The Internet of Things revolution started in 2015 and will continue to be strong in 2016. 2015 was the year everyone talked about the Internet of Things. (So was 2014. And 2013.) But unlike before, it was the year everyone started making plans, laying groundwork, and building the infrastructure. Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. The premise of IoT is that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been called the next Industrial Revolution — it will change the way all businesses, governments, and consumers interact with the physical world. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer the data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
and the Internet. IoT is also called the Internet of Everything. A critical component for the IoT system to be a success will be secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization services.
In the future, everything will be connected. It won’t just be our phones that access the Internet; it will be our light bulbs, our front doors, our microwaves, our comforters, our blenders. You can call it the Internet of Things, The Internet of Everything, Universal Object Interaction, or your pick of buzzwords that begin with Smart. They all hold as inevitable that everything, everything will be connected, to each other and to the Internet. And this is promised to change the world. Remember that the objects themselves do not benefit us, but what services and functions they make it possible to obtain. We will enjoy the outcome, hopefully even better quality products, informative and reliable services, and even new applications.
There will be lots of money spend on IoT in 2016, the exact sum is hard to define, but it is estimated that nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years. IoT is now a very large global business dominated by giants (IBM, Intel, Cisco, Gemalto, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Bosch, GE, AT&T, T-Mobile, Telefonica and many others). I see that because it is still a young and quickly developing market, there will be lots of potential in it for startups in 2016.
There will be a very large number of new IoT devices connected to Internet in the end of 2016. According to Business Insider The Internet of Things Report there was 10 billion devices connected to the internet in 2015 and there will be will be 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devicesw ill comprise 10 billion (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.). Juniper research predicted that by 2020, there will be 38.5 billion connected devices. IDC says it’ll be 20.9 billion. Gartner’s guess? Twenty-five billion. The numbers don’t matter, except that they’re huge. They all agree that most of those gadgets will be industrial Internet of Things. The market for connecting the devices you use all day, every day, is about to be huge.
Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions because they see ways the IoT can improve their bottom line: lowering operating costs, increasing productivity, expand to new markets and develop new product offerings. Sensors, data analytics, automation and wireless communication technologies allow the study of the “self-conscious” machines, which are able to observe their environment and communicate with each other. From predictive maintenance that reduces equipment downtime to workers using mobile devices on the factory floor, manufacturing is undergoing dramatic change. The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling increased automation on the factory floor and throughout the supply chain, 3D printing is changing how we think about making components, and the cloud and big data are enabling new applications that provide an end-to-end view from the factory floor to the retail store.
Governments are focused on increasing productivity, decreasing costs, and improving their citizens’ quality of life. The IoT devices market will connect to climate agreements as in many applicatons IoT can be seen as one tool to help to solve those problems. A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C was agreed at the climate change summit in Paris in December 2015. Sitra fresh market analysis indicates that there is up to an amount of EUR 6 000 billion market potential for smart green solutions by 2050. Smart waste and water systems, materials and packaging, as well as production systems together to form an annual of over EUR 670 billion market. Smart in those contests typically involves use of IoT technologies.
Consumers will lag behind businesses and governments in IoT adoption – still they will purchase a massive number of devices. There will be potential for marketing IoT devices for consumers: Nine out of ten consumers never heard the words IoT or Internet of Things, October 2015! It seems that the newest IoT technology extends homes in 2016 – to those homes where owner has heard of those things. Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous in homes in so many parts of the world that you can now really start tapping into that by having additional devices. The smart phones and the Internet connection can make home appliances, locks and sensors make homes and leisure homes in more practical, safer and more economical. Home adjusts itself for optimal energy consumption and heating, while saving money. During the next few years prices will fall to fit for large sets of users. In some cases only suitable for software is needed, as the necessary sensors and data connections can be found in mobile phones. Our homes are going to get smarter, but it’s going to happen slowly. Right now people mostly buy single products for a single purpose. Our smart homes and connected worlds are going to happen one device, one bulb at a time. The LED industry’s products will become more efficient, reliable, and, one can hope, interoperable in the near future. Companies know they have to get you into their platform with that first device, or risk losing you forever to someone else’s closed ecosystem.
The definitions what would be considered IoT device and what is a traditional computing devices is not entirely clear, and I fear that we will not get a clear definition for that in 2016 that all could agree. It’s important to remember that the IoT is not a monolithic industry, but rather a loosely defined technology architecture that transcends vertical markets to make up an “Internet of everything.”
Too many people – industry leaders, media, analysts, and end users – have confused the concept of
“smart” with “connected”. Most devices – labeled “IoT” or “smart” – are simply connected devices. Just connecting a device to the internet so that it can be monitored and controlled by someone over the web using a smart phone is not smart. Yes, it may be convenient and time saving, but it is not “smart”. Smart means intelligence.
IoT New or Not? YES and NO. There are many cases where whole IoT thing is hyped way out of proportion. For the most part, it’s just the integration of existing technologies. Marketing has driven an amount of mania around IoT, on the positive side getting it on the desks of decision makers, and on the negative generating ever-loftier predictions. Are IoT and M2M same or different? Yes and no depending on case. For sure for very many years to come IoT and M2M will coexist.
Nearly a dozen contenders are trying to fill a need for long distance networks that cut the cost and power consumption of today’s cellular machine-to-machine networks. Whose technology protocols should these manufacturers incorporate into their gear? Should they adopt ZigBee, Apple’s HomeKit, Allseen Alliance/AllJoyn, or Intel’s Open Interconnect Consortium? Other 802.15.4 technologies? There are too many competing choices.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, two pioneers of the Internet of Things are expanding their platforms and partnerships. Crowdfunding sites and hardware accelerators are kicking out startups at a regular clip, typically companies building IoT devices that ride Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Bluetooth Special Interest group is expected to release in2016 support for mesh networks and higher data rates.
Although ZWave and Zigbee helped pioneer the smart home and building space more than a decade ago, but efforts based on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 6LoWPAN are poised to surpass them. Those pioneering systems are actively used and developed. Zigbee Alliance starts certification for its unified version 3.0 specification in few months (includes profiles for home and building automation, LED lighting, healthcare, retail and smart energy). EnOcean Alliance will bring its library of about 200 application profiles for 900 MHz energy harvesting devices to Zigbee networks. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities. The Z-Wave Security 2 framework will start a beta test in February and Z-Wave aims to strike a collaboration withleading IoT application framework platforms. Zigbee alredy has support Thread.
The race to define, design and deploy new low power wide area networks for the Internet of Things won’t cross a finish line in 2016. But by the end of the year it should start to be clear which LPWA nets are likely to have long legs and the opportunities for brand new entrants will dim significantly. So at the moment it is hard to make design choices. To protect against future technology changes, maybe the device makers should design in wireless connectivity chips and software that will work with a variety of protocols? That’s complicated and expensive. But if I pick only one technology I can easily pick up wrong horse, and it is also an expensive choice.
Within those who want to protect against future technology changes, there could be market for FPGAs in IoT devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) is broken and needs ARM-based field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to fix it, an expert told engineers at UBM’s Designers of Things conference in San Jose. You end up with a piece of hardware that can be fundamentally changed in the field.
There seems to be huge set of potential radio techniques also for Internet of Things even for long distance and low power consumpion. Zigbee will roll out a new spec for smart cities in February based on the 802.15.4g standard for metro networks. It will compete with an already crowded field of 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz networks from Sigfox, the LoRa Alliance, Ingenu and others. Weightless-P is an open standard announced by Weightless SIG, which operates at frequencies below one gigahertz. Weightless-P nodes and development cards will be expected to be in the market already during the first quarter of 2016, at the moment Weightless IoT Hardware Virtually Unavailable.
I expect LoRa Technology is expected to be hot in 2016. The LoRaWAN standard enables low-data-rate Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) wireless communication with a range of up to 10 miles, a battery life of 10 years, and the ability to connect millions of wireless sensor nodes to LoRaWAN gateways. LoRa® technology works using a digital spread spectrum modulation and proprietary protocol in the Sub-GHz RF band (433/868/915 MHz). I see LoRa technology interesting because lots of activity around in Finland in several companies (especially Espotel) and I have seen a convincing hands-in demo of the LoRa system in use.
It seems that 3GPP Lost its Way in IoT and there is fragmentation ahead in cellular standards. In theory 3GPP should be the default provider of IoT connectivity, but it seems that it has now failed in providing one universal technology. At the moment, there are three major paths being supported by 3GPP for IoT: the machine-type version of LTE (known as LTE-M) and two technologies coming from the Cellular-IoT initiative — NB-IoT and EC-GSM. So here we are with three full standardization efforts in 3GPP for IoT connectivity. It is too much. There will like be a base standard in 2016 for LTE-M.
The promise of billions of connected devices leads everyone to assume that there will be plenty of room for multiple technologies, but this betrays the premise of IoT, that a connected world will offer gains through efficiency. Too many standard will cause challenges for everybody. Customers will not embrace IoT if they have to choose between LTE-M and Sigfox-enabled products that may or may not work in all cases. OEM manufacturers will again bear the cost, managing devices at a regional or possibly national level. Again, we lose efficiency and scale. The cost of wireless connectivity will remain a barrier to entry to IoT.
