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:
Module Makes BLE a Drop-In Design Element
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326344&
Adding Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity to a small, portable design can be an overwhelming hurdle for small to mid-size companies. In addition to acquiring the necessary RF design expertise and lab equipment to create the design, development teams need to certify their product’s protocol operation through the Bluetooth SIG as well as obtain radio qualification and approval from the FCC and other regulatory agencies worldwide. Cypress Semiconductor promises to eliminate all that effort with its new EZ-BLE PRoC module.
“BLE is fast becoming the dominant choice for short-range wireless connectivity,” Dave Solda, director of Cypress’ modules business unit told EE Times. Solda quoted an IHS report on the 2014 BLE market saying that The BLE market is expected to grow at a 64% CAGR to 1.2 billion devices in2018. He also noted that of the 185 million BLE-enabled devices sold in 2014, 61% used BLE modules in their designs. “The reason developers choose to use modules is to shorten development time, especially if they’re not RF experts,” Solda added.
But even with modules, Solda noted, there can be headaches for developers, depending on the nature of the module and the specific needs of the design. A design using a module that needs an external antenna, for instance, will still need to go through regulatory certification and testing to ensure the final configuration meets standards
To address these kinds of development issues, Cypress has now introduced its EZ-BLE PRoC (programmable radio on chip) module. The module is fully qualified with the Bluetooth SIG (including the assignment of the QDID) and has passed regulatory certification for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, and Korea.
The processor aboard the EZ-BLE PRoC module not only runs the Bluetooth protocols and manages the wireless link, it also provides resources for applications programming. The 48 MHz ARM Cortex M0 core has 128 kbytes of Flash and 16 kbytes of SRAM, two configurable serial IO blocks (UART, I2C, or SPI), I2S for audio, and 16 GPIOs. There are also a 12-bit 1 Msps SAR ADC, four counter/timer/PWMs, and a CapSense touch controller built in.
EZ-BLE PRoC Module (Bluetooth Smart)
http://www.cypress.com/ez-bleprocmodule/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Processor and radio module makes BLE design a snap
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4439190/Processor-and-radio-module-makes-BLE-design-a-snap?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150415&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150415&elq=32e16977841c4c9bb5457852642ca4ab&elqCampaignId=22552&elqaid=25360&elqat=1&elqTrackId=40adefb6757740148a265f7d9f27df32
Cypress Semiconductor has introduced an EZ-BLE PRoC (programmable radio on chip) module. The module is fully qualified with the Bluetooth SIG (including the assignment of the QDID) and has passed regulatory certification for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, and Korea. It has crystals, all passive components, and a chip antenna built-in along with a processor core and digital peripherals in a 10mm x 10mm x 1.8mm package. By being self-contained, the module allows drop-in development while its pre-certifications streamline a design’s Bluetooth SIG registration and national regulatory approvals.
PRoC BLE 2.4 GHz programmable radio on a chip with integrated balun. The radio provides -91 dBm receive sensitivity and as much as 3 dBm of transmit power. An.
A 48 MHz ARM Cortex M0 processor aboard
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rapid prototyping an open source cloud-connected sensor
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/the-workbench/4439168/Rapid-prototyping-an-open-source-cloud-connected-sensor?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150415&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150415&elq=0a130cb4e2b143eaa9476c5930f8a30a&elqCampaignId=22554&elqaid=25362&elqat=1&elqTrackId=ca1eb26371654434a6b00de16405f778
Following this incident, I started thinking that it would be great to be able to design a small, low-power moisture detector, and to then place these little rascals throughout the house — behind the fridge, under the dishwasher, at the back of the cabinet under the kitchen sink; pretty much anywhere a water leak might manifest itself.
My initial ponderings centered around something that would beep in an annoying way so as to alert me as to a developing problem (see Things That Go ‘Meep’ in the Night). But then I decided that it would be great to extend this idea into the Internet and the Cloud, so the detector could send voice and/or text messages to a one or more designated smartphones, for example.
As you can see in this video, during his 45-minute session, Adrian will live-build a complete end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) system using open source hardware and software tools.
In reality, there are a tremendous variety of applications that can benefit from triggering cloud-side activity or events based on things occurring in the real world. It just so happens, however, that — for the purposes of this demonstration — Adrian creates a moisture sensor that sends a voicemail to his smartphone. In this case, the message is “Alert! Alert! Alert! There’s flooding in your house!” This is followed by an additional message that made me laugh out loud, but I’ll leave you to watch the video and hear that for yourself.
ESC Boston 2015 sneak peek // Rapid prototyping a cloud-connected sensor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g47Ph50kga0
Tomi Engdahl says:
MCUs bring high-performance graphics to IoT devices
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4439161/MCUs-bring-high-performance-graphics-to-IoT-devices?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150415&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150415&elq=0a130cb4e2b143eaa9476c5930f8a30a&elqCampaignId=22554&elqaid=25362&elqat=1&elqTrackId=59896d391c6b40dd94f3a47789ca0348
Leveraging STMicroelectronics’ Chrom-ART Accelerator and a MIPI Display Serial Interface (DSI), the STM32F469/479 series of microcontroller chips delivers smart phone-like graphics and intuitive user interfaces to wearable devices, smart appliances, and other Internet of Things applications. At the heart of the product line is a 32-bit low-power ARM Cortex-M4 MCU, along with large embedded memories and a rich set of peripherals.
Operating at a frequency of up to 180 MHz, the STM32F469/479 series handles 225 DMIPS executing from flash memory.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Imagination Tunes in Wi-Fi, BT
Comms cores vie with blocks from ARM, Ceva
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326273&
Imagination Technologies launched versions of its Ensigma cores powering Wi-Fi/Bluetooth links, competing with ARM and Ceva in intellectual property for consumer wireless chips. The IP blocks target Internet of Things designs where some competitors are still fielding low power mobile SoCs.
Semiconductor and IP companies have traditionally focused on performance, reach, and throughput in their wireless devices while shirking power and board space,
The company’s three new IP cores, dubbed Ensigma Whisper radio processing units (RPUs), use a Series5 architecture to integrate Wi-Fi 802.11n (C5400), Bluetooth Smart (C5300), or a combination of the two standards (C5401). The RPUs consist of a cluster of programmable MIPS processors that Imagination officials hope will straddle the line between software-defined chips and heavy hardware acceleration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/04/15/1941243/the-crazy-tiny-next-generation-of-computers
University of Michigan professors are about to release the design files for a one-cubic-millimeter computer, or mote. They have finally reached a goal set in 1997, when UC Berkeley professor Kristopher Pister coined the term “smart dust” and envisioned computers blanketing the Earth. Such motes are likely to play a key role in the much-ballyhooed Internet of Things.
The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers
“Smart dust,” long heralded in research papers
and sci-fi, is now a reality. Just don’t sneeze.
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-crazy-tiny-next-generation-of-computers-17e89e472839
The race to build the world’s smallest computer has been in the works since UC Berkeley professor Kristofer Pister coined the phase “smart dust” in 1997, back when Apple computers were the size of large lapdogs, and smart dust the stuff of fan-boy fiction. Pister envisioned a future where pinhead-sized computers would blanket the earth like a neural cloud, relaying real-time data about people and the environment. Each particle of “dust” would function as a single autonomous computer: a tiny bundle of power, sensor, computing and communication chips that could incorporate and relay information about their environment, perform basic data-processing and communicate with one other, using almost zero energy consumption. And each computer would be no larger than one cubic millimeter in size.
But Pister’s smart dust vision never came to pass. After leaving academia to found a company called Dust Networks in early 2003, Pister got derailed by the mechanics of running a company and stopped scaling computers full time. The smallest mote his company currently makes is about the size of sugar cube: good for performing diagnostics on utilities, not so good for exploring the brain or anything else that requires a very small and unobtrusive presence — qualities essential for meshing with the much-ballyhooed Internet of Things. “Probably my single most important contribution is coming up with a catchy name,”
By July of 1999, Pister had developed a mote with a volume of 100 cubic millimeters that had a working transmitter. Jason Hill, a colleague of Pister’s, created the TinyOS operating system
By 2010, Dutta was at the University of Michigan, where colleagues David Blaauw and Dennis Sylvester had created a 1.5-mm³ marvel called the Phoenix Chip. The solar-powered sensor system was intended to measure intraocular pressure for glaucoma patients. Dutta was impressed. But he wanted to push towards “tagging” things in the environment, particularly for monitoring scarce natural resources.
So Blaauw, Sylvester and Dutta sketched plans for what would become the M3 project.
M3 has spoken with corporations for the inclusion of smart dust in wearables, and they’ve recently launched a for-profit company called CubeWorks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HVAC system uses IoT
Intelligent Equipment harnesses the Internet of Things (IoT) for commercial HVAC equipment.
http://www.csemag.com/single-article/hvac-system-uses-iot/06cc49d81bce1e920824b9e2b2f1a03e.html
Daikin Applied has launched Intelligent Equipment, a technology platform that harnesses the Internet of Things (IoT) for commercial HVAC equipment. With the technology, HVAC systems can be monitored and controlled remotely using any mobile device. It gives users the ability to quickly adjust ineffective systems and help facility managers maintain equipment before it loses efficiency or impacts occupant comfort.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Is This? A Computer for Ants!?
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/16/what-is-this-a-computer-for-ants/
Developed by the University of Michigan, the Michigan Micro Mote (M3) is quite possibly the world’s tiniest computer. It’s about the size of a grain of rice.
The multi-layered PCB features 7 layers of components, surrounded in epoxy for protection. Drawing only 2 nano Amps during standby, the computer can be powered by a 1 millimeter squared solar cell. It’s designed to be glued to a window for use. It’s capable of input data via sensors, the ability to process and store the data, and then output the data wirelessly.
Hey, watch where you’re flicking. That’s a computer
http://phys.org/news/2015-04-hey-youre-flicking.html
Kaustubh Katdare in Crazy Engineers said on Wednesday, “It requires no special imagination to understand that as more things get connected with each other, the size of computers operating behind the scenes must be smaller.” He said “the Michigan Mote opens up new avenues towards the world of Internet of Things (IoT).”
Sensors are the input; radios are the output. Solar cells power the battery with ambient light, said the university report detailing the work and features of this computer.
They use a 1mm2 solar cell producing 20nW. The device can harvest enough energy under ambient light to run perpetually. Standby power consumption is 2nA, “a million times less power than the average mobile phone consumes while on standby.”
The computer is built in stacked layers. They communicate through a universal interface protocol, MBus.
Of what practical use is this computer? A helpful way to get answers is to ask, who would need mini-computer sensing devices? The Michigan group is sending the computer to interested researchers. Home automation and industrial, medical and environmental monitoring are some of the potential application areas that would come to mind and, in the bigger picture, advance the Internet of Things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Solving the 5 Biggest IoT Adoption Issues
http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=3507&doc_id=277146&image_number=2
1. Adoption of a universal standard
While a lot of progress has been made towards a standard for IoT, far more is needed in terms of security, privacy and most importantly, architecture. According to a recent report in the Financial Times, an “intense battle” is developing between technology and telecoms groups for market domination of the Internet of Things.
As the various market leaders attempt to flesh out their own space within this market, several competing standards have emerged. These include Google’s Physical Web, the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), the Open Interconnected Consortium, and Thread, a new IP-based wireless networking protocol pulling together support from Google, Samsung, ARM, and Freescale Semiconductor
there still remains a worrying lack of standardisation across the industry.
2. Adoption of IPv6
Every device that connects to the internet requires its own unique numerical label – an IP address. As it stands, the vast majority of these IP addresses run on a fourth generation version of the Internet Protocol known as IPv4.
Using a 32-bit system, IPv4 offers a total of around 4.3 billion unique addresses
as the number of connected devices increases, NAT is unlikely to meet the demands of IoT.
Instead, network operators are now promoting the adoption of IPv6, a new 128-bit protocol that can offer up to 340 undecillion (340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) device addresses
a report from Google in December 2014 suggests that more than 94% of worldwide internet traffic is still being carried by IPv4
3. Wireless protocol selection
design engineers are also faced with an overwhelming variety of connection technologies to include within any IoT device.
Typically these technologies include Wifi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth low energy, ANT, ZigBee and RF4CE – to name a few.
The decision to develop a proprietary solution versus leveraging a standard technology such as Bluetooth often boils down to the basic functionality required. Highly specialised functions may necessitate a proprietary implementation
4. Providing a power source
In order for the Internet of Things to reach its full potential, the various devices included on the network will need to become increasingly self-sustaining.
the idea of regularly changing the batteries in each device is hardly realistic. Instead, what is needed is for each individual sensor to generate electricity from its own environment, harnessing local elements such as vibrations, light, and airflow.
5. Privacy
One of the most common concerns surrounding IoT is the impact on individuals’ rights and personal privacy. Fears of invasive marketing and corporate surveillance have helped to develop a powerful lobby of misunderstanding and mistrust surrounding the Internet of Things. As such, if the industry is to encourage widespread consumer adoption, it falls to the designers to help ensure that personal privacy – and ultimately the user’s trust – is not abused.
For every new technology that is introduced, the issue of privacy is always the first to be voiced by the media and ultimately the public. This has been true of everything from smartphones to satellite navigation systems. At the end of the day however, the reasons these technologies thrived is because they offered a tangible benefit while attempting to maximise security and privacy for the end user.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth Does IoT 5+ Ways
Nordic promotes IPv6, Google eschews apps
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326352
Google, CSR and Nordic Semiconductor pitched different ways to connected Bluetooth devices for the emerging Internet of Things. Their presentations led off the annual Bluetooth World event here where vendors showed wireless wearable and smart home gadgets that ranged from hearing aids and toys to espresso machines and bikes.
As many as three billion devices will ship with Bluetooth this year, rising to nine billion in 2019. By that time the cost of adding Bluetooth will fall to less than a dollar, said Mark Powell, executive director at the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) in opening remarks here.
How to link those devices for various IoT scenarios was a hot topic at the event.
Google said developers should ditch beacon apps in favor of open Web services it is prototyping. Nordic Semiconductor called for others to follow its direction in supporting a full Internet Protocol stack on IoT nodes, while CSR touted its homegrown mesh network and advocated a hybrid approach that supports IP addressability without the baggage of a full IP stack on each node.
The IP debate is playing out in a SIG working group developing a mesh network capability similar to what IEEE 802.15.4 networks such as Zigbee have today. The group is expected to issue a spec for Bluetooth mesh networking next year.
“Devices that need an absolute minimum will not send IP packets but logically could be part of an IP network,”
In a keynote talk, a representative of Nordic called for supporting IPv6 over Bluetooth. The company has been shipping such software on its nRF51 chips since December, based on the SIG’s IP Support Package.
More than 2,000 people have downloaded the software so far but no one has announced products using it
CSR’s Heydon argued that many IoT nodes don’t need the complexity and power drain that comes from supporting IP elements such as UDP, CoAP and XML. “Shaving even a couple cents off the price of a chip will increase sales tremendously, and I want to optimize for increasing sales,” he said.
Bonnerud countered that most of the IP elements (right) need less than 24 Kbytes flash and 8 Kbytes RAM. With the exception of TCP, they add less than 10 percent to the loading of a Bluetooth chip’s CPU, he said. Representatives of Mindspeed who make silicon blocks for Bluetooth were also on hand showing IPv6 stacks running on their silicon.
Scott Jenson, a product strategy manager at Google, called for a new approach to using Bluetooth to advertise nearby services to smartphones. Developers should create beacons that broadcast URLs to devices using open Web services and notifications rather than the current approach of using apps.
“It doesn’t make sense to install an app for each [service], it doesn’t scale — we need a discovery service,” said Jenson, describing Google’s Physical Web initiative. “This can’t be a Google product [because] I want a whole bunch of beacons and devices [so] we create a market that no company can control,” he added, in a jab to his former employer, Apple.
Google is now making several prototype services using open source code
Tenaya Hurst, an account manager with Dog Hunter LLC, displayed wearable versions of the company’s latest mini Arduino boards
She wore as earrings the Chiwawa board which uses an Atheros MIPS AR9331 802.11n chip running Linino, a Linux distribution based on OpenWRT. Her hat is based on a Linino One board using the same Wi-Fi chip along with an Atmel ATmega32u4 controller.
To brew interest in IPv6, Nordic created an espresso machine that can be operated via the Web (below). Even though its nRF51 chips (bottom) are smaller than coffee beans, the company is now making available a full IPv6 stack that runs on them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Imagination Launches New Low Power Wireless IP: Ensigma Whisper
by Stephen Barrett on April 15, 2015 10:00 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9154/imagination-launches-new-low-power-wireless-ip-whisper
Today Imagination is launching a new set of licensable wireless intellectual property (IP) called ‘Ensigma Whisper’ to complement its portfolio of other SoC IPs. This announcement gives Imagination a more complete portfolio of large SoC IP blocks and notably differentiates Imagination from ARM who does not have a comparable wireless IP offering. Imagination claims the patented power optimizations makes Whisper the highest efficiency wireless IP available.
Customers licensing Ensigma Whisper receive access to Imagination’s ‘Radio Processing Unit’ or RPU. This RPU is a complete set of IP from antenna to software, including all parts in between such as RF transceivers and baseband processing.
Imagination considers the Ensigma Whisper brand to be a collection of different wireless IPs, and is launching three models today. The C5300 is a Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) solution, C5400 is Wi-Fi 802.11n 1×1 and the C5401 is a combination model featuring both with separate paths enabling simultaneous operation.
Imagination plans to fill out the Whisper line with more protocols such as LTE CAT 0/1, 802.15.4 and 802.11ah.
profiling a variety of IoT and wearable devices. Chakra stated that for every 300ms of time, a typical IoT device is only awake 4ms. Furthermore, when a device is connected to a populated WiFi network, only 1 out of every 100 times RX packets are processed is there also TX activity. As a result Imagination focused its optimization efforts on sleep power and RX efficiency.
One of these optimizations is a patented technique called early packet abortion, which works in tandem with rapid sync convergence.
Other optimizations discussed by Chakra are that the Ensigma Whisper baseband was optimized to operate at 20 or 40 MHz frequencies (depending on wireless channel width) and use an 8-bit data path. Chakra mentioned this is a significant improvement over traditional designs that operate at 80 MHz and use a 10-bit data path.
Finally, Imagination states that the embedded microcontroller of the Ensigma Whisper can be loaded with custom firmware to provide protocol layer 2 processing and even application level logic, eliminating the need for a paired general purpose CPU. If a general purpose CPU is needed, Imagination would love to sell you its MIPS CPUs, but stated Ensigma Whisper is compatible with almost any CPU type (including ARM)
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of things is great until it blows up your house
How to stop hackers letting the gas flow in your connected oven? Bitcoin has the answer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/17/the_internet_of_things_is_great_until_it_blows_up_your_house/
A few months ago I had a chat about the Internet of Things with the design head of a well-known home appliance manufacturer. Gartner had just published 2014’s hype chart,, and with the Internet of Things sitting at the very peak of the hype cycle, he reckoned it might be an interesting way to differentiate his firm’s products in a market filled with cheap Chinese appliances.
After our chat, I had a thought: I could teach him about the Internet of Things with some broad-brush product designs. After reviewing the line of products manufactured by his firm, I found two that I could reimagine, using the pixie dust of intelligence and connectivity.
Nearly every home in Australia has a clothes iron. The major difference between models is how much steam they can put out on demand. Every iron has a dial to set its temperature – and if you don’t set it just right, you can damage your clothes.
The solution to that problem seems obvious. Design an iron equipped with Bluetooth LE, linked to a smartphone, running an app that uses its camera to scan a QR code printed on a fabric care tags. This QR code contains all of the care information for that article of clothing, so every time that dress or dress shirt goes under the iron, the app adjusts the iron to the ideal temperature.
Extending this idea, it’s easy to imagine setting the temperature and cycle for both washing machine and dryer based on that fabric care tag.
All of that additional capability would add about $5 to the cost of goods, or around $20 at retail. Not much to pay for something that could prevent a fair bit of damage to clothing.
Next, I took one of the absolute necessities of cold winter nights – the electric blanket – and made it smart.
Again, the solution seems obvious.
Once that heuristic had been learned, you’d have a smart electric blanket – one that would never need adjustment. You wouldn’t even need to turn it on.
An electric blanket would be hard pressed to do all of this computationally expensive work on its own. Those readings would be uploaded to the cloud, where sophisticated analysis algorithms could be run over the data
This ‘internet of electric blankets’ would also tie into Fitbits and Jawbones and the Apple Watch, and whatever else we have on hand to sense our activity when we’re sleeping.
To do all of this would add something less than $12 to the cost of goods for an electric blanket, around $50 at retail. That’s a lot for a blanket that might only cost $150, but when the manufacturer offers ‘Electric blanket-as-a-service™’ – free for the first year, and at a modest annual fee thereafter – it becomes very appealing. The internet of things means appliance manufacturers realise new profits as service providers.
If something uses electricity, it will be connected
We live in a world where billions of devices consume electricity, so when I read last week that Strategy Analytics predicted 33 billion connected devices by 2020 – now just five years away – it confirmed something I’d suspected for a long time now: we’re in deep trouble.
Let me pose another hypothetical appliance: the connected oven.
That sounds delightful.
But when you go away on a fortnight’s holidays, and someone hacks into your oven, turns the gas on, waits 36 hours, then lights the pilot, well, then you’ve got a problem. A much worse problem if you happen to be at home at the time. Your oven could gas you in your sleep.
2014 saw both the peak of the internet of things hype cycle, and the start of the ‘What have we done?’ era of network computing. 33 billion connected devices means 33 billion attack surfaces, each with their own exploits, zero day attacks, weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
We need a solution that provides security for connected devices, and moreover, we need a universal solution, so a device designer can simply add this into their product as a bog-standard feature, without having to worry too much about either its implementation or its vulnerabilities.
We need something difficult to attack, something that can’t be spoofed or subverted. We need a solution that is open, inspectable, verifiable, something that favours transparency over obscurity. And it needs to be freely available, to prevent another pointless round in these endless patent wars.
In short, we need the blockchain.
The Bitcoin blockchain provides enough security to support a distributed financial system, sufficient protection for all our connected devices. And as an open source technology, it’s freely available for anyone to implement and adapt to their needs.
IBM has seen this as well, and recently launched the ‘Adept’ initiative, blending the blockchain with the Internet of Things, provisioning for security and access control within the blockchain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Liam Tung / ZDNet:
ARM buys Wicentric and Sunrise Micro Devices, creates new IoT chip portfolio under Cordio brand, claims devices using Cordio radios will last up to 60% longer
ARM buys two low-power IoT firms to launch Cordio for wearables
http://www.zdnet.com/article/arm-buys-two-low-power-iot-firms-to-launch-cordio-for-wearables/
Summary:ARM has acquired two companies that will add a new product licensing unit for low-powered radios.
ARM has created a new Internet of Things (IoT) portfolio under the name Cordio after snapping up talent and technology from two companies that specialise in low-powered wireless hardware.
The UK chip designer announced today that it has acquired two US firms, Wicentric and Sunrise Micro Devices, to launch a new portfolio of low-power radio IP systems designed for power-constrained consumer wearables, such as smartwatches.
Among the technology that ARM will offer under the Cordio brand are “sub-volt” Bluetooth systems that should help semiconductor companies accelerate the time between creating a concept and releasing a finished product.ARM says the Cordio portfolio is available for immediate licensing.
ARM claims devices using Cordio radios will last up to 60 percent longer between battery charges due to falling under the typical wireless circuits which run at 1.2 volts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Self Powered Camera Powers Itself
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/18/self-powered-camera-powers-itself/
Cameras sense light to create images, and solar cells turn light into energy. Why not mash the two together and create a self-powered camera?
The Computer Vision Laboratory at Columbia built this unique camera, which harvests power from its photodiode sensors. These photodiodes also act as an array of pixels that can recover an image. The result is a black and white video camera that needs no external power supply.
The MC13226V microcontroller that was used for this build features an internal 2.4 GHz radio.
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MC13226V
Tomi Engdahl says:
Your city’s not smart if it’s vulnerable says hacker
Major vendors block hackers from testing insecure IoT kit
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/smart_city_vendors_blasted_for_dumb_security/
“Real world hacker” Cesar Cerrudo has blasted vendors, saying they’re stopping security researchers from testing smart city systems, and as a result they’re being sold with dangerous unchecked vulnerabilities.
The warning will be detailed at RSA San Francisco this week, and comes a year after the IOActive chief technology officer found some 200,000 vulnerable traffic control sensors active in cities like Washington DC, London, and Melbourne.
Vendors don’t want their kit tested, Cerrudo said, although there are now 25 major cities across the world taking the lead in deployment, such as New York, Berlin, and Sydney.
In An Emerging US (and World) Threat: Cities Wide Open to Cyber Attacks (pdf), the hacker warns that attack surfaces in smart city technology are plentiful given its complexity and integration with legacy systems, and says the woeful security shortfalls with internet-of-things devices are creeping into city tech.
“In our research at IOActive Labs, we constantly find very vulnerable technology being used … for critical infrastructure without any security testing,” Cerrudo says.
“Technology vendors impede security research: New systems and devices used by smart cities are difficult to acquire by the security research community – most are expensive and are usually only sold to governments or specific companies, making it difficult for systems to be rigorously tested.”
He added that “a simple problem can have a large impact due to interdependencies and associated chain reactions [which] highlights the need for threat modelling.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home Automation Systems – A Consumer Checklist
by Ganesh T S on April 17, 2015 5:15 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9174/home-automation-systems-a-consumer-checklist
The Internet of Things (IoT) concept has gained a lot of traction over the last couple of years. One of the main applications of IoT lies in the home automation space. Consumers have many options in this space, but none of them have the right combination of comprehensiveness, economy, extensibility and ease of use. We provided an introduction to IoT / home automation back in 2012, and the space has rapidly evolved since then.
As we ramp up our IoT / home automation coverage, we wanted to bring out a set of aspects that consumers should analyse in detail when choosing a home automation system. They will also help us in reviewing home automation systems / devices from a consumer’s perspective.
There are a wide variety of home automation devices, but the common / popular ones fulfill one or more of the following:
Control state of an electrical outlet or switch
Monitor energy consumption of an electrical outlet or switch
Control light bulb intensity and/or color
Monitor environmental data (parameters such as temperature, humidity etc. or detection of motion, open doors or windows, live video feed etc.) via connected sensors
It is also expected that a home automation solution will allow configuration and automatic triggering of events based on data collected from the component devices.
Why is Home Automation Hot?
It is an interesting exercise to look into why home automation and IoT tend to draw a lot of players (established companies, VC-funded startups and crowd-funding seekers) into the market. The potential for revenue is huge (multiple devices per household) and development of single-function components is not resource intensive (many home automation devices are simple to design and suitable even for undergraduate engineering projects). This is the reason why established companies go for an ecosystem of products, while others try to start with one or two devices.
Home Automation and the Cloud
The cloud has come as a messiah for all the IoT / home automation device vendors seeking venture funding. As mentioned earlier, home automation devices need to be controlled and/or monitored and their state needs to be actionable. This requires intelligence that has traditionally been resident in the in-house command center. Some vendors opt to offer service plans by moving this intelligence to the cloud and making all user interactions go via their servers. It also provides them with data mining opportunities. In certain cases, vendors can claim delivering of a better experience for customers using machine learning on the cloud side.
Drawing up a Checklist
In evaluating home automation devices, there are a number of questions that the consumer needs to ask before committing to a particular product family.
1. Does the unit require an always-on Internet connection? What are its capabilities in an ‘Intranet of Things’ scenario?
2. Is it possible for authorized third-party applications or devices to control the unit without compromising security?
3. Does the installation require new wires or ‘hubs’ in addition to the main unit? How is the command center implemented?
4. What are the power requirements of the device? If powered via batteries, what type is used, and how often do they need to be changed?
5. Is the device a standalone product or a member of an ecosystem of products? What are the pricing aspects?
Concluding Remarks
a summary table covering the following points in each of our home automation reviews:
Communication Technology (Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / Z-Wave / ZigBee etc.)
Power Source
Hub / Bridge Requirement
Control Center (Local device / cloud / local server etc.)
User Control Interface (Mobile apps / web server / dedicated consumer premises equipment etc.)
Notes on Open APIs
Notes on Cloud Reliance (includes subscription aspects)
Notes on Security
Pricing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth Smart Sensor Beacon
http://www.eeweb.com/news/bluetooth-smart-sensor-beacon
EM Microelectronic announced the release of its EMBC02. The unique combination of sensors with EM’s low-cost, low-power and fully certified beacon technology will be an enabler of many real-world Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
EMBC02 beacons integrate a 3-axis accelerometer in the same easy-to-use, tiny form factor as EMBC01, enabling a wide range of motion-based beacon applications. By attaching EMBC02 to objects or people, both, proximity and motion, can be monitored by a smartphone or tablet application. EMBC02 can be programmed to transmit proximity and identification data, like standard beacons, but it can also provide motion data (movements, vibrations, acceleration) as well as specific motion-based alarms based on accelerometer data, originating from shock, free-fall or taps. The accelerometer allows to maximize battery life by “beaconing” data only when required, e.g. while in motion, or when an alarm condition occurs.
The EMBC01 Bluetooth Smart proximity beacon can operate for more than 12 months on a single CR2032 coin cell. EMBC02 offers even longer battery life with optimized usage scenarios where the beacon sleeps (or transmits infrequently) until the accelerometer detects movement.
The EMBC02 is completely programmable and capable of supporting multiple proximity standards (e.g. iBeacon, AltBeacon or any other proprietary protocol) in a single beacon. It is FCC/CE/IC certified, includes a multi-function button for input and two LEDs for user feedback. The beacon module comes in a sleek, weatherproof (IP-64) housing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LightBlue Bean
A low energy Bluetooth Arduino microcontroller.
$29.97
http://store.hackaday.com/products/lightblue-bean
3-axis accelerometer.
Temperature sensor.
RGB LED.
CR2032 coin cell battery.
ATmega 328p.
8 MHz clock speed.
3V operating voltage.
6 digital I/O pins, 2 analog pins.
Bluetooth LE Peripheral.
Wireless programming.
Support on OS X and iOS.
Including Windows 8 support!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things: A Fancy Way of Saying “More Embedded Linux, Please”
http://intelligentsystemssource.com/internet-of-things-a-fancy-way-of-saying-more-embedded-linux-please/
Spanning server to deployed device, configurations of Linux have reached levels of flexibility, performance and real-time capability that enable it to function at all levels in the Internet of Things.
To recap the past decade or so of embedded computing:: Linux is the dominant operating system in embedded devices and its use is increasing, while the deployment of custom or in-house operating systems has taken a sharp downward turn, according to the 2014 Embedded Market Study by UMB Tech. This remains true, even when taking Android and all of its associated “Linux or not” questions out of the equation, with the next contenders being Windows, custom OSes, and RTOS as a distant fourth.
Why is Linux so dominant? It’s not the smallest, fastest, or lowest energy OS. Memory requirements ranging from 2 MB to 512 MB preclude its use on many smaller devices. A custom OS that has been pared down and optimized for a given microprocessor or System-on-Chip (SoC) will probably deliver better performance.
Embedded Linux Keeps Growing Amid IoT Disruption, Says Study
https://www.linux.com/news/embedded-mobile/mobile-linux/818011-embedded-linux-keeps-growing-amid-iot-disruption-says-study
A new VDC Research study projects that Linux and Android will continue to increase embedded market share through 2017 while Windows and commercial real-time operating systems (RTOSes) will lose ground. The study suggests that the fast growth of IoT is accelerating the move toward open source Linux.
“Open source, freely, and/or publicly available” Linux will grow from 56.2 percent share of embedded unit shipments in 2012 to 64.7 percent in 2017, according to VDC’s “The Global Market for IoT and Embedded Operating Systems.” That represents a CAGR of 16.7 percent for open Linux, says VDC.
The surging open source Linux growth more than compensates for the decline from 6.3 percent to 5.0 percent in commercial Linux shipments. In 2013, there were more than 1.7 times more shipments of embedded devices based on open source OSes, including free RTOSes, than for commercial platforms, says VDC.
“Linux, in particular, continues to grow its developer base and support from leading vendors,” says Daniel Mandell, an analyst at VDC Research. “Linux is the primary OS for new connected device classes such as IoT gateways.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Linux takes leading role in IoT-obsessed market
http://linuxgizmos.com/linux-takes-leading-role-in-iot-obsessed-market/
Spurred on by IoT, open source Linux will grow from a 56.2 percent share of embedded device shipments in 2012 to 64.7 percent in 2017, says VDC Research.
Earlier this month, VDC Research released a report on the embedded OS market that says embedded Linux is growing in adoption in a market increasingly obsessed with the Internet of Things. The popularity of open source as well as the need for more advanced wireless and security stacks have helped Linux gain share from Microsoft’s Windows Embedded and from real-time operating systems (RTOSes), according to VDC’s “The Global Market for IoT and Embedded Operating Systems.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Nudge Technology Prods You To Take Action
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/04/19/2356227/new-nudge-technology-prods-you-to-take-action
Natasha Singer reports at the NYT on a new generation of devices whose primary function is to prod people to change. This new category of nudging technology includes “hydration reminder” apps like Waterlogged that exhort people to increase their water consumption; the HAPIfork, a utensil that vibrates and turns on a light indicator when people eat too quickly; and Thync, “neurosignaling” headgear that delivers electrical pulses intended to energize or relax people. “There is this dumbing-down, which assumes people do not want the data, they just want the devices to help them,”
But do the new self-tracking and self-improvement technologies benefit people or just create more anxiety?
Technology That Prods You to Take Action, Not Just Collect Data
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/technology/technology-that-prods-you-to-take-action-not-just-collect-data.html
She uses software with the Orwellian name of Freedom to temporarily block Internet access on her computer. It forces her to stop browsing and concentrate on her writing.
“These are little shields against the temptations and fallibilities of being human,” Ms. Schüll said when I visited her recently to discuss her research on digital self-monitoring and self-modification devices.
Ms. Schüll, a cultural anthropologist, studies the relationship between people and technology. And her own progression from managing her writing schedule with an hourglass to ceding control to an Internet lockdown app parallels the technological shifts she is exploring in a book due to be released next year.
Titled “Keeping Track: Personal Informatics, Self-Regulation and the Data-Driven Life,” the book charts the evolution of contemporary digital self-tracking. The phenomenon originated in 2009 as a do-it-yourself community called Quantified Self, in which tech enthusiasts and other data obsessives analyzed details from their daily lives with the aim of gaining insights into their own behavior patterns. The idea was to increase self-knowledge and autonomy through numbers.
Consumer electronics developers — or “quantrepreneurs” in industry parlance — soon took up this idea, expanding the market for fitness activity and health trackers.
But now that retailers like Best Buy and Amazon are dedicating extensive real estate to wearable wellness gadgets,
“There is this dumbing-down, which assumes people do not want the data, they just want the devices to help them,” Ms. Schüll observes. “It is not really about self-knowledge anymore. It’s the nurselike application of technology.”
In the move to the mass market, it seems, the quantified self has become the infantilized self.
But whether these gadgets have beneficial outcomes may not be the point. Like vitamin supplements, for which there is very little evidence of benefit in healthy people, just the act of buying these devices makes many people feel they are investing in themselves. Quantrepreneurs at least are banking on it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DHL, Cisco predict Internet of Things to boost to warehouse supply chain, logistics operations by $1.9 trillion
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2015/04/dhl-cisco-iot-trend.html
At this week’s DHL Global Technology Conference in Dubai, the logistics service provider DHL and Cisco jointly released a new trend report focused on the Internet of Things (IoT). The report estimates that there will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020, compared to 15 billion today, and looks at the potential impact this technological revolution will have on business.
“For any organization with a supply chain or logistics operations, IoT will have game-changing consequences, from creating more ‘last mile’ delivery options for customers, to more efficient warehousing operations and freight transportation.”
Ken Allen, CEO for DHL Express and Board Sponsor Technology, comments, “At Deutsche Post DHL Group, we have a deeply held belief in the positive powers of global trade. Yet, as our Global Connectedness Index 2014 revealed, the overall level of global connectedness remains surprisingly limited. There is huge potential for countries to further increase their connectedness and prosper through trade, integration and technology. We believe the Internet of Things will be a primary enabler of this global transformation.”
According to Cisco’s economic analysis, IoT will generate $8 trillion worldwide in “Value at Stake” over the next decade. This will come from five primary drivers: innovation and revenue ($2.1 trillion); asset utilization ($2.1 trillion); supply chain and logistics ($1.9 trillion); employee productivity improvements ($1.2 trillion); and enhanced customer and citizen experience ($700 billion).
Tomi Engdahl says:
RTOS simplifies IoT endpoint development
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4439158/RTOS-simplifies-IoT-endpoint-development?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150420&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150420&elq=cd8175fad764408396c930b8d6c13bb9&elqCampaignId=22634&elqaid=25457&elqat=1&elqTrackId=cf860b96035d49d5879e0c49de159952
Texas Instruments has released version 2.12 of its TI-RTOS, incorporating automated power management and connectivity features that simplify IoT endpoint creation. It also provides all the peripheral drivers and protocol stacks needed to implement cloud connectivity as well as automate power management for the MCU. WiFi, Bluetooth, Smart Zigbee, and 6LoWPAN are supported as well as cloud connectivity protocols such as HTTP and MQTT clients. The RTOS also supports over-the-air software updating.
The TI-RTOS is available as open source under the BSD license,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Indoor wireless mesh network is solar-powered
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4439241/Indoor-wireless-mesh-network-is-solar-powered?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150420&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150420&elq=98b2b0f736dc4742b474c010d0bc7a0e&elqCampaignId=22627&elqaid=25449&elqat=1&elqTrackId=e6b25f275b1a4c388f79685b37850832
Linear Technology demonstrated its SmartMesh IP embedded wireless mesh network, powered by Sol Chip’s Solar Battery, at this month’s Hannover Fair 2015 trade show, promoting the use of solar energy to power industrial Internet of Things applications. The Sol Chip Solar Battery (Light Battery) integrates all the required components in a single battery unit to harvest and supply sustainable solar/light energy to low-power designs.
Based on 6LoWPAN and IEEE 802.15.4e standards, SmartMesh IP wireless mesh networks are built for IP compatibility.
SmartMesh IP
http://www.linear.com/products/smartmesh_ip
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless Sensor Networks – Dust Networks
http://www.linear.com/products/wireless_sensor_networks_-_dust_networks
Dust Networks, a pioneer in the field of wireless sensor networking, is defining the way to connect smart devices. Dust Networks delivers reliable, resilient and scalable wireless embedded products with advanced network management and comprehensive security features. Dust Networks products are built on breakthrough Eterna™ 802.15.4 SoC technology, delivering ultra low power consumption for wire-free operation on batteries or energy harvesting. Working with Dust Networks, wireless sensing applications can be deployed anywhere data can be gleaned.
Dust’s portfolio of standards-based products include:
SmartMesh IP is built for IP compatibility, and is based on 6LoWPAN and 802.15.4e standards.
SmartMesh WirelessHART products are designed for the harshest industrial environments, where low power, reliability, resilience and scalability are key, making them well suited for general industrial applications as well as WirelessHART-specific designs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Confessions of a low power addict
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-basics/4439236/Confessions-of-a-low-power-addict?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150420&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150420&elq=98b2b0f736dc4742b474c010d0bc7a0e&elqCampaignId=22627&elqaid=25449&elqat=1&elqTrackId=e94842dd0a364d1db13f11ea0ecf0ca6
The beauty of it all was that all aspects of this project were being done in parallel, which meant that everything, including production tools, all showed up at once. Once we got to the product testing stage, that was it; there was no going back and no budget to change the hardware. We were stuck with the mismatch. The 9.5 hour operational gap would have to be closed in software.
Was it even possible? What can possibly be done in software to squeeze enough battery life out of the device to last 3 times as long?
It turns out that a software developer has far more control over how energy is used in an embedded system than one might think. Energy savings start with the selection of proper software architecture. Round robin or polling methodologies are inefficient and waste energy. They need to be the first things that go. Interrupt driven techniques need to replace them.
Using an event-driven architecture, though, will only save energy if a low power mode is used during idle processor time. Modern day processors have a plethora of low power modes available, but they are not as simple or easy to use as one might think. They are a complex labyrinth of state transitions, wake events, and recovery times. Choose poorly and that could spell the end of any real-time behavior in your system.
Software architecture and low power modes are just the tip of the iceberg! Silicon vendors have been busy racing to see who can design in the lowest energy states. Implementing advanced techniques such as clock scaling, sleep-on-exit, and autonomous peripherals they can watch the energy usage drop. After a while, it starts to become addicting. How low-energy can a design go? What if DMA is used? Can compiler optimizations help?
Using these mentioned techniques as well as others, we were ultimately able to extend the product’s 4.5 hour battery life to 14.5 hours!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Making Wireless LoRa Design Easier, Faster
Microchip speeds to market with wireless LoRa module
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326390&
With the ink scarcely dried on the agreement to form the LoRa Alliance for promoting a new long range wireless M2M communications standard, one of its founding members, Microchip Technology, is ready with samples of a ready-to-deploy, precertified sensor node module. Volume quantities will be available in May.
LoRa is a low-data-rate wireless networking standard developed initially by Semtech Corp. to make possible Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) wireless communication with a range of more than 10 miles (suburban), a battery life of greater than 10 years, and the ability to connect millions of wireless sensor nodes to gateways. In addition to Microchip, charter members of the LoRa Alliance include Cisco, Eolane, IBM, Kerlink, IMST, MultiTech, Sagemcom, and Semtech.
“The key to our ability to get out with a LoRa design so quickly is that we took advantage of a stack-on-board wireless module strategy we initiated several years ago to get our 8-, 16-, and 32-bit MCUs into a variety of newly emerging wireless markets,”
The surface mountable RN2483 module comes with the LoRaWAN protocol stack, so it can be easily connected with the emerging LoRa infrastructure—including both privately managed local area networks (LANs) and telecom-operated public networks—to create Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) with nationwide coverage. “This protocol stack integration approach, as with our earlier wireless modules, also makes it possible for it to be used with any microcontroller that has a UART interface, including our own MCUs,” said Smith.
ASCII command line configuration
Similar to Microchip’s earlier wireless designs, the module firmware incorporates a command-line interpreter to make it easier to integrate the RN2483 into designs by allowing developers to easily configure and control its functions
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things, ie IoT lot of promise. It can bring significant business to new entrepreneurs, if only to find their own sweet spottinsa. Ruuvi Innovations from Oulu Finland plans to conquer the world open source foundation for a, affordable and compact bluetooth tag.
RuuviTagiin focused interest is intense. -Yritämme Take it to the world loud enthusiasm. RuuviTag IoT is a very competitive market. It is a small, affordable, versatile and open software-based, Ostrava praises.
Ruuvi has two products, RuuviTracker was developed several years and at the moment it is gaining greater production start. – We also offer complete solutions for the customer’s needs, such as industrial environments
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2711:oululainen-iot-tagi-valloittaa-maailmaa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using Big Data and Cloud Computing to Predict Traffic Jams
http://www.techbriefs.tv/video/Using-Big-Data-and-Cloud-Comput;Data-Acquisition
Microsoft Research is working with Brazil’s Federal University of Minas Gerais to tackle the seemingly uncontrollable problem of traffic jams. The Traffic Prediction Project plans to leverage all available traffic data – including both historic and current information gleaned from transportation departments, Bing traffic maps, road cameras and sensors, and the social networks of the drivers themselves. The immediate objective of the research is to predict traffic conditions over the next 15 minutes to an hour.
The model achieved a prediction accuracy of 80 percent, and that was based on using only traffic-flow data. The researchers expect the accuracy to increase to 90 percent when traffic incidents and data from social networks are folded in.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using Arduino* IDE for Windows* with the Intel® IoT Developer Kit
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/using-arduino-ide-for-windows-with-the-intel-iot-developer-kit?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=Syndication&utm_term=Q4&utm_campaign=IHI-IoT-Q4
This document shows you how to use the Arduino IDE along with the Intel® IoT Developer Kit (dev kit) tools. While the dev kit offers several extras in the way of libraries and tools, you can use the Arduino IDE without it; just follow this link. However, if you want to use your Intel® Galileo board and the Arduino IDE and take advantage of the dev kit, as well as use your board as a USB storage device please continue reading.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Maker
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/maker.html
Start Making!
Intel® Edison and Intel® Galileo development boards are available globally.
Download Software for the Intel® IoT Developer Kit v1.0
https://software.intel.com/en-us/iot/downloads
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kickstarting Router-Based Development Boards
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/21/kickstarting-router-based-development-boards/
[Squonk] is rather famous in the world of repurposed routers, having reverse engineered the TL-WR703N wireless router from TP-Link a few years ago. With that knowledge, he’s developed an open platform for Things on the Internet called Domino. It’s pretty much exactly what you would get by cracking open a router bought on AliBaba, only in a much more convenient package with many more pins broken out.
The Domino builds on [Squonk]’s reverse engineering efforts of the TP-Link TL-WR703N wireless router, the router that has stolen the thunder from the Linksys WRT54G for all those sweet, sweet, embedded hacks.
Domino IO – An Open Hardware WiFi Platform for Things
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/706167548/dominoio-an-open-hardware-wifi-platform-for-things
Domino.IO is an affordable and advanced WiFi hardware platform for Things, and full life-cycle services for Makers!
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ‘Internet of Things’ will be the world’s most massive device market and save companies billions of dollars
Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-internet-of-things-market-growth-and-trends-2015-2?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=taboola&utm_campaign=taboola&utm_term=bloomberg?r=US#ixzz3XySIrnlT
Tomi Engdahl says:
UNDERSTANDING THE
IoT Opportunity
http://www.idc.com/prodserv/iot
As the number of IP-ready devices explodes worldwide, the Internet of Things (IoT) is moving beyond concept to reality. And, the opportunity is not going unnoticed as IT decision makers scramble to understand and evaluate how IoT will impact their business now and in the future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things: Opportunity Across a Diverse Ecosystem
http://insight.synopsys.com/synopsysinsight/issue_1_2015?elq_mid=6498&elq_cid=303473#pg2
Autonomous communications between devices, or what has long been referred to as
machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, has evolved into a much broader market
opportunity that is now commonly known as the Internet of Things (IoT). It represents a
new era of innovation that moves our thinking beyond the connectivity that we enjoy in
smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics. The IoT also represents a new
opportunity for demand and supply sides of the equation –technology vendors, businesses,
government organizations, and consumers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ubuntu 15.04 to bring ‘Vivid’ updates for cloud, devices this week
Canonical claims first-to-market with LXD, OpenStack ‘Kilo’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/22/ubuntu_15_04_release/
Canonical says Ubuntu 15.04 “Vivid Vervet,” the latest version of its popular Linux distro, will ship this week, following a two-month beta period.
Along with the desktop version – which Canonical says is “the favorite environment for Linux developers” – the release will also deliver a range of variants, including special formulations of the OS for cloud deployments, phones, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Run two PANs with one transceiver
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4439199/Run-two-PANs-with-one-transceiver?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150422&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150422&elq=496f8072ab0c41c18e15d2368a4ef928&elqCampaignId=22660&elqaid=25485&elqat=1&elqTrackId=3204631c03c54b68b4ecad0c0bbdb333
Industrial and home automation systems often need multiple, concurrent wireless networks active. Freescale’s MCR20AVHM transceiver addresses that need with a two-antenna diversity design able to rapidly switch between two personal area networks (PANs), bridging them without losing data packets.
The MCR20AVHM is a radio transceiver intended to operate in conjunction with a Kinetis-family host microcontroller, especially the KL46 and K64F families, that runs the protocol stacks. An SPI MCU interface that supports burst transfers provides the link to the host MCU. The existing Kinetis SDK already includes wireless protocol software as well as a compliant IEEE 802.15.4-2011 PHY-MAC implementation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t confuse “connected lighting” with “smart lighting”
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/led-zone/4439197/LEDs-battle-ebola-and-climate-change–?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150422&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150422&elq=496f8072ab0c41c18e15d2368a4ef928&elqCampaignId=22660&elqaid=25485&elqat=1&elqTrackId=b0f37e55864e4a53bc481dd1af20c707
Smart Lighting’s future may hinge on coming up with a good answer to the question: “Why are our cars still so much smarter than our so-called Smart Homes?” That question was posed in “Smart Home Hype”, a white paper by GreenPeak’s Cees Links who found part of the answer in an important distinction between a “Connected Home” and a truly “Smart Home”.
Links says a Smart Home has some intelligence of its own which is able to gather information from its network of sensors, review and analyze that data, and then take some kind of action – without a human person in the loop to make the decisions for it. Although it’s focused on the broader issues facing smart houses, they explain a lot about why most of today’s so-called Smart Lighting products are struggling in the marketplace. For more details on the problem and its solutions, click here to download your copy of “Smart Home Hype”.
Smart Home Hype White Paper
GreenPeak White Paper
Why is the so called Smart World still So Stupid
http://greenpeak.com/Press/PressKit/2015GreenPeakWhitePaperSmartHomeHype.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kickstarting Even More Router-Based Dev Boards
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/22/kickstarting-even-more-router-based-dev-boards/
The latest and greatest thing makers and IoT solutions is apparently router hacking. While most Hackaday readers lived through this interesting phase where Linksys routers were used to connect sensors and other such digital bits and bobs to the Internet a few years ago, SOCs have improved, and now there are router-based dev boards.
The latest is the Onion Omega, an exceptionally tiny board just under two inches square. Onboard is an Atheros AR9331 chipset – the same found in a number of cheap WiFi routers – attached to 32 pins breaking out GPIOs, SPI, I2C, and USB. With WiFi and Ethernet, this is a board designed to connect sensors, motors, actuators, and devices to the Internet.
Onion Omega: Build Hardware with JavaScript, Python, PHP
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onion/onion-omega-invention-platform-for-the-internet-of?ref=category
Tiny dev board with Linux & WiFi. Create cool things with REST APIs, App Store, in-depth tutorials, and our awesome community!
What Is The Onion Omega?
The Onion Omega is a hardware development platform
designed specifically for software developers.
It comes with built-in WiFi, Arduino-compatible and it runs full Linux. It lets you prototype hardware devices using familiar tools such as Git, pip, npm, and using high level programming languages such as Python, Javascript, PHP. The Onion Omega is fully integrated with the Onion Cloud, making it a breeze to connect physical devices to the Web to create Internet of Things applications. It’s also open source
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino mqtt and web socket home automation
http://bogdanioanliviu.no-ip.org/arduino-mqtt-web-socket-home-automation/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Nike and Under Armour pour money into health tracking to develop connections with customers, recommend products based on exercise data, reach new markets
Why Nike and Under Armour are spending wildly to watch your every step
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/04/22/why-nike-and-under-armour-are-spending-wildly-to-watch-your-every-step/
Sportswear outfitters like Under Armour and Nike look increasingly like tech companies, with apps and digital ecosystems that stretch far beyond their traditional fitting rooms and football deals. In the age of the Fitbit and Apple Watch, where Web-connected fitness is increasingly de rigueur, the winner of the health-tracking arms race could potentially secure a goldmine from shoppers looking for the best way to break a sweat.
Boasting “the world’s largest digital health and fitness community,” Under Armour executives said Tuesday that their Connected Fitness platform now counts more than 130 million unique users. Most of those have come from Under Armour’s $700 million health-app buying spree, during which it gobbled up MapMyFitness in 2013 and, in February, MyFitnessPal and Endomondo.
It is another way America’s second-biggest sportswear firm is seeking to get ahead of its chief rival, Nike, and another way in which the underdog is already lagging behind. NikeFuel, the company’s athletic melange of fitness trackers and mobile apps, boasts a big user base, a longer track record and the backing of the Big Swoosh, which sells far more clothes than Under Armour and remains more easily recognized.
Under Armour has, in the Nike-Michael Jordan tradition, done incredibly well at signing on sports talent
But some sportswear executives think fitness tracking could give an even bigger sales boost than star partnerships. The apps offer personalized detail and encouragement for the everywoman exercise crowd, even those who couldn’t care less about major sports. And unlike athlete endorsement deals, they don’t leave the company at risk of a bad game or career-ending injury, and could offer a sales bump in every season.
Fitness trackers could also help the companies win over a fast-growing yet underrepresented market among amateur exercisers: women.
Health and wellness is one of the fastest-growing categories in app stores for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, which now count more than 100,000 apps for counting calories, tracking diets or logging workouts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
8 Views of Security from RSA
Internet of Things lacks root of trust
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326422&
The Internet of Things, along with everything else, is insecure. The U.S. government wants to help with that and other security problems — if you still trust them.
Those were two of several messages from the annual RSA Conference here.
“We have a long way to go in IoT security just to bring designs up to the not-yet-adequate state of PC security,” Steve Hanna, co-chair of the IoT committee at the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), an industry alliance setting security standards for nearly a decade.
Hana was one of a handful of experts who gave a half-day seminar showing at RSA. They demoed ways cost-constrained embedded systems could adapt the group’s approach to providing a hardware-backed root of trust, something well established in x86-based PCs and servers.
“Without hardware security, IoT devices are as vulnerable as PCs were 15-20 years ago, perhaps more so because they only use software security and it’s rarely updated, so it’s pretty easy to attack and control a device,” said Stacy Cannady, the other IoT committee co-chair and a security expert at Cisco Systems.
Other experts such as Adi Shamir, the ‘A’ in the RSA algorithm, agreed. He noted the recent phenomenon of ransom-ware in which remote hackers lock up someone’s device and demand a ransom to fix it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth Does IoT 5+ Ways
Nordic promotes IPv6, Google eschews apps
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326352&
Google, CSR and Nordic Semiconductor pitched different ways to connected Bluetooth devices for the emerging Internet of Things. Their presentations led off the annual Bluetooth World event here where vendors showed wireless wearable and smart home gadgets that ranged from hearing aids and toys to espresso machines and bikes.
As many as three billion devices will ship with Bluetooth this year, rising to nine billion in 2019. By that time the cost of adding Bluetooth will fall to less than a dollar, said Mark Powell, executive director at the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) in opening remarks here.
How to link those devices for various IoT scenarios was a hot topic at the event.
Google said developers should ditch beacon apps in favor of open Web services it is prototyping. Nordic Semiconductor called for others to follow its direction in supporting a full Internet Protocol stack on IoT nodes, while CSR touted its homegrown mesh network and advocated a hybrid approach that supports IP addressability without the baggage of a full IP stack on each node.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Saving the bees using the IoT
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4439281/Saving-the-bees-using-the-IoT?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150427&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150427&elq=d8e7743b69a04b93b856d7cf815aade5&elqCampaignId=22726&elqaid=25562&elqat=1&elqTrackId=291f04c57f3c4e5abeae62476d3c7223
Honeybees are dying, mites are the cause, and the Internet of Things (IoT) may have the solution.
Whether you use honey or not, honeybees are an essential factor in your nutrition. They collect pollen in order to generate honey, and as a byproduct of their collection activities, they pollinate the plants that produce much of our food. But the bees are dying off in North America and Europe. Colonies have declined as much as 90% in the US since 1962. Some 70 of the top 100 food crops have suffered losses due to this bee crisis.
The causes of this “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) are many and varied, but a key component appears to be the Varroa destructor mite. It hitches a ride on an unsuspecting bee, which gives it passage into a hive. There, it breeds rapidly and infests the colony, leading to CCD.
non-chemical approach to mites is needed.
The IoT may offer such an approach. Working with M2M provider Gemalto, agricultural communications company Eltopia has produced a network-connected “smart beehive frame” that replaces a traditional frame in a commercial beehive. The “MiteNot” frame provides sensors and a heater element that communicate through a gateway to an application on the network. The sensors feed information to the application, which in turn commands the heater to protect the hive from infestation. One frame can protect an entire hive and one gateway can support the apiary’s whole hive collection.
the MiteNot identifies the right time and place to apply heat in the hive to interrupt the mites’ breeding cycles before the fertilization step, sterilizing the mite eggs and halting the infestation.
There has been a lot of criticism about the hype surrounding the IoT, but applications such as the MiteNot show that the trend is real and the implications profound. The ability to create a small, low-power, wirelessly-connected device that can access and leverage powerful computing algorithms on the network opens a whole world of applications that were inconceivable a few years ago. The idea of the Internet toaster may be silly, but the potential for the IoT is not. In fact, the IoT may well save the bees and, by extension, mankind.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 are two increasingly discussed strategies helping to make manufacturers more productive.
Source: https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1061790
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Now Expands Its Reach, Integrates 70 More Services
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/google-now-app-integrations/
Google Now lives life a quarter-second at a time. The feature, which comes standard on every Android phone, surfaces information to you based on the time of day and your current location. It always shows you a simple dashboard of cards, each filled with timely notifications, reminders, and real-time data.
With a newly open API, Google is working with its partners to present even more of that information on your mobile screen. And today, Google has announced more than 70 new integrations for Now. You can find new music to listen to, control your smart home, and even track the whereabouts of your food delivery from the restaurant to your door, all within the confines of Google Now. When you say “OK Google” into your watch or phone to activate Google Now, you’re not just searching for stuff—you’re doing stuff.
The Now platform is essentially the entire interface for Android Wear devices, and it’s becoming more and more important on Android phones as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things is full of promises: intelligent homes, better health and a unified connected world. General Media, the less visible, but more likely to affect the society is an industrial Internet of Things, ie IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things).
IIoT includes smart farming, smart cities, smart factories and smart electrical grids. IIoT: s can be described as a huge number of interconnected industrial systems that communicate with each other and coordinate data analytics and operations in order to improve industrial performance, ultimately to benefit society as a whole.
Intelligence increase in industrial systems brings with it a number of difficult challenges. One of them is the concept of time in the standard ethernet protocol. We tolerate some delay and re-downloads when we look at the latest movie on Netflix, but such stops can not be a medical device between two converging high-speed robotic arm, or – worse – between the pedal and the car tires. The standard Ethernet use of our cities, and our machines combine power grid means that we have to solve the timing deficiencies.
The long-av-cable replacement standard Ethernet was the festival organizers, stadium designers and kotiteatterifanaatikkojen dream. However, the same above-mentioned network problems – latency, low reliability, and synkronointiongemat – have always affected insurmountable.
To solve this problem the IEEE 802.1 Working Group created AVB Group (Audio Video Bridging), which updated the Ethernet AVB standard to include in the 2000s, the first end of the decade. AVB allows audio and video data, deterministic transmission and terminal equipment such as speakers and Jumbotron screens synchronization over Ethernet standard. In addition, the AVB data runs parallel to the same Ethernet cable, in which the normal data transfer between computers.
How does this relate to the industry the Internet of Things? Leap Glastonbury intelligent plant may sound long, but AVB will help us to implement three important step towards the industrial IoT’s.
1. Future factories, the machines must communicate, work together and syknronoitua each other a lot more reliable and deterministic.
2. machines and servers, data, analytics and visualization of the separating walls must be torn down, and these systems need to be connected.
3. 50 billion, the device must be able to communicate and work together.
Industrial IoT possible was one of the reasons why the IEEE 802.1 AVB Working Group was expanded in 2012 to the end of the TSN Working Party (Time-Sensitive Networking task group). The working group task is to expand AVB’s basic features to support industrial automation, automotive control networks, and to further enhance the audio and video application performance. When the TSN group completes its work, the Ethernet communication, deterministic data transfer and synchronization of nodes merged into a single new protocol.
Skeptics show – quite rightly – that the Ethernet factory is nothing new, and that the motion control, safety systems, sensor networks, and between machines M2M traffic is a whole set of network protocols. Even these various industrial networks, the number reveals how much time, money, and the complexity of a modicum of intelligent machine construction requires smart, IIoT the promise of fully redeeming smart factory not to mention
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2721:dolly-parton-ja-teollinen-esineiden-internet&catid=9&Itemid=139
Tomi Engdahl says:
NECOM Intel® Quark Processor X1021 IoT Gateway System
http://intelligentsystemssource.com/product-details/?id=5942
NIO 100
Onboard Intel® Quark processor X1021 single core 400MHz
Wind River® or Yocto (only for NIO100y) operating system and McAfee® security software solutions
Optional Wi-Fi or Wireless module
2 x 10/100 Fast Ethernet ports
1 x mPCIe slots for Radio module (only for NIO 100)
1 x mPCIe slot for FBI module (only for NIO 101)
2 x USB 2.0 type A
1 x RS232/485 selectable
DIO 4×4
Support 9~36V wide range DC input with phonix x 2 pin terminal block
Support -20 ~ 70°C extended operating temperature
Tomi Engdahl says:
The data from the machine to the cloud
Internet of things is no longer just a vision. It smells of welding smoke, rattles workshop crane and throb cargo ship engine room. It requires sensors, platforms and analytics – and can save the Finnish industry.
The worker grasps Peikko Group’s factory in Lahti terminal welding system. It is a smartphone-looking, but the bigger device.
Welder by scanning a barcode reader set of tags: identity, manual welding, weld, ball of yarn sulatuseränumeron and the type of wire and the gas mixture.
When the arc is ignited, the machine automatically stores the voltage, current and wire feed speed variation. Data is transferred via the WLAN network connection to the cloud when the seal has been made.
For example, if the welder using the wrong voltage or is not sufficiently qualified, the system blabbed by sending notice the discrepancy. Then the welding coordinator may knock on the shoulder.
This is a disaster, which is called depending on the method of calculation of third or fourth industrial revolution. Information technology and software will be gradually integrated into all the equipment and machines for the industry.
The guesswork out of knowing
Kemppi’s Lahti-based product slogan is “stop guessing and start knowing”. It describes it, from industrial on the Internet is – or should be about. Both the customer and the equipment manufacturer will benefit from the data will be used more efficiently.
“But Did we know are doing industrial internet, when we developed our product? No, we did not know, ”
Kemppi was collected welding data for a long time. The company was born little by little understanding of what the market needs. Customers wanted the welders would be more efficient and make better quality results.
“In many cases it is the customer’s reputation. The customer does not want the roller coaster will be down and dozens of people are dying, ”
Arc System makes every seam traceable, even if a worldwide operating sub-contractors. The customer often requires high quality output than the official norms.
Significant savings are also created when the documentation automated. Welders mean without Kemppi system next to the welded seam in chalk on the same data that Arc System recorded digitally. Liitukynäilyt must then be separately put together and recorded. For example, when an oil rig is completed, the front is a couple of months in length documentary voluntary.
“Oh, think about how robust, reliable and profitable traditional model,” says Kemppi.
“If this game does not start, it is a big risk.”
The mere savings in repair costs and documentation of deadly Kemppi according to the system price up together in a big project.
Kemppi is a manufacturer of industrial means of production company. Internet of things has created a business model on new dimensions. Many other companies have only just started digitalization adventure.
The crane manufacturer Konecranes decided four years ago to head the industrial tightly to the Internet. The products are then consciously equipped so that they can be monitored remotely. In practice, cranes added sensors and network connections.
Remote monitoring or the sensors are not in themselves create an industrial-Fi. The business will start to benefit when the sensor data is analyzed.
Konecranes uses large part of the collected data, the development of customer practices. Data provides the same company a significant source of information that helps product development and the development of product offerings. The customer sees all the time its own data cloud browser.
“Customer owns the data, but we have a license to use it.”
Factory Internet rebound many at the mouth of the Finnish industry to be saved. Finland has, for example, last year’s survey indicates that in the technology industry with strong skills needed to succeed.
“Finland is exactly the kind of expertise that is needed for the implementation of industrial solutions for the Internet, such as mobile and user interface expertise. We also have a good industrial spearhead companies that are leaders in their own territory
Hype raise awareness and serving our intentions, but it also raises expectations unnecessarily.
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/4-2015/149730
Tomi Engdahl says:
When THINGS attack! Defending data centres from IoT device-krieg
IoT makers aren’t doing enough about security, so what should you do?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/27/when_fridges_attack/
IoT includes every device that is connected to the internet – from home automation products, security cameras, refrigerators, microwaves and home entertainment devices like TVs and gaming consoles, to industrial machinery and smart retail shelves that know when they need replenishing. The IDC predicts that more than 200 billion “things” will be connected via the internet by 2020.
We have, of course, had sensor-driven environments for decades, in environments including nuclear power stations, subway trains and manufacturing plants. But these have been tightly coupled, hard real-time systems, whereas with IoT, we have large, loosely coupled networks composed of systems that were not purpose-built to be used together and are interoperating over the internet.
The increased digitisation of industries and the connection of people, processes, data and things will see significant growth at the edge of the network, particularly with wireless and Wi-Fi-connected devices. It’s the network edge that could be the badlands. “With more and more devices, the number of end points for network security quickly proliferates. The possibility of connected private networks between supply chains, and customers too, also demands attention, as data begins to flow between companies which have traditionally been ringfenced behind a firewall,” says Terry Greer-King, Cisco UK and Ireland’s director of security.
A Capgemini study reiterates this. It found just a third of organisations believe their IoT products are “highly resilient” against cyber-security threats, less than half focus on securing their IoT products at the beginning of the product development phase, and 47 per cent do not provide any privacy-related information on their IoT products.