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:
ARM reveals the Internet of Things security defenses hackers will inevitably learn to evade
TrustZone in microcontrollers and mbed OS waddles on
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/10/arm_trustzone_armv8m_mbed_os/
ARM hopes to make chips in the Internet of Things a little more secure – by adding its TrustZone defenses to its microcontroller blueprints. In effect, ARM is adding some extra hurdles for hackers to leap in order to exploit programming bugs in gadgets’ firmware.
What the heck is TrustZone?
TrustZone is usually found in ARM’s application processor designs – your smartphone’s system-on-chip, for example. It’s been around since the early 2000s, though, first appearing in the ARMv6 ARM11 family well before the smartmobe boom.
It works by splitting the device into two domains: a secure domain and a non-secure domain. Typically, your bells-and-whistles operating system with its huge attack surface and vulnerabilities (cough, Android) runs in the non-secure domain, and the secure domain runs stuff that needs safeguarding: code-signing cryptography and fingerprint sensor drivers, say.
TrustZone acts as a barrier between the two worlds, allowing the non-secure and secure realms to talk to each other, but never allowing the non-secure side to tamper with the secure half – allowing the non-secure zone to trust that the secure zone hasn’t been infiltrated to do anything malicious to the system.
This technology isn’t hacker-proof, not by a long shot: the sort of bugs that turn into security holes in operating systems can crop up in the code running in the secure domains. If there is a buffer overflow or an integer overflow vulnerability in the secure zone’s code, it can be exploited from the non-secure side to infiltrate the protected realm.
ARM’s TrustZone is only as secure as the software running in the safeguarded world – and smartphone firmware developers have managed to turn out some pretty insecure code.
For its microcontroller implementation of the technology, ARM has added some hardware-level defenses against any crap code that ends up in devices. ARM hopes its microcontroller designs end up in plenty of Internet of Things gadgets, so hardwiring extra protections into the mechanism is welcome.
ARM’s new microcontroller architecture is called ARMv8-M, which is not to be confused with ARMv8-A.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CHALLENGES IN THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT)
http://www.techonline.com/electrical-engineers/education-training/tech-papers/4440796/CHALLENGES-IN-THE-INTERNET-OF-THINGS–IOT
The global revenues of the semiconductor industry have been hovering above the USD 300 billion mark for the past few years. The last wave saw the evolution of the end-user semiconductor market from personal computers to mobile devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices will be the next wave powering the growth of the semiconductor industry. However, IoT and other technology trends present multiple challenges including getting the product right first time, power consumption optimization and security to name a few.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet Blackouts by 2020, Warns Nanoelectronics Book
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1328218&
CHIPS 2020 Vol 2: New Vistas in Nanoelectronics looks at the state-of-the-art in nanoelectronics but its most significant finding is at the global scale; that unless changes are made the proliferation of nanoelectronics is set to produce blackout failures of the Internet by 2020 due to a lack of electrical power.
CHIPS 2020 Vol 2: New Vistas in Nanoelectronics looks at the state-of-the-art in nanoelectronics but its most significant finding is at the global scale; that unless changes are made the proliferation of nanoelectronics is set to produce blackout failures of the Internet by 2020 due to a lack of electrical power.
In short, the global population’s eagerness to get itself and everything it owns online is leading to a data explosion that is consuming 40 percent more power every year and the Internet’s power demand could soon rival the world’s available power resources.
This is leading to fears of major Internet blackouts by as soon as 2020. Such blackouts would likely be manifested around global events such as natural or man-made catastrophes or worldwide sports coverage, says the research book’s editor Bernd Hoefflinger.
Two strategies that could delay or avoid the collapse of the Internet are mentioned in the book. One is to introduce charges or taxes levied on excessive use of the Internet to curtail use of what will effectively become a limited resource. The second is to effect a series of 10x order of magnitude changes in the way in which nanoelectronics is designed, manufactured and used.
These nanoelectronic changes mainly focus on digital logic and neural network architectures optimized for power consumption. Mobile Internet data doubles every 18 months, rather like a non-benign version of Moore’s Law, and video data already represents 70 percent of Internet traffic, according to Hoefflinger, so addressing video data is a priority.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ZigBee, Z-Wave, Thread and WeMo: What’s the Difference?
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/smart-home-wireless-network-primer,news-21085.html
But as our homes become “smarter,” we’re seeing a number of competing wireless-network standards. These include not only the familiar Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but others such as Thread, WeMo, ZigBee and Z-Wave. What are the differences among these new standards? Can they coexist in the same household or office?
What a Smart Home Needs
The ideal smart-home gadget would use a wireless transmitter and receiver that required very little power, so that devices could go for months, or even years, without needing a new battery. Its signals would pass through walls and floors inside and outside a home, yet without interfering with other wireless networks.
Signals would be encrypted for security reasons, and the user would be able to easily add devices to the network. All devices on the same network would be able to “talk” to each other. Finally, the standard should be able to handle dozens or even hundreds of devices on a single network.
Standard Wi-Fi consumes a lot of power, so it doesn’t quite fit the bill. Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) is better at conserving power, but is limited in both signal range and number of devices. As a result, other network standards have come into play that fit most or all of these requirements.
Most of these new standards create decentralized “mesh” networks in which each device can communicate directly with any other device within range. If two devices are too far apart, their signals can hop along intermediate devices. Devices can drop in and out of the network without affecting the network’s overall strength.
However, most of these networks also need a “primary” device that serves as a network controller
Tomi Engdahl says:
James Risley / GeekWire:
Amazon Echo coming to 3K+ retail stores in US including Home Depot, Sears, Staples, in smart home push — Amazon Echo coming to traditional retail stores in new smart-home push … Amazon’s strategy to bring its intelligent home speaker to market has been a little … different.
Amazon Echo coming to traditional retail stores in new smart-home push
http://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-echo-coming-to-traditional-retail-stores-in-new-smart-home-push/
Amazon’s strategy to bring its intelligent home speaker to market has been a little … different.
The Echo was first introduced in a promo video more than a month before it started shipping to customers. For a time, Prime members could get one for deep discount, but only if they were selected by Amazon. In June, it finally went on sale to the general public, but only on Amazon.
Today, more than a year after its debut, Amazon announced that the Echo is coming to third-party physical retail stores for the first time.
The Echo will be available at Staples, The Home Depot, Sears, Fred Meyer and various other big box and electronics stores. It’s coming to more than 3,000 retail locations across the U.S. in time for holiday shopping. It will cost the same $179.99 as it does on Amazon’s site.
But by offering the Echo at hardware stores like The Home Depot where many smart home appliances are sold, Amazon and its partners are positioning the Echo as a smart home device.
When coupled with the Alexa Skills Kit and the ability to control smart appliances, Amazon is pushing harder and harder to make the Echo the brains of the future smart home.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Bluetooth will improve in 2016 with up to 4x range, 100% boost in speed, mesh networking support, says Bluetooth Special Interest Group — IoT drives the Bluetooth roadmap: Faster, bigger range, and mesh networking support in 2016 — With the rise of ubiquitous computing and the burgeoning Internet …
IoT drives the Bluetooth roadmap: Faster, bigger range, and mesh networking support in 2016
http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/11/iot-drives-the-bluetooth-roadmap-faster-bigger-range-and-mesh-networking-support-in-2016/
With the rise of ubiquitous computing and the burgeoning Internet of things (IoT), the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced some big changes for Bluetooth to help support the growing demand for connectivity.
The group has now given a preview of what’s to come in 2016 and beyond, and it said that Bluetooth LE, or Bluetooth “Smart” as it’s branded, will increase its range by four times, up from its current limit of around 330 feet (though it can theoretically extend further). This will mean a Wi-Fi-connected device in the home, for example, could pair and transfer data with devices much further away, such as at the bottom of the garden or at the street corner.
Furthermore, a “100% increase in speed” has been promised — without the need for more energy to power the increase. This could have major ramifications for applications across many use cases that require low latency, such as home health care.
But perhaps one of the most interesting developments in the pipeline is support for mesh networking.
“There is significant demand from our members and the industry at large to enhance Bluetooth with the new capabilities we’re announcing today,” said Toby Nixon, chairman of the Bluetooth SIG board of directors. “Current projections put the market potential for IoT between $2 and $11.1 trillion by 2025. The technical updates planned for Bluetooth technology in 2016 will help make these expectations a reality and accelerate growth in IoT.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huawei predicts the ‘superphone’ by 2020
http://www.zdnet.com/article/huawei-predicts-the-superphone-by-2020/
The natural evolution of the smartphone will lead to the superphone being developed by 2020, according to Huawei, which will further digitalise lives by tying in with 5G and the IoT.
Chinese technology giant Huawei has announced its vision for the next generation of the smartphone: The “superphone”, which will further integrate the physical with the digital world, where everything that can be connected will be connected.
According to Huawei, the smartphone-to-superphone evolution will take place within a 12-year cycle similar to the one that saw Motorola invent the first feature phone in 1995 and Apple end that cycle by inventing the first smartphone in 2007.
Following this established 12-year trend, the superphone will be developed by 2020, argued Shao Yang
“Inspired by the biological evolution, the mobile phone we currently know will come to life as the superphone,”
“The intelligence of the superphone will continue to evolve and develop itself into digital intelligence, capable of empowering us with interactions with the world. Through evolution and adaptation, the superphone will be more intelligent, enhancing and even transforming our perceptions, enabling humans to go further than ever before.”
The Chinese company said the superphone will take advantage of advancements in big data, cloud computing, and digital intelligence by tying in with the Internet of Things (IoT), where all physical things are digitalised.
Huawei said it is already working towards building the IoT by developing intelligence technologies such as big data analytics, software-defined networking, digital intelligence, and circumstantial intelligence platforms; connection technologies including IoT platforms and multi-device network standards; perception technologies as sensors, object recognition, and 3D scanning; and interactivity technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality.
The company also announced plans to invest an extra $600 million into 5G technology research and development so it can launch its 5G network by 2020, which will be 100 times faster than speeds reached on 4G.
“With our commitment to creating value through innovation, Huawei has driven the technology industry by focusing on ecosystem, alliance, and partnerships,” Shao said.
“From smartphones, connected cars, wearables, to smart cities, mobile technology innovation continues to evolve, profoundly changing the relationship between humans and the world.
“Thanks to the extensive application of our cloud computing, storage, agile network, and other flagship products and solutions in the smart city, finance, education, and ISP markets in and outside of China, our growth in the enterprise business began to pick up in the first half of this year.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Securing Your IoT Processor Based System
http://www.techonline.com/electrical-engineers/education-training/webinars/4440747/Securing-Your-IoT-Processor-Based-System?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20151112&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20151112&elq=6cf6ce40634048ffb0d9c98ef5a3ada5&elqCampaignId=25686&elqaid=29234&elqat=1&elqTrackId=d6f644d8d27f4817b150b5aa220a1f2e
There is an increasing concern about the amount of information stored on or transmitted from IoT edge devices and the ability to protect personal and corporate data. This concern is driving demand for security in SoCs targeting the IoT market, but unfortunately the size and power constraints for these devices make implementing required security features challenging.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brand New Solution for Medical and Healthcare Markets
http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/socionext/brand-new-solution-for-medical-and-healthcare-markets/
Socionext Inc. will be showing its state-of-the-art solution named “viewphii” for ultrasound imaging at MEDICA in Düsseldorf, Germany, November 16-19.
Socionext has miniaturized a conventional ultrasound imaging machine for medical use down to passport size and made it completely cableless
The “viewphii” solution is composed of three elements, all of which have been developed by Socionext: a hand-held device, a tablet application to monitor image data, and a cloud system to save the acquired data.
The whole solution, with the tablet application and cloud system, offers virtually no waiting time, and allows users to utilize the measurement data anywhere, anytime.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Security and spoofing in the IoT Internet of Everything
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440816/Security-and-spoofing-in-the-IoT-Internet-of-Everything?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20151112&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20151112&elq=800f5e14c6c94569a99ed99dbf80d1a8&elqCampaignId=25702&elqaid=29251&elqat=1&elqTrackId=d92301192c9040be8691140ecfa14379
It’s the Internet of Everything, this concept of a truly connected world through IoT (Internet of Things) where all the things talk to all the other things through a connected network. That, of course, has great benefits on the surface but it creates its own unique problems, king of which is security.
What can be created in this IoT Internet of Everything structure is an environment of “spoofing,” as Atmel’s Senior Marketing Manager for security products Ron Ih described this week at ARM TechCon in Santa Clara. Spoofing happens when security is breached through a lower level system on a shared IoT network. For example, when a Zigbee-enabled light switch, with little or no security, is included on the same IoT network as a personal computer with banking information on it. The network may be encrypted but the intruder is on it through the easily hacked light switch, also encrypted, and the network now believes the hacker is encrypted.
“Security really comes down to protecting an entire ecosystem,” says Ih. With that in mind, Atmel announced at ARM TechCon a certified-ID security platform that the company says prevents unauthorized reconfiguration of an edge node to access protected resources on the network. The platform is available on the Atmel SmartConnect Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Smart, and ZigBee technologies that connect directly to Atmel Cloud partners for an IoT edge node-to-cloud secure connection.
In short, the platform aims to counter flaws when secure identities are created through a centralized approach and IoT device keys and certificates are generated offline and managed in secure databases in Hardware Security Modules to protect the keys.
ARM itself is also looking at security in this age of IoT and Internet of Everything.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth SIG hints at 2016 roadmap
Faster, further, and with mesh networking
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/13/bluetooth_sig_2016_roadmap/
Crackers and hackers will no longer need to get up close and personal with Bluetooth devices to launch attacks: the next iteration of the standard will get a fourfold increase in range.
The Bluetooth SIG is previewing a bunch of changes it plans for 2016, and it’s drunk deeply from the Internet of Things Kool-Aid bottle.
Citing predictions that the IoT market will be worth between US$2 trillion and $11.5 trillion by 2025 – a handsome error bar if ever there was one – the SIG’s canned statement says the technology will also get mesh networking and higher speeds.
The group says Bluetooth will get a speed doubling at the same power as the current spec.
Mesh networking will be particularly attractive, the SIG hopes, in home applications, letting devices pass on each others’ messages so they stay connected even when they’re on the move.
The speed-and-mesh combination, the group hopes, will also give the technology a bigger footprint in industrial and medical applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacked Amazon Echo Controls a Wheelchair
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/11/12/2223217/hacked-amazon-echo-controls-a-wheelchair
An anonymous reader writes with a cool hack for making an electric wheelchair voice activated. Robotics Trends reports: “Amazon Echo, which is designed around your voice, answers to ‘Alexa’ and can tell you scores, read your book, play your music, or check your calendar. And if you have a smart home, Echo can control lights and other technology. Bob Paradiso, however, wondered if he ‘could push Echo’s utility a little further.’ He certainly did. Paradiso turned an electric wheelchair into a voice-controlled wheelchair using Echo, a Raspberry Pi and Arduino Uno.
Hacked Amazon Echo Controls a Wheelchair
Watch as Amazon Echo thinks it turning lights on and off as it’s really controlling a wheelchair.
http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/hacked_amazon_echo_controls_a_wheelchair
Tomi Engdahl says:
Write-Once Memory Speeds Up, Powers Down Reads
10X reduction in power from eNVM
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328234&
Embedded nonvolatile memory (eNVM) IP company Kilopass Technology Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) is using Y2K-era technology to target the low-power, data-heavy Internet of Things. Using 10-times less power than other eNVM memories, Kilopass’s Gusto eNVM line, showing at ARM TechCon (Santa Clara, Calif.) this week, uses one-time programmable nonvolatile memory to reduce read power.
One-time programmable (OTP) nonvolatile memory (NVM)–a type of NVM that has been around for years, holding data such as the security ID for TV set-top boxes and repair data for DRAM–can track historical data streams more cheaply, making them perfect for IoT sensors, infrastructure tracking, and wearables, according Kilopass. Kilopass has patented one-transistor (1T), 1.5T, 2T, 3T, and 3.5T antifuse nonvolatile bit-cells, also known as OTP, since 2001.
NVMs are now in many IoT devices, but Kilopass says it is cutting eNVM read power by 10-times and enabling consumer IoT device to keep a permanent, one-time programmable (OTP) memory of everything, from a baby’s first Ma-Ma to a life record as viewed by a Go-Pro.
“The new X2Bit bit-cell uses ohmic programming of its N-MOS transistors and controls the location of oxide breakdown in the region of the source and drain region rather than in the middle of the channel, enabling us to achieve our 10-times lower power goal,”
Kilopass says all other components are going down in energy except memory, underlining the importance of its ultra-low power eNVM
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ambiq Leaps to Front of Low-Power MCU Lineup
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328252&
With so much development for the Internet of Things (IoT) targeting battery-powered operation, it’s no wonder that microcontroller vendors have been engaging in a game of low-power leapfrog with one another, vying for the title of best in low-power performance. But with the announcement of verified EEMBC ULPBench benchmark results for Ambiq Micro’s Apollo MCU at ARM TechCon this week, that game may be all but won. The Cortex M4F-based Apollo MCU achieved twice the score of the prior title holder.
ULPBench is an industry-standard means of measuring MCU energy efficiency that mimics typical low-power system behavior. The benchmark works in conjunction with a standardized hardware device that monitors the MCU’s energy consumption.
Results posted on the EEMBC website show the prior leader in low power performance was the STMicroelectronics STM32L476RG MCU with a score of 187.7. Ambiq Micro held a public demonstration at ARM TechCon of its Apollo MCU achieving a whopping 377.5.
The secret behind Apollo’s performance is the unique subthreshold technology that Ambiq has developed. Rather than having the device’s logic transistors switching between saturation and off states, Ambiq’s transistors operate exclusively at voltages that remain below the switching threshold. As a result they use up to 10x less current than conventional transistors when changing logic states.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is That Google In Your Pants?
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/13/is-that-google-in-your-pants/
Google’s Project Jacquard is tackling the age old gap between controlling your electronic device and touching yourself. They are doing this by weaving conductive thread into clothing in the form of a touch pad. In partnership with Levi Strauss & Co., Google has been designing and producing touch interfaces that are meant to be used by developers however they see fit.
conductive touch interface can be designed as a visibly noticeable difference in material or seamlessly woven into a garment.
Introducing Project Jacquard
https://www.google.com/atap/project-jacquard/
Project Jacquard makes it possible to weave touch and gesture interactivity into any textile using standard, industrial looms.
Everyday objects such as clothes and furniture can be transformed into interactive surfaces.
Jacquard yarn structures combine thin, metallic alloys with natural and synthetic yarns like cotton, polyester, or silk, making the yarn strong enough to be woven on any industrial loom.
Jacquard yarns are indistinguishable from the traditional yarns that are used to produce fabrics today.
Using conductive yarns, bespoke touch and gesture-sensitive areas can be woven at precise locations, anywhere on the textile.
Alternatively, sensor grids can be woven throughout the textile, creating large, interactive surfaces.
The complementary components are engineered to be as discreet as possible.
Captured touch and gesture data is wirelessly transmitted to mobile phones or other devices to control a wide range of functions, connecting the user to online services, apps, or phone features.
LEDs, haptics, and other embedded outputs provide feedback to the user, seamlessly connecting them to the digital world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WiFi Propane Remote Monitoring: Tank Utility
http://postscapes.com/wifi-propane-remote-monitoring-tank-utility
Like it or not, winter is on the way, and those of us in the northern latitudes know what that means: it’s time to start worrying about home heating. But maybe some of us will get to worry less this season, thanks to the wireless propane tank monitors being developed by Tank Utility.
Homeowners that rely on propane for heating have to be careful to keep their tanks full before the worst of winter hits. Running out of heat mid-blizzard not only bad for the residents, it can cause catastrophic damage to buildings when pipes freeze and burst. The danger is especially high for rental properties and vacation homes, which may not get checked on as frequently.
Tank Utility solves that problem with a simple, wireless smart meter. It relies on the fact that large propane tanks already have a mechanical sensor inside: a floating magnet that reports the level via a dumb guage. Tank Utility provides a Hall effect sensor to convert the float’s analogue data into a digital signal, which is transmitted over WiFi by a small transmitter that attaches to the outside of the tank or a nearby building.
Because most propane tanks are outdoors and subject to extremes of temperature and weather, the Tank Utility transmitter is built like, well…a tank. It’s rated for temperatures from -40 to 120 F, and the enclosure is fully waterproof. Three AA batteries provide power for up to three years.
An open Rest API will let developers link the meter up with other home automation products, and there’s a stretch goal in Tank Utility’s Kickstarter campaign to add support for IFTTT.
Tomi Engdahl says:
International Telecommunication Union ITU indicates that the frequency range of 1087.7 to 1092.3 MHz is allocated to continuous monitoring of aircraft.
In the past, these ADS-B frequencies (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) is used for communication between the aircraft and ground stations LOS connections (line-of-sight), or a link operates as between aircraft and the ground station is line of sight. 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface has been the ADS-B out of reach.
Continuous monitoring of aircraft frequencies set in the ongoing WRC15 radio at the meeting.
In 2017 the ADS-B receivers satellites will be moving the ADS-B signals of all the earth fly the aircraft control towers throughout the world. This makes all aircraft equipped with ADS-B transmitter business data practically in real time.
The solution enables aircraft can be monitored on the high seas, deserts, polar regions and mountainous areas, where the machines have so far been outside the radar field of view.
In addition, the system increases the information on aircraft movements can therefore help to optimize the machines air routes.
In the United States each aircraft must be installed in the transmitter at the latest in 2020.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3595:lentokoneiden-jatkuva-seuranta-sai-taajuudet&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Despite the sad story of Lumia, Microsoft is keen to talk up the role of Windows on other small devices. There are two sides to the company’s IoT (Internet of Things) play. One is Azure as a back-end for IoT data, both for storage and analytics. The other is Windows 10 IoT Core, which runs on devices such as Raspberry Pi.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/13/decoding_future_decoded_microsoft_sets_out_its_stall/?page=2
Tomi Engdahl says:
LoRaWAN certification
http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2015/11/lorawan-certification.html
Lora Alliance All Member Meeting & Open house took place in Rotterdam this week. The board of alliance acknowledged Espotel and IMST as the first official certification test houses.
Press release:
The LoRa Alliance Launches the LoRaWAN™ Certification Program End Device Interoperability to Enable Global Scalability for the IoT
https://www.lora-alliance.org/kbdetail/Contenttype/ArticleDet/moduleId/583/Aid/50/PR/PR
SAN RAMON, Calif. – November 10th, 2015 – The LoRa Alliance is one of the fastest growing Internet of Things (IoT) alliances. It has drawn over 130 members since March 2015 and today announced the launch of the LoRaWAN™ Certification Program. The launch announcement was made at the 3rd European Open House Meeting in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and will ensure interoperability between end devices and LoRaWAN™ networks.
The LoRa® Alliance has a mission to ensure that the open LoRaWAN™ specification for secure, carrier grade, low power wide area networks (LPWAN) will enable all end devices to behave in a predetermined way when connected to a LoRaWAN™ network and interoperate with all gateway products. The Certification Program will provide assurance to end customers that their application-specific end devices will operate on any LoRaWAN™ network, which is a crucial requirement for the global deployment of the IoT using LPWANs.
The scope of the Certification Program will be to confirm that the end device meets the functional requirements of the LoRaWAN™ protocol specification, and will include a suite of tests that are specified in the LoRa® Alliance End Device Certification Requirements document. A device manufacturer must be a member the LoRa® Alliance to be LoRa® Certified and must use one of the accredited LoRa® Certification test houses to do the functional protocol testing.
Two LoRa® Alliance members, IMST and Espotel, both respected test houses, have already implemented test suites to perform the testing and are accredited by the LoRa® Alliance. Both companies also offer RF or regulatory compliance testing and additional services for the end devices if required. “LoRa® is one of the most promising radio technologies for IoT solutions and we see plenty of great opportunities for this technology in Industry, utilities and logistics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tips to get funding for your IoT product idea
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440828/Tips-to-get-funding-for-your-IoT-product-idea?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151113&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151113&elq=74710de12abe4c128ce1c3aaeded0962&elqCampaignId=25729&elqaid=29300&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0a8477667da0442fa30d62c5d2acf57c
At ARM TechCon 2015, Eric Klein offered his perspectives during a keynote on what venture capitalists are looking to fund in IoT as well as some of the technology challenges that are slowing down innovation. Klein is a partner in Lemnos Labs, an early-stage hardware investment fund based in San Francisco, CA.
Klein shared what ideas have been overdone in the consumer market: smart watches, step counters, smart home hubs, thermostats, and anything that helps you grow “food” in your homes. Frankly, venture capitalists (VCs) are looking for new ideas in the consumer market.
So what kinds of ideas are most likely to get funded? Products for the industrial/enterprise market are very appealing to VCs. Klein shared what is getting VCs excited in the IoT industrial/enterprise market saying, “Businesses will pay for efficiency gains.” He gave an example of a waste management company that could reduce its fleet of trucks by 1/3 just by adding sensors to dumpsters. Klein added, “There are multi-billion and trillion dollar opportunities still untapped.” These are the kinds of products that VCs are getting behind—ones that can significantly drive down costs and/or add revenue opportunities. Another reason to consider a product in this market: enterprise and commercial companies have money to pay for your product.
Klein closed his talk with a list of what VCs look for in the projects they fund:
Team, team, team: smart passionate folks who believe in the idea so much it is contagious
Understanding of the target market value chain: what part of the dollar are you going to get
Proven ability to create a physical product and complex systems: what have you made
Plan to get to profitable unit economics: have a clear path to opportunity
Perhaps the biggest challenge to the IoT entrepreneur is not the “big idea” or even funding, but instead it is the lack of toolkits to help link the IoT device into a network, analyze the data, and keep it secure. IoT entrepreneurs are forced to become network, data, and security architect experts. “Without these tool chains,” Klein said, “it’s no wonder why they fail.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future is stupid
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440829/The-future-is-stupid?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151113&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20151113&elq=74710de12abe4c128ce1c3aaeded0962&elqCampaignId=25729&elqaid=29300&elqat=1&elqTrackId=8f0693e980b34503a519ee8d8468768b
Right now, the future is stupid and IoT, or, more specifically, less than perceptive engineering, is to blame. That was generally the theme of the ARM TechCon closing keynote with Google Developer Advocate Colt McAnlis. But there’s good news: It’s not too late to change course.
“This Internet of Things is not built for the Internet of things,” he said. “But we can still save ourselves.”
McAnlis’ first concern is power efficiency and how we may be duping smartphone users; smartphones being the primary device for IoT today. “All this networking isn’t free. These things all draw power. All of the [IoT] operations cost the battery something,” he said. And, as IoT is now, really our devices are only networking from point to point. “As far as consumers are concerned, battery life is everything,” he said.
“We are building the Internet of Things on technology we have. We need new IoT technology. We need an Internet for the Internet of Things,” he said.
Better data compression also comes into call, more so than media compression, McAnlis believes. This could combine to slow connections, more battery drain, and higher cost to users with every bit counting, he said.
“Let us not kill this [IoT] before it starts,” he beseeched. “It has such great potential to help humanity and connect us. Make the right engineering decisions for the consumer.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Embedded systems face design, power, security challenges
http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4440758/Embedded-systems-face-design–power–and-security-challenges-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20151109&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20151109&elq=8f262274cea14fcb905f80c54dd0c35b&elqCampaignId=25616&elqaid=29155&elqat=1&elqTrackId=47132a81d02343df8a88b87547789381
As the market for embedded systems grows dramatically, all eyes are turning to embedded systems designers who are tasked with combining microprocessors, connectivity, and operating systems that span a wide range of applications from the tiniest IoT device to those embedded in large networking systems.
According to IDC, the market for intelligent systems will grow from 1.4 billion units this year to more than 2.2 billion in 2019. While marketers and financiers may be salivating over the prospects for revenue, what does this really mean for the embedded system designer? From my armchair view, I could easily guess that these challenges likely center on the perennial challenges that electrical engineering designs face: size, cost, power, and time to market.
Design
The biggest design concerns Shore sees are “getting to grips with multicore platforms, implementing secure systems in IoT, resilient and reliable programming, and energy efficient development.” To be sure, these are topics that are regularly addressed in embedded trade journals and conferences. Considering the entire development cycle, Prestridge points to shortened time to market versus increased design functionality as a critical challenge.
Power
But what about energy efficiency? It’s not just engineers who are working on battery operated devices that are being tasked like never before to reduce power consumption and look for creative power sourcing options. Prestridge notes that over the last 10 years, the green engineering movement has caused all teams to be concerned about their products carbon footprint, regardless of whether they will be battery operated or plugged in to the wall.
One of the classic trade-offs is between power and performance. How is this being addressed in embedded design? Shore offers some tips:
• carefully architect software to take advantage of the facilities provided by the hardware
• ensure that you understand exactly what the hardware is doing at all times
• have a deep knowledge of power saving facilities provided by your platform
• design your software (from algorithms down to machine code) carefully and conscientiously
• design interrupt handlers carefully
Security
You cannot seem to have a conversation about the IoT these days without discussing security or the latest automobile hack. Shore notes that the challenges of security in the IoT need to be met not only in hardware and architecture, but also in software design. As time goes on, “security is only going to become more important for us,” adds Shore.
Looking Ahead
Shore offers some parting advice: “Modern embedded systems are now, in many cases, as complex as the desktop systems of 5 years ago. The embedded developer needs to understand and utilize design and coding techniques that were the exclusive province of the desktop community only a few years ago. There is only so far that the tools can take you in this and developers have a huge task to educate themselves about things like superscalar processors, out-of-order memory, caches, multicore platforms etc.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 tips for building connected devices
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-basics/4440794/5-tips-for-building-connected-devices?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20151116&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20151116&elq=2cc0b049d91a4c8bb3ca26407a2f3fed&elqCampaignId=25737&elqaid=29308&elqat=1&elqTrackId=422b661d2ec94b1c8c3faaa731eb53c2
The number of embedded devices connected to the internet is rising at an incredible rate. Some engineers have been designing connected devices for over a decade while others are just beginning to jump into the fray. Adding connectivity involves more than simply bolting on a radio, though, so here are five tips for building a connected device.
Tip #1 – Don’t neglect security
Tip #2 – Use third-party software components
Tip #3 – Utilize an existing IoT platform
Tip #4 – Only use proven standards
Tip #5 – Optimize for team strengths
Today’s engineers live in an exciting time. The world around us is quickly becoming alive through automation and connected devices. In the not too distant future nearly every electronic device will be connected allowing a nearly seamless and automated environment in which humans will work and live. Embedded software engineers are at the center of this amazing transition and these five tips are just the tip of the iceberg.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MEMS for Million-Dollar Horses
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328262&
Two years ago cows entered the Internet of Things (IoT) when Dairymaster’s MooMonitor began tracking the herds, monitoring each cow’s activity, letting them in and out of automatic doors and detecting when they are ovulating. Now in 2015 Horse Sense’s Pegasus is doing the same thing, and more, for horses.
Pegasus are MEMS-based devices attached on a horse’s tail that sense everything the cow’s collar (MooMonitor) does plus the horse’s temperature, which is especially important for high value horses. There are about 250 million cows worldwide, but only 59 million horses. However, the average worth of the equine population is much higher than the bovine population. Horses bred for racing can be worth millions of dollars.
The tough thing about keeping horses healthy is that their temperature needs to be measured multiple times per week, and the only reliable way to do it is with a rectal thermometer. You would think that they would get used to this, but they don’t.
With the Pegasus MEMS system, however, a temperature measurement is made every time the horse passes flatulence, which anybody who has been around horses knows is many times a day.
The official name of Horse Sense is Horse Sense Shoes LLC (a division of HSS Global Group Inc., Wayzata, Minn.) because their original idea was to put the sensor in the horses shoes, which turned out not to be the right place
Tomi Engdahl says:
Challenges to Widespread IoT deployment
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328211&
Immediate opportunities for the highly anticipated IoT market are not in consumer applications, but in industrial IoT and security it demands.
I came away with two distinct impressions.
One was that while we hear a lot about IoT in consumer applications like refrigerator or toaster oven connected to Internet etc., the immediate and bigger opportunity seems to be in industrial and commercial applications.
The second was that security will be a key factor in the growth of IoT in various vertical markets. From the security point of view, we can only say to what extent a system will be secure as nothing connected online will be fool proof against a smart and determined hacker.
Jesse DeMesa, Software CTO at GE sees the Internet of Things being deployed in energy, transportation and medicine. His vision is of the convergence of the physical and analytical worlds made possible by sensors tied to cloud computing.
GE alone has tens of thousands wind turbines, locomotives, and jet engines, as well as hundreds of medical image scanners. Each can contain hundreds of sensing devices monitoring critical operational functions and reporting this information to the cloud.
Deriving value from this deluge of data the Internet of Things is producing is the challenge to established and newly emerging companies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Optimizing Crop Yield With IoT
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/16/optimizing-crop-yield-with-iot/
For a recent hackathon, a group of strangers (now friends!) created Crop Squares — a system designed to optimize crop yield by better tracking weather and soil conditions.
The event was hosted in Madrid called Future Hacks Internet of Things Edition, with the goal to build disruptive IoT solutions to help change the world. In 54 hours.
The concept behind crop squares is to make a graphical user interface using Dizmo that clearly shows the status of your crops in a grid system. For the prototype they used an Arduino Pro Mini with moisture sensors in potted plants to detect moisture levels, while a Raspberry Pi also collected weather data for the area being watched. The Arduino used an ESP8266 WiFi module to transmit the data remotely.
Crop Squares – Optimize Irrigation of Crop Fields
https://github.com/fauria/crop-squares/blob/master/README.md
Tomi Engdahl says:
Audio-coupled Smoke Alarm Interface Sends Texts, Emails
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/16/audio-coupled-smoke-alarm-interface-sends-texts-emails/
The Internet of Things is getting to be a big business. Google’s Nest brand is part of the trend, and they’re building a product line that fills niches and looks good doing it, including the Nest Protect smoke and CO detector. It’s nice to get texts and emails if your smoke alarm goes off, but if you’d rather not spend $99USD for the privilege, take a look at this $10 DIY smoke alarm interface.
The secret to keeping the cost of [Team SimpleIOThings’] interface at a minimum is leveraging both the dirt-cheap ESP8266 platform and the functionality available on If This Then That. And to keep the circuit as simple and universal as possible, the ESP2866 dev board is interfaced to an existing smoke detector with a simple microphone sensor.
$10 DIY Wifi Smoke Alarm Notifier (Roost & Nest Alternative) (Full Tutorial)
http://www.simpleiothings.com/10-diy-wifi-smoke-alarm-notifier-roost-nest-alternative-full-tutorial/
However with the emergence of IoT devices, now there are some cool products on the market right now that will send you a smartphone notification when your smoke detector goes off.
Nest Smoke Alarm + Carbon Monoxide Monitor ($99, Nov 2015) – A replacement for the traditional smoke alarm that sends an alert to your phone when it detects smoke.
Roost Smoke Detector Smart Battery ($40, Nov 2015) – 9V Battery you can install in any traditional smoke detector, which will notify you via a smartphone app if your alarm is going off. Battery lasts for 5 years, at which point the non-smart portion of the device needs replacement.
These look like great devices, but for some consumers they will be too expensive. Especially if you need multiple devices, it starts to get very expensive very fast. What if I told you you could build yourself a simple sound sensor that sends you a smartphone notification, SMS, and even call your phone when your current smoke detector rings. You could also build this for about $10 bucks. If that sounds interesting to you, read on!
I know you’ve seen these types of tutorials on the internet before, and usually they say something like, just buy a breadboard, soldering iron, breakout board, serial adapter, etc. etc. and after you’ve spent about $50 dollars you can build a cheap Internet of Things (IoT) device. Well, sorry internet. We nerds sometimes forget that most people don’t really have these things lying around. That’s why I built this website around the idea that IoT devices can be built without coding knowledge, soldering, or complicated prototyping.
One of the reasons why IoT devices can be built so easily now is because of the ESP8266 development board. IoT enthusiasts have been excited about the ESP8266 because its a full system on a chip (SoC) that has onboard wifi connectivity that can cost as low as 3 dollars. The IoT community has been building with Raspberry Pi and Arduino microcomputers for a while now, and while capable these computers cost up to $35 dollars, don’t have onboard wifi, and aren’t easily powered with common ports like microusb. The standalone ESP8266 chip is great, but doesn’t have an easy to use power supply and it’s hard to configure without special cables.
To make building IoT devices both easy and cheap, I recommend using the ESP8266 development board.
The Wifi Smoke Alarm Notifier, and all of the projects on SimpleIOThings use an internet service called If This Then That (IFTTT). IFTTT executes an action, like sending an SMS or posting a Tweet, when an event takes place.
Using the Maker Channel
For SimpleIOThings projects we’re going to use IFTTT recipes that use the Maker Channel. The Maker Channel allows people to create recipes that interact with DIY devices. The DIY devices you can build using tutorials from SimpleIOThings will send messages over the internet to the IFTTT Maker Channel, which then triggers actions like phone calls and SMS messages. The Maker Channel can also send messages to DIY devices to trigger actions on the device as well.
Once you connect to the Maker Channel, take note of your “Maker Key,” which is an alphanumeric code that identifies you and your DIY devices when they send web messages. You can jot it down somewhere, or you can always go back to https://ifttt.com/maker to find it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analyst: Slow ROI stalling adoption of commercial building automation systems
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/11/abi-buidling-automation-revs.html?cmpid=EnlCIMCablingNewsNovember162015&eid=289644432&bid=1234423
According to a new study by ABI Research, the commercial building automation market will experience steady but incremental growth over the next 5 years, generating $45 billion by 2021. The analyst states that Europe will be the biggest market in terms of revenues for the segment, followed by North America and Asia Pacific in 2021.
The report notes that big four building automation OEMs, namely Honeywell, Schneider Electric, Johnson Controls and Siemens, have more than 60% market share, and a strong influence in the market. Notably, the study finds one factor holding back adoption is the slow return on investment for building owners, due to the high cost of installing building automation systems.
In hospitality, the short refurbishment cycles in hotels are reportedly becoming a lucrative market for solution providers to upgrade or replace existing systems with more intelligent systems to improve the overall customer experience. In healthcare, increasing regulatory and compliance requirements are driving the use of connected medical devices to improve auditability in the use of high value moveable assets, and to control environments to improve patient comfort.
“The Internet of Things and its adoption in consumer markets has a noticeable impact in the traditionally conservative industry with distributed intelligence and cloud-based analytics gaining acceptance,” comments Adarsh Krishnan, senior analyst at ABI Research.
The analyst concludes that, as the market continues to witness a gradual shift towards more integrated solutions, there is wider acceptance for interoperable systems that foster innovative applications to optimize building environment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Long-range, low-power wireless network system suits industrial, commercial applications
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2015/11/long-range-low-power-wireless-network-system-suits-industrial-commercial-applications.html?cmpid=EnlCIMCablingNewsNovember162015&eid=289644432&bid=1234423
As seen at Wireless Design & Development (WDD), the Cellio LoRa long-range low-power wireless network system provides end-to-end automation and instrumentation monitoring in factories, farms, warehouses, transportation, agriculture, and many other industries. The Cellio wireless gateways and transceivers use LoRa (Long Range radio, approximately 1 mile) technology to connect sensors and controllers wirelessly to the network.
These gateway devices connect to internal and external networks, the Internet, and cloud data systems via CDMA-Cellular, GSM-Cellular, or Wi-Fi 802.11bgn systems. “This low-cost and easy to install system enables companies to gain visibility into their operations and assets (sensors, instruments, equipment, location, usage, status, decision making, supply chain, operator indicators, etc.),” notes a Cellio press release. The gateways can be used stand-alone or configured with transceivers to optimize architecture, data transmission, and connections.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Six IIoT, Industry 4.0 key findings
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/six-iiot-industry-40-key-findings/81818224e0d08e6347fd955277e0a3db.html
Respondents to the Control Engineering 2015 Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Industry 4.0, Information Integration Study identified six high-level findings on their attributes and how familiar they are with the technology and the concepts.
Familiarity: Fifty-nine percent of respondents identified as being “very” or “somewhat” familiar with the IIoT framework, compared to 29% being not very familiar and 12% not at all familiar. Only one-third of respondents identified as being “very” or “somewhat” familiar with the Industry 4.0 platform, compared to 36% being not very familiar and 31% not at all familiar.
IIoT attributes: According to respondents, the most useful IIoT framework attributes to their organizations are interoperability and open standards connecting people, processes, and data (79%); as well as security (75%).
Industry 4.0 attributes: Realtime capabilities (83%), interoperability (80%), and modularity (78%)
Funding levels: On average, respondents expect funding levels to increase 32% as a result of IIoT and Industry 4.0 discussions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automation enterprises invest in cloud technologies
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/automation-enterprises-invest-in-cloud-technologies/1eeb4626e331ab287a6ceff170dadefa.html
Facing new demands from manufacturers and the latest developments in the Internet of Things, enterprises in industrial automation begin to invest in cloud technology.
With the popularization of cloud storage technology in commercial fields, consumers are accustomed to enjoying information in the cloud in smart phones, tablet PCs, and laptops. The cloud provides flexible and convenient information transmission. It works like an invisible USB with unlimited capacity.
Just like commercial fields, the recognition of the cloud by the manufacturing industry is also quietly changing. The industry went from having doubts and concerns over safety of using a cloud platform to realizing value in cloud-based asset management, historical data analysis, industrial business flow optimization, remote real-time access, better energy efficiency management, more cost cutting, and efficiency improvements.
IDC, a market research organization, said the global cloud-computing infrastructure grew by 25.1% and reached $6.3 billion in first-quarter 2015. The expenditure of private cloud and the expenditure of public cloud grew by 24.4% and 25.5% respectively, year over year.
Relevant data from the China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology indicated that the fastest growing information technology service industry of China in the first half of 2015 was service business with cloud and big data as representatives. The growth rate reached 22.1%. It was undoubtedly a new blue ocean as far as “new normality” of China’s economy was concerned.