Today’s Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts, quite propably supplied by different companies. An Internet of Things product or service ultimately consists of multiple parts. One is the end device that gathers data and/or executes control functions on the basis of its communications over the Internet. Another is the gateway or network interface device. Once on the Internet, the IoT system needs a cloud service to interact with. Then, there is the human-machine interface (HMI) that allows users to interact with the system. So far, most of the vendors selling into the IoT development network are offering only one or two of these parts directly. Alternatives to this disjointed design are arising, however. Recently many companies are getting into the end-to-end IoT design support business, although to different degrees.
Voice is becoming more often used the user interface of choice for IoT solutions. Smartphones let you control a lot using only your voice as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung have their solutions for this. For example Amazon, SoundHound and Nuance have created systems that allow to add language commands to own hardware or apps. Voice-activated interface becomes pervasive and persistent for IoT solutions in 2016. Right now, most smart home devices are controlled through smartphones, and it seems like that’s unlikely to change. The newest wearable technology, smart watches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce – it learns from its users, and generate as responses in real time appropriate, “micro-moments” tied to experience.
Monitoring your health is no longer only a small group oriented digital consumer area. Consumers will soon take advantage of the health technology extensively to measure well-being. Intel Funds Doctor in Your Pocket and Samsung’s new processor is meant for building much better fitness trackers. Also, insurance companies have realized the benefits of health technologies and develop new kinds of insurance services based on data from IoT devices.
Samsung’s betting big on the internet of things and wants the TV to sit at the heart of this strategy. Samsung believes that people will want to activate their lights, heating and garage doors all from the comfort of their couch. If smart TVs get a reputation for being easy to hack, then Samsung’s models are hardly likely to be big sellers. After a year in which the weakness of smart TVs were exploited, Samsung goes on the offensive in 2016. Samsung’s new Tizen-based TVs will have GAIA security with pin lock for credit card and other personal info, data encryption, built-in anti-malware system, more.
This year’s CES will focus on how connectivity is proliferating everything from cars to homes, realigning diverse markets – processors and networking continue to enhance drones, wearables and more. Auto makers will demonstrate various connected cars. There will be probably more health-related wearables at CES 2016, most of which will be woven into clothing, mainly focused on fitness. Whether or not the 2016 International CES holds any big surprises remains to be seen. The technology is there. Connected light bulbs, connected tea kettles, connected fridges and fans and coffeemakers and cars—it’s all possible. It’s not perfect, but the parts are only going to continue to get better, smaller, and cheaper.
Connectivity of IoT devices will still have challeges in 2016. While IoT standards organizations like the Open Interconnect Consortium and the AllSeen Alliance are expected to demonstrate their capabilities at CES, the industry is still a ways away from making connectivity simple. In 2016 it will still pretty darn tedious to get all these things connected, and there’s all these standards battles coming on. So there will be many standards in use at the same time. The next unsolved challenge: How the hell are all these things going to work together? Supporting open APIs that connect with various services is good.
Like UPnP and DLNA, AllJoyn could become the best-kept secret in the connected home in 2016 — everyone has it, no one knows about it. AllJoyn is an open-source initiative to connect devices in the Internet of Things. Microsoft added support for AllJoyn to Windows in 2014.
Analysis will become important in 2016 on IoT discussions. There’s too much information out there that’s available free, or very cheaply. We need systems to manage the information so we can make decisions. Welcome to the systems age.
The rise of the Internet of Things and Web services is driving new design principles. The new goal is to delight customers with experiences that evolve in flexible ways that show you understand their needs. “People are expecting rich experiences, fun and social interactions… this generation gets bored easily so you need to understand all the dimensions of how to delight them”
With huge number of devices security issues will become more and more important. In 2016, we’ll need to begin grappling with the security concerns these devices raise. The reality of everything being connected can have unintended consequences, not all of them useful – Welcome to the Internet of stupid (hackable) things.
Security: It was a hot topic for 2015 and if anything it will get hotter in 2016. The reason is clear. By adding connectivity embedded systems not only increase their utility, they vastly increase their vulnerability to subversion with significant consequences. Embedded systems that add connectivity face many challenges, of which the need for security is both vital and misunderstood. But vendors and developers have been getting the message and solutions are appearing in greater numbers, from software libraries to MCUs with a secure root of trust.
Bruce Schneier is predicting that the IoT will be abused in conjunction with DMCA to make our lives worse instead of better. In theory, connected sensors will anticipate your needs, saving you time, money, and energy. Except when the companies that make these connected objects act in a way that runs counter to the consumer’s best interests. The story of a company using copy-protection technology to lock out competitors—isn’t a new one. Plenty of companies set up proprietary standards to ensure that their customers don’t use someone else’s products with theirs. Because companies can enforce anti-competitive behavior this way, there’s a litany of things that just don’t exist, even though they would make life easier for consumers.
Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how. Maybe it’ll be 2016, maybe the year after, but the train is coming. It’ll have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and probably eight other things, and you’ll definitely get a push notification when it gets here.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Deployment Fundamentals – Part 1 (Microchip, Python, React.js)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/iot-deployment-fundamentals-part-1-microchip-python-kenny-chetal?articleId=7933632149188433514
When building Internet of Things products, we must step back and understand that an IoT product at it’s core, is just a computer system (embedded) with specific constraints to serve a designated purpose. If the hardware design is done correctly, then a common obstacle for a software engineer writing code for an IoT device would be dealing with the limited memory utilizable in our code implementation. Memory is often taken for granted by software engineers programming on large systems, where memory is not a great concern. When limited in the memory we can utilize, we must build the software cautiously simple to be
We begin by placing our hex file on a cloud server, which is then read into a tcp/udp server application (coded in Python) that waits until the tcp/udp IoT client socket connects (from bootloader memory space). When an IoT device requests the new software update, the new instructions are sent and this overwrites the old application memory locations with new instructions.
You have seen how we can update software on an IoT device deployed in the field, which is a fundamental aspect in the deployment of Internet of Things devices. Yet, how would your customers actually use this feature? We need to introduce a user interface that allows us to interface with this functionality
I will discuss building a user interface in JavaScript (react.js)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jillian D’Onfro / Business Insider:
Google will build an “off-the-record” Incognito-like mode into Home to help with privacy concerns
Google’s Echo-rival will have a button for muting its microphone
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/google-home-privacy-2016-6?op=1?r=US&IR=T
Google knows how important it is to avoid crossing the “creepy” line, so the company is baking privacy controls into its smart home appliance, Google Home, CEO Sundar Pichai said on stage at Vox Media’s Code Conference on Wednesday.
The voice-powered device, which works a lot like Amazon’s Echo by letting users speak to it to make restaurant reservations, get the weather and play music, will ship with a physical mute button that you can use to turn off the microphone.
A previous version of this post said that Home would have an “off the record” mode where it wouldn’t store any data about search or queries, but Google clarified that that feature is not in the road map and that Pichai was speaking more generally about its view on privacy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
Jeff Bezos says Alexa could be Amazon’s fourth pillar after retail, Prime, and AWS, as company has 1K employees working on Echo and Alexa
Alexa could be the 4th pillar of Amazon, says Jeff Bezos
http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/31/alexa-could-be-the-4th-pillar-of-amazon-says-jeff-bezos/
Amazon has three big pillars: the retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Web Services. But there certainly would be room for a fourth pillar.
It’s possible that Amazon Studios, which is producing original video content for Prime Video, could be that fourth pillar, but it’s also possible that the Alexa voice assistant, which is packaged inside of the Echo speaker, could end up being the fourth pillar, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos told Recode’s Walt Mossberg today at Recode’s Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
IBM and Cisco ink IoT deal integrating Watson AI into Cisco edge routers
http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/02/ibm-cisco-iot/
IBM has been giving a push both to its Watson artificial intelligence and Internet of Things businesses as part of its bigger strategy to grow new streams of revenue to offset declines in older ones. Today came the latest development on that front: IBM has inked a deal with Cisco to bring Watson IoT technology into Cisco’s architecture, specifically aimed at providing analytics services for networks of autonomous and unmanned connected devices.
Green says that the problem that IBM and Cisco are trying to tackle has to do with tapping the wider range of IoT devices, including unmanned devices in remote locations, in a more efficient way.
“While we have a focus on Watson as a cloud-based system, for certain clients with remote or autonomous operations we need something else,” she said. “Shipping, mining and many factories all operate at the edge of the computer network, where bandwidth might be expensive or unreliable.”
This is where Cisco’s edge analytics come in. The idea is to put in Cisco hardware, specifically edge routers and switches that already run Cisco’s analytics, that will host the Watson tech to both collect and hand off IoT analytics data. That data can then be handed off in real time into the cloud-based network.
Green added that while the deal between IBM and Cisco is not exclusive, it is the first of its kind for both in the approach to working with another huge vendor to tackle new business areas — in this case, the new wave of IoT business as well as the emerging market for big data analytics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Six Hidden Costs in a 99 Cent Wireless SoC
Considerations when choosing between a wireless module and a wireless SoC
http://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/TechnicalDocs/six-hidden-costs-of-a-99-cent-soc.pdf?partnerref=distycomm
What you don’t know about dropping a wireless SoC onto the board could delay your product.
There are two main options:
Option 1: Use a wireless system-on-a-chip (SoC) on the product printed circuit board (PCB). It’s small and cheaper than a wireless module. But designing with it may be costly.
Option 2: Use a wireless module with Option 1’s SoC inside. A majority of the design is already done including a fully -characterized PCB with RF optimization and antenna layout, shielding, timing components (crystals), external bill of materials (BOM), regulatory approvals, and standards certifications. But they are generally more expensive and larger than the SoC.
So, what is the easiest and most cost effective option? That changes depending on the product, the designer, time to market, and so on. Further, the best option changes with volume.
Modules cost more than their SoC equivalent, but companies use them widely. Why? And what’s the breakeven volume for when to change from one option to the other?
Given the above, the annual breakeven volume falls between 200K and 300K.
This breakeven figure may seem high, but it still may not justify using an SoC as seen with the super-high volume iPhone 6 which uses a Murata Wi-Fi module.
An RF engineer is required for an SoC design. Or, at a minimum, access to RF engineering expertise from the SoC supplier. RF engineers can be expensive.
Hiring an RF Engineer = $80K-152K/year + 33% overhead = $100K-200K/year
since every design is different, the recommendations are always—always—hard to implement.
Module companies charge more for their products partly because they are already RF-optimized within a small footprint and low BOM. The whole “system” can be placed on the product board in a matter of hours if not minutes.
Of course, it is “never always” easy. But in the base case, putting a module on the board is measurably
easier than putting down an SoC.
RF engineering requires special equipment, software, and facilities to debug RF designs.
But there is still a good chance the PCB will need tweaks to optimize antenna performance. These take time—a few days to determine what needs to be tweaked and a week to turn the board at a local PCB manufacturer. Two weeks adds up when a typical development can take 16 to 20 weeks.
Products that operate in the unlicensed frequency bands require regulatory “type approvals.” Many also require a wireless st andard certification (e.g., Bluetooth).
Some wireless modules come pre-certified for type approval and wireless standards.
Regulatory testing costs and type approvals vary by country.
Every wireless standard requires certification and paid membership in the standards body.
One of the biggest hidden “costs” in using a wireless SoC versus a module is the risk of missing the market window due to incremental time to design it in, test it, debug it, type-approve it, and certify it.
For companies with low-volume production runs, modules can mitigate supply risk.
Module companies generally provide a unique software application programming interface (API) for their modules. This serves their customers with an easy-to-use API that allows them to transition between different modules for different SoC versions and/or wireless standards.
Conclusion
The answer of whether or not to use a wireless module or a wireless SoC has a high degree of associated complexity that depends on volume, time to market urgency, risk tolerance, and available resources.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT making inroads in industry
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4442105/IoT-making-inroads-in-industry?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20160602&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20160602&elqTrackId=2440cb9c8ed446dca8d4c3de4e7c43f4&elq=310f33e707624e558403b9701374faf6&elqaid=32490&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28390
While the Internet of Things (IoT) for consumers is gaining the lion’s share of the publicity (and hype), the technology is quietly finding its way into industrial applications. Industrial adopters tend to stay quiet about their plans and progress, though, in order to avoid tipping their hand to their competitors. But stories are now coming to light about the IoT in industry, and the business case for adoption of connectivity is starting to sound compelling.
Heavy industries such as manufacturing and mining tend to be conservative in their outlook and slow to adopt new technologies. But the promises of increased efficiency and cost savings that form the siren’s call for industrial IoT can be compelling, leading the bold to try things out. One such trial was announced by Fujitsu last year. Working with Intel, the company aimed to conduct a proof of business trial at its Shimane Fujitsu factory.
Fujitsu applied its sensor technology and distributed service platform along with Intel’s IoT Gateway with the aim of showing how the IoT can provide measurable value in an industrial setting.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Manufacturing and the fourth revolution
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/manufacturing-and-the-fourth-revolution/58fbc759e1b4aabe9284f5efd7e87ce4.html?OCVALIDATE&ocid=101781
Industry leaders within manufacturing have already set in motion the idea of a fourth industrial revolution, or Industrie 4.0, and the Internet of Things (IoT) will play a major role in how manufacturing changes.
Increasing issues such as volatile resource prices mean that manufacturers need a more agile approach allowing them to adapt to changing conditions, pursue profit opportunities and minimize risk. On top of this, an upsurge in the Internet of Things (IoT) throughout the business has begun to trigger a transformation. IoT is a network of physical objects—devices, equipment, engines and robotics—which use sensors to collect and exchange data.
What’s next for manufacturing?
Industry leaders within manufacturing have already set in motion the idea of a fourth industrial revolution, or Industrie 4.0. Building on the introduction of robotics and information technology (IT) in the early 2000s, this is the next step in “smart” manufacturing, which is focused on utilizing data and connectivity for business value.
Through the IoT, manufacturers will eventually be able to interlink every part of their business—equipment, systems, services, and even human activities—so that one automatically communicates with another to inform decision making within the value chain, both internally and externally. Yet as this comes into full fruition, manufacturers will be faced with granular information from multiple locations and sources, causing a data explosion to occur.
Better business outcomes
With today’s digitalization manufacturers can now supplement typical data collection, from production lines and technical log processes, with granular information from telemetry, sensors, and all types of machine-generated data—providing manufacturers with enormous prospects for data-driven optimization.
Yet, too many manufacturers continue to stop at the water’s edge and do not use their data to its full potential. Some, for example, will use the data to track a product’s journey on the manufacturing line, but not to improve the operations on this journey.
Big data analytics and machine learning technologies, first applied vastly inside internet and online businesses, are now being applied to almost all industries.
While many people are still skeptical about calling this a revolution, data-orientated technologies are doubtless driving greater efficiency, higher production and faster fulfillment, which equal new opportunities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Process historians can be an integral part of the IIoT
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/process-historians-can-be-an-integral-part-of-the-iiot/67bdba3b0e9c2882284b72f1f252b28b.html?OCVALIDATE&ocid=101781
Process historians are still cutting-edge tools even though they have been around for many years. They can form the foundation of distributed, cloud-based enterprises and can integrate with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
Process historians are the first step up the automation pyramid beyond process controls and are the foundation for turning data into information. Process historians provide the data necessary for powerful data analysis tools to do their job. Following the current technological trends, they can even be moved out of datacenters and into the cloud.
At its most basic level a process historian is a database used to store time-series data from an industrial process. Data is collected either on a cyclical basis of usually 1 to 10 sec, or as data points change. Actual values, the associated timestamp and other information such as data integrity are written to the historian each time data is collected.
Once the data is in the historian, it can be accessed in a handful of ways. Many vendors offer data analysis packages that can be used in conjunction with the historical data for trending, reporting, and various database query capabilities. Most historians also can be queried directly using existing database systems, such as structured query language (SQL) or stored procedures.
A historian by itself is not a tremendously useful tool.
The first tool, usually supplied with historians, is trending. Trends display time series data and the overall trajectory of data points in relation to one another. Most trend tools provide basic statistical analysis capabilities including averaging, integration, and range configurations to show when values have exceeded desired limits.
In addition to trending tools, many historians include the ability to query historical data using SQL tools.
Integrating IIoT with process historians
Historians can also be used to collect and store information from IIoT devices accessible through open platform communication (OPC) and MQ telemetry transport (MQTT) protocols and, using the various integration capabilities described above, can provide information back to IIoT devices.
One example of this type of integration using the API interface approach is in use by a company that manufactures golf course irrigation pump stations. Each system in the field has a local PC running a historian and a webserver. The webserver is configured with a reporting and trending interface accessible via browsers and mobile devices. It also has an API exposing historical data to third-party SaaS system.
The API can be queried with different parameters such as describing date ranges, specific data points to transmit, and login and security tokens to prevent unauthorized access to the system. The SaaS application integrates with other data sources including weather information, irrigation sensors, and GPS units on landscaping equipment to provide a cohesive monitoring system for all of the activities required to maintain a golf course.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT leaders remain skeptical of digital transformation and IoT
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/it-leaders-remain-skeptical-of-digital-transformation-and-iot/10797c325a4693fb7011946e455312df.html
Cisco’s survey on digital readiness suggest that information technology (IT) leaders around the world are not yet convinced of the industry’s ability to drive digital transformation, which is bad news for the Internet of Things (IoT).
Cisco’s international survey regarding digital readiness suggests that information technology (IT) leaders around the world are not yet convinced of the industry’s ability to drive digital transformation, which is bad news for the Internet of Things (IoT).
The premise of the survey is the “fourth era of industrial evolution,” which will be characterized by increased digitization. This will in turn rely on a combination of the IoT, analytics, automation, and machine learning. The result will be secure industrial connectivity, autonomic infrastructure, and predictive ecosystems.
IT modernization is multi-year effort, so even the most advanced organizations are only a part of the way toward complete digital readiness.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Think you’re missing the IoT wave? Don’t panic.
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4442115/Think-you-re-missing-the-IoT-wave–Don-t-panic-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160602&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160602&elqTrackId=fc64f38c431a4b7eae78b39b965a847d&elq=b9236a41038d408f8d65607c07815a01&elqaid=32488&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28388
Let’s just cut to the chase. First, there are admittedly useful and valid applications where connectivity with other like or dissimilar products will be beneficial to improving design, manufacturing, or in one way or another, our quality of life. I believe the real issue falls on the shoulders of those of us who were born and bred in the chip industry. Read the headlines. Our financial world is shrinking… again. Pundits are forecasting a decline in global semiconductor revenues… again.
The problem (again, in my opinion) is that we have run out of killer ideas. Investment money has abandoned.
Money is flowing like a tsunami into non-chip-related enterprises. Growth (maybe not the right word) in our fading silicon industry today is coming from artificial means: megamergers.
Innovation drives killer apps – that drive product growth – that drive the chip industry’s growth. Historically, much of this came from chip startups.
Circle back to IoT. What’s the frenzy all about? Aside from those applications that really have a valid need for connected devices, the balance (again, in my opinion) is driven by panic. When there is no killer app, (think back to the early days of PCs and mobile phones and the World Wide Web) beware of overzealous marketers, hawking their versions of snake oil remedies to spur growth. Much of the IoT hype is spaghetti thrown against the wall… I wonder how much will stick?
Tomi Engdahl says:
FDSOI Grabs European Money for IoT
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329820&
Globalfoundries and STMicroelectronics are the leading chip companies in a European Commission collaborative research project that aims to create an ultra low-power platform for Internet of Things applications based on 22nm FDSOI chip manufacturing process.
The three-year project’s title is “Ultra-low power technologies and memory architectures for IoT.” It is otherwise known as Prime and led by Belgian research institute IMEC. Prime includes academic and commercial participants from across the chip-manufacturing ecosystem
The plan is to develop low-power logic, analog, RF and embedded memory circuits for implementation on the 22nm FDSOI manufacturing process together with chip design and system architecture innovations. The embedded memory circuit options are spin-torque transfer magnetic RAM (STT-RAM) and resistive RAM.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LoRa Gets End-to-End Dev Kit
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329800&
Microchip gave the LoRa low-power, wide-area networking market a boost with its recent release of an end-to-end development kit.
Previously, developers seeking to work with the LoRaWAN protocol in the development of industrial and civil Internet of Things (IoT) applications needed to integrate system elements such as gateways, cloud services, and mobile apps from various vendors on their own. Microchip’s kit provides everything needed for creating a LoRa system in a lab environment, easing the task of developing and testing a LoRa IoT device.
LoRa is one of several technologies targeting low-power, wide-area networking applications such as the Industrial IoT, smart cities, and other applications where long communications range requirements make IoT systems like Wi-Fi and mesh networking impractical. The approach uses chirp spread-spectrum modulation to provide data rates from 0.3 to 50 Kilobits/second at ranges that can exceed cellular systems.
“LoRa is an ecosystem of partners,”
The solution Microchip has now released is the DV164140 development kit. The kit comes in two versions: one operates in the 868 MHz band for European deployment and the other operates in the 915 MHz for North America. Both kits contain two LoRa sensor nodes (called Motes), a LoRaWAN gateway, and local server software intended to run on a laptop computer. All the radio modules are pre-certified by the relevant regulatory agencies.
With these three key elements, developers have an end-to-end system they can use for evaluation and development of a LoRaWAN application right out of the box.
Microchip Debuts Industry’s First LoRa® Technology Evaluation Kits for Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN)
https://www.microchip.com/en/pressreleasepage/microchip-debuts-industry-s-first-lora-technology-evaluation-kits-for-low-power-wide-area-networks-%28lpwan%29
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finland gets a new network for the Internet of Things
Built in Finland, a new designed purely for the Internet of Things needs Sigfox sensor network.
Construction of Suomenmaa Sigfox network will begin in June 2016 and the biggest cities nationwide network coverage is reached in winter 2017.
Sensors, power consumption is very low, which typically means a 5-15 year battery life.
In Finland, the construction of the sensor network is operated by the Connected Finland. The company also provides customers with technical support and the opportunity to join the world Sigfox other networks. The company also sells network access devices.
The Button Corporationin has an IoT button (bttn) that supports Sigfox.
Sigfoxin background is in France, but in recent years it has been expanding not only in Europe, inter alia, the United States and Australia.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/03/suomi-saa-uuden-verkon-esineiden-internetille/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Autonomous Plant Watering Thingamajig
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/03/autonomous-plant-watering-thingamajig/
[Eitan] is one of those guys whose plants keep tottering between life and death. Can’t blame the plants, because he just keeps forgetting when to water them. But keeping them hydrated requires him to get off his butt and actually water them. Surely, there had to be an easier solution which needed him to do nothing and yet prevent his plants from dying. Being lazy has its benefits, so he built his own super simple Autonomous Plant Watering Thingamajig.
He needed a water pump, but all he had was an air pump. So he hooked it up to force air in to a sealed container and push the water out. To make the setup autonomous, he connected the pump to a WiFi-enabled wall socket and then programmed it to dispense water at regular intervals.
Autonomous Plant Watering
https://blog.monotonous.org/2016/05/25/autonomous-plant-watering/
This setup has a few advantages over other pump setups:
It is cheap. So far the bill of parts is around $12.50.
It offers predictable water throughput.
You can connect any sealable container. Don’t want to refill the water after 32oz of watering? Get a gallon jug.
If the reservoir runs dry the motor won’t catch fire. That apparently is a thing water pumps.
Since the water is only going through a simple tube and not an expensive motor, you can pump a nutrient solution. If you want to pamper your plants, we don’t.
I made a stupid pump. Why is that cool? Because with a WiFi plug it becomes smart! It is now a Connected Device™. I plugged it into a Bayit WiFi socket, and set it to turn on for 20 seconds each Monday afternoon. That will feed our plants about a 1/2 a cup a week.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Poetic SSIDs
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/06/poetic-ssids/
Artists see the same world that the rest of us do. They just see it from a little bit off to the left. Where you see picking an ESSID for your router as being a hassle, or an opportunity to insult your neighbors, [Dmitry], alias [::vtol::] sees a poetry-delivery mechanism.
Based on ESP8266 units, each “poet” has a battery and a switch. Turn it on and it changes its SSID once every ten seconds, feeding everyone who’s listening the next line of a poem. You can’t connect to the network, but you can occasionally hit refresh on your WiFi scanner and read along.
hotspot poet
http://vtol.cc/filter/works/hotspot-poet
Autonomous micro-device which distributes wi-fi masked as wireless network, visible at any gadget such as a smartphone or a laptop. The device is automatically renaming its network every 10 seconds, taking as its name various lines of poems by famous poets. The device is using an information channel which is accessible and visible to everyone through mobile devices, thus being a non-standard transmitter of poetry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
You can try Amazon Echo online without need to buy the device
Echo can give voice commands to Apple’s Siri-like assistant with the difference that communicates with the Echo back almost exclusively by means of sound. Echo distinguish it from its competitors in that it can create for yourself more functionality with relative ease.
Platform development has now been made even easier, because applications can now test through the echosim.io site
Your own applications can develop and test, as long as the registers with Amazon’s developer site and inform the used interface was demonstrated. Its own interface can be created with any tool, but Amazon also offers its own cloud solutions, such as the Lambda-service of creation.
However, if the apparatus of interest, but not an expensive import, can use the same virtual interfaces ECHO to create for themselves using the device even Raspberry Pi-based computer.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Vinkit/alykaiutinta-voi-kokeilla-netissa-ostamatta-laitetta-6556925
Site: https://echosim.io/welcome?next=%2F
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Eye on IoT
Spend the afternoon on IoT innovation
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4442152/Spend-the-afternoon-on-IoT-innovation?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160607&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160607&elqTrackId=3b279c7389334d3c9e822e80d2c1c4e5&elq=81d4bdfb66354de8a91ba997700fd8a0&elqaid=32556&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28438
Early thinking about the Internet of Things (IoT) focused on relatively simple and low cost sensors and actuators. Part of that thinking was that if we get enough of these things deployed a kind of synergy would begin to take place. Third-party developers would be able to start combining the capabilities of installed systems to create useful functionality that not a part of the original intent for these devices.
But new thinking is starting to make its mark in the IoT, especially in industrial applications where a strong business case can be made for networked sensing and control of manufacturing and processing equipment. In such applications, the end node needs to be able to operate autonomously as well as being part of a network. This autonomy is needed both for performance and safety reasons. Many industrial control applications cannot tolerate the uncertain latency of cloud-based processing nor the risk of losing network communications. In addition, bandwidth considerations make the sending of raw sensor data to the cloud for processing or even storage problematic. In these types of applications, the end node needs to provide local control and information preprocessing. This more complex type of IoT application requires careful integration of the device design, the network structure, the cloud services, and user applications, all optimized for the application.
Developers entering this field will thus most likely need to partner with one or more specialists in the areas of wireless networking, cloud services, data analytics, and the like in order to develop such full systems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Getting smarter about power conversion and its management
http://www.edn.com/design/power-management/4442109/Getting-smarter-about-power-conversion-and-its-management?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160607&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160607&elqTrackId=0c55e1b0df344aa3879df9d68ae40ccd&elq=81d4bdfb66354de8a91ba997700fd8a0&elqaid=32556&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28438
Part of the drive for connecting electronic products on the scale of the Internet of Things is that with greater connectivity comes greater control. While that can mean different things to different people, there is high expectation that the IoT will bring greater control over the way power is used.
Regional legislation is already in place across Europe to enforce compliance with targets for 2020 (which includes a 20% improvement in energy efficiency), with more laws and regulations being developed. This puts pressure on OEMs to comply with the new standards for power efficiency, which, in turn, is driving innovation from semiconductor manufacturers.
There is an opportunity for the IoT to play a crucial role in meeting these targets, by enabling greater control over energy use. This could range from a Building Management System autonomously controlling the HVAC of a large building based on occupancy, to allowing homeowners to moderate their heating and lighting remotely using a smart device.
In the European Union, the Energy Efficiency Directive will likely cover many of the products that will form part of the ‘I’ in IoT; the millions of switches and servers that will effectively provide the connectivity between all of the (billions) of nodes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacking A Fluke Multimeter To Serve Readings Over WiFi
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/07/hacking-a-fluke-multimeter-to-serve-readings-over-wifi/
Lord of Hackaday [Sprite_TM] decided to hack his multimeter to serve its readings over Wi-Fi. Rather than start with a throwaway meter from the bargain bin, he did it with a Fluke. The meter he chose was a Fluke 15B+, the company’s budget offering for the Indian and Chinese markets, since he had one spare.
Opening up the 15B+, he was presented with its processor concealed under a blob of epoxy
he did find an I2C EEPROM
Removing this chip
Further detective work allowed him to identify the baud rate, and supplying random commands delivered him some that returned data packets. Eventually he identified a packet containing the states of the LCD’s segments
Connecting an ESP8266 module with appropriate software left him with a Wi-Fi connected multimeter.
Fluke 15B+ WiFi – Introduction
http://spritesmods.com/?art=fluke15pluswifi&page=1
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Programming Juggling Props
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/07/hackaday-prize-entry-programming-juggling-props/
For their Hackaday Prize entry, [Laurent B] and [michael.creusy] are bringing the Internet of Things to juggling clubs. Their Rastello Club is a glowing, LED illuminated juggling prop with a 9-DOF IMU that makes juggling look even cooler than it already is.
Inside these juggling clubs are a bunch of LEDs, of course, along with a rather powerful STM32F4 ARM processor, the 9-axis IMU, and the circuitry to charge a battery. The radio connection between individual clubs and a computer will be handled with an RFM75 transceiver. No, it’s not WiFi, Bluetooth, or ZigBee; this radio module is faster than Bluetooth, cheaper than Zigbee, and lower power than an ESP8266.
Rastello Club
A wireless glowing programmable juggling props, with 9-DOF IMU
https://hackaday.io/project/10764-rastello-club
Tomi Engdahl says:
Founded in 1972, the legendary Atari video game name will return to the market. Admittedly, game consoles, even if someone nostalgic it is hoped the game. French IoT Sigfox company plans to sell Atari brand in home intelligent networked devices.
Sigfox has its own sensor network, which is suitable for the networking of IoT devices.
The French company intends to launch its own probe connected to its network devices. Developing equipment To begin later this year and the early stages of devices brought into the home, pets and security technology.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4544&via=n&datum=2016-06-08_10:46:55&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
SAG taps STMicro for IoT NFC tags
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4442156/SAG-taps-STMicro-for-IoT-NFC-tags?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160608&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160608&elqTrackId=e7db4572d47845c2ac9156d218b0fe97&elq=2d6ced70fe534485a243726eabc2b3b3&elqaid=32562&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28444
STMicroelectronics and Securitag Assembly Group (SAG) have announced a tiny NFC ferrite tag based on ST’s ST25 NFC tag IC for IoT data transmission in consumer electronics, wearable devices, and smart healthcare products. Small, light, and thin, the NFC ferrite tag can be surface-mounted during production through the metal pad and directly soldered to a PCB surface. Further, the tag’s anti-metallic interference characteristics allow it to function when placed on metal products.
The 4.9×3.0×2.5-mm ferrite tag packs an embedded antenna that benefits from the ST25TA02K NFC Forum Type 4 tag IC with built-in NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) message support.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Super capacitor into IoT microcircuit
VTT Technical Research Centre has developed a new type of integrated circuit, inside which can be nano-technology to create a super capacitor energy source. The solution brings new opportunities for the implementation of the Internet of Things.
Small supercapacitors can be integrated in the vicinity of the active circuits, for example, to store at ambient temperatures, vibration or light energy produced by the power collection devices, and to enter it as the need arises. This is necessary, among other things, the Internet of Things autonomous sensor networks, wearable electronics and mobile energy management.
for up to 0.2 Joules of energy and produces a power of 2 watts per square inch of surface area
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/08/superkondensaattori-iot-mikropiirille/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Talking Things
IoT has not yet lived up to the hype
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/talking-things/4442146/IoT-has-not-yet-lived-up-to-the-hype?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160608&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160608&elqTrackId=47bfe48a53ee49508ee81662eb334d1e&elq=1ad7e13589624419aee55ebe8dc1942c&elqaid=32574&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28454
With a new column about Internet of Things (IoT) technology for EDN, I thought it would be worthwhile explaining my approach and views on the subject. With this first write-up, I will cover my take on the current market status and the future it holds.
To date, the IoT has not yet lived up to the hype. We hear about the new wearables, thermostats, sensors, and proprietary networks being deployed. And we see numerous presentations at industry events on what the future is going to look like, how things will interconnect and communicate, and the promise of delivering value from data.
In fact, this is similar to every technology wave that has come before it – rich with promise, but initially breaking on the rocks of reality. If we think back to software-as-a-service (SaaS) or e-commerce delivered by the evolving Internet and wireless networks, they were slow to live up to their considerable initial hype, however, they eventually exceed it!
I strongly believe that the same will be true for the IoT and its relevant services. CrunchBase now lists, at the time of this writing, 1,495 companies in the IoT space
In fairness, we do see initial signs of IoT development efforts. For example, it is no surprise that smart cities trail-blazers are funded by the government organizations or public-private partnerships.
In a recent white paper that my company, InterDigital, sponsored, Machina Research noted that cities are poised to spend nearly $1 trillion (Yes, a trillion!) on smart city initiatives. On a related note, they will likely squander more than $300 billion of that on the wrong technologies
But, the real value will be in the diverse sets of data created by us as individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Ultimately, this will hinge on our ability to aggregate, analyze, learn, and generate valuable insights, cost savings, and quality of life improvements from that data. If anything, based on that, the pie-in-the-sky projections might end up being too conservative!
Cisco estimates 50 billion connected devices by 2020, or roughly 6.5 connected devices per person on earth. But my house has 20 windows and 3 garbage cans, so once again it could be that we’re in for a huge surprise!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia Open Innovation Challenge 2016
http://networks.nokia.com/innovation/futureworks/openinnovationchallenge
Nokia Open Innovation Challenge 2016
Rapidly developing Internet of Things (IoT) technology is opening up multiple new business opportunities for operators and enterprises, spanning many industries – public safety, healthcare, connected mobility, smart cities and more. Nokia’s vision is to expand the human possibilities of technology to improve people’s lives and help them thrive by enabling a programmable world where billions of people, things, sensors and devices are connected.
- See more at: http://networks.nokia.com/innovation/futureworks/openinnovationchallenge#sthash.KD96llWC.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qualcomm Launches Reference Platform for Connected Car
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329868&
Fabless chipmaker Qualcomm has announced a reference platform for the connected car. Supporting wireless key technologies such as LTE, GNSS, WiFi, DSRC/V2X and Bluetooth, the platform addresses the requirements of a broad range of applications with one sweeping blow.
Designed to solve challenges such as scalability, wireless coexistence, future-proofing and support for third-party in-car hardware architectures, the platform is built upon existing Qualcomm technologies and architecture such as Snapdragon X12 and X5 LTE modems, quad-constellation Global Navigation Satellite System and 2D/3D Dead Reckoning location solutions as well as the company’s VIVE WiFi products, Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) for Vehicle-to-X communications, Bluetooth LE and broadcasting capabilities such as analog and digital tuner support using software-defined radio functionality based on Qualcomm’s tuneX chips. In addition, the platform features in-vehicle connectivity technologies such as Gigabit Ethernet via Automotive Audio Bus (A2B) and CAN.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shelby said that, while some see automotive vehicles as “expensive mobile phones,” they are actually becoming autonomous drones. And he added, “The auto is the ultimate intelligent connected device.”
Source: http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329873&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Integrating Raspberry Pi to Watson IoT Platform
https://www.eeweb.com/company-blog/ibm/integrating-raspberry-pi-to-watson-iot-platform/
The Raspberry Pi is like a small computer capable of running operating systems such Linux and Windows 10. It is a very popular platform to makers and engineers because it is so powerful that it can do almost anything a desktop computer can do.
The Raspberry Pi has fueled the maker culture by offering more power than many low-end devices. With millions sold worldwide, it has becomea symbol of innovation and creativity for the Internet of Things (IoT). Because many engineers begin tinkering with IoT ideas on a Raspberry Pi, IBM has committed to the Pi ecosystem to deliver a powerful prototyping environment for cognitive IoT solutions.
Also, because Pi is an open platform, people are using it for many purposes, including:
automating household appliances
building security systems
simulating arcade cabinets
creating sensor based solutions for garage doors.
On the surface, these ideas sound like home uses, but once created, they can easily be expanded into enterprise or industrial settings.
This is why many developers and engineers use Raspberry Pi to create their first mock-ups to see how they might work. “It’s inexpensive, it has the I/O and sensors, you can connect it to other things, make it do something, and program it very easily from almost any operating system —Linux, Windows, Mac,” said Bret Greenstein, vice president of Watson Internet of Things Platform.“It’s super-easy to connect to, deploy your code to and do something interesting.”
Raspberry Pi is a game-changer because for the first time and at a lowentry price point, makers can do everything they can do on a computer, but at the device level, moving from simulating devices in an IoT solution to using a real one. According to Greenstein, this is significant because as soon as you use a real device versus a simulated one, you’ll encounter the same problems that customers or users have in the real world, such as handling passwords and IDs across multiple devices or wondering what will happen when the device restarts and you lose your work.
“These are all real-world things that, as soon as you begin playing and using a real device, you can start to see the implications of,” said Greenstein.
The Raspberry Pi integrates nicely with the IBM Watson IoT platform. You’re able to connect it directly into the IoT platform, get data from it, interact with it, oversee device management on it, and treat it as any other smart device. This makes it easy to begin prototyping and simulating ideas in the Raspberry Pi environment. The ability to get hardware that combines power and openness while working with real things, instead of a simulation, gives you the freedom to take average products and make them smart, connected devices while also building out innovative solutions around them.
Impact on the industry
“What’s really happening with IoT is that the regular objects are becoming aware — not consciously aware, but they’re becoming an active part of a business process,” Greenstein said. “So every light, every sensor, every thermostat, every printer, they’re all part of your business. And now you can actually see what’s happening with them, you can interact with them, and you can collect data from them.”
What this means is that you’ll no longer need to see if your printer is out of toner, for example, or if the coffee machine is working,because they’ll be part of your business network. These devices will be able to tell you what’s happening around them, such as whetherpeople are walking by, how many people are in the room, or if something isn’t working properly.
Raspberry Pi can represent one of those smart endpoints in your business.
“Think of it this way: we connect the Raspberry Pi into the Watson IoT Platform so developers or engineers can interact with it — send commands, receive data from it — basically, your device is exposed to Watson IoT like a service in Bluemix,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
General Electric and Hewlett Packard Enterprise will institute along with Internet industrial IoT solutions for the future. Strategic cooperation agreement between companies was published yesterday in Las Vegas Discover event.
Under the agreement, the industrial companies integrate Internet technology to bring digital know-how in the industry. As part of the agreement HPE operates storage and server infrastructure partner General Electric Predix-cloud technologies.
Predix is GE’s cloud-based PaaS (Platform-as-a-service, platform as a service) for industrial internet. In order to expand the range of services and to accelerate the market introduction of HPE offers support for the design, deployment and Predix-platform delivery.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/09/amerikkalaisyhtiot-iot-yhteistyohon/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ericsson’s bad-ass IoT forecasts
Responded telecommunications operator ConsumerLabin Ericsson’s latest research, consumers believe that the various ingested or placed under the skin sensors already commonplace within five years. Huge forecast is included in the company’s Wearable technology and the internet of things clarification.
43 percent of respondents believe smartphones replacement wearable technology. 38 percent believe that it will happen within five years.
In addition, 42 percent believe that the wearable technology to replace the passport IoT era.
Most unwanted devices and features include a study indicated that:
Personal panic button (32 percent of respondents would like this feature)
Wearable (28 per cent)
Wearable tracking device (27 per cent)
he electronic authentication (25 per cent)
Portable water purifier (24 per cent).
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/09/ericssonin-hurjat-iot-ennusteet/
Report: http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2016/consumerlab/wearable-technology-and-the-internet-of-things-ericsson-consumerLab-2016.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Talking Star Trek
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/08/talking-star-trek/
Speech generation and recognition have come a long way.
Now speech on phones is good enough you might never use the keyboard unless you want privacy. Every time we ask Google or Siri a question and get an answer it makes us feel like we are living in Star Trek.
[Smcameron] probably feels the same way. He’s been working on a Star Trek-inspired bridge simulator called “Space Nerds in Space” for some time. He decided to test out the current state of Linux speech support by adding speech commands and response to it.
For speech output, he used pico2wave and espeak. There’s also Festival
PocketSphinx for speech recognition
If your system isn’t as powerful as a full Linux box, consider uSpeech for the Arduino. You might also check out Jasper.
Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing in Space Nerds In Space
https://scaryreasoner.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/speech-recognition-and-natural-language-processing-in-space-nerds-in-space/
Tomi Engdahl says:
MontaVista Carrier Grade Express
Powerful Linux® Environment for Intelligent Devices
http://app.bronto.com/public/?q=preview_message&fn=Link&id=cfz0lueupgr06mldqsimjpuo502yz&ssid=24339&t=3
MontaVista® Linux® Carrier Grade eXpress (CGX), delivers Carrier Grade Linux reliability, security, and serviceability to embedded Inter‐ net of Things (IoT) devices along with high configurability and flexibility CGX meets the demands of the interconnected intelligent devices, providing application portability, dynamic configuration, field maintenance, and real‐time performance in a single plaƞorm. Development teams are under tremendous pressure to build leading‐edge features into the next generaƟon of highly intelligent and interconnected devices.
MontaVista Carrier Grade Express (CGX)
http://www.mvista.com/product-cgx.html
MontaVista® Linux® Carrier Grade eXpress (CGX), delivers Carrier Grade reliability, security, and serviceability that is highly configurable, flexible, and of consistent high quality. CGX meets the demands of the interconnected intelligent devices, providing application portability, dynamic configuration, field maintenance, and real-time performance in a single platform.
CGX will address a very large embedded device segment including networking and communications, instrumentation and control, aerospace and defense, SOHO devices, medical electronics and the “Internet of Things (IoT)” markets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NOKIA TECHNOLOGIES INTRODUCES BODY CARDIO,
THE FIRST CONNECTED SCALE WITH CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH ASSESSMENT
http://media-cdn.withings.com/press/press-release/body-cardio/BodyCardioPR_Final_US.pdf
Nokia Technologies today announced the global launch of the Withings Body Cardio,
redefining the connected scale category. Using Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) measurements
Within seconds of stepping on the Body Cardio, users can see a holistic view of their health with
accurate measures of weight, BMI, body composition (fat, muscle, water & bone mass), standing
heart rat e and the highly insightful PWV
Body Cardio connects to the free, award-winning Withings Health Mate iOS and Android app and automatically syncs data after every use of the scale. The data helps users visualize trends over time and note how their weight impacts overall health.
Body Cardio is currently available exclusively at Apple stores and Withings.com for $179.95.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ericsson: soon we will swallow sensors
Ericsson ConsumerLab survey, consumers believe that the various ingested or placed under the skin sensors already commonplace within five years. In addition to the measurement of the vital functions of these sensors may be, for example, to open the locks, or they can be used instead authentication of identity documents.
According to a recent ConsumerLabin Wearable technology and the internet of things survey responses representing 280 million smart phone users globally. As many as 43 percent of respondents believe smartphones replacement wearable technology. 38 percent believe that it will happen within five years.
In addition, 42 percent believe that the wearable technology to replace the passport IoT era
- In Finland, wearable and aktiivirannekkeet have broken through a couple of years ago. In addition, the utilization of well-being of Finnish know-how wearable technology and goal-oriented sport is the best in the world, such as, for example, Polar and Suunto
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4567:ericsson-pian-nielemme-antureita&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth range is extended
Bluetooth SIG organization will to publish the standard of the new 5.0 version next week. 5.0 standard brings significant improvements in low power link BLE (Bluetooth low energy) connection: range and data rate Ble connections will be about double (up to 200 meter range and up to 4 megabits per second).
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4568:bluetoothin-kantama-pitenee&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
“Bluetooth 5” spec coming next week with 2x more range and 4x better speed — New standard also aims to expand usefulness of wireless beacons. — Bluetooth 5.0, the latest version of the ubiquitous wireless standard, is set to be announced on June 16 according to an e-mail sent by Bluetooth SIG Executive Directory Mark Powell.
“Bluetooth 5” spec coming next week with 2x more range and 4x better speed
New standard also aims to expand usefulness of wireless beacons.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/bluetooth-5-spec-coming-next-week-with-2x-more-range-and-4x-better-speed/
Bluetooth 5.0, the latest version of the ubiquitous wireless standard, is set to be announced on June 16, according to an e-mail sent by Bluetooth SIG Executive Director Mark Powell.
The update will apparently be called “Bluetooth 5″
It’s primarily of interest because the update promises to double the range and quadruple the speed of Bluetooth 4.2. It also adds “significantly more capacity to advertising transmissions,”
Current advertising packets are 47 bytes in size, of which 31 are available for data. We don’t know how large Bluetooth 5.0 packets are yet, but expanding the size of advertising packets makes it possible for Bluetooth devices to send each other more detailed information, which could in turn expand the number of things that are possible for wireless beacons or Handoff-like features.
usually a new Bluetooth version requires new Bluetooth hardware
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Improved WiFi Connected E-Ink Display
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/12/an-improved-wifi-connected-e-ink-display/
[David] created a great looking e-ink WiFi display project that works a little like a network-connected picture frame with a few improvements over other similar projects. With the help of an ESP8266 it boots up, grabs an 800×600 image over the network, updates the screen, then goes back to sleep. Thanks to some reverse engineering, he was able to make his own firmware for the onboard controller to handle the low-level driving of the display. Since e-ink displays require no power to hold an image and the rest of the unit spends most of the time either asleep or off, power use is extremely low. [David] hopes to go months without needing to recharge the internal lithium-polymer battery.
The ESP8266 rounds out the project by taking care of periodically booting things up, connecting to the wireless network and downloading an image, feeding the image data to the STM32 to update the display, then disconnecting power from all non-essential electronics and going back to sleep.
We especially like how the unit automatically creates a WiFi access point to allow easy (re)configuring.
E-ink wifi display
https://davidgf.net/page/41/e-ink-wifi-display
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ericsson Reports Love/Hate Relationship With Wearables
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329865&
A new report from Ericsson shows a love ‘em and leave ‘em relationship with wearables: consumers are increasingly connected to their wearable devices, but still feel underwhelmed by what the device delivers.
“Two in five users of wearables say they feel naked when not wearing their device,” the Ericsson ConsumerLab Report on Wearables stated. “[One] in 10 said they no longer used their wearable devices, with one third of these owners abandoning them within a couple of weeks of purchase.”
That paints a complicated picture for wearables’ place in the growing Internet of Things [IoT] marketplace.
“[Respondents] feel that the industry still needs to find the use case that resonates with all consumers and 2020 was the timeline consumers have chosen for most wearable ideas to go mainstream,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cutting a Dash with Amazon’s Dash Buttons
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=216&doc_id=1329882&
Do these Wi-Fi-enabled buttons herald the dawn of a new golden age, or do they signify the beginning of the end of life as we know it?
“Why didn’t I think of this?”. The message itself read as follows:
It’s rare that I see a new invention that’s so simple and obvious. This will make someone billions and billions (with apologies to Carl Sagan) of dollars. Why couldn’t that someone have been me?
Rick also included this link to a page of something called Amazon Dash Buttons. There are currently 100+ different versions (more are being added all the time) of these little wireless plastic pods that you can stick or hang anywhere you wish around your abode
Each pod is associated with a particular brand of popular household product
If you haven’t already done so, you download the free Amazon app to your smartphone or tablet. Then you order one or more Dash Buttons depending on what you think you’re going to want to buy.
When the button arrives, you use the Amazon app to set it up. This involves connecting it to your home Wi-Fi network, and selecting whatever item from this manufacture’s family of products you wish to be associated with this button.
Each button costs $4.99, but you receive a $4.99 rebate off the first order associated with each button, so they end up being a no-cost item to you.
You stick or hang each button wherever it makes sense to you.
Whenever you realize you are getting low on a particular item, you simply press the corresponding button, which immediately places an order with Amazon and sends a confirmation message to your smart device.
These little scamps are available only to Amazon Prime members, which means the shipping is free
the next time my dear old mom and I are video-chatting on our iPads, I’ll take her on a stroll to the laundry room, show her me pressing the Tide button, and explain that a new carton of tide is now racing its way to my side. She’ll be able to “dine out” at the hairdresser’s for weeks on this.
The worst case scenario is that I use each of the buttons only once (to get my money back) and then forget about them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pi Zero IOT Led Matrix Beamer
An 8×8 Led matix to display messages on the wall
https://hackaday.io/project/12084-pi-zero-iot-led-matrix-beamer
Transform the Ikea Lamp Sprida in a Led Beamer to display short messages on the wall. The optic of this lamp makes it perfect for this hack. Could be used as an alarm clock to display the time, or as info system for a smart home
Tomi Engdahl says:
Symantec Wants to Protect Your Car From Zero-Day Attacks
http://www.securityweek.com/symantec-wants-protect-your-car-zero-day-attacks
Symantec this week introduced a new IoT security solution specifically designed to protect connected vehicles from zero-day attacks and never-before-seen threats.
News of Symantec’s undertaking comes just a few months after the FBI released a warning on remotely exploitable cyber vulnerabilities that affect modern motor vehicles.
“Connected cars offer drivers conveniences such as navigation, remote roadside assistance and mobile internet hot spots,” Symantec said. “There will be 220 million connected cars on the road in 2020, according to Gartner. While new technologies promise to enhance the driving experience, these advancements also create avenues of attack for hackers that can endanger drivers and passengers.”
“Automotive security threats have gone from theory to reality,” said Shankar Somasundaram, senior director of product management and engineering at Symantec. “The infrastructure and technology that already helps protect billions of devices and trillions of dollars now protects the car.”
Symantec currently protects more than 1 billion connected IoT devices through its portfolio of IoT security offerings.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless internet to Buster boats
DNA delivers Buster boats monitor the system online machine machine interfaces. Buster Q called the terminal brings together boaters useful data. The touch screen combined with electronic maps, trip computer and entertainment system into a motor boat to the basic equipment.
Today, Yamaha has owned for Buster boats make use of machine-machine connections.
The new system, for example, to eliminate the need to acquire a separate chartplotter or sonar device. Because the user interface is designed for motor boats, is all the unnecessary features and menus have been left out by Buster.
The touch screen is 10-inch and boats in the largest 16-inch.
Buster Q includes Internet access, C-Map charts, Yamaha outboard motors and meter management system, weather and a Wi-Fi connection. Buster Q-system can be supplemented by the optional transducer, AIS, respectively, sound system, as well as future radar.
“Buster Q stands for the Internet of Things inputs boats. The device, for example, to update themselves whenever a network connection is available and develop Buster Q’s new features, ”
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/14/langaton-m2m-yhteys-buster-veneisiin/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“IoT Security” is an Empty Buzzword
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/13/iot-security-is-an-empty-buzzword/
As buzzwords go, the “Internet of Things” is pretty clever, and at the same time pretty loathsome, and both for the same reason. “IoT” can mean basically anything, so it’s a big-tent, inclusive trend. Every company, from Mattel to Fiat Chrysler, needs an IoT business strategy these days. But at the same time, “IoT” is vacuous — a name that applies to everything fails to clarify anything.
That’s a problem because “IoT Security” is everywhere in the news these days. Above and beyond the buzz, there are some truly good-hearted security professionals who are making valiant attempts to prevent what they see as a repeat of 1990s PC security fiascos. And I applaud them.
But I’m going to claim that a one-size-fits-all “IoT Security” policy is doomed to failure. OK, that’s a straw-man argument; any one-size-fits-all security policy is bound for the scrap heap. More seriously, I think that the term “IoT” is doing more harm than good by lumping entirely different devices and different connection modes together, and creating an implicit suggestion that they can all be treated similarly. “Internet of Things Security” is a thing, but the problem is that it’s everything, and that means that it’s useful for nothing.
What’s wrong with the phrase “Internet of Things” from a security perspective? Only two words: “Internet” and “Things”.
Which Things constitute the “Internet of Things” is an easy starting point. If you ask Mattel what Things they mean, they’ll tell you Hello Barbie. For Samsung, it’s your fridge. If you ask Ford, they’ll tell you it’s a car. I was at an embedded electronics trade fair a couple years ago, and there was a company that designs factory-floor robotics telling me about their IoT strategy. It gets weirder: yoga mats, toasters, tampons, sniper rifles, and aircraft.
If you can think up a thing that hasn’t yet been Internetted
seek VC funding first and then work on a prototype second. (And then start your security design after it’s in the customers’ hands.)
The point is that it’s very hard to have a decent discussion of security and the IoT without getting specific about the Things.
When you say you’ve got a lightbulb “on the Internet”, what do you really mean? Is it firewalled? If so, what ports are open? Which servers does it connect to? Are the communications encrypted? And if so, do you control the passwords, or are they built-in? Are they the same for every Thing? Just saying “we’ll put it on the Internet” is meaningless. The particulars of the connection are extremely important.
This is where the security community has spent most of its efforts so far, and there’s great work being done. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has an IoT sub-project and their checklist for testing the security of an IoT device is great, if not (possibly) exhaustive.
When you try to secure you PC, or run a server on the Internet, you have a great advantage. You probably know which ports you need to open up in your firewall, which services you need to run, and/or what destinations you’ll be talking to. Even the cheapest home routers do a fairly decent job of protecting the computers behind them, because people’s needs are pretty predictable. I don’t think my father-in-law has ever used any port other than 80. This is not the case with IoT devices.
The most important point from [Dan]’s talk, for the armchair security types like me at least, is that an IoT device is an ecosystem, and that means that the bad folks have many more surfaces to attack than you might think, or wish for.
“Internet of Things” doesn’t describe much that’s useful from a security standpoint. On one hand, it includes widely varying classes of devices with correspondingly varying needs for security. On the other hand, it fails to describe or delimit the extent of the network that needs securing. Saying “Internet of Things security” adds nothing to just saying “security” except to warn the listener that they might need to be worrying about a very large class of problems, and end-users who don’t think they’re using a computer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ikea Projection Lamp Makeover Adds LED Matrix and Raspberry Pi Zero
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/14/projection-lamp-makeover-adds-led-matrix-and-raspberry-pi-zero/
If you’re like us, it’s hard to walk through an Ikea without mentally hacking everything there into something else. The salad bowl? Parabolic antenna. Drawer slides? Linear motion rails. Storage containers? Etching tank. We admit that we still haven’t figured out what to do with that 1,000-pack of tea lights.
[Alain Mauer] pulled off an Ikea hack that we’ve always dreamed about. In particular, he took the Sprida projector lamp and wedged an 8×8 LED matrix and Raspberry Pi Zero into it.
Pi Zero IOT Led Matrix Beamer
An 8×8 Led matix to display messages on the wall
https://hackaday.io/project/12084/instructions
Tomi Engdahl says:
Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:
Apple’s app-based, device-centric approach for Siri appears less expansive than Google’s and Amazon’s efforts
Can Apple Think Outside the Device?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/technology/can-apple-think-outside-the-device.html
More than any other company in tech, Apple prizes physical objects — expensive, perfectly designed, self-contained nuggets of aluminum and glass that you buy today, use for a couple years and replace.
Until recently, that view worked quite well. Over the past decade, through its own products and the many copycats that piled on, Apple’s device-centric aestheticism has made computers easier to use and more accessible to more people around the world — and raked in eye-popping profits while doing so.
Yet Apple’s view increasingly feels like an outdated way of thinking about tech.
Many of its competitors have been moving beyond devices toward experiences that transcend them. These new technologies exist not on distinct pieces of hardware, but above and within them. They are things like Alexa, Amazon’s ambient assistant, which lives on the internet and is ready to help you on the Amazon Echo but also on any other device that a programmer adds it to. In an era of flat iPhone sales, Apple, too, has been talking up the importance of online services, which it sees as a crucial part of its future growth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Sayer / PCWorld:
Nokia announces its IoT platform, Impact, to manage all aspects of IoT services including data collection, analytics, device management
Nokia hopes its new IoT platform, Impact, will be a hit
Nokia is pulling together all its connected-device technologies under one umbrella
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3083418/nokia-hopes-its-new-iot-platform-impact-will-be-a-hit.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Sayer / PCWorld:
Nokia announces its IoT platform, Impact, to manage all aspects of IoT services including data collection, analytics, device management
Nokia hopes its new IoT platform, Impact, will be a hit
Nokia is pulling together all its connected-device technologies under one umbrella
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3083418/nokia-hopes-its-new-iot-platform-impact-will-be-a-hit.html
Nokia hopes it will have a hit on its hands with Impact, an all-encompassing new Internet-of-Things management platform that brings together several existing products.
The Intelligent Management Platform for All Connected Things builds on the company’s established CPE (customer premises equipment) management tool for network operators, Motive Connected Device Platform, so broadband and home routers will be among the first devices to feel its impact. It already supports 80,000 different device types, Nokia said Tuesday.
No doubt its new Smart Home Gateway, also unveiled Tuesday, will soon be among them. It combines a fiber “modem” with a router, dual-band gigabit Wi-Fi — and Zigbee and Z-Wave radios for home automation. It’s intended to be distributed by network operators.
But Nokia’s ambitions for the Impact platform — as its name suggests — are much grander. Nokia hopes that enterprises and governments will also use it to securely manage all aspects of IoT services, handling everything from data collection to data analytics, taking in event processing and device management along the way.
The platform is designed to run in the cloud, where it can be sold as a managed service, but customers can also deploy it on their own infrastructure.
Nokia’s Impact has inherited some of the characteristics of Mformation’s earlier project, including its use of the LWM2M (Lightweight machine-to-machine) security model for IoT device management. Secure management tools are important, Nokia noted, because you can’t trust data from an unmanaged source.
7368 ISAM ONT G-240WZ-A
http://networks.nokia.com/portfolio/products/7368-isam-ont-g-240wz-a
Our 7368 ISAM ONT G-240WZ-A home hub delivers simplicity by combining unparalleled connectivity with the most advanced Wi-Fi® capabilities. It’s the smart choice for the smart home.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Devices Not Properly Secured on Enterprise Networks: Survey
http://www.securityweek.com/iot-devices-not-properly-secured-enterprise-networks-survey
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming an increasingly important part of enterprise environments, yet companies continue to fail at securing them properly, a recent report sponsored by ForeScout reveals.
According to the research, nearly three quarters of enterprises either don’t have efficient protection methods for their IoT devices, or are not aware of what is being used. At the other end, only 19% of organizations have a specialized agent that monitors the network, while 7% say they use a different approach to securing IoT devices, the report says.
The insecurity of products that can be included in the IoT category has been long said to put both enterprises and their customers at risk. Many such devices feature vulnerable software or re-use cryptographic secrets that make them vulnerable, yet there are also those who are sold with malware embedded in them right from the start.
However, there are also devices that, although secure on their own, aren’t properly protected once they’ve entered a company’s network, which turns them into security hazards.
According to the survey, conducted among professionals who “represent the technological elite in IT and Telecommunications,” 66% of respondents feel that 25% or less devices in the network are IoT. However, 85% of respondents said they aren’t confident they know all devices in the network
When asked about the security policy for IoT, only 44% of the respondents said that their company had such a policy in place. While 26% admitted they didn’t know, 30% said no such policy was in use.
The report also shows that 89% of the respondents believe that it is important to discover that an IoT device is on the network, while 87% said it is important to classify IoT devices. What’s more, 86% of them found discovering/classifying without the use of an agent to be quite important.
When asked about their organization’s current primary approach to securing IoT devices on the network, 30% of respondents said that they rely on “industry or manufacturer standard methods, such as Wi-Fi, WPA22, Bluetooth protocols, etc.” 17% said they have a password on the network, 13% didn’t know and 14% weren’t aware of such protection.
As Cigital’s Jim Ivers noted in SecurityWeek column earlier this year, IoT devices are, by definition, connected to the Internet, yet plugging something to the Internet actually makes it vulnerable. The software running on these devices is what should be secured first, but only “by building a software security initiative (SSI) and creating a software security group (SSG) to ensure someone is held responsible and accountable.”
“Watches, streaming media widgets, phones, tablets and a whole host of other things are likely making their way into the office right now”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Consumers Not Excited About Connected Appliances
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329910&
Consumers like the idea of connected devices, but many are reluctant to embrace the reality due to security concerns.
Internet companies and appliance manufacturers are spending billions jumping into the connected Internet of Things (IoT) smart home market. Google spent $3.2 billion buying thermostat maker Nest Labs just two years ago, Apple launched their HomeKit initiative, and manufacturers such as Bosch Siemens have their own connected appliance platform in the market.
Except for thermostats, most consumers do not want IoT appliances such as connected fridges, dishwashers, or slow cookers. The recent news of Nest ending support for the Revolv Home Hu, also highlighted the risks of trusting proprietary platforms for home connected devices.
Privacy and Security
A survey of 28,000 consumers in 28 countries released in January by Accenture LLP found that 47% of respondents pointed to security and privacy as potential obstacles to adopting such technology.
“Security has moved from being a nagging problem to a top barrier as consumers are now choosing to abandon IoT devices and services over security concerns. More than two-thirds of the consumers surveyed are aware of the recent security breaches such as hacker attacks resulting in stolen data or malfunction.” the report said.
More:
Consumers Not Excited About Connected Appliances
http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=3560&doc_id=280703&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zigbee Mesh Gets Early Praise
Spec spans array of standards, options
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329903&
Analysts gave guarded praise to JupiterMesh, a new specification for a wireless mesh network from the Zigbee Alliance, targeting utility, industrial and smart city markets. JupiterMesh supports IPv6 traffic at data rates from 6.25 to 800 Kbits/second over 800 MHz to 2.4 GHz unlicensed bands, embracing IETF and other security standards.
JupiterMesh could become a viable alternative to the Wi-SUN field area network announced in May, analysts said. The new spec adds another option to a rapidly widening field of low power wide area network (LPWA) options.
JupiterMesh is based on IEEE 802.15.4e/g media access control and physical layers including support for CSMA or TSCH modes. It supports 6LoWPAN, UDP, TