP and general manager of Cisco’s Internet of Things (IoT) and Applications Division Rowan Trollope.
Trollope told ZDNet at the company’s Cisco Live event in Melbourne on Wednesday that IoT was not a radical departure for a traditionally networking-focused organisation.
“There are some unique problems, and we are thinking about those, but we are also taking our existing technologies and applying them to these new use cases,” he said.
“It’s a traditional computer security problem … so we are doing that same kind of thing for cars and for other kinds of devices, and some of that security lives in the network itself.”
“It’s not that it is a radically different problem,” Trollope told ZDNet.
While the company has appeared to move quickly from pushing software-defined networking (SDN) to its new intent-based paradigm, Trollope said to journalists that they shouldn’t confuse “marketing with underlying technology”.
“I don’t view intent-based networking and SDN as two discrete buckets,” he said. “One is an outgrowth of the other, so conceptually, software-defined networking in my, perhaps simplistic view, is the simple idea of separating software and hardware in the network.
Cisco’s ‘network intuitive’ the next era of networking: Chuck Robbins
http://www.zdnet.com/article/ciscos-network-intuitive-the-next-era-of-networking-chuck-robbins/
CEO Chuck Robbins used his Cisco Live keynote to expound on the networking giant’s new network intuitive, saying the company had to rewrite its IOS to enable its command centre and analytics platform, encrypted traffic analytics, and programmable switches.
Cisco’s “network intuitive” will enable the scale, complexity, and security required by the billions of devices to be added to the internet in future, according to CEO Chuck Robbins.
“We are going to build the secure, intelligent platform on which you can run the business of the future,” Robbins said during his keynote at Cisco Live Las Vegas on Monday, adding that in order to do so, Cisco will reinvent networking, enable a multi-cloud world, unlock the power of data, and deploy security everywhere across the network.
“Last week, we announced the network intuitive, which is the start of this new network for this new era powered by intent and informed by context.”
According to Robbins, as many as 1 million new connections per hour will be added to the internet by 2020, with Cisco’s network intuitive comprising three parts: Encrypted traffic analytics; the DNA-Center, which is the command centre and analytics platform of the new network; and a series of programmable, IoT-, cloud-, and mobile-ready switches called the Catalyst 9000 series.
The network intuitive is based on Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture (DNA), which marks a strategy of “intent-based networking infrastructure”, with Cisco labelling the new network as its most significant achievement in the last 10 years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gateway-free IP protocols ensure smart lighting system reliability (MAGAZINE)
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/print/volume-15/issue-2/features/smart-lighting/gateway-free-ip-protocols-ensure-smart-lighting-system-reliability.html?eid=293591077&bid=2030652
Non-IP-based communications abound in the connected LED lighting space, but GIULIO BORSOI explains how gateways in such systems can introduce system performance issues, while IP-based protocols to the end node will eliminate such issues.
The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is exploding in commercial and residential sectors and across many product types, with LED-based lighting being one such example. Lighting is ubiquitous and powered and could be a perfect IoT backbone; solid-state lighting (SSL) fixtures increasingly leverage connectivity for automated control, preventive maintenance, and other applications. That said, there are issues that plague IoT progress across applications, a primary one being gateways that are often required for networking and communication between IoT devices. Information is often lost, however, during signal conversion. But a move to IP (Internet Protocol) communications all of the way to the end node is one way to optimize system performance and reliability.
In our context here, the term “gateway” does not refer to routers that act as the hardware interface to provide access to the Internet. Such routers operate at layer 3 of the OSI reference model
Instead, what are relevant in our discussion here are gateways that operate at the application layer, in other words in layer five and above in the OSI model. For proper data communications, these gateways have to understand and convert the contents of the packets in their entirety.
For lighting infrastructures, this means that conventional control protocols such as DALI (digital addressable lighting interface) definitely need application gateways for communication because the time element is critical here. If the response to a request is not received within a certain time, the request will not be forwarded. Transfer of DALI frames is possible only with application gateways that are capable of interpreting the packet contents.
Completely eliminating gateways in the network
In view of these difficulties, it is worth considering whether and how gateways can be completely eliminated in networked infrastructures, in other words how a completely gateway-free architecture can be implemented. This is possible if requests are transmitted via devices that do not have to understand the contents
Lighting infrastructure as a basis for IoT
As described above, not only are gateways not needed for data communication but a gateway-free architecture also offers significant benefits such as avoiding conversion problems, which ultimately enhances the security and stability of the network. This also applies to the IoT – and particularly to lighting infrastructures, in other words the (IP-based) digital networking of luminaires.
Such networks are suitable as the carrier infrastructure for IoT applications for various reasons. As hinted at earlier, luminaires are already present in huge numbers – wherever people live, work, and travel, such as buildings, public squares, and roads. What’s more, lighting systems already have their own integrated power supplies so there is no need for power cables to be laid or batteries to be provided. Luminaires normally also have sufficient space for sensors to be integrated, making them ideal as hubs for collecting and transmitting data.
Open and interoperable
Moreover, the proposed architecture is based on open standards and it’s flexible and highly scalable. For example, the toolbox is based on the IPv6 open standard for Internet communications and enables wireless communication on a low-power version of IPv6 in accordance with the Thread standard. Luminaires based on the toolbox can be an integral part of the IoT and can communicate fully with other devices in the network. Furthermore, it’s a future-proof hardware and software platform.
As stressed earlier, the proposed concept does not require any gateways for networking the lighting-centric IoT components – and you need to understand that this statement applies beyond the luminaires. All the functions of the luminaires along with independent devices such as sensors and beacons can be addressed directly. This significantly reduces the cost of setting up, operating, and expanding the network and the application software.
The platform also makes use of standard technologies such as UDP/IP (User Datagram Protocol over IP), CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol), DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security), and LWM2M (Lightweight Machine to Machine). Fig. 3 depicts how the technology is layered into the OSI model.
A network that needs application gateways for communication will often have weaknesses.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IoT takes center stage at LuxLive (MAGAZINE)
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/print/volume-15/issue-2/features/luxlive-conference-report/the-iot-takes-center-stage-at-luxlive.html?eid=293591077&bid=2030652
The November 2017 installment was no exception. The IoT literally took center stage, as the IoT Arena provided the focal point and main discussion forum of the sprawling show floor. Speaker after speaker took the podium and extolled the virtues of tying LED lights and luminaires into the Internet to help not only improve the operation and control of lighting, but to also gather data and thereby improve the operation of businesses, homes, roadways, public spaces, and facilities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Testing Low Power Connectivity for the Internet of Things
http://www.mwrf.com/test-measurement/testing-low-power-connectivity-internet-things?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20180312_MWRF-001_486&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_2_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=15796&utm_medium=email&elq2=369c86cac660455cb182216d1f46548f
Remotely monitoring for forest fires with solar-powered sensors, tracking modules installed on fleets of delivery trucks, and connecting smart meters to a local power plant are all potential applications for low power cellular LTE-M and NB-IoT networks.
These electronic devices present challenges for testing. Test equipment companies like Keysight Technologies and Anritsu are jostling to help engineers meet the strict power and coverage requirements of NB-IoT and LTE-M – also called CAT-M1 or eMTC – on ever-tightening product budgets and deadlines.
“There are always challenges in testing new technology or new formats in the wireless industry,” said Hanglu Bai, product marketing lead for Keysight, in an email. But with LTE-M and NB-IoT technology, “the cost per test and speed of test is more important as a massive number of devices need to be deployed.”
Bai added that “the massive deployment of low cost devices means the device will not be tested as rigorously as testing a cellphone in a manufacturing environment.” The wireless industry is targeting LTE-M and NB-IoT modules that cost less than five dollars each and run on a single battery charge for a decade.
Richardson, Texas-based Anritsu released a series of software updates last year for testing NB-IoT and LTE-M devices for power consumption and wireless coverage. Last year, Rohde & Schwarz updated its CMW500 wideband communications radio tester to check that these devices meet 3GPP standards from prototyping all the way to production.
Keysight’s UXM system has been upgraded to “emulate a real network scenario, device under test scenarios, and custom test cases” for NB-IoT and LTE-M. “The biggest benefit is the device is validated in early prototyping and later in system integration to ensure the product that rolls out to market is both compliant and reliable in the field,” said Bai.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exponentials At The Edge
https://semiengineering.com/exponentials-at-the-edge/
The revolution that started in mobile phones will continue in other devices, but much faster.
Developments at the edge are not just another rev of Moore’s Law, where processors double density every couple of years. The term being used more frequently these days is exponentials. It’s all about exponential improvements in power, performance, processing, throughput and communication. The main reason why companies are looking at advanced packaging options, including fan-out on substrate, 2.5D and 3D-ICs, as well as pouring money into 3nm transistors that can be patterned with high-NA EUV and directed self-assembly, is that multiple approaches will be needed and combined to achieve these kinds of exponential gains.
The payoff from all these efforts ultimately will be enormous, though. The entire smartphone/tablet market has driven much of the innovation in semiconductor design for more than a decade, and that was just one market. Collectively, all of these new applications will dwarf the size of the mobility market. And each also will add some unique elements that ultimately can be leveraged across market segments, driving new technologies and approaches and even new markets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IIC Publishes Best Practices for Securing Industrial Endpoints
https://www.securityweek.com/iic-publishes-best-practices-securing-industrial-endpoints
ndustrial Internet Consortium Guidance Aims to Improve IIoT Endpoint Security for Manufacturers and Practitioners
The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has published a new paper designed to provide a concise overview of the countermeasures necessary to secure industrial endpoints; that is, the industrial internet of things (IIoT).
The paper (PDF) is not meant to provide a checklist for compliance or certification, but rather a starting point to understand what is necessary to ensure IIoT endpoint security. It is, in fact, a distillation of best practices drawn from existing guidance and compliance frameworks: (IISF [IIC-IISF2016], Industrie 4.0 [Ind4.0-ITSec], IEC 62443 [IEC-62443-11], and NIST SP 800-53 [NIST-800-53r4] [NIST-800-53r5]).
“Although there are existing documents such as the IIC’s own Industrial Internet of Things Security Framework (PDF) and other documents from NIST and IEC,” comments Dean Weber, CTO at Mocana, “they’re complex and abstract; and it’s often challenging for practitioners to know how the guidance applies to them in particular.”
But however complex the problem, the need to ensure security for the IIoT, both for itself and for the role it plays in the critical infrastructure, is increasing rapidly. The IIoT is an expanding and fundamental part of operational technology, rapidly increasing its attack surface. Criminals are attracted by the possibility of extorting companies that rely on their OT, while nation states are surveilling — and sometimes employing — methods to disrupt critical infrastructures.
This paper provides a starting point for improving IIoT endpoint security, such as sensors, actuators, pumps, flow meters, controllers and drives in industrial systems, embedded medical devices, electronic control units, vehicle control systems; and communications infrastructures and gateways.
IIC Endpoint Security Best Practices
http://www.iiconsortium.org/pdf/Endpoint_Security_Best_Practices_Final_Mar_2018.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Time for ‘Open Innovation,’ Not Just Open Source
Harnessing vision and creativity
https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1332998
Let’s view this open innovation dilemma and opportunity from the top down.
Today’s IoT devices require a collection of technologies assembled in a cost-efficient “package.” The system-level innovator is more likely focused on data or a use case and is unlikely to have everything at her or his disposal to get the hardware system that enables the solution to market. Technical resources are hard to find and the cost of creating customized solutions for customized applications are prohibitive. The problem is more profound when those system-level innovators and their suppliers become smaller, underfunded entities armed only with a dream.
The solution lies in a connected community of like-minded innovators with complementary skill sets collaborating in a frictionless manner. The community will access cloud-based platforms that reduce the cost to build a prototype. The business process could be highly directed, like a crowdsourced development flow where companies or individuals contribute in various stages of a highly structured project. Or, it may be non-deterministic, as in the case of an IC reference design that community members can clone and fork in new and creative ways, again and again. These reference designs might combine open source and proprietary IP with each contributor retaining economics and intellectual property rights.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Process control sensor types and applications
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/process-control-sensor-types-and-applications/6015a66146f697b95aa3e1873fdaf153.html?OCVALIDATE&[email protected]&ocid=101781
Process sensor types and applications
The four most common sensors are temperature sensors, pressure sensors, level sensors, and flow sensors (flowmeters). Other sensors that may be used in process applications follow in alphabetical order:
Chemical sensors (many types and sensing elements, including chromatographs)
Electrical current sensors
Humidity sensors
Inductive sensors can be used for level or presence
Load sensors (load cells, traditionally thought of as a discrete sensor, can measure tank weight or be used in weigh scales)
Machine vision (traditionally thought of as a discrete sensor, but are used on many web-based applications)
Magnetic sensors
Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), cover many technologies and are perhaps most known for microfluidics
Optical sensors
pH sensors
Power
Presence sensors, including photoelectric sensors, proximity sensors
Torque (for motors attached to pumps).
Tomi Engdahl says:
2018 ERP, IIoT and the Cloud Study
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/2018-erp-iiot-and-the-cloud-study/f3128874a179ee628884a24c80b86c1d.html?OCVALIDATE&[email protected]&ocid=101781
The IIoT for Engineers 2018 Enterprise Resources Planning, IIoT and the Cloud Study unveiled several key findings regarding usage of ERP, IIoT, and the Cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Product design: Incorporating commercial technologies into industrial controllers
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/product-design-incorporating-commercial-technologies-into-industrial-controllers/d29d49ecab2cf1c21439430bdfa0dd64.html?OCVALIDATE&[email protected]&ocid=101781
Industrial controllers are using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies such as Ethernet, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), USB, and MicroSD cards to improve price/performance ratios, shrink form factors, and add new features.
Programmable logic controllers (PLCs), programable automation controllers (PACs), and other controllers used in industrial automation applications borrow freely from commercial technologies. These technologies are used as is, or modified to meet specific and demanding industrial application requirements.
Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies can be used in controllers and other automation components to benefit designers and end users.
Mobile technology leads the way
Mobile technology is a driving factor greatly impacting industrial control system designs. Manufacturers continue to make smartphones, tablets, and other devices ever thinner, smaller, and more powerful. Technologies they use are trickling down into the industrial arena, with many components meeting the specifications required for industrial use, as Figure 1 shows.
A particular area of interest is 3.3 V components. In the past, the required supply voltage at the component level was 5 V or 12 V, but many new components only require 3.3 V. This lowers the power consumption of industrial controllers, and the heat generated.
For example, a fully loaded PLC with advanced power technology consumes only about 15 W.
Designers need to pack more memory into smaller areas to handle a variety of applications. About 15 years ago, industrial controllers typically had about 10 kB or 15 kB of onboard memory. This was only enough for executing some ladder logic and a couple of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) analog control loops; even high-end controllers could only run about 16 PID loops.
Now, industrial controllers can not only store all the program code, they also store all the documentation for the project. Also, there is often a separate segment of memory available for storing historical data. Even with all of these needs, there is still enough memory to run more than 100 PID loops.
COTS technology, industrial controls
Some COTS technologies commonly applied in industrial controllers include:
Ethernet
USB
FPGA
MicroSD.
Ethernet and USB provide benefits to product designers and end users. Ethernet communication is standard on many modern automation controllers, creating an open system for communications with a wide variety of input/output (I/O), field devices, human-machine interfaces (HMIs), higher-level computing systems, and other products.
Using COTS products such as Ethernet connectors, cable, switches, and peripheral devices saves money and simplifies setup and wiring.
USB communication is another COTS technology used in modern industrial automation controllers.
Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are used in some industrial automation controllers as a traffic coordinator for backplane communications.
MicroSD cards provide a low cost and simple way to expand onboard memory.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rita El Khoury / Android Police:
Google is rolling out voice-triggered Google Assistant routines for smart home devices including six predefined ones like “I’m home”, after announcing it in Oct
https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/03/13/google-assistant-will-6-routines-launch-one-limited-set-actions/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Prophesee Foresees Event-Driven CIS, Lidar
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333062
In the fast-growing markets for factory automation, IoT, and autonomous vehicles, CMOS image sensors appear destined for a role capturing data not for human consumption but for machines to see what they need to make sense of the world.
CMOS image sensors “are becoming more about sensing rather than imaging,” said Pierre Cambou, activity leader, MEMS & Imaging at Yole Développement. The Lyon, France-based market research and technology analysis company boldly predicts that by 2030, 50% of CMOS image sensors will serve “sensing” devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IIoT Security Threat Rising
https://semiengineering.com/industrial-iot-security-lacking/
Rising value of data and growing complexity driving sense or urgency.
The rapid growth of the Industrial Internet of Things is raising questions about just how secure these systems are today, how to improve security, and who exactly should be responsible for that.
These issues are interlaced with a shift in where a growing volume of data gets processed, the cost and speed of moving large amounts of data, and the increasing frequency and cost of attacks.
“Digital data is doubling every 1.5 to 2 years,” said Steven Woo, vice president of systems and solutions and a distinguished inventor at Rambus. “That is causing a growing concern with security. The data is becoming more valuable.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Virgin Media samples standard electrical wires for IoT lighting at technical center
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2018/03/virgin-media-samples-standard-electrical-wires-for-iot-lighting-at-technical-center.html?eid=293591077&bid=2033630
The pilot powerline communications deployment by enModus serves a strong reminder that existing cables can serve double duty and slash energy costs.
British broadband and cable provider Virgin Media is sampling the use of standard electrical wires to transport data to and from luminaires in order to control lux levels and collect information about facility usage at a technical center. The small powerline communications (PLC) trial has cut lighting-related energy costs by 99%, according the PLC provider, enModus.
Chepstow, Wales-based enModus replaced a number of fluorescent lights with LED luminaires from Thorn and tied them into enModus’ Wattwave control system that delivers commands from a central hub to the lights, each of which is outfitted with an enModus node.
The hub also connects via the Internet to an enModus cloud computing system based on Microsoft Azure, which helps to analyze lighting use and which sends back adjustments to the controls. In addition to lighting information, the lights deliver occupancy information — picked up from embedded PIR sensors — which the cloud system examines to help facility operators make better use of their space.
Virgin switched on the new system in July in a small retrofit which could lead to a complete retrofit of the facility and others in the Virgin orbit. The job was led by electrical contractor Richardson Electrical of Leeds, England.
Unlike another wired form of smart lighting, Power over Ethernet (PoE), PLC makes use of the existing electrical wiring that supplies the lights. PoE runs both data and electricity over the Ethernet cables that are traditionally associated with data. The common wisdom is that PoE makes more financial sense in new builds, which by definition call for new wiring of some sort, than it does in retrofits.
Both PLC and PoE technology can also deliver data to devices other than lights, providing rounded Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity. They are both competing with a variety of wireless approaches, such as Bluetooth Mesh.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top ten overlooked ASHRAE 90.1-2013 requirements
http://www.csemag.com/single-article/top-ten-overlooked-ashrae-901-2013-requirements/dddf6a05cf3b93f4a68b06b355bd61cb.html
As energy efficiency is a growing concern, understanding ASHRAE 90.1 requirements for energy-efficient buildings is vital.
8. Electrical energy monitoring. New buildings must have meters installed to separately monitor total electrical energy, HVAC systems, interior lighting, exterior lighting, and receptacle circuits. (Section 8.4.3 of ASHRAE 90.1-2013)
9. Mandatory exterior and interior lighting controls. Since the lighting-power allowance (Sections 9.2.2.1 and 9.2.2.2 of ASHRAE 90.1) is a prescriptive requirement, many assume the lighting controls are too. Some of the largest changes to ASHRAE 90.1-2013 related to the lighting controls, which are all mandatory. In Section 9.6, Table 9.6.1 breaks down which interior lighting control types are required for each space, by space type. Section 9.4.1.4 specifies the exterior lighting control types and schedules required, such as façade and landscape lighting that must be shut off between midnight and 6 a.m.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Implementing analytics for Big Data applications with PC-based control systems
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/implementing-analytics-for-big-data-applications-with-pc-based-control-systems/9a6ea8c06faa4de37fb2c415a5b8546d.html
Control engineers can use PC-based control systems to take advantage of Big Data analytics to help them make real-time insights for their companies in the Internet of Things (IoT) era.
Demand for companies to reach the best decisions based on real-time data insights have never been greater. The responsibility to apply the right technologies to make all this happen often falls right at the feet of controls engineers. Fortunately, there are ways for them to implement Big Data analytics that aren’t too far out of the comfort zone of programmable logic controller (PLC) programmers if they use PC-based control systems.
As PC-based control platforms have evolved into the Internet of Things (IoT) era, the walls have come down in terms of what the roles are for automation controllers in machines and plants. As far back as the mid-90s, one PC-based controller could assume the combined roles of PLC, motion controller, and human-machine interface (HMI). This eliminated previously existing costs and the inefficiencies of relying on multiple hardware, software, and networking platforms. Today, it is possible for one industrial PC (IPC) to assume the roles of IoT gateway, edge computing device, and data analytics platform.
While deploying analytics onboard machine controllers is more typical in edge computing scenarios, additional analytics code developed in the same environment also can be run concurrently in cloud services, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS). Communication standards that arose first in the information technology (IT) world, such as message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT), are also at play in manufacturing environments today, as well as the standards associated with industrial applications like OPC UA, which means scalability is assured.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TSN solves measurement and control challenges
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/tsn-solves-measurement-and-control-challenges/269f599a75420de83314d8d38f76ae96.html?OCVALIDATE&[email protected]&ocid=101781
Time-sensitive networking (TSN) is an evolution of standard Ethernet and adds the bounded latency and guaranteed bandwidth provided by hard real-time Ethernet, which is crucial as more devices are connected to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
Of the 50 billion devices it is said will be connected by the year 2020, experts estimate that the industrial sector will account for nearly half. This means that engineers and scientists have a big voice when it comes to implementing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) across factories, test laboratories, power grids, refineries, and infrastructure.
The global processing industry is an early adopter of IIoT, and it’s easy to see why. Unscheduled asset downtime in the industry costs $20 billion annually, 80% of which is preventable, according to ARC Advisory Group. However, it’s not just the global processing industry that can benefit from IIoT. Among business leaders, 95% expect their companies to use the IIoT within the next 36 months.
Engineers can expect to gain three key benefits:
Increased uptime with predictive maintenance
Boosted performance with control at the edge
Improved product design and manufacturing through connected, real-world data.
Today, the uptime of the most critical assets often depends on manual inspection by a few subject matter experts. Unfortunately, these experts are becoming harder to find, and manual monitoring is not scalable across an entire fleet of assets. It’s estimated that only 5% of data collected today is analyzed. IIoT helps illuminate the possibilities when using analytics and machine learning to predict the amount of remaining serviceable life of an asset and to schedule maintenance before a costly failure.
Realization forthcoming
To realize the benefits of IIoT, design teams must depend on several core technologies. Regardless of whether it’s building an online monitoring system, smart manufacturing machine, or testing a physical electromechanical system, a key commonality is the need for intelligence at the edge. The more sophisticated systems get, the more decisions need to be made in real time. For example, the ability to acquire massive amounts of high-resolution analog waveform data for the structural test of a wind turbine blade is important to understanding the characteristics of its real-world behavior.
At the same time, that data needs to be processed to provide input to the control system that is actuating the blade to ensure the test is conducted under known conditions. So, it should be no surprise that experts estimate that at least 40% of all IIoT-created data will be stored, processed, analyzed, and acted on at the edge, according to IDC. To maximize performance and reduce unnecessary data transfers, you must push decision making down to edge nodes deployed at or near the “things.”
A few challenges arise when attempting to develop such a system:
Synchronizing the potentially thousands of channels and numerous measurement systems
Synchronizing the control systems such that all actuation happens at the correct time
Synchronizing the measurements and control systems.
Another possibility
Figure 2: Time-sensitive networking is the evolution of standard Ethernet to include time-based synchronization, traffic scheduling, and system configuration. Courtesy: National InstrumentsAnother option is to leverage a protocol built on top of a common standard like Ethernet. Ethernet offers openness and interoperability but has no bounds for latency or guarantees for bandwidth. To solve this challenge, custom versions of Ethernet, often referred to as Hard Real-Time Ethernet, have been developed. EtherCAT, Profinet, and EtherNet/IP are prime examples. These custom variants of Ethernet provide hard real-time performance and best-in-class latency and control. However, each variant includes both hardware and software modifications to network infrastructure, which increases costs and means different devices from different vendors cannot function on the same network.
A new technology to solve this synchronization challenge is coming to market now, called time-sensitive networking (TSN). TSN is an evolution of standard Ethernet that provides openness and interoperability but adds the bounded latency and guaranteed bandwidth provided by hard real-time Ethernet. Specifically, TSN delivers three key components: time-based synchronization, traffic scheduling, and system configuration. The synchronization capabilities are based on the IEEE 1588 precision time protocol profile, providing a sub-microsecond level of network synchronization. In addition, traffic scheduling and system configuration power deterministic data communication, so users can schedule and prioritize time-critical data (such as control signals) across the network.
An important aspect of TSN is the convergence of time-critical traffic and other Ethernet traffic. Because TSN is a feature of the Ethernet standard, the new capabilities of time synchronization and deterministic communication run over the same network as other network communication. This means a single port on the measurement or control system can perform deterministic communication while also updating remote user interface terminals and supporting file transfer.
Having separate measurement and control systems naturally makes systems more complex since two independent systems must be created, often using disparate software tools and requiring multiple forms of expertise. Then those systems must be integrated together, which results in additional cabling and related considerations. This all leads to added cost and complexity-especially for large-scale systems like the structural test example.
Instead, a fully consolidated measurement and control platform should be considered. Such a platform would need to offer the measurement breadth, accuracy, channel scalability, and I/O synchronization needs of a measurement system as well as the customizability of a control system. By leveraging such a platform, test engineers, maintenance managers, and machine designers alike will have the necessary tools at their disposal to fully realize the benefits of the IIoT, while reducing the cost and complexity of their deployment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
By utilizing the low power consumption of the BLE technology (Bluetooth Low Energy) and the widespread penetration of technology, the beacons have the ability to send short messages to the local network, which will allow recipients to get information and access them to value-added services.
Market forecasts are enormous. According to ABI Research, the market will grow from the 4 million beacons delivered in 2015 to over 565 million in 2021. One of the real benefits of this solution is that every user who owns a smartphone or tablet is already carrying a beacon-compatible receiver.
Although the market is still in its early stages and many new applications are emerging as technology advances, the current lighthouse applications include:
- Advertising: Advertisers can post URLs and other information to prospective customers who are physically close to trading.
- Retail: Stores can communicate with internal customers and analyze product placement and make sales advertising.
- Navigation: Lighthouses can be placed in different parts of the hospital, shopping center, exhibition space or art gallery. The Mobile App on User Devices helps navigate inside the building.
- Product tracking: Any lighthouse attached to any physical object can be located quickly. Security can be enhanced by an alarm if the goods pass beyond the defined area.
- Supervision: Lighthouse children, patients or elderly people can be monitored at home or within a predefined lighthouse network.
- Logistics: The beacons can be attached to a valuable inventory in the warehouse or on the packaging of the vehicle, which makes it possible to identify and locate individual goods / objects.
- Urban environments: In smart cities, lighthouses can be used to guide users to specific points or to provide interesting tourist information both indoors and outdoors.
The development of BLE (after standard Bluetooth) was the key to the beacon revolution. First of all, it can be found on every smartphone sold after 2012, which will bring a huge receiver to the army. In addition, focusing on low-power transmission will lengthen battery life, which will lead beacons to success.
In general, power consumption depends on two key factors: the selected integrated circuit and the application.
Summary
Consumers are not yet fully aware of the Bluetooth beacons, but they are a great opportunity for both system developers and commercial organizations that can use lighthouses for advertising and creating new business models and revenue streams.
Though the possibilities are already extensive, they are only increasing with the widening of Bluetooth 5.0, enabling longer messages, faster data transmission, and longer backbones, allowing users to develop more advanced lighthouse features that enhance commercial opportunities.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/7698-uuden-sukupolven-majakkatekniikka