It’s undeniable: 2014 was the year when the electronics industry decidedly and collectively moved forward to push the Internet of Things (IoT). In year 2015 IoT markets will continue to grow. I think we’re going to see some critical mass on corralling the IoT in 2015. IoT is a young market – no one seems to be clearly leading. Communications are the key here. Over the last 10 years the world has done a remarkably good job of connecting the global wireless world. The last decade has radically changed the way we live. The smartphone and its cousin, the tablet, was the final link to ubiquitous wireless coverage, globally. The fantasy of the IoT is quite grand: everything on the planet can be smart and communicate. The idea is both powerful and impractical.
IoT is entering peak of inflated expectations: The Internet of Things is at that stage when the efforts of various companies involved in it, along with research, are proving to have a lot of promise. At this stage, the Internet of Things should not have too many difficulties attracting developers and researchers into the fold. As we turn to 2015 and beyond, however, wearables becomes an explosive hardware design opportunity. Tie the common threads of IoT and wearables together, and an unstoppable market movement emerges. There seems to be a lack of public appreciation of the extent to which the Internet of Things is going to fundamentally change how people interact with the world around them.
On the other hand, the Internet of Things is getting poised to enter the trough of disillusionment, which means that there is more room for failure now. There are issues of security, privacy, and sharing of information across vertical implementations that still need to be worked out. Until they are, the IoT will not be able to fulfill all its promises.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to grow significantly, as consumers, businesses, and governments recognize the benefit of connecting inert devices to the internet. The ‘Internet of Things’ Will Be The World’s Most Massive Device Market And Save Companies Billions Of Dollars in few years. BI Intelligence expects that the IoT will result in $1.7 trillion in value added to the global economy in 2019. This includes hardware, software, installation costs, management services, and economic value added from realized IoT efficiencies. The main benefit of growth in the IoT will be increased efficiency and lower costs: increased efficiency within the home, city, and workplace. The enterprise sector will lead the IoT, accounting for 46% of device shipments this year, but that share will decline as the government and home sectors gain momentum. I expect that home, government, and enterprise sectors use the IoT differently.
The IoT is only enabled because of two things: the ability of networks to reach countless nodes, and the availability of cost-effective embedded processors to attach to a multitude of devices. The prices for components and devices continues to decline while the skyrocketing global demand for 24/7 Internet access grows exponentially. The Internet of Things growth will benefit mostly from the autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity that will make up the bulk of the objects of the IoT. This is the main driver for double-digit growth across verticals in the electronics, and especially the semiconductor industry well into the next decade. The IoT will connect places, such as manufacturing platforms, energy grids, health-care facilities, transportation systems, retail outlets, sports and music venues, and countless other entities to the Internet.
Internet of Things can become Engineering for Everyone. The emergence of open-source development platforms, developed and maintained by dedicated volunteers, has effectively raised the level of abstraction to a point where nonexperts can now use these platforms. The availability of open-source software and, more recently, hardware targeting embedded applications means that access to high-quality engineering resources has never been greater. This has effectively raised the level of abstraction to a point where nonexperts can now use these platforms to turn their own abstract concepts into real products. With the potential to launch a successful commercial venture off the back of tinkering with some low-cost hardware in your spare time, it’s no wonder that open-source hardware is fuelling an entirely new movement. A new generation of manufacturer is embracing the open-source ethos and actually allowing customers to modify the product post-sale.
Exact size predictions for IoT market next few years vary greatly, but all of the firms making these predictions agree on one thing—it’s going to be very big.
In year 2014 very many chip vendors and sensor algorithm companies also jumped on the IoT bandwagon, in hopes of laying the groundwork for more useful and cost-effective IoT devices. Sensors, MCUs, and wireless connectivity are three obvious building blocks for IoT end-node devices. Wireless connectivity and software (algorithms) are the two most sought-after technologies. Brimming with excitement, and with Europe already ahead of the pack, a maturing semiconductor industry looks expectantly to the Internet of Things (IoT) for yet another facelift. The IC sales generated by the connectivity and sensor subsystems to enabled this IoT will amount $57.7 billion in 2015.
Chips for IoT market to grow 36% in 2015, says Gartner as automotive V2X, LED lighting and smart domestic objects are set to drive semiconductor market growth through the year 2020, according to market analysis firm Gartner. The move to create billions of smart, autonomously communicating objects known as the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving the need for low-power sensors, processors and communications chips. By 2018, the market value of IoT subsystems in equipment and Internet-connected things is projected to reach $103.6 billion worldwide, which represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.0 percent from $39.8 billion in 2013.
BI Intelligence expects that by 2019 IoT market will be more than double the size of the smartphone, PC, tablet, connected car, and the wearable market combined. A new report by Yole Developpement pegs the market size in the $70 billion range by 2018, with the next five years presenting a golden opportunity for device makers as the IoT enters the growth stage. Device shipments will reach 6.7 billion in 2019 for a five-year CAGR of 61%.
Number of connected devices is expected to to reach 36 billion units by 2020, cautions that “all of this new market opportunity is under threat.” Other estimate according to market research firm Radiant Insights of San Francisco is that the number of Internet connections will grow from 9 billion devices in 2014 to 100 billion by 2020 (twice as many as the estimate from Cisco Systems Inc). IC Insights forecasts that web-connected things will account for 85 percent of 29.5 billion Internet connections worldwide by 2020. Currently fragmented market, the number of cellular M2M connections could rise from 478 million today to 639 million in 2020.
By 2024, the report predicts that overall market value for components will exceed of $400 billion, of which more than 10% will come from hardware alone. Revenue from hardware sales will be only $50 billion or 8% of the total revenue from IoT-specific efforts, as software makers and infrastructure companies will earn the lion’s share. As the Internet of Things grows to a projected 212 billion items by 2020, the question of regulation looms increasingly large.
The growth of the IoT will present some very interesting issues in a variety of areas. You will see some very fast activity because unless it gets resolved there will be no IoT as it is envisioned.
General consensus is that the interconnect protocol of the IoT will be IP (Internet Protocol). As it stands today, the deployment of the billions of IoT objects can’t happen, simply because there just aren’t enough IP addresses with IPv4. While there is still some discussion about how to connect the IoT, most are in agreement that the IoT protocol will be IPv6. The first step will be to convert all proprietary networks to an IP-base. Then, the implementation of IPv6 can begin. Because direct interoperability between IPv4 and iPv6 protocols is not possible, this will add some some complications to the development, resulting in a bit of obfuscation to the transition for IPv6.
Is There Any Way to Avoid Standards Wars in the Emerging Internet of Things? I don’t see that possible. IoT will be in serious protocol war in 2015. There is a wide selection of protocols, but no clear set of winners at the moment. The real IoT standardization is just starting – There are currently few standards (or regulations) for what is needed to run an IoT device. There is no single standard for connecting devices on the Internet of Thing, instead are a handful of competing standards run by different coalitions of companies: The Thread Group (Qualcomm, The Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Panasonic), The Industrial Internet Consortium (Intel, Cisco, AT&T, IBM, Microsoft), Open Interconnect Consortium (Samsung, Intel, Dell), Physical Web (Google), AllSeen Alliance (Samsung, Intel, Dell) and huge number of smaller non-standardized protocols in use. Each of the standards vary how they do things.
Anyone who tries to build a physical layer and drive a software stack based on it all the way up to the application layer is a fool. But many companies try to do it this year. Today Zigbee is the most cost effective, but tomorrow WiFi will figure it out. On networking field in every few years there’s a new management protocol – what will happen in IoT, it will keep moving, and people will need open APIs.
Currently the IoT lacks a common set of standards and technologies that would allow for compatibility and ease-of-use. The IoT needs a set of open APIs and protocols that work with a variety of physical-layer networks. The IP and network layer should have nothing to do with the media. The fundamental issue here is that at the moment the Internet of Things will not have a standard set of open APIs for consumers. IoT, it will keep moving, and people will need open APIs. I suspect that at some point, after the first wave of the Internet of Things, open APIs and root access will become a selling point.
It is not just technical protocol details that are problem: One problem with IoT is that it is a vague definition. Do we simply mean ‘connected devices? Or something else? One of the main issues, which will only get worse as the IoT evolves, is how are we going to categorize all the different objects.
Early in 2015, the Industrial Internet Consortium plans to wrap up work on a broad reference architecture for the Internet of Things, ramp up three test beds, and start identifying gaps where new standards may be needed. The group, formed by AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM, and Intel, now has about 115 members and aims to make it easier to build commercial IoT systems. The IIC hopes to finish a first draft of its reference architecture by the end of January and have it ratified by March. It will define functional areas and the technologies and standards for them, from sensors to data analytics and business applications. The framework includes versions for vertical markets including aerospace, healthcare, manufacturing, smart cities, and transportation. A breakout section on security also is in the works. Hopefully the reference architecture could be used to help people construct industrial IoT systems quickly and easily.
With the emergence of the Internet of Things, smart cars are beginning to garner more attention. Smart cars are different than connected cars, which are simply smartphones on wheels. Even though the technology has been on the evolutionary fast track, integration has been slow. For car manufacturers, it is a little tricky to accept driverless cars because it disrupts their fundamental business model: Private resources will evolve to shared resources, centrally controlled, since autonomous vehicles can be controlled remotely.
Over the next few years, we’ll see a torrent of new devices emerge that are connected to the Internet and each other through a wide range of different wireless networking protocols. As a result, there’s a race on, not just to get those devices connected, but also to provide the network infrastructure necessary to managing all of them at scale. WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular networks are nowadays widely used, nut new alternatives are coming to solve applications were those technologies are not most suitable. There are different plans for wide area wireless networks that use licensed or unlicensed wireless bandwidth to transmit small amounts of data from various connected device – this could create its own connection to them in a cost effective manner without relying on existing cellular or WiFi networks.
Recently we have developed a pressing need, or desire to put our refrigerators, and everything we have access to while mobile, on the net, morphing the brave new world of the Internet of Things, into the Internet of Everything (IoE). And that will make that last 100 meters—that final frontier of interconnect—a reality. Today, only about 10% of the last 100 meter devices that will make up the IoT are connected. As the IoT evolves, other small cells such as businesses, city centers, malls, theaters, stadiums, event centers, and the like, will connect much of what they have on premise (soda or popcorn machines, vending machines, restaurants, parking garages, ticket kiosks, seat assignments, and a very long list of others). And, there are a very large number of devices that are short-range in all of these various cells. What was once the last mile for connectivity is now the last 100 meters.
Plenty of people and companies in the technology world tend to come at the Internet of Things by dwelling on the “Internet.” But what if, instead, we started with the “Things?” Knowing intimately what “things” are supposed to do and how they think and behave will be the key to solving one of the IoT’s most pressing issues: application layers. Over the past 18 months, the industry has launched numerous consortia, from Qualcomm’s AllSeen and Intel’s Open Interconnect Consortium to Apple’s HomeKit and Google’s Thread. Every entity says it’s targeting the “interoperability” of things at home, but each is obviously concentrating primarily on its own interests, and making their “layer” specifications slightly different from those pursued by others.
It seems that no industry consortium is particularly interested in defining — in gory detail — the specific functions of, say, what a door lock is supposed to do. The library of commands for each function already exists, but someone, or some group, has to translate those already determined commands into an IP-friendly format. One of the standards organizations will take up the challenge in 2015. This will be the first step to “knock barriers down for IoT” in 2015.
Missing today in the IoT are reliability and robustness. Consumers expect their light switched and other gadgets to be infinitely reliable. In many today’s products we seem to be far from reliable and robust operation. Today’s routers can relay traffic between networks, but they have no idea how to translate what functions each device attached to them wants to do, and how to communicate that to other devices. The network needs to be able to discover who else is on the network. Devices connected to network need to be able to discover what resources are available and what new devices are being added. The network needs to be extensible.
Despite the oft-mocked naming scheme, the Internet of Things (IoT) has an incredibly practical goal: connecting classically “dumb” objects—toasters, doorknobs, light switches—to the Internet, thereby unlocking a world of potential. Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website, accessing it without geographic restriction. But there is one missing piece of the smart home revolution: smart home operating system. So what will be the system that capitalizes on the smart home in the same way, the enabler of all the applications and actions we want our homes to run and do? There are no ready answers for that yet. And there might not be a singular, cohesive operating system for your home, that this stuff isn’t one-size-fits-all. It might be that the real potential for home automation lies not in local software running on a home device but in the cloud. I think that the cloud is going to be more important over time, but there will always be also need for some local functionality in case the connection to cloud is lost. Right now the Internet of Things is rather disjointed compared to Internet and computers.
When everything will be connected, how about security? In the path to IoT, the issue of data and device security looms large. Security for the ‘Internet of Things’ will be talked about very much in 2015 for a good reason. As Internet of Thigs becomes more and more used, it will be more hacked. Thus security of Internet of Things will be more and more talked about. Virtually anything connected to the Internet has the potential of being hacked, no matter how unlikely. Internet of Things devices often lack systematic protections against viruses or spam. Nowadays most security breaches are software-based, when an application can be compromised. Counter-measures for such attacks range from basic antivirus scanning software, to embedded hypervisors to hardware-bound secure applications tying their execution to uniquely identifiable hardware. There is emerging customer demand for silicon authentication. But the threats extend way beyond software and some hackers will put a lot of effort into compromising a system’s security at silicon-level. Individual devices can get hacked, but all systems should have some way of self-checking and redundancy. Those IoT systems can be very complex at device and system level. The problem with complexity is that you create more attack points and make it easier for hackers to find flaws.
Experts recommend far more layers of cyberprotection than manufacturers have thought necessary. Because many of the devices will often be practically inaccessible, the “patch and pray” strategy used for many desktop software packages is unlikely to be an effective strategy for many forms of IoT devices. Right now, there are hundreds of companies churning out “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices as fast as they can, without thinking too much on the security issues they can cause in the future. The imperative is clear: Do your homework on the specific security features of any IoT device you might consider bringing into the home. What steps are IoT companies taking to keep us safe from others online, and what constitutes a truly “safe” smart appliance?
What we’re opening up is a whole new subject not just of security but of safety. That safety depends on devices to be constantly connected to the Internet the same way they’re connected to the power grid. That’s a whole new area that deserves its own consideration. Keep in mind that IoT is one field where cyber security flaws can kill in the worst case. Connecting unrelated devices in the IoT means many more pieces now affect reliability and security. More devices are now considered critical, such as a connected baby monitor or a smart smoke detector, because wrong information can injure or kill people. The Internet of Things is coming no matter what happens. The people in charge of keeping the public safe and the industry healthy need to be ready.
The European Police Office (Europol) said governments are ill-equipped to counter the menace of “injury and possible deaths” spurred by hacking attacks on critical safety equipment. There are many potential dangers are in transportation: many new cars are Internet connected and potentially vulnerable, SCADA Systems in Railways Vulnerable to Attack and Airline bosses ignore cyber security concerns at their peril. With industrial control systems becoming network-connected, security risks rise and will need a long-term solution. In light of the trend toward the Industrial Internet of Things, development teams must start thinking hard about network security and planning for its long-term viability.
You have to accept the fact that at each point in the IoT there are vulnerabilities to malicious attacks and interception of vital information. Soon, almost every network will soon have some IoT-hacking in it. IDC predicts that in two years from 90 per cent of the global IT networks have met IoT data theft. In a report, cybersecurity firm Fortinet expects greater threats from “denial of service attacks on assembly line, factory, industrial control systems, and healthcare and building management…resulting in revenue losses and reputation damages for organizations globally.” This opens new doors of risks in the areas of corporate extortion, altering of corporate business operations, and the extension of cyberattacks to include physical threats of harm to civilians.
There are lessons to be learned to keep the cyber security in control in the IoT era. There will be lessons to be learned for all the parties of the IoT ecosystem. The companies that figure out how to make security available on multi-stakeholder platforms will be the most successful ones. Figuring out a secure platform is important, but having different levels of security is still important. Different uses have different bars. Security is a self-regulating system to some extent because it is supply and demand. That is the Holy Grail for technology right now, which is how to build systems with enough security—not 100% protection right now—from a unified platform point of view for multiple applications.
The data generated by the Internet of Things has the potential to reveal far more about users than any technology in history: These devices can make our lives much easier … The Internet of Things however, can also reveal intimate details about the doings and goings of their owners through the sensors they contain. As the Internet of Things grows to a projected 212 billion items by 2020, the question of regulation looms increasingly large. There is a lot of effort is going today at the government level. They’re not thinking about whether the Internet goes down. They’re worried about what happens if the Internet gets compromised.
When we have devices on the field, there is question how to analyze the data coming from them. This is easily a “big data” problem because of the huge amount of data that comes from very large number of sensors. Being able to monitor and use the data that comes from the Internet of Things is a huge potential challenge with different providers using different architectures and approaches, and different chip and equipment vendors teaming up in a range of different ways. Many large and smaller companies are active on the field: Intel, IBM, Lantronix+Google, Microchip+Amazon, Freescale+Oracle, Xively, Jasper, Keen.io, Eurotech, and many other.
The huge increase of data is coming. Radiant predicts that wireless sensor networks will be used to monitor and control very many domestic, urban, and industrial systems. This promises to produce an explosion of data, much of which will be discarded as users are overwhelmed by the volume. As a result, analysis of the data within the wireless sensor network will become necessary so that alerts and meaningful information are generated at the leaf nodes. This year has seen the software at the very highest point in the Internet of Things stack — analytics — becoming tightly coupled with the embedded devices at the edge of the network, leading to many different approaches and providers.
Integrating data from one IoT cloud to another will have it’s challenges. Automation services make big steps by cutting corners. Sites like IFTTT, Zapier, bip.io, CloudWork, and elastic.io allow users to connect applications with links that go beyond a simple synch. Check what is happening with integration and related services like IFTTT, ItDuzzit, Amazon Lambda. For example IFTTT is quietly becoming a smart home powerhouse.
Most important sources of information for this article:
With $16M In Funding, Helium Wants To Provide The Connective Tissue For The Internet Of Things
IFTTT, other automation services make big steps by cutting corners
Internet of Things: Engineering for Everyone
IoT in Protocol War, Says Startup – Zigbee fortunes dim in building control
Analysts Predict CES Hotspots – Corralling the Internet of Things
What’s Holding Back The IoT – Device market opportunities will explode, but only after some fundamental changes
Apps Layer: ’800lb Gorilla’ in IoT Nobody Talks About
Analysts Predict CES Hotspots – IoT, robots, 4K to dominate CES
10 Reasons Why Analytics Are Vital to the Internet of Things
Tech More: Mobile Internet of Things BI Intelligence Consumer Electronics – Most Massive Device Market
Wearables make hardware the new software
Zigbee Opens Umbrella 3.0 Spec
IoT Will Give ‘Embedded’ a Shot in the Arm - Connected cities to be largest IoT market
Chips for IoT market to grow 36% in 2015, says Gartner
Apps Layer: ’800lb Gorilla’ in IoT Nobody Talks About
Short-Range, Low-Power Sensors – once the last mile for connectivity is now the last 100 meters
The one problem the Internet of Things hasn’t solved
Plan Long Term for Industrial Internet Security
To Foil Cyberattacks, Connected Cars Need Overlapping Shields
IoT cybersecurity: is EDA ready to deliver?
More Things Are Critical Systems
Silicon, Security, and the Internet of Things
The missing piece of the smart home revolution
Hackers will soon be targeting your refrigerator
10 Reasons Why Analytics Are Vital to the Internet of Things
1,316 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why IoT will Fail (and How to Save It)
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/03/why-iot-will-fail-and-how-to-save-it/
Buzzword technology has two possible fates: they fail and disappear or they succeed and disappear. Remember at one time “multimedia” and “networking” were buzzwords. They succeeded and now they’ve vanished into ubiquity. Of course, there are plenty of failed buzzwords (like telecosm) that you probably don’t even remember. They just vanished into obscurity.
Unless you’ve been living under the CNC mill in your local hackerspace, you’ve probably heard or read about the “Internet of Things” (IoT). Companies big and small have realized that getting in early on The Next Big Thing is good for share prices and, right now, IoT is where everyone is trying to make a play.
There’s two things I’d observe, though: First, IoT is far from new. Connecting embedded systems to the Internet is old hat (I even wrote a book called Embedded Internet Design way back in 2003). Second, the way it is going, IoT–in its current incarnation–is doomed.
Sure, your typical Hackaday reader can manage IP addresses directly and could probably cobble together a reader for some non-HTML format. But the broader public relies on DNS services and a standard HTML format. It is hard enough that a very small percentage of sites today rely on some specific browser feature.
Yet this is where we are heading with IoT. Everyone has an open or semi-open broker. Groups of companies are banding together to create standards that compete with the other guy’s standards. In other areas (for example, WiFi) vendors have submitted to IEEE standards. The IEEE is working on an IoT standard and it might be out by 2017. Meanwhile, it is a land grab to get something to market now, hoping it will take off and displace everyone else.
How to save it? I’m avoiding IoT infrastructure that isn’t open source. There no promise the eventual winning standards will be kind to open source, but at least you (or someone) can likely bring it up to snuff. Plus, if you decide to stick with it, at least you can support it yourself if that makes sense in your application.
The truth is, I don’t think IoT will win or lose. I think it has been around for years and will continue to thrive in places where it makes sense. For places it doesn’t make sense, the fad will eventually die down, the big companies will go milk the Next Big Thing (smell-o-vision, perhaps) and the rest of us will continue developing embedded systems that meet our needs.
In the video below, Jeremy Rifkin says the Internet of Things is going to launch a new economic revolution on par with the industrial revolution and that there will be 100 trillion Internet-connected sensors by 2030. However, I can’t help but think that his argument of zero marginal cost is going to apply more to the Star Trek-style replicator than to IoT.
Jeremy Rifkin on the Fall of Capitalism and the Internet of Things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xOK2aJ-0Js
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Semifinalist: A Mobile Node
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/03/hackaday-prize-semifinalist-a-mobile-node/
The future is the Internet of Things, or so we’re told, and with that comes the requirement for sensors attached to the Internet that also relay GPS and location data. [Camilo]’s MobileNodes do just that. He’s designed a single device that will listen to any sensor, upload that data to the Internet over GSM or GPRS, and push all that data to the cloud.
The MobileNode is a small circular (7cm) PCB with a standard ATMega32u4 microcontroller. Attached to this PCB are GSM/GPRS and GPS/GLONASS modules to receive GPS signals and relay all that data to the cloud. To this, just about any sensor can be added, including light sensors, PIR sensors, gas and temperature sensors, and just about anything else that can be measured electronically.
Of course the biggest problem with a bunch of sensors on an Internet of Things device is pulling the data from the Internet. For that, [Camilo] designed a web interface that shows sensor data directly on a Google Map
MobileNode
https://hackaday.io/project/7033-mobilenode
The MobileNode is an open source GSM/GPRS and GPS/GLONASS 7cm circular board with a fully Arduino compatible MCU.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Goes Emotional
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327600&
I came across recently a refreshing IoT pitch — “Emotional Home.” The company promoting it is Binatone. The man behind the concept is consumer GPS pioneer Kanwar Chadha.
We’ve all seen a lot of IoT products, IoT pitches and IoT applications — for use in kitchen, factories, highways, farming, you name it.
But the clincher, which I recently came across, was IoT for the “emotional home.”
The pitch isn’t about just saving time or making things convenient. Instead, it’s using IoT — an end-node device and the accompanying cloud services — to enhance emotional connections people already have with babies, pets and elders.
The company promoting this digitally enhanced “emotional home” is Binatone. The man behind the concept is Kanwar Chadha.
Moreover, for anyone old enough to remember how GPS ended up in every smartphone, Chadha might be a more familiar name. Founder of SiRF Technology, Inc. in 1995, he pioneered the concept of “GPS for Consumers,” when the rest of the world thought it was both silly and risky.
Chadha became executive chairman of Binatone earlier this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM and ARM team up for IoT infrastructure alliance
Partnership will use analytics to supercharge mbed components
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2424521/ibm-and-arm-team-up-for-iot-infrastructure-alliance
IBM HAS announced a new Internet of Things (IoT) partnership with ARM to be known as the IBM IoT Foundation that will combine ARM’s mbed-enabled devices with IBM’s analytics services.
As part of the announcement, IBM has revealed the first in a series of IBM IoT for Electronics, which will allow manufacturers to gather data which can then be combined with other information and analysed.
Built on SoftLayer, the IBM IoT Foundation offers industry-leading analytics tools, access to the Bluemix platform-as-a-service and security systems that protect IoT data on a par with other data.
“Deploying IoT technology has to be easy, secure and scalable for it to feel like a natural extension of a company’s business,” said Krisztian Flautner, general manager of IoT business at ARM.
“By collaborating with IBM, we will deliver the first unified chip-to-cloud, enterprise-class IoT platform. This will empower companies of any size with a productivity tool that can readily transform how they operate, and the services they can offer.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IFA: Samsung SmartThings hub lets you control your IoT devices in the home
Kit works with existing smart home products from Bose, Philips, Honeywell and others
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2424424/samsung-smartthings-hub-lets-you-control-your-iot-devices-in-the-home
BERLIN: SAMSUNG has launched a hub for Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the home, called Samsung SmartThings.
Arriving in the form of a £200 Starter Kit, SmartThings allows users to connect all of their IoT devices to one hub where they can monitor, control and secure their home regardless of their location.
“The Samsung SmartThings Hub is the heart of your smart home. It connects wirelessly with hundreds of compatible smart devices, allowing you to monitor, control and secure your home from anywhere,” Samsung said during a keynote at IFA in Berlin on Thursday.
“Once you’ve set up your Starter Kit, SmartThings allows you to add hundreds of compatible smart devices to enhance your home.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
For Future Wearable Devices, the Network Could Be You
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/09/04/008254/for-future-wearable-devices-the-network-could-be-you
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have found a way for wearable devices to communicate through a person’s body instead of the air around it. Their work could lead to devices that last longer on smaller batteries and don’t give away secrets as easily as today’s systems do.
For future wearables, the network could be you
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/583773/future-wearables-network-could/
Researchers have built a network that uses magnetic fields for devices to communicate through the body
But radio technologies like Bluetooth can’t transmit well through the body itself, so they have to go around it. Bluetooth signals can travel as far as 10 meters (30 feet) which increases the chance of eavesdropping and leads to high “path loss,” an effect that weakens signals on the way to their destinations, the researchers said.
A team led by Professor Patrick Mercier of the university’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has discovered a way to use the body itself as the medium for data transmission. It uses magnetic fields and shows path loss that’s 10 million times lower than what happens with Bluetooth.
This could make the magnetic networks much more efficient, so devices don’t have to work as hard to communicate and can have smaller batteries — or get longer useful lives with the same size batteries. The team hasn’t actually tested the system’s energy use yet. They envision the technology being used for networks of health sensors that monitor many parts of the body.
The system works like NFC (near-field communications), but at a slightly longer range. It uses very low frequencies, in the range of 10MHz to 30MHz, and it can carry at least 1M bps (bit per second), enough for dedicated devices like sensors, he said.
There’s no serious danger to the wearer’s health because the magnetic fields are so weak, the researchers said
Tomi Engdahl says:
Our Rising Dependency on Cyberphysical
http://www.securityweek.com/our-rising-dependency-cyberphysical
In a previous column, I discussed how “cyberphysical” is an appropriate term to capture this new world we are entering, where machines operate automatically and rapidly based on real-time feedback. The next step is to understand why this cyberphysical matters to the wider population that these machines will service. We can then assess levels of risk in order to better develop a culture of cyberphysical security.
The most notable trend is that critical services we rely on are increasingly dependent upon cyberphysical interactivity. The scope of these critical services continues to broaden and deepen across industries, especially as the functionality and speed of devices is more widely understood.
To me, nothing offers a more direct example of cyberphysical dependency than heart pacemakers. More than three million people rely on these devices every day, and 600,000 new implants are performed each year (American Heart Association).
Another set of cyberphysical interactions occur to deliver our electricity, which we ambitiously consume at approximately 18,000 TerraWatts a year. How many of us can go 60 minutes without an electrical charge to our cell phones? Smart meters, not to mention power generation control systems, play a part in delivering this critical energy service.
Moving forward, we can envision a host of additional cyberphysical systems beyond these two examples, managing and impacting our daily lives. Many have seen self-driving cars, which are expected to grow at 134% CAGR in the next five years (not to mention electric cars, another dependency back on our power generation systems). Or consider home automation systems and maritime cargo monitoring.
As a security specialist, while I anticipate great reward from these new types of cyberphysical systems, I also envision the need for better protection. The dependency on cyberphysical systems exposes the broader population to a variety of risks.
Amidst pressures to be “first to market,” it is not uncommon for manufacturers to trade off convenience and price for limited protection. In some cases, it might not even be a conscious design decision. Considering our growing dependency on cyberphysical systems, however, security testing seems an obvious addition (but I will discuss solutions further in my next column).
In other industries, it is less a rush to the consumer market triggering risks than it is a status quo regarding defining what constitutes “safe.” In the energy sector, offshore oil rigs were once “air gapped” and not connected to other systems.
Today, devices from as far afield as transportation and government services have typically been prioritized by physical security implications first.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The True Internet of Things
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/true-internet-things
Before the Internet there were just nets, and they didn’t get along. Each was a country or a city-state of its own, with hard boundaries that could not be crossed—or could be crossed only if the owners of the networks created closed and silo’d ways of doing it. Every company’s LAN (Local Area Network), for example, had its own way of working, with its own internal e-mail system and methods for transferring files. The same went for “on-line services”, such as AOL and Compuserve. Those too were closed and separate worlds of their own. You couldn’t send e-mails from one to the other. Many vendors of network “solutions” considered lack of interoperability a feature and not a bug.
The Internet didn’t blow existing networks away so much as it simply subordinated them to higher principles that were good for everybody and everything: 1) making every node an end point and 2) getting all the member networks to agree about how to pass data from any end to any other end. Those agreements are protocols, which are simply manners, like nods or handshakes.
That all networks agreed on the same protocols for moving data between end points, with no guards or tolls at border crossings, was as unlikely as instant world peace. Yet, that’s exactly what it was—and still is.
The main effect of the Net in our midst is elimination of distance.
This amnesia is made clear by pretty much everything happening in the ill-named “Internet of Things” (aka IoT) today. Rather than a true Internet of Things—namely, the Internet we already have—we have what Phil Windley calls “The Compuserve of Things”. In other words, silos of things. In his summary of that essay, Phil writes:
On the Net today we face a choice between freedom and captivity, independence and dependence. How we build the Internet of Things has far-reaching consequences for the humans who will use—or be used by—it. Will we push forward, connecting things using forests of silos that are reminiscent of the on-line services of the 1980s, or will we learn the lessons of the Internet and build a true Internet of Things?
Right now the way to bet is on the forest of silos. Every gizmo- and system-maker either has its own silo for things or one inside a farm run by Google, Apple, Facebook or some other large operator.
PW: We’ve made a mistake associating the Internet of Things too closely with “things”. To be functional, the IoT will have to operate on a model of the world that doesn’t just connect things, but people, places, organizations and even concepts. Everything will have to be on-line.
DS: Meanwhile all the conversation and development on IoT is on things with built-in intelligence or data storage. What made you start thinking and working outside that box?
PW: Well, the world is full of things, and only some of them have intelligence. Worse, most of the intelligence being built into things is silo’d to Apple or Google/Nest or some other company—what I call the Compuserve of Things. All this thinking and development is as primitive and isolated and broken and doomed as Compuserve was. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all useful up to a point, just like Compuserve was. But we didn’t iterate from Compuserve to the Internet, and we won’t iterate from the current work on IoT to what we really need to build.
To be fully useful and meaningful, IoT should embrace all things, whether or not they have intelligence or memory onboard. Among the infinitude of things in the world are potholes.
Of course, potholes aren’t computers, so you can’t program them. And we’re unlikely, at least for a while, to instrument them. But we could put them on the Internet of Things, as a functional entity with a pico, or something like it. The pico represents the pothole in models, manages relationships to other picos, remembers attributes, history and past interactions, and runs programs for the pothole. The pothole has an API, responds to queries, listens for events and participates as a full-fledged member of the IoT.
When you start to think of the IoT this way, you realize that there could be trillions of things, and many of them won’t need a microprocessor to be part of it.
DS: Companies also can give anything they make or sell its own pico, along with its serial number, SKU (stock-keeping unit) or VIN (vehicle identification number). I can imagine lots of ways this can play out, but I’d rather hear where your thinking goes with it.
PW: As cheap as microprocessors are, it’s still going to be a while before there’s one in everything we buy. In many cases, the business model just can’t support it yet. But picos are cheap and easy to create. So it’s feasible to give one to every thing right now.
DS: The IoT, whatever it turns out to be, comes at an interesting time for Linux, because Linux’s main problem today is its success. In its first decade, Linux was a cause. In its second decade, it won. Now it’s everywhere. I’d like to see the same thing happen with the IoT, based on somebody’s code—yours, or anybody’s. What can we do to energize development around the early code we already have, and what additional code bases are we going to need?
PW: One big problem is that there are a thousand and one IoT projects. Everyone—and I’m as guilty as anyone else—just wants to work on their own, so none of us get critical mass. Commercial efforts get traction, but aren’t likely to produce the true IoT we all want to live with. You’ve pointed out that the Internet doesn’t have a business model. Neither will the IoT.
Furthermore, we need an IoT architecture that is biased toward personal control of things without any intervening administrative authority (like the manufacturer, the police, or the Federal Highway Administration, to name a few). What if, in some future world, a root certificate authority revokes the identity documents I use for banking, shopping, travel and a host of other things? Or if my car stops running because Ford shuts off my account? Personal control of the connected things in our lives is fundamental for our freedom.
Tomi Engdahl says:
There is no internet of things: There is only the internet of data, stupid! – See more at: http://blog.open-xchange.com/2015/02/09/iot/#sthash.ViEcmVHZ.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things Is Far Bigger Than Anyone Realizes
http://www.wired.com/insights/2014/11/the-internet-of-things-bigger/
When people talk about “the next big thing,” they’re never thinking big enough. It’s not a lack of imagination; it’s a lack of observation. I’ve maintained that the future is always within sight, and you don’t need to imagine what’s already there.
Case in point: The buzz surrounding the Internet of Things.
What’s the buzz? The Internet of Things revolves around increased machine-to-machine communication; it’s built on cloud computing and networks of data-gathering sensors; it’s mobile, virtual, and instantaneous connection; and they say it’s going to make everything in our lives from streetlights to seaports “smart.”
But here’s what I mean when I say people don’t think big enough. So much of the chatter has been focused on machine-to-machine communication (M2M): devices talking to like devices. But a machine is an instrument, it’s a tool, it’s something that’s physically doing something. When we talk about making machines “smart,” we’re not referring strictly to M2M. We’re talking about sensors.
A sensor is not a machine. It doesn’t do anything in the same sense that a machine does. It measures, it evaluates; in short, it gathers data. The Internet of Things really comes together with the connection of sensors and machines. That is to say, the real value that the Internet of Things creates is at the intersection of gathering data and leveraging it. All the information gathered by all the sensors in the world isn’t worth very much if there isn’t an infrastructure in place to analyze it in real time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Upgrading Your Alarm System With an Arduino
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/05/upgrading-your-alarm-system-with-an-arduino/
When [Doug] moved into his new house, he found an old alarm panel set up — but it had no monitoring service any more. Not wanting to pay a monthly fee to have it setup, he decided to try interfacing an Arduino with the system in order to push events to the net!
He’s using an Arduino Uno and an Ethernet breakout board to hook it up to the network. This allows him to send text messages to himself when the alarm system is armed, disarmed, or triggered. All the code is available on GitHub in case you also have a DSC 1550 alarm system.
Connecting an Arduino to a DSC 1550 Alarm Panel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNx5MH5QwJM
dougkpowers/pc1550-interface
https://github.com/dougkpowers/pc1550-interface
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung launches SleepSense, a smart sleep-tracker that connects to your home appliances
http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/03/samsung-launches-sleepsense-a-smart-sleep-tracker-that-connects-to-your-home-appliances/
Samsung has launched a new “Internet of Things” (IoT) healthcare device designed to improve your sleep.
At the IFA consumer technology event in Berlin, Samsung unveiled the cylindrical device that connects with your TV, air conditioning, music system, and other home appliances — all managed through a mobile app. “It’s connected to your life,” the company says. The Korean tech titan also launched a SmartThings Hub to manage home IoT systems today, which ties into these individual product rollouts.
The SleepSense is basically a contactless sensor that’s placed under your pillow at night to analyze your sleep patterns. It can also turn off your TV when it senses you’re asleep, or turn your coffee machine on when it reckons you’re awake in the morning.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The new class LTE modules for host connections
LTE standard is also defined in the terminal class 1, which provides up to 10 Mbps data connections to the network terminal. Swiss u-blox has introduced the first Class 1 modules for LTE. They are needed, for example, IoT links, cars and engines between M2M connections.
The new module has the advantage of a clear class 4 modules for a more affordable price. New U-bloxin is intended for the North American market. Europe modules are still under construction.
Arrivals Toby-R201 acts as LTE bands 2, 4, 13, 17, and HSPA in lanes 2 and 5. The module dimensions are 24.8 x 35.6 millimeters. Samples it gets during October.
Analysys Mason claims that over the next 10 years will be sold up to three billion units, which transfer data at speeds of Class 1 and 0.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3286:uuden-luokan-lte-moduuleja-koneyhteyksiin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trends That Drive Automotive Innovation
Connectivity. By 2025, fifty million vehicles will be connected. Currently, about 18 millions have access to the Internet.
Internet-based production organisation, aka Industry 4.0 or Industrial Internet. The digitization of industrial production enables further cost reductions. The costs for quality control can be reduced by as much as 20% through data-based real-time production process monitoring and, as a consequence, fewer rejects.
Source: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327618&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Augmenting Your Systems With Embedded Vision
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=216&doc_id=1327615&
Want to add embedded vision to your system? This just got easier with OMRON’s Human Vision Components (HVC) modules.
The HVC module integrates OMRON’s best in class image sensing technology (OKAO Vision) along with a camera, processor, and external interface, all onto a single 60mm x 40mm PCB. The module boasts 10 functions as follows:
Human body detection
Hand detection
Face detection
Face recognition
Age estimation
Gender estimation
Facial pose estimation
Gaze estimation
Blink detection
Expression/mood estimation
The HVC module uses serial communication via UART to communicate its findings in real-time to your main system, which can use this information as the basis for its actions. In the case of a flat screen display showing an advert in a store, for example, the system may present different adverts based on the age and/or gender of the person viewing the display. Similarly, a vending machine may base its food and beverage recommendations on the age and/or gender of the customer.
I can envisage so many applications for this sort of thing.
http://media.digikey.com/Resources/Omron/omron-hvc-module-product-release.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Goes Emotional
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327600&
I came across recently a refreshing IoT pitch — “Emotional Home.” The company promoting it is Binatone. The man behind the concept is consumer GPS pioneer Kanwar Chadha.
We’ve all seen a lot of IoT products, IoT pitches and IoT applications — for use in kitchen, factories, highways, farming, you name it.
But the clincher, which I recently came across, was IoT for the “emotional home.”
The pitch isn’t about just saving time or making things convenient. Instead, it’s using IoT — an end-node device and the accompanying cloud services — to enhance emotional connections people already have with babies, pets and elders.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EarlySense, Samsung unveil direct-to-consumer, contact-free sleep monitor
http://mobihealthnews.com/46487/earlysense-samsung-unveil-direct-to-consumer-contact-free-sleep-monitor/
Israel-based EarlySense has announced its first direct-to-consumer product: a sleep monitoring device called myEarlySense. Samsung will directly market a version of the device called Sleep Sense. The device will be available in South Korea by year-end with other regions to follow, the company told MobiHealthNews. MK News reports a price point around $169.
“Building upon the success of our contact-free monitoring solution in the hospital setting, our core technology can make a similar impact for consumers who want key information on their overall wellness,” Liat Tsoref, VP and GM of the Digital Health Business Unit of EarlySense, said in a statement. “myEarlySense is the next logical step after wearables — which we call ‘invisibles.’ We are proud to offer an extremely accurate, contact-free device to manage personal wellness and sleep patterns. Our solution can benefit everyone in taking better care of themselves and their loved ones.”
EarlySense releases myEarlySense for digital health consumer market
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20150902/EarlySense-releases-myEarlySense-for-digital-health-consumer-market.aspx
EarlySense, the market leader in contact-free, health and wellness sensing and analytics, announced today the release of myEarlySense, its first OEM solution for the digital health consumer market. The new sleep and wellness monitoring solution will be showcased at the upcoming IFA event, taking place in Berlin on September 4-9.
myEarlySense tracks and helps users improve sleep and overall wellness in an automatic and contact-free manner. The ultra-sensitive sensor, placed under the user’s mattress, detects individual heartbeat, respiratory rate, sleep stages and movement, and then wirelessly transmits data to the accompanying smartphone application.
“Building upon the success of our contact-free monitoring solution in the hospital setting, our core technology can make a similar impact for consumers who want key information on their overall wellness,” said Liat Tsoref, VP & GM of the Digital Health Business Unit of EarlySense. “myEarlySense is the next logical step after wearables – which we call ‘invisibles.’ We are proud to offer an extremely accurate, contact-free device to manage personal wellness and sleep patterns. Our solution can benefit everyone in taking better care of themselves and their loved ones.”
myEarlySense is designed to seamlessly integrate with smart home solutions, home security and smart bed solutions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Welcome to ChiliPeppr Hardware Fiddle
http://chilipeppr.com/
A hardware fiddle enables the world of web-based software to merge with hardware and the Internet of Things. This is a place where you can create software/hardware mashups.
Tomi Engdahl says:
analog.io – A full stack IoT platform
https://hackaday.io/project/4648-analogio-a-full-stack-iot-platform
A full stack project dedicated to easily collecting, analyzing and sharing IoT sensor data.
My project is a full stack IoT web service and hardware platforms where people can create connected devices and share them with the world. It is designed to solve all kinds of world problems from air pollution, improving farm output or studying the bee population. It is really only limited by the users imagination.
From a software perspective, analog.io is a graphing front end that is backend agnostic. What this means is that users have the freedom to host their own data locally, within the analog.io cloud, or choice of 3rd party services such as data.sparkfun.com. At the moment only phant.io servers are supported but it is entirely possible and on the roadmap to support services such as thingspeak as well.
Many challenges today stem from the inability to cheaply and efficiently collect data, analyze it and share with others. My project, analog.io is a full stack development that aims to solve this issue. It has a very broad use case that could be used to monitor & reduce pollution, more efficiently heat or cool buildings, monitor water consumption, grow better food or learn more about our honey bees.
analog.io is build on the Digital Ocean VPS cloud. These are basically linux servers running Ubuntu LTS 14.4. On Ubuntu I have install Ruby on Rails, Nginx and Postgres and deploy my application using Capistrano.
The application is developed in AngularJS and uses a Bootstrap Theme called Inspinia which I purchased from wrapbootstrap. For charts, the Highstocks library is used.
In addition to the web app, analog.io relies on separate “data backend” servers that store the actual IoT data. These backend servers run an open source library called phant.io. Phant was created by Sparkfun and is the infrastructure that data.sparkfun.com runs on.
Phant.io is developed in nodejs and also runs in the Ubuntu environment. analog.io’s AngularJS application makes API calls to the appropriate backend server to retrieve data.
MSP430G2553IRHB Microprocessor
RF75 HopeRF 2.4GHz Radio Transceiver
Tomi Engdahl says:
SentriFarm
https://hackaday.io/project/4758-sentrifarm
Solving a key farming problem: is it safe to harvest / spray / sow today? (+experiments with ‘big’ data in agriculture)
Sentrifarm is comprised of a network of energy harvesting sensor nodes, geographically distributed according to the topology of the farm, able to run on low power, and communicate over extended distances without relying on the mobile phone network.
Novel features include intelligent back end monitoring and data analysis, a shield-like system allowing the SX1276 radio to be connected to completely different embedded boards, a custom design intelligent rain gauge, and the ability for long range farm monitoring of multiple paddocks without requiring multiple SIM cards.
Benefits to Farmers
Timely information reporting
Improved safety
Improved knowledge of cropping
Reduced operating costs
Components include SX1276 915MHz LoRa radios, Teensy-LC and ESP8266 modules, an ATtiny powered rain gauge, and Raspberry Pi nodes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM, Thundersoft Plan IoT Accelerators In China
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327636&
The initiative is the latest in a recent spate of major investment in in the Internet of Things by vendors worldwide, even as two US industry trade groups call for greater commitment to the space.
ARM and Thundersoft, an Android core technology provider headquartered in Beijing, are establishing the ARM Innovation Ecosystem Accelerator, which the companies describe as a one-stop shop for Internet of Things (IoT) startups and established original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
The initiative is the latest in a recent spate of major investment in IoT by major vendors worldwide, even as two US industry trade groups call for greater commitment to the space.
Sponsor video, mouseover for sound
A June report from IT research firm IDC projected the worldwide IoT market will grow from $655.8 billion in 2014 to $1.7 trillion in 2020, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.9%. According to IDC, devices, connectivity, and IT services will account for the majority of IoT spending in 2020.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Embedded Engineers: 10 Skills You Need Now
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325557&
From getting familiar with open source software to developing apps, industry professionals are urging embedded engineers to get out of their comfort zone and acquire new skills to stay relevant.
Then, as embedded systems became bigger and more complex — millions of lines of code now ship with devices — embedded skill sets became partitioned by discipline: hardware developer, firmware developer, software developer.
In many big companies that is still the case. But the pendulum appears to be swinging back, as more and more companies are consolidating engineering roles, looking for developers who are fluent in both hardware and software, and trying to accomplish more with less. Certainly a bigger percent of engineers say they work on both hardware and software, as compared to the group that only does one or the other.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM wants you to jump into mbed with it – IoT open-source OS in beta
Pre-launch open-ish code appears online
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/08/arm_mbed_os_beta/
Chip blueprint scribbler ARM has released some of the source code for its first public beta of mbed, its operating system for the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things is today’s fancy word for embedded engineering, and ARM is all over that latter space: the tiny and relatively simple processor cores it designs are used in countless gadgets and gizmos, phones and tablets, controllers and sensors, smartcards, and so on.
The Brit biz feels it is best positioned, right in the center, to provide the software to bring together low-end, low-power Cortex-M chips and the competing communications standards. In October, ARM revealed mbed OS, which emerged from its mbed.org community of developers and driver code.
The idea is, you run the open-source mbed OS on devices, and ARM’s middleware on the backend to talk to and control the gizmos. The entire stack isn’t, however, open source: the systems running the show at the back use ARM’s device server product; and down on the devices, some binary blobs are needed to initialize the hardware and ensure trusted firmware is executed.
ARM has told us it is trying to open source as much as it can – using the Apache 2.0 license – but commercial realities cannot be ignored.
ARM signs with Big Blue for cloudy IoT services
‘Chip-to-cloud’ analytics
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/07/arm_signs_with_big_blue_for_cloudy_iot_services/
ARM, which in late July bought Israeli Internet of Things Sansa Security, has added another plank to its IoT strategy by signing on with IBM’s IoT Foundation.
Based on SoftLayer, IBM’s IoT Foundation combines analytics tools, the Bluemix PaaS offering, and security services. ARM’s involvement, according to the IBM announcement, is designed to give it a “unified chip-to-cloud, enterprise-class IoT platform.”
The integration will let ARM’s mbed chips automatically register with the IoT Foundation, so that “information gathered from deployed sensors in any connected device is delivered to the cloud for analysis”.
In its most recent financial presentation, ARM claimed an 85 per cent global share in the mobile space, compared to a 10 per cent share of “enterprise infrastructure” and a 25 per cent share in embedded systems.
But the embedded segment showed the best growth in the company, with 2015 60 per cent higher than 2014 (compared to 30 per cent growth in its enterprise business and just 15 per cent growth in mobiles).
At the same time, IBM also announced IoT for Electronics, which will give other electronics manufacturers a similar sensor-to-cloud data-gathering capability.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT platform brings distributed intelligence to smart lighting and applications
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4440266/IoT-platform-brings-distributed-intelligence-to-smart-lighting-and-applications?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150909&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150909&elq=bbafbd82010148b5a56da12276597399&elqCampaignId=24689&elqaid=27974&elqat=1&elqTrackId=431b77063f344289a02441efdf6be5ec
One of the reasons that lighting product designers should pay close attention to WiSilica’s WiSe Connect IoT platform is that it isn’t designed exclusively for lighting applications. Instead, it integrates a suite of intelligent lighting control functions into a much larger platform which can be tailored to meet the building automation needs of nearly any residential, commercial, or industrial application. The platform makes it easy to bring together infrastructure, sensors, devices, and people into a single unified, smart environment based on a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth low-energy (BLE)-based mesh-networking platform.
The WiSe platform enables customers to easily configure smart homes, buildings, lighting, sensors, and wearables into intelligent devices that they can manage via mobile apps and in the cloud. Using WiSilica’s proprietary mesh networking technology, it provides secure connectivity, control, management, and data gathering for lighting or nearly any smart object at the device, app, and cloud level. It can be used to connect thousands or even millions of devices, understand their environment, and apply its predictive intelligence to improve the user experience, reduce cost, and improve efficiency.
The WiSilica platform is available now and currently shipping to customers. The platform can be used in a wide variety of healthcare, manufacturing, energy management, building automation, retail, infrastructure/environmental monitoring, and other applications, as well as smart environments for the home, office, and other facilities. More information about the WiSilica platform and development tools may be found here.
http://www.wisilica.com/developers.html
Internet of Things: Accelerating through the power of WiSilica technology. The Internet of Things is expected to grow to include more than 50 billion devices by 2020 – and WiSilica’s WiSe Connect Platform is providing developers with the tools to kick-start new ideas and devices.
With all of that embedded hardware engineering already complete, WiSilica’s development kits help to quickly turn creative IoT ideas quickly into prototypes and ready-for-market devices for both large and small companies. Our SDKs support embedded development in C, iOS and Android operating systems development for mobile, and RESTful Web services and data transformation services in the cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hack Puts Aging Sprinkler System Online
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/09/hack-puts-aging-sprinkler-system-online/
Water conservation is on a lot of people’s mind, and with an older sprinkler system one may not have the finest control of when and where the lawn is getting its water. Faced with such a system [Felix] decided to hack into his, adding better computerized scheduling, and internet remote control.
The brains of the operation is handled by a Moteino, which is a Arduino compatible micro controller board with WiFi on board. In order to interface with the sprinkler system, an interface PCB is made. The interface has an on board buck power supply to regulate the 24 volt AC power of the sprinkler down to 5 volt DC for the micro and the 74HC595 shift registers.
Sprinkler Controller Automation
http://lowpowerlab.com/blog/2015/08/31/sprinkler-controller-automation/
The IOShields are daisy chainable and can take 24VAC through a buck regulator. Wireless control is done with a regular Moteino or MoteinoUSB and in a daisy chain only the first board would need the regulator and Moteino.
I designed the IOShield to be able to take the same 24VAC input and power the Moteino and itself. I have 9 sprinkler zones, but one IOShield will support up to 16 outputs. I can use the TRIAC board and only tap into the 9 zones that are active.
The RFM69 IOShield example skech for sprinkler control has been posted at Github.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Nets Snags Wide-Area Player
On-Ramp launches U.S. net, new name
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327641&
The horse race to build a low-power, wide-area network for the Internet of Things just got a new contender. On-Ramp Wireless (San Diego) changed its name to Ingenu Networks and announced it is raising funds to roll out a public IoT network in the U.S. by the end of 2017.
Ingenue’s 2.4 GHz technology will compete with as mnay as a half dozen separate 900 MHz offerings from groups including Sigfox, NWave and the LoRa Alliance founded by Semtech. They are all racing to beat versions of cellular and Wi-Fi networks tailored for IoT that are expected to hit the market in about two years.
The Ingenu launch is “one of the biggest news stories in IoT networks this year, and it will help them build scale,” said Aapo Markkanen, an analyst for Machina Research following the area
Over time, Markkanen expects the area of low-power, wide-area networks will fragment into tiers of offerings at high, medium and low data rates. He currently puts the new Ingenu effort in a new band supporting about 10 Kbits/second, below a medium-tier LoRa but above a low-tier Sigfox and NWave.
“When LTE-M is ready then that will complicate things further,” he said, referring to a part of the LTE-Advanced, Release 13 offering expected to emerge in about two years.
Phoenix and Dallas will be the first cities connected on a public offering Ingenu calls the Machine Network. The company claims it already covers 50,000 square miles in the Midwest and northwestern Texas
Ingenu’s Random Phase Multiple Access (RPMA) technology is a 39 dB variant of a Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum network. It uses antenna diversity to offset the wider reach of its 900 MHz competitors.
The company claims RPMA delivers the highest link budget of all its competitors. A shoebox-sized access point can cover up to 500 square miles and can handle hundreds of thousands of end points, it said in a white paper. However one user, the city of Anaheim, Calif., operates three access points to cover 50 square miles.
RPMA trades off more complex nodes for a less complex network with a relatively high link budget. It cannot support video for remote surveillance, but it can support mobile connections up to 2 Kbits/second at 90 miles/hour.
End-node modules cost about $10, well below current cellular M2M modules but higher than some competitors. The implementation requires an ASIC in the node and the access point which handle network time and frequency synchronization among other jobs.
By contrast, Sigfox uses off-the-shelf parts and LoRa requires one device sourced from Semtech.
Ingenu’s white paper includes extensive comparisons to Sigfox and LoRa, signaling they are seen as its closest competitors. It claims it can deploy a network with one node per square mile for $180 per node, compared to $14,600 and $7,000 for networks based on Sigfox and LoRa technology, respectively.
The idea for the national public network is the brainchild of John Horn who took over as chief executive at On-Ramp three months ago. Horn previously worked on M2M networks for TMobile and one of its distributors.
Ingenu’s initiative comes at a time when Sigfox hopes to set up 1,300 base stations to cover 10 U.S. cities by the end of the year and as many as 4,000 base stations covering 30 cities by the end of 2016. Meanwhile LoRa is in talks to partner with a carrier to create a regional network and recently hired an IoT expert from outside Semtech to lead its alliance. Ingenu lacks the big company backing of the LoRa Alliance which includes giants such as Cisco, IBM, Microchip and SK Telecom.
The window for such newcomers may only be open for a couple years. Cellular proponents are already starting to ship a modified version of LTE called Category 1 geared for lower power, lower bandwidth IoT networks. However chips for more compelling variants such as Category 0 and Cat-M are not expected until 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Separately, the 3GPP cellular standards group is considering separate proposals from Huawei and others for a variant of GSM for IoT. The so-called Clean Slate or Cellular IoT proposal from Huawei and the startup Neul it acquired talks about subdividing 200 KHz channels but sports lower capacity than RPMA and may not be ready until 2018, the Ingenu white paper said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adam Clark Estes / Gizmodo:
AT&T announces ZTE Mobley, a mobile hotspot for cars that plugs into diagnostic ports, available Sept. 11 on contract, or for $99 outright
AT&T’s New Gadget Will Put Wifi in Your Old Ass Car
http://gizmodo.com/at-ts-new-gadget-will-put-wifi-in-your-old-ass-car-1729358333
In-car wifi is equal parts mind-bending and irresponsible-seeming. But you know you want it, and you’ve only been able to get it in brand new cars that are already computers on wheels. Until now, that is!
AT&T just announced a new gadget called Mobley that plugs into your car’s on-board diagnostics port, and when you turn on the car, you’ve got a wifi hotspot. That means that it’ll work with most American models built after 1996. (Check this small list to see if your pre-1996 vehicle has the correct OBD II port.) When you turn your car off, the Mobley turns off, so you won’t have to worry about charging a battery, like you do with other mobile hotspots. You can order the new device will be available here, and AT&T starts shipping on September 11.
The Mobley is equipped with a Qualcomm MDM9215 processor and allows up to five people to use AT&T’s LTE network. If you sign up for a two-year contract, the company will charge you $0 for the device itself. Otherwise, it’s a cool $100
Oh and by the way, let’s hope that AT&T packed this thing to the gills with security features, because plugging stuff into your dashboard is a great way to give hackers complete access to your entire car.
Your Car Can Be Hacked. So What Are Auto-Makers Doing About It?
http://gizmodo.com/your-car-can-be-hacked-so-what-are-auto-makers-doing-a-1724118855
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Semifinalist: Big Data and Big Agriculture
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/09/hackaday-prize-semifinalist-big-data-and-big-agriculture/
For their entry to the Hackaday Prize, the team behind SentriFarm is solving a big problem for farmers in Australia. Down there, farms are big, and each paddock must be checked daily. This means hours of driving every day. Surely a bunch of sensors and some radio links would help, right?
This is the idea behind SentriFarm: a ground station that reads air temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, rain, light, UV and smoke, and relays that back to a central node. Yes, it’s basically a wireless weather station, but the sheer distance these sensors must transmit adds some interesting complexity.
The SentriFarm team is hoping to get about 10km out of their radio system, and they’re using a long-range, low power radio module to do it.
SentriFarm
https://hackaday.io/project/4758-sentrifarm
Solving a key farming problem: is it safe to harvest / spray / sow today? (+experiments with ‘big’ data in agriculture)
Semtech SX1276
137 MHz to 1020 MHz Low Power Long Range Transceiver
http://www.semtech.com/apps/product.php?pn=SX1276
The SX1276/77/78/79 transceivers feature the LoRaTM long range modem that provides ultra-long range spread spectrum communication and high interference immunity whilst minimising current consumption.
Using Semtech’s patented LoRaTM modulation technique SX1276/77/78/79 can achieve a sensitivity of over -148dBm using a low cost crystal and bill of materials. The high sensitivity combined with the integrated +20 dBm power amplifier yields industry leading link budget making it optimal for any application requiring range or robustness.
LoRaTM Modem
168 dB maximum link budget
Programmable bit rate up to 300 kbps
High sensitivity: down to -148 dBm
Low RX current of 9.9 mA, 200 nA register retention
Fully integrated synthesizer with a resolution of 61 Hz
FSK, GFSK, MSK, GMSK, LoRaTM and OOK modulation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Press Amazon Dash Button, Summon Uber
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/09/press-amazon-dash-button-summon-uber/
Modern life is complicated. When you want to call an Uber car to pick you up, you have to open the app, sign in and set your pickup location. [Geoffrey Tisserand] uses Uber to commute to his job in San Francisco every day, so he came up with a neat way to automate this process, by reprogramming an Amazon Dash button to call an Uber. All he has to do is to hit the button, and a few minutes later an Uber rolls up to his door.
To do this, he used the intercept method, where a Python script running on another computer notices the Amazon Dash button joining his home WiFi network and posts the request to Uber. Because Uber uses the OAuth authentication system, he was able to easily log into the system using Expressjs. And because he is always following the same route, he could also automate the posting of the pickup and dropoff locations, as they don’t change.
Getting an Uber ride with the Amazon dash button
https://blog.growth.supply/getting-a-uber-ride-using-the-amazon-dash-button-c4dcef42051c
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Nets Snag Wide-Area Player
On-Ramp launches U.S. net, new name
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327641&
The horse race to build a low-power, wide-area network for the Internet of Things just got a new contender. On-Ramp Wireless (San Diego) changed its name to Ingenu Networks and announced it is raising funds to roll out a public IoT network in the U.S. by the end of 2017.
Ingenue’s 2.4 GHz technology will compete with as mnay as a half dozen separate 900 MHz offerings from groups including Sigfox, NWave and the LoRa Alliance founded by Semtech. They are all racing to beat versions of cellular and Wi-Fi networks tailored for IoT that are expected to hit the market in about two years.
“When LTE-M is ready then that will complicate things further,” he said, referring to a part of the LTE-Advanced, Release 13 offering expected to emerge in about two years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Is About Older Nodes, Cheaper Dev
IEEE’s conference for IoT technology
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327652&
IEEE is addressing the Internet of Things with its upcoming S3S Conference 2015. Here are some intriguing highlights.
It is now accepted that the needs for the emerging IoT market are different from those that drive the high volume PC and smartphone markets. The following CEA Leti slide illustrates this industry bifurcation where traditional mass products follow the — ever more expensive — scaling curve, while IoT devices, with their focus on cost, power, flexibility and accessibility, will seek place near its minimum.
The current high volume is focus on handful of foundries and SoC vendors driving a handful of designs at extremely high development cost each, processed at the most advanced nodes, with minimal processing options. In contrast, the emerging IoT market is looking for older nodes with lower development costs, broad range of process options, with many more players both at the foundry side and the design side.
For the IoT market the key enabling technologies are extreme low power, as enabled by SOI and sub-threshold design, integrating with multiple sensor technologies and communication technologies that ca be enabled by 3D integrations. All of these combined in forming the IEEE S3S unified conference.
New technologies are an important part of the future of semiconductor industry
Tomi Engdahl says:
3 IoT-Based Myths about Analog Electronics
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327657&
http://www.planetanalog.com/author.asp?section_id=3065&doc_id=564039&&hootPostID=eb63d949093bfa2f625200534d7bc254
Look to the right of you. Now look to the left. Only 4 percent of current IoT proposals will actually be of use once they come to fruition.
The hype surrounding the Internet of Things (IoT) has been nothing short of monumental. The reality is that, by some estimates, only 4 percent of current IoT proposals will actually be of use once they come to fruition. Despite this disparity, the electronics industry is excited about those few products that will succeed and in turn be profitable.
The corollary concept of the IoT and what will make it successful, however, is still deeply rooted in a host of misinformation that has many believing certain design applications are on their way out the door. One such application is analog.
A common understanding among many enthusiasts is that everything under the IoT will be dominated by digitally interconnected devices that thrive on both local and group intelligence. For this reason, most believe the future of the IoT will be binary and not analog, and some have even called into question the capabilities of the latter. The fact of the matter is analog is ideally positioned to help accelerate the number of successful IoT devices beyond 4 percent.
Below are three IoT-based myths about analog, dispelled:
Myth 1: All IoT sensors will transmit their information directly as digital data
We live in the real world, not a digital simulation of it. At the most basic level, all electronics are analog; digital is just a faster version of analog.
So long as there is a need for analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog interfaces, there will always be a need for analog electronics and data.
Myth 2: Any analog signals will be filtered by digital signal processors (DSPs)
Microprocessors with on-board operational amplifiers, pulse-width modulation (PWM) generators and mixed-signal electronics are actually experiencing a sharp growth curve, contrary to this commonly-accepted myth. There still exists a significant trust barrier among engineers when it comes to digital power suppliers. Many do not feel comfortable working on designs that resist empirical analysis.
Electronics engineers want to be able to look at a circuit schematic and determine how it’s supposed to work using performance specifications within the accompanying datasheet. If the circuit doesn’t work, they want to be able to troubleshoot it. As soon as digital processing or control enters the mix, the logical link between input and output is lost, hidden in some cryptic part of the coding that can otherwise be avoided with analog.
Myth 3: Analog power suppliers will be exchanged for digital power supplies that can adapt to loads
This is perhaps the most widely accepted analog myth of the three. Certainly, digitally-controlled power modules may be an effective strategy for higher power units with higher expectations for efficiency, and in situations where non-digital control cannot achieve a high power factor or fast response rate for dynamic loads. All power suppliers have performance requirements that stem from analog-based interactions – be it cabling inductance, unwanted cross coupling between components, stray leakage capacitances or even complex, layered EMC interference signals that many digital simulations do not or cannot take into consideration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackathon Meets Old MacDonald
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327635&
“Farmers are not programmers. But they need to get a grip on data,” says Casper Koomen. He plans on a hackathon called Farmlab, hoping to bring farmers fresh perspectives about using data and applying it to the farm.
A hackathon called Farmlab will gather on Sunday (Sept. 13) in Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands. It will take place at an actual farm, located south of Amsterdam and owned by one of the farmers who belong to the group.
A team of 20 some people, ranging from designers, engineers, programmers and hardware makers to agricultural experts and business people, are expected down on the farm to look at “open data” and explore “sensor solutions.”
“a farmer in the Netherlands with many small scattered odd-sized patches of land who uses drones, sensors and data analysis to manage his farm.”
I’ve heard of hackathons in various shapes, forms and sizes, but this is the first I’ve encountered that’s dedicated to farming.
Too idealistic? Maybe so. But Koomen is also grounded. To apply the hackathon concept to the farm, his strategy is to “be smarter about using technology,” “going open source,” “and exploring possibilities by picking each other’s brains.”
He’s convinced there is “a major opportunity for farms to diversify their production, improve productivity and re-claim their position as places that support the environment.”
Asked for more specifics about the possible opportunities from sensors, smart data and crowd-sourcing, he rattled off a list:
increased biodiversity (versus the one-directional and land-draining farming that occurs now)
multi-year crops (versus one-year crops that need to be re-planted, fertilized every year)
clean crop control (reducing harmful pesticides)
fragmented, distributed farming (smaller, distributed and fragmented, odd-sized patches of land – which makes it possible to leave trees, bushes, irregular patches in the field: good for biodiversity, flora and fauna)
asynchronous farming (growing a wider variety of crops that require different management)
Koomen is also working on something that’s called “micro-farming.” He described it as “farming with local citizens to increase awareness, distributed contribution to food chain and management.” This notion is in its early phase. “You heard it here first,” he noted.
The group is also naturally onto using IoT. They are taking a look at LoRa sensor networks for livestock and land.
Why hackathons?
It turns out that Farmlab isn’t Koomen’s first hackathon. Organizing hackathons is one of the many day jobs he has. Other hackathons he has been involved in were Hack Food Waste, Science Hack Day Eindhoven, and Flora Fauna Hack.
Wait. Organizing hackathons is your day job?
Koomen explained, “I earn my living from being a freelance brainstormer, facilitator of creative sessions and meetups (such as hackathons), innovation consulting.”
This is no ordinary business consultant.
Koomen said, “I tinker on problems to generate ideas that resonate with people’s hearts and minds. That is my mission. Not sure if I always succeed in it. So, in a sense, I have many day jobs. Some fill my bank account, others fill my heart. The best ones do both.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel-led Group Touts OIC 1.0 Over Rival IoT Specs
Cloud-native architecture and IPR policy
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327659&
The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), led by such industry heavyweights as Intel, Cisco, Samsung, General Electric and Samsung, is making public its long-waited Internet of Things specification 1.0 on Thursday (Sept. 10).
The OIC move is expected to add weight to the IoT debates brewing over several incompatible specs promoted by different groups.
The newly released OIC 1.0 is technically still a “candidate spec,”
During an interview with EE Times, Richmond stressed that “we all need to understand that the big unresolved problem with IoT is not about ‘things.’ But it’s about the network.”
During an interview with EE Times, Richmond stressed that “we all need to understand that the big unresolved problem with IoT is not about ‘things.’ But it’s about the network.”
Chris Rommel, executive vice president at VDC Research Group, Inc., told EE Times that the benefit of OIC’s ‘cloud-native approach’ is architecture that allows devices to intelligently self-organize and communicate locally if the cloud is not directly accessible.”
In other words, “The OIC is using the combination of XMPP, 6LowPAN, and RESTful APIs help to provide this flexibility.”
Rommel noted that OIC is using the approach based on Representational State Transfer (REST), a software architecture style for building scalable web services.
In contrast, Qualcomm-led AllSeen, one of OIC’s competitors, is using Remote Procedure Call (RPC). RPC allows a computer program to cause a subroutine or procedure to execute in another address space – often on another device on a shared network – without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction.
Asked to compare the two approaches, Rommel said, “The REST-based approach of OIC can sometimes lead to better interoperability compared to the RPC approach used in AllSeen since REST is semantically/contextually consistent.” Rommel, however, added, “But both frameworks ultimately have a goal of supporting broad-based interoperability.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Buys StrongLoop To Add Node.js API Development To Its Cloud Platform
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/10/ibm-buys-strongloop-to-add-node-js-app-development-to-its-cloud-platform/#.ojwuxm:J7U6
IBM has today made another acquisition to expand its business in cloud services — specifically in the area of enterprise app development. It has acquired StrongLoop, a startup based in San Mateo that builds application development software for enterprises using the open source JavaScript programming language Node.js. This in turn enables enterprises to build mobile and cloud-based apps equipped with APIs to integrate with each other and handle high volumes of data between mobile, web and Internet-of-Things apps.
IBM says it will be integrating StrongLoop’s Node.js features into its wider software portfolio to sit alongside MobileFirst and WebSphere. The main benefit of adding a Node.js development framework is to address a demand from enterprises who are interested in building apps with APIs that can handle large amounts of data and also connect on the back-end with other enterprise applications. (It should also help IBM compete better with the likes of Amazon, which has been offering a Node.js development platform since 2013.)
IBM says Node.js is one of the fastest-growing frameworks for developers, which also may point to demand that IBM has been seeing directly from its customers.
IBM says that from today, Node.js developers can use IBM’s Bluemix, the company’s platform-as-a-service offering.
Node.js is an open source technology and IBM intends to use the acquisition to further its ties to that community. It is a founding member and Platinum member of Node.js Foundation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netduino 3 wifi
http://www.netduino.com/netduino3wifi/specs.htm
An open-source electronics platform using the .NET Micro Framework
Processor: 168MHz Cortex-M4 MCU; 2MB dual-bank flash; 256KB RAM.
Standard I/O: 22 GPIOs combined with SPI, I2C, 4 UARTs (1 RTS/CTS), 6 PWM channels and 6 12-bit ADC channels.
Advanced I/O: 802.11b/g/n (Wi-Fi) with SSL/TLS. MicroSD storage. 3 GoBus 2.0 ports for plug-and-play components.
MicroUSB cable and GoBus cable included. Design files and source code are included.
.NET Micro Framework combines the ease of high-level coding and the raw features of microcontrollers.
Price: $69.95
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simplest Electricity Monitoring Solution Yet
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/12/simplest-electricity-monitoring-solution-yet/
Monitoring your home’s energy use is the best way to get a handle on your utility bills. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t measure! The only problem is that most home energy monitoring systems are cumbersome, complicated, or expensive. At least, until now. [Kevin] has created a new electricity meter based on Particle Photons which should alleviate all of these problems.
The Particle Photon (we get confused on the naming scheme but believe this the new version of what used to be called the Spark Core) is a WiFi-enabled development board. [Kevin] is using two, one to drive the display and one to monitor the electricity usage. This part is simple enough, each watt-hour is accompanied by a pulse of an LED on the meter which is picked up by a TLS257 light-to-voltage sensor.
Simple Electricity Meter Reader and Display
Particle Photon electricity meter pulse counter and Nextion display driver
https://hackaday.io/project/7608-simple-electricity-meter-reader-and-display
After seeing a few projects using arduinos, in combination, or solely using a RaspberryPi to read an electricity meter I set out to make a simpler and cheaper alternative. I’m a big fan of the Particle (previously Spark) products and with two Photons on pre-order I figured they’d be the answer. Using 1 to drive a display and the other to log the electricity usage via pulse counting the 1 Wh LED.
The only piece of software in this project is emoncms which is part of the OpenEnergyMonitor platform. This has a fantastic API which makes it easy to push and pull data from the platform. As well as a good webpage where you can manage and view your data in a number of dashboard and graphs. The two Photons use http get request to push the current watt hours, temperature, and humidity as well as pull the current and historic data via the api. This can be hosted yourself on a linux or windows server or you can use the public version at emoncms.org.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Lacks Tools, Says EDA Vet
Sangiovanni-Vincentelli gives DARPA a role
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327668&
New design tools are needed to orchestrate an emerging swarm of networked sensors and the services they will spawn, said a Berkeley researcher and veteran of the EDA industry.
“The Internet of Things is just an intermediate step on the way to the sensor dominated world” where the numbers of networked sensors will exceed the population by several orders of magnitude, said Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, a Berkeley professor and co-founder of EDA giants Cadence and Synopsys.
“Complexity is growing in a way unlike we have seen before, everything will be affected by the swarm system and more unpredicted interactions are possible,” he said in a talk at a conference hosted by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
In many respects, tools for the sensor world should mirror the EDA tools used to handle the complexity of billion-transistor chips. However the sensor world is much more heterogeneous and adds a new critical dimension of time, he said.
“How to handle the issue of time is a deep mathematical problem and we have done some work on it,”
“The end devices have to cost a few cents each, so how can you make money from that? Another question is who will build the infrastructure…DARPA can play a role as an independent partner to coalesce people and help build the infrastructure,” he added.
“The first step is to define layers of abstraction to think about a design in a simplified but correct way, then you have to develop tools that can march across the different layers of abstraction in a correct way,” he said. “The most important thing is to have a set of methodologies, a set of recipes, that offer freedom of choice but restrict the design space,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
In the late 20th century industrial companies viewed process automation combined with a few monolithic applications as the norm for plant operations. But many companies are now experimenting with – or already pursuing – new approaches that take advantage of intelligent connected products coupled with potent software and analytics.
Whether you call it Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Smart Manufacturing, Industrie 4.0, Digitization, or Connected Enterprise, these concepts are clearly moving past the hype stage to the point where real solutions with strong business cases are emerging.
Source: http://www.controleng.com/media-library/webcasts/2015-webcasts/91715-iiot-webcast-two-operations.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
IIoT video: See on-machine sensor values in real time via Apple iPad
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/iiot-video-see-on-machine-sensor-values-in-real-time-via-apple-ipad/7a83e360381f0920a4031fcc1ffd2ff1.html
In an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) demonstration using a mountain bike tricked out with sensors and instrumentation, ThingWorx, a PTC business, revealed how an operator might see an industrial machine’s metrics in real time by looking through a mobile human-machine interface (HMI) or a head-mounted display. The NIWeek demo on Aug. 5, 2015, used myRIO embedded hardware programmed with NI LabVIEW.
In an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) demonstration using a mountain bike tricked out with sensors and instrumentation, ThingWorx, a PTC business, revealed how an operator might see an industrial machine’s metrics in real time by looking through a mobile human-machine interface (HMI) or wearable HMI, such as a head-mounted, hands-free display.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Acquires StrongLoop to Extend Enterprise Reach using IBM Cloud
https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/47577.wss
Offers Fast Path for Developers to Rapidly Build and Deliver APIs for Mobile, Internet of Things and Web Applications
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the acquisition of StrongLoop, Inc., a software provider, to help developers connect enterprise applications to mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and web applications in the cloud.
StrongLoop is a leading provider of popular application development software — known as enterprise Node.js — that enables software developers to build applications using APIs (application programming interfaces).
IBM intends to integrate Node.js capabilities from StrongLoop with its software portfolio, which already includes MobileFirst and WebSphere®, to help clients better use enterprise data and conduct transactions whether in the cloud or on-premises. These new capabilities will enable clients and developers to build scalable APIs, and to more easily connect existing back-end, enterprise processes with front-end mobile, IoT and web apps in an open, hybrid cloud. Node.js is one of the fastest growing development frameworks for creating and delivering APIs.
“Enterprises are focused on digital transformation to reach new channels, tap new business models, and personalize their engagement with clients,” said Marie Wieck, general manager, Middleware, IBM Systems. “APIs are a critical ingredient. By bringing together StrongLoop’s Node.js capabilities to rapidly create APIs with IBM’s leadership in Java and API Management on our cloud platform, we are unlocking the innovation potential of two vibrant development communities.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disney’s light-bulb moment: build TCP into LEDs for IoT comms
It’s going to be the year of Linux in the light socket
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/14/disneys_lightbulb_moment_iot_comms_in_led_lamps/
Since lights are everywhere, and LED lamps are The Way of The FutureTM, it makes sense that they be used for communications. Now, boffins working for Disney Research have taken LED-based comms a step further, adding a Linux TCP/IP network stack to a consumer lamp.
Their work, published here, pushes visible light communication (VLC) beyond research that has focussed on physical- and MAC-layers with a custom-built board the researchers reckon could be cheaply and easily integrated into existing LED lamps.
Doing so, they write, means integrating the inter-Thing communication with the TCP/IP protocol, and getting the protocol running under a familiar operating system (in this case, Linux).
To do that, the boffins working at ETH Zurich for Disney Research built a bottom-to-top stack instead of merely demonstrating that ones-and-zeroes sent by one lamp could be received by another. This includes:
Hardware design to turn a consumer LED light bulb into a Linux host;
A Linux kernel module that integrates the VLC protocol’s physical and MAC layers into the Linux networking stack; and
Evaluation of the system using ICMP, UDP, and TCP.
An 8-bit Atmel controller handles the PHY and MAC layer protocols on the lamp, with an Atheros AR9331 system-on-a-chip running OpenWrt providing the on-lamp Linux environment.
The advantage of creating a full-stack implementation, the paper says, is that individual lamps are able to route data, rather than merely supporting simple point-to-point links.
Linux Light Bulbs: Enabling Internet Protocol Connectivity for Light Bulb Networks
http://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/Linux-Light-Bulbs/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Margaret Rhodes / Wired:
Estimote’s Location Intelligence Platform now allows users to track and search for indoor items that have company’s Bluetooth beacon-enabled stickers on them
You Can Use These Tiny Stickers to Map All of Your Stuff
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/can-use-tiny-stickers-map-stuff/
From the beginning, Estimote has wanted to create an operating system for the physical world. And it’s just taken another step toward that goal.
The hardware and software company makes Bluetooth-enabled stickers you can put pretty much anywhere. These stickers use beacon technology to communicate with apps on your phone. The way Estimote imagines it, analog people and objects magically become digital and interactive. Estimote co-founder Steve Cheney puts his company’s mission in the form of a question: “What if, in the physical world, you could have a search box, and find stuff inside it?”
Estimote has built that box: It announced this week that you can now track and search for objects in its platform.
Previously, Estimote’s indoor location capabilities extended to people, via their phones. You could deck out a room or building with beacons, and they would triangulate with your phone to determine your location.
Now, Estimote’s platform can do with this any object wearing a sticker. When someone with an Estimote-enabled phone comes within range of that object (in location intelligence lingo, these objects are called nearables), the platform records the item’s location and stores it in the cloud. Over time, there will be a huge and evolving library of physical objects and their relation to us at any given time.
Cheney is the first to admit that it’s unclear how this will all be put to use. That’s been Estimote’s MO in the past—make the technology available, then see what developers and clients do with it. The company is starting to see the results. Target, for instance, is using Estimote beacons in its stores to experiment with offering context-aware shopping.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia, Ericsson and Intel to cooperate IoT networks
Competition on radio access technology, which will be billions of IoT devices connected to the internet, is still only beginning. LTE mark an important milestone reached this week, when the 3GPP decide what narrowband technology chosen for LTE IoT version.
Nokia, Ericsson and Intel believe that LTE tailored for the industrial Internet version of NB-LTE is the best technique for this purpose. NB-LTE’s a tough competitor, for example, Huawei and many others supported by CioT ie Cellular IoT.
NB-LTE (Narrow Band LTE) is a preferred advantage of feasibility. Link can be implemented, for example, 200 kilohetrsin channel, as IoT devices do not need to transfer large amounts of data.
LTE networks covering many countries for 90 per cent of the area, so the networks are ready for LTE-based IoT links.
Intel has promised to bring next year already available in NB-LTE support in chipsets. Internet of things at the moment is well suited for Intel’s portfolio
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3323:nokia-ericsson-ja-intel-yhteistyohon-iot-verkoissa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Evaluating a Role in the IIOT Future
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327670&
Standards are needed to assure that the Industrial Internet of things becomes a reality. In the meantime, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon because the risks of waiting are too high.
The technology to implement a smart network of sensor data that gives an instant sense of an industrial machine’s or system’s well-being is available. With this technology, you can even project the cost savings in anticipating breakdowns, forgoing not-needed maintenance, not requiring folks just-in-case, and boosting the efficiency of operations. So, why is it being hyped so much, but not happening?
It’s really simple. The relevant standards are not agreed upon as yet and therefore it is a market that is being teed up, but waiting for a “go” signal. Sure, there are obstacles such as data security, but the breaches of bank, government, and supposedly safe corporate information have not stopped those systems from being implemented. Nor will it stop the IIOT (Industrial Internet of Things) from becoming a reality. The reason is that the coming market is too lucrative to forgo. IIOT will ultimately determine the leaders of industrial systems for many years into the future.
Most sensors are analog. Thus, measuring instruments need to make measurements near the sensor to minimize errors. Power requirements must be minimal, signal conditioning included, and voltages beyond the usual 3.3 V must be accommodated. All the typical interactions of noise and cross-coupling among circuits and grounds must be solved. We think that this approach to instrumentation meets the need of this giant market to be. But it is a little too early to say for sure.
There are other hurdles to overcome, but these are poised to be worked out through the IIC <Industrial Internet Consortium), a public-private organization.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Dynastream ANT™ series is a proven wireless sensor network protocol and silicon solution for ultra-low power networking applications in sport, wellness, home and industrial automation. With an installed base of over a million nodes, ANT is engineered for ultra-low power, low system cost, ease of use, scalability and flexibility that enables sensors to operate for up to three years on a coin cell battery. The ANT protocol handles peer-to-peer, star, tree and practical mesh topologies.
Source: http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/digikey/ant-2.4ghz-wireless-protocol/
Tomi Engdahl says:
T&M moves to the cloud
The Interop Era
The following list includes just some of the interops recently conducted or are imminent. It is meant only to show the variety of interop endeavors:
oneM2M has defined specifications for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications (aka Internet of Things, or IoT). This interop is an example of an interop being conducted well before the product stage; the goal is to check functionality on oneM2M interfaces, to ensure those who want to use the interfaces are interpreting the specification correctly.
The AS2 standard is designed to secure data (including EDI and XML) being transferred over the Internet. Eleven companies, including IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, tested software applications in a recently conducted interop.
The cable industry research consortium CableLabs has been conducting interops for the new version of cable’s DOCSIS communications standard, DOCSIS 3.1. Equipment involved includes cable modem termination systems (CMTS), cable modems, and test equipment.
OpenStack is open-source software used to build cloud networks. The OpenStack Foundation oversees interoperability testing for any company that wants to certify its products work in an OpenStack environment. As of this writing, there were 15 companies with OpenStack certified products, including Ubuntu, VMware, Rackspace and IBM.
The InterOperability Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire (UNH-IOL) conducts ongoing interoperability testing for several technology categories. Some of its recent activity includes interops helping companies verify that their products conform to IPv6 Internet communications standards. One upcoming even is the CEA IPv6 Plugfest, which will test dual-stack (IPv4/IPv6) capabilities in consumer premise equipment (CPE, including set-tops and gateways).
It’s worth noting that Interops are hardly confined to companies concerned with complying with industry standards. They are also held by individual vendors who have products based on proprietary technology that must work with products from other vendors in a specific environment.
Source: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327655&page_number=8
Tomi Engdahl says:
Let Skynet Become Self-Aware!
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/14/let-skynet-become-self-aware/
Every day there are more reports of drone operators getting past these restrictions and flying near jetliners, crashing into stadiums, and interfering with first responders.
We’ve got to do something about this before governments do it for us, with restrictions that catch the many good uses of drones in the crossfire.
Drones Themselves Should Know Rules of Each Area
Fortunately, they don’t have to. Our drones can be even smarter — smart enough to know where they should and shouldn’t fly. Because modern drones are connected to phones, they’re also connected to the cloud. Every time you open their app, that app can check online to find appropriate rules for flight where you are, right then and there.
Here’s how it works. The app sends four data fields to a cloud service: Who (operator identifier), What (aircraft identifier), Where (GPS and altitude position) and When (either right now or a scheduled time in the case of autonomous missions). The cloud service then returns a “red light” (flight not allowed), a “green light” (flight allowed, with basic restrictions such as a 400 feet altitude ceiling), or “yellow light” (additional restrictions or warnings, which can be explained to the operator in context and at the point of use).
Right now industry groups such as the Dronecode Foundation, the Small UAV Coalition (I help lead both of them, but this essay just reflects my own personal views) and individual manufacturers such as 3DR and DJI are working on these “safe flight” standards and APIs. Meanwhile, a number of companies such as Airmap and Skyward are building the cloud services to provide the up-to-date third-party data layer that any manufacturer can use. It will start with static no-fly zone data such as proximity to airports, US national parks and other banned airspace such as Washington DC. But it will quickly add dynamic data, too, such as forest fires, public events, and proximity to other aircraft.
There’s Always a Catch
Of course, this system isn’t perfect. It’s only as good as the data it uses, which is still pretty patchy worldwide, and the ways that the manufacturers implement those restrictions. Some drone makers may choose to treat any area five miles from an airport as a hard ban and prohibit all flight in that zone, even at the cost of furious customers who had no idea they were five miles from an airport when they bought that toy at Wal-mart
Peer-to-peer Air Traffic Control
There’s a precedent for such peer-to-peer air traffic control: WiFI. Back in the 1980s, the FCC released spectrum in the 2.4 Ghz band for unlicensed use. A decade later, the first 802.11 standards for Wifi were released, which was based on some principles that have application to drones, too.
Let’s create an innovation “sandbox” with de minimus regulatory barriers for small UAVs flying within very constrained environments. The parameters of the sandbox could be almost anything, as long as they’re clear, but it should be kinetic energy and range based
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bruce V. Bigelow / Xconomy:
Qualcomm acquires Capsule Technologie, a firm linking medical devices with hospitals, which has 1.9K hospital customers in 38 countries
Qualcomm Buys Capsule to Unite Health Data Across Hospital & Home
http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2015/09/14/qualcomm-buys-capsule-to-unite-health-data-across-hospital-home/
Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) said its Qualcomm Life subsidiary has acquired Capsule Technologie, an Andover, MA-based healthtech systems company with more than 1,900 hospital customers in 38 countries. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Capsule, founded in 1997, specializes in software tools that integrate medical devices with software systems used by hospitals and healthcare organizations. The company’s SmartLinx technology supports more than 730 medical devices—collecting medical device data from wherever a patient may be and transmitting it to any information system.
Qualcomm Life is in the same business, although it’s more focused on gathering data from outside of hospitals and clinics. Its core technology is a wireless gateway device that collects and encrypts data transmitted from patients’ medical devices and personal mobile devices, and enables healthcare providers to access the data in the cloud.
Qualcomm Life says it is creating one of the world’s largest open connected health ecosystems to deliver intelligent care by combining its wireless expertise and ecosystem of connected medical devices outside of the hospital with Capsule’s know-how in connecting medical devices, electronic medical records, and IT systems across the hospital enterprise.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Traffic Light Restoration
I restored a real traffic light and have it hanging on my living room wall.
https://hackaday.io/project/7658-traffic-light-restoration
Components
1 × Traffic Light These are kinda hard to come by, but if you keep an eye out you can find them
1 × Electric Imp
1 × SainSmart Relay Board http://amzn.com/B0079WI37Y
1 × Electrical outlet