Facing the new demands from manufacturing users, leading enterprises in industrial automation also are giving increasing attention to cloud services. As a promoter of the concept of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), GE formally declared a plan to enter into the cloud service market through the Predix cloud, an industrial Internet cloud platform exclusively developed for Predix. It is said to be the first cloud solution developed and designed exclusively for collection and analysis of industrial data.
“All technologies for construction of a cloud platform are basically mature in terms of content. The challenges are information security and depth of industrial application,”
Today, industrial enterprises are starting to adopt cloud technologies for big-data-based intelligent manufacturing through data sharing, assets management, remote monitoring, and information analysis.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart data and 5G are critical to enable the Industrial Internet of Things
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/smart-data-and-5g-are-critical-to-enable-the-industrial-internet-of-things/b51f83b3a47a388c09cf91437aa9aa22.html
NI Days 2015 Chicago highlighted the latest advances in platform-based technologies and 5G research to overcome escalating complexity and expand the Internet of Things (IoT). Smart data was also a main focus at the event, featuring methods to better save data for analysis and future applications. The National Instruments event was held on Oct. 15 at Navy Pier, Chicago.
According to John Graff, vice president of corporate marketing at National Instruments, there are five key areas where IoT is implemented in the industrial sector, where the concept is called the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT):
Smart measurements
Smart test systems
Smart grid
Smart machines
Smart power generation.
Smart measurement is important especially in mechanical and electromechanical systems due to the large amount of data created in the process. Today, using traditional measuring methods, only 22% of the data collected during the process is good enough to be analyzed, and only 5% of the data is actually analyzed. With the small portion of analyzed data, critical decisions and business analysis are difficult to make. To use big analog data more efficiently, smart measurements need to be enabled.
The first step to enable smart measurement is to save and identify measurable data from machines. With the rising complexity of wireless tests due to the increasing use of 5G, Cellular, global position systems (GPS), near-field communication (NFC), Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1), and IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks, smart wireless test systems, and software are needed. With the right architecture, the smart testing system will look like a set of “systems of systems” that accommodates multiple standards, ports, and devices that allow data to flow among machines testing tools, smart grids, the computers, cloud, and smart phones.
Smart power grid, smart power generation
Another important area of IIoT is related to smart grid and power generation. According to McDonell, there is a strong correlation between the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of a country and its electricity consumption per capita, showing the impact of electricity on an economy. Smart data and smart measurement enable better scheduling of the power grid machines’ uptime and freezes machines at peak power consumption to achieve higher utilization of energy.
An example in India using such a power grid allows 100 MW to serve 250,000 homes. It’s an example of taking existing grids, applying smart measurements, and optimizing them to get better results. To show the impact of energy efficiency improvement, McDonell stated that 1% of industry efficiency savings means the saving of $66 billion in equipment fuel, $27 billion in rail productivity, $90 billion in oil and gas capital expenditure, or $30 billion in aviation fuel.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Connectivity, security, mobility: Integrating modern controls
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/connectivity-security-mobility-integrating-modern-controls/2138fa1832f404089ed9b8def6fee6b5.html
OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) when built into automation software eases integration with other systems and enhances security for a better expansion of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 concepts.
Modern automation and control systems should implement the latest advances in communications connectivity, security, and mobility to keep pace with the latest innovations in Industrie 4.0 and the Internet of Things (IoT). The latest human-machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and building automation software includes universal connectivity with a wide variety of data sources including OPC, BACnet, and SNMP, databases and Web services, and enhanced compatibility with OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA).
For example, OPC UA clients can now securely access:
Data from any IoT device or equipment
Registers and data from programmable logic controllers (PLCs) or distributed control systems (DCS)
Equipment maintenance records and work orders from maintenance management systems
Energy data from any metering system
Incoming order data from any enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
In addition to communications connectivity, one of the most critical aspects of a modern automation system is its security. In the past, security was almost taken for granted or assumed to be there. But due to an increasing number of highly visible breaches in recent years, corporations now have a renewed focus on making sure that their systems adhere to the strictest security standards. OPC UA server/client interactions meet these requirements in different ways including user authentication, security certificates, and data encryption. Security upgrades incorporate the latest advances made by the OPC Foundation to ensure secure, IoT-friendly OPC UA communications.
Today’s mobile solutions should also adhere to universal connectivity, with ability to connect to OPC UA, BACnet, SNMP, Modbus TCP/IP, and Web services and be able tap into the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Mobile HMI and dashboard software also can integrate with OPC UA technology. With such connectivity, mobile apps enable operators, field service workers, managers, executives, and others to securely visualize, analyze, and store data from a multitude of geographically dispersed asset
Tomi Engdahl says:
Retro-fit #IoT to your washing machine or home appliance
https://www.hackster.io/fablabeu/retro-iot-home-appliance-75cc7e?ref=platform&ref_id=5755_trending___&offset=10
Why buy a new “connected” washing machine if you can add a little like $10 and 1hr time to make it a connected one? #ESP8266 #IFTTT
Another #MakerWeekend make me thought you can I use the low cost #ESP8266 to make my home appliances talking to me, e.g. just letting my know if the washing machine is ready to take out washed clothes? Oh which home appliance allows to interact with the famous IFTTT application on your Smartphone to receive machine status where every you are or allow to trigger other events … what ever your like: send a tweet to your kids … doing the job
Get your #ESP8266 ready with nodeMCU, check out my other tutorials on getting ready with #ESP8266.
#IoT made easy #ESP8266 and IFTTT (If This Then That) app
https://www.hackster.io/fablabeu/first-esp8266-and-ifttt-integration-69dc3d?ref=platform&ref_id=5755_trending___&offset=11
Trigger IFTTT Maker channel on a Smartphone using the IF application while feeding data events from ESP8266 … super easy! #SENSableTHING
IFTTT Smart Button © GPL3+
https://www.hackster.io/noelportugal/ifttt-smart-button-e11841?ref=platform&ref_id=5755_trending___&offset=4
This is a V2 of my original Staples Easy Button project. It is WAY more energy efficient, plus it has a first-time OTA wifi configuration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Introducing the Maker Channel
http://blog.ifttt.com/post/121786069098/introducing-the-maker-channel
For all the DIYers, tinkerers, and creative coders out there — we’re thrilled to introduce you to the Maker Channel.
The Maker Channel extends the power of IFTTT to any DIY project, big or small. You can now build and connect Recipes to any device or service that can make or receive a web request.
From creating browser extensions to connecting a Raspberry Pi or Arduino with Twitter — it is all possible with Maker.
https://ifttt.com/maker
The Maker Channel allows you to connect IFTTT to your personal DIY projects. With Maker, you can connect a Recipe to any device or service that can make or receive a web request (aka webhooks). See how others are using the Maker Channel, or share your own experience at hackster.io.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pool temperature monitor © Apache-2.0
Know the temperature of your pool anywhere, anytime
https://www.hackster.io/gusgonnet/pool-temperature-monitor-5331f2?ref=platform&ref_id=5755_trending___&offset=7
The first time I saw the Kickstarter campaign for the Spark Core (now Particle Core or Photon), I knew I would want to use one of those wifi development kits.
This summer, our pool gave me a perfect excuse to just do that.
what is the temperature of the water? is my family’s favorite question on a hot summer day.
Reading the temperature
For this we are going to use IFTTT.
We will combine two elements here. A DO button calls a function in the Particle which in turn publishes the current temperature. Then this IF Recipe will trigger once the Particle publishes the current temperature and pushes a notification to our phone.
For all this to work, you have to install in your phone the DO button and the IF apps.
Configure a DO recipe in your phone to call the status function in your Particle
Create this recipe in your IFTTT. If you are a Pushbullet user (Pushbullet app required), then you can use this recipe instead. The notifications look similar and the delivery time to your phone is around 5 seconds for both. If you like notifications in your browser, the pushbullet extension in your Chrome browser would help you get the temperature there too.
So, what is the temperature of the water?
You can now answer this one in a matter of seconds, even if you are not home!
Hit the Do button and watch the temperature appear in your phone few moments after:
Storing the data in Google Sheets
This section is optional! You can choose to skip it and everything will work fine.
Please follow steps 3 and 4 of this tutorial if you want to publish the temperature data in a Google Sheet.
I think this could be useful to see how the temperature of your pool behaves whether you cover it at night or not. With this information, you could decide to not go through the pain of covering it!
Snap Circuits® – Internet Sounds © GPL3+
https://www.hackster.io/porrey/snap-circuits-internet-sounds-af7c79?offset=2&ref=similar&ref_id=12680
Snap Circuits® makes learning electronics easy and fun! These projects are designed for younger kids who want to get introduced IoT.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future is stupid
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440829/The-future-is-stupid?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20151117&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20151117&elq=87be80ba777e408d965a7a3d084c2335&elqCampaignId=25754&elqaid=29323&elqat=1&elqTrackId=ac1836b997054d898b1652a0719ed2f9
Right now, the future is stupid and IoT, or, more specifically, less than perceptive engineering, is to blame. That was generally the theme of the ARM TechCon closing keynote with Google Developer Advocate Colt McAnlis. But there’s good news: It’s not too late to change course.
“This Internet of Things is not built for the Internet of things,” he said. “But we can still save ourselves.”
McAnlis’ first concern is power efficiency and how we may be duping smartphone users; smartphones being the primary device for IoT today. “All this networking isn’t free. These things all draw power. All of the [IoT] operations cost the battery something,” he said. And, as IoT is now, really our devices are only networking from point to point. “As far as consumers are concerned, battery life is everything,” he said.
On that networking, McAnlis would like to see better options engineered.
“We are building the Internet of Things on technology we have. We need new IoT technology. We need an Internet for the Internet of Things,” he said.
“Let us not kill this [IoT] before it starts,” he beseeched. “It has such great potential to help humanity and connect us. Make the right engineering decisions for the consumer.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Elisa IoT Innovation Challenge award to Foller for reducing food wastage
Launched in April, Elisa IoT Innovation Challenge competition is resolved Slush 2015 event. The first prize of EUR 50 000 won Foller, which developed the service aims to reduce food wastage.
Developed by Follerin service will reduce food wastage by monitoring the degree of freshness of food throughout the production, transport and during the distribution chain. Competition in the product development cycle was exceptionally fast, because the top three were selected after only six weeks of intensive product development. Foller started from zero, but less than three months, they created an operational service, which already has a pilot customers.
- In today’s world of business, it is crucial that the observed potential can be reached quickly R & D stage and pilot projects. Elisa IoT platform enabled us this. Next, can scale and develop the service further. The journey continues, “says a representative Folleria Tomi Kankainen.
Real-time information about the freshness of food
Food wastage is a huge problem, both in Finland and abroad. Fabric alone, according to the home country’s annual food waste is worth around EUR 500 million. Globally, food is wasted every year 1.3 trillion pounds.
Real-time monitoring of food freshness enables automatic pricing and marketing to consumers. Developer Team is intended in the future to reduce food wastage as food shops and cafes and at home. Foller has had time to launch a pilot project in one Incl. With the Deli.
- Foller is evidence of the speed of the digital world. Technology has always been an enabler, but inertia and price development have been wide innovation on the road. Elisa IoT was conceived to let the ideas of the possibility of practice.
Elisa IoT Innovation Challenge competition was launched in April, and the actual development phase began in mid-August.
Source: http://www.epressi.com/tiedotteet/telekommunikaatio/elisa-iot-innovation-challenge-kilpailun-voitto-ruuan-havikkia-vahentavalle-follerille.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Espotel firmly at the forefront of IoT development
Espoo-based embedded systems design house Espotel runs the Internet of Things in the development of the world right at the cutting edge. As proof of this Espotel has become the officially approved LoRaWAN-certification body, the second company in the world.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3608:espotel-tiukasti-iot-kehityksen-karjessa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia demonstrated the new low-power of LTE in Korea
NB-LTE is the technology that drives the Nokia firmly in radio technology for equipment related to the future Internet of Things. Now, Nokia has demonnut this technology in Korea with SK Telecom for the first time.
The network used in the demo was based on the Nokia Flexi Multi Radio 10 base stations. IoT devices were GCT Semiconductor. They were connected to the LTE modem, which used a new Power Saving Mode.
In practice, this status means that the modem is the power part of the time off. IoT device do not need to be constantly connected to the network. According to Nokia, this will enable the IoT, you can meet single battery / battery up to more than 10 years.
3GPP decided in September that NB-IoT a narrow band of IoT is driven by the organization technology web links IoT devices to cellular networks. It is a compromise between the various technologies, one of which was Nokia’s NB-LTE.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3612:nokia-demosi-uutta-vahavirtaista-lte-ta-koreassa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finnish company takes control of the LEDs into the cloud
Oulu Valopaa brings a new market for intelligent lighting control system. iLUMNET system includes a cloud service operating LUMOSCOPE-management software, intelligent appliances, lighting control, and intelligent modules that allow the lamps operate as part of iLUMNET system.
The demand for smart lighting is now growing at a furious pace. Lighting control can save energy in an average of 50 percent compared to non-controlled LED lighting, Valopaa praises.
According to the company all the lighting in the field of work can be part of iLUMNET family. Luminaire manufacturers can make smart use of lamps in the intelligent modules iLUMNET system, which allows the lamps to communicate with the rest of the system.
iLUMNET is Valopaa creation of engineers and other Oulu companies. The system employs the techniques and skills of several undertakings in Oulu. Cloud Service to the server and information, is also a local company management.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3614:suomalaisyritys-vie-ledien-ohjaukseen-pilveen&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Water-Saving Agricultural System Wins Best Product
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/18/water-saving-agricultural-system-wins-best-product/
The 2015 Hackaday Prize included something new: a prize for the Best Product. The winner took home $100k in funding, a six-month residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena, and help turning a budding product into a full-grown success. And the winner is…
Vinduino
In California, five times as much water is used in agriculture as is used by residential consumers. A 25% reduction in agricultural use, for instance, would entirely offset all urban water use.
One important development is targeted irrigation. Getting precisely the right amount of water to each plant can reduce the fraction lost to evaporation or runoff. It’s a small thing, but it’s a very big deal.
Vinduino, a wine grower’s water saving project
Monitoring soil moisture at different depths to determine when to irrigate,
and – more importantly – how much water is needed. Save 25%!
https://hackaday.io/project/6444-vinduino-a-wine-growers-water-saving-project
The Vinduino project (Vineyard + Arduino) started out of necessity to better manage irrigation in my Southern California vineyard.
In order to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the Vinduino project is open source, affordable, and easy to build.
In 2015 we saved 25% , or 430,000 gallons, of irrigation water.
Cost saving on water and labor was $1,925.
Cost to achieve these savings was $635.
Minimum configuration for developing countries, incl. salinity measurement: $ 60.
Options include:
3 electrically separated inputs for soil moisture sensors
Wifi (ESP8266) or Appcon RF module (APC220, APC320, APC340) for long range connectivity (miles)
Irrigation valve control, optional pressure sensor for valve operation feedback
DHT-11 temperature/humidity sensor
Resistive sensors, like gypsum or Watermark sensors, need to be excited with short pulses of alternating current to avoid electrolysis effects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VOCore Tutorial Gets You Started with Tiny Router
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/15/vocore-tutorial-gets-you-started-with-tiny-router/
[Vadim] wrote up this short but sweet tutorial on getting started with the Vocore (tiny) OpenWRT-router-on-a-stamp. If you need more computing power than you can get with an ESP8266, and you want an open-source Linux-plus-Wifi solution in a square inch of board space, the Vocore looks pretty sweet.
We covered the Vocore a while ago. It has 28 GPIOs, all accessible from system calls in OpenWRT. It becomes much more computer-like if you add a dock that breaks out the USB and Ethernet functionality, but that also doubles the price.
Vocore tutorial: blinking an LED, using software SPI and unbricking
http://shortn0tes.blogspot.de/2015/11/vocore-tutorial-blinking-led-using.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
RFM69 to MQTT Gateway on the Super-Cheap
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/14/rfm69-to-mqtt-gateway-on-the-super-cheap/
[Martin] is working on a RFM69-to-MQTT bridge device. If you’re at all interested in DIY home automation, this is going to be worth following. Why? When your home automation network gets big enough, you’re going to have to think seriously about how the different parts talk to each other. There are a number of ways to handle this messaging problem, but MQTT is certainly a contender.
MQTT is a “lightweight” publish-subscribe framework that’s aimed at machine-to-machine data sharing, and runs on top of a normal TCP/IP network. IBM has been a mover behind MQTT since the beginning, and now Amazon is using it too.
But most MQTT servers need a TCP/IP network, which pretty much means WiFi, and this can be a killer for remote sensors that you’d like to run on battery power, or with limited processing power. For these use cases, a low-power, simple sub-gigahertz radio module is a better choice than WiFi. But then how to do you get your low-power radios to speak to your MQTT devices?
That’s the point of [Martin]’s MQTT bridge.
RFM69 to MQTT gateway using ESP8266
https://harizanov.com/2015/11/rfm69-to-mqtt-gateway-using-esp8266/
Andrey is an IoT enthusiast + embedded systems developer and has done excellent job in porting LowPowerLab’s RFM69 library for the ESP8266. He spent few weekends staring at the oscilloscope, re-writing SPI library code and managed to solve a number of challenges to get this library going. I’ve bundled his driver code with MQTT to get a beautifully working prototype that forwards RFM69 traffic to MQTT and vice versa.
Some folks probably ask why the RFM69 and not RFM12B and why LowPoweLab’s library and not Jeelib,
Tomi Engdahl says:
All about Moteino
http://lowpowerlab.com/moteino/
Moteino is a low cost low-power open-source wireless Arduino compatible development platform based on the popular ATMega328 chip used in traditional Arduinos, making it 100% compatible with the Arduino IDE (programming environment).
They are compatible with any other Arduino clones that use the popular HopeRF RFM69 transceiver, or the older RFM12B.
MoteinoMEGA is a new generation Moteino based on the more resourceful Atmega1284p microcontroller
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Networked Analog Clock
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/19/a-networked-analog-clock/
Even in the face of an Internet of Things grasping for a useful use case, an Internet-connected clock is actually a great idea. With a cheap WiFi module and a connection to an NTP server, any clock can become an atomic clock. [Jim] decided to experiment with the ESP8266 to turn a cheap analog clock into something that will display network time using a bunch of gears and motors.
The clock [Jim] chose for this build is an extremely cheap clock pulled right from the shelves of WalMart. This clock uses a standard quartz clock mechanism, powered by a single AA cell. The coils in these quartz movements can be easily controlled by pulsing current through them, and with a few a few transistors and diodes set up in an h-bridge, an ESP8266 is quite good at setting the time on this clock.
The software for this clock first connects to the WiFi network, then checks an NTP server for the true time. Once the ESP8266 gets the time, it starts hammering the coil in the clock movement until the hands are where they should be.
ESP8266 WiFi Analog Clock
https://sites.google.com/site/wifianalogclock/home
This project uses an ESP8266 module to connect to a NIST Internet Time Service (ITS) server to automatically retrieve and display the local time on a inexpensive analog quartz clock. The ESP8266 reconnects to the NIST server every 15 minutes which keeps the clock accurate. The clock also automatically adjusts for daylight savings time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Japan Focuses on IoT Nuts & Bolts
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328314&
Germany has Industry 4.0. The United States is forging ahead with an Industrial Internet Consortium. So, what can Japan contribute to the fast-growing world of the Internet of Things?
That was the gist of a keynote speech by Ken Sakamura, creator of Japan’s RTOS — TRON, at the Embedded Technology 2015/Internet of Things Technology 2015 Conference here this week. Sakamura, professor at the Univ. of Tokyo, was outspokenly disappointed with the complete lack of leadership on IoT from the Japanese embedded systems design community.
Indeed, Japan has sat on the sidelines watching the rest of the world define IoT standards. Talk about missed opportunity.
However, a host of embedded systems — ranging from printers to cameras and automotive — are still designed in Japan. And they are getting connected, more and more.
Japanese engineers see embedded technology as their domain, and they take pride in innovating the necessary parts and components — including software — to advance such embedded systems and connect them to the Internet.
Some of their efforts were on full display at the Embedded Technology 2015/IoT Technology 2015 here.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs Spend a Third of Their Time On Security
http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/11/22/1431237/cios-spend-a-third-of-their-time-on-security
Much has been discussed about the potential security risks of an Internet of Things future in which billions of devices and machines are all talking to each other automatically. But the IoT market is exploding at a breakneck pace, leaving all companies scrambling to figure out the security piece of the puzzle now, before it’s too late. In fact, some experts believe this issue will be what separates the winners from the losers, as security concerns either stop companies from getting into the IoT market, or delay existing IoT projects and leave the door open to swifter competition. That’s likely why, according to CIO Magazine’s annual survey, CIOs are spending a third of their time on security.
These 4 responsibilities just jumped to the top of CIOs to-do list
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2015/11/these-4-responsibilities-just-jumped-top-cios-do-list
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): CIO Magazine’s State of the CIO Survey does a great job bringing to light the activities, concerns, opportunities, challenges currently on the minds of IT leaders. Did you notice any big shifts in how CIOs are spending their day-to-day?
Adam DennisonDennison: Absolutely. There were four key areas where we saw big jumps this year, but time spent on security was the most noticeable change. It came as no surprise that our 2015 survey reflected a heightened sense of responsibility in this arena. The year before was commonly dubbed “the year of the breach” in IT circles, so we were not shocked to see that time spent on security management jumped from 24 percent in 2014 to 31 percent in 2015. The trend was also reflected when survey respondents were asked what their CEO’s top priorities for the CIO were for the coming year. Cybersecurity jumped from the number eight priority in 2014 to number four in 2015.
It’s clear that security is no longer a functional task for a CIO. It’s not a back-office afterthought. It has become a boardroom discussion, and it’s paramount in any initiative that CIOs are going to undertake in the foreseeable future. If IT leaders want to embrace the sexy, new technologies they are hearing about today—the SMAC stack, third platform, Internet of Things, etc—security is going to be upfront and at the center of the discussion. And as CIOs spend more of their time on security, budgets will follow.
TEP: Were there any surprising takeaways for CIOs in the survey results this year?
Dennison: It’s clear that the job of understanding the customers is falling increasingly to the CIO, and it will become more and more critical to their success. CIOs are feeling the pressure to become more customer friendly as the expectations of “always-on,” hyper-connected consumers create new demands on IT. Quite literally, some of their jobs depend on it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Six billion connected devices by next year: the Internet of Things takes shape
http://www.zdnet.com/article/six-billion-connected-devices-by-next-year-the-internet-of-things-takes-shape/
By 2016 Gartner predicts 6.4 billion devices will be connected to the internet — and 5.5 million new ‘things’ will join them each day.
By the end of 2016 some 6.4 billion ‘things’ — devices from toasters and kettles to cars and hospital equipment — will be connected to the internet, according to analyst Gartner.
That figure represents a 30 percent rise from 2015 — and will grow further to reach 20.8 billion by 2020. By 2016, as many as 5.5 million new things will become connected every day.
As a result, the growing Internet of Things will support total services spending of $235bn in 2016, up 22 percent from 2015, the analyst predicts.
In addition, Gartner believes that most of that money will be spent on what it calls the “professional category”. This means that businesses, instead of implementing IT themselves, will contract with external providers to order, design, install and operate IoT systems. At the same time, Gartner says connectivity services, through communications service providers, and consumer services will grow at an even faster pace.
Jim Tully, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, said: “IoT services are the real driver of value in IoT, and increasing attention is being focused on new services by end-user organisations and vendors.”
When looking at enterprise computing, Gartner says it considers two classes of connected things.
The first class consists of generic or cross-industry devices that are used in multiple industries, such as connected light bulbs, and HVAC and building management systems that are mainly deployed for purposes of cost savings.
The second class includes vertical-specific devices that are found in particular industries, such as specialised equipment used in hospital operating theatres and tracking devices in container ships.
“Connected things for specialised use are currently the largest category,” said Tully. “However, this is quickly changing with the increased use of generic devices [and] by 2020, cross-industry devices will dominate the number of connected things used in the enterprise.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
All Cisco certs add cloud, IoT, ‘business transformation’
Network admins: Go buy a tie and some kool-aid, diluted to 10 per cent of your marks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/23/all_cisco_certs_add_cloud_iot_business_transformation/
Cisco has announced a major refresh of its certification programs, all of which will henceforth include material on cloud, the internet of things, cloud, “network programmability” and “business transformation”.
Cloud and IoT are self-explanatory while “network programmability” is software-defined networking by another name. While Cisco is making much of the three topics’ inclusion representing a major modernisation of its certifications, “core” topics beyond the three new elements will account for 90 per cent of the available score in exams.
“Business transformation” is all about making sure networking pros can speak the language of colleagues capable of saying things like “building disruptive digital businesses” without a hint of irony or self-loathing.
The biggest changes will be felt by those studying for Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) and Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) certifications, as all candidates will be directed into fields of study that “ensure that experts are equipped to participate in meaningful business discussions about these new technical areas that are shaping business strategy and operations.”
The Cisco Certified Network Associate qualification’s Security skein has changed and now “expands focus from network security to end-to-end IT security, with emphasis on core technologies and skills needed to maintain enterprise information systems.”
Cisco’s been trying to elevate the role of networking staff for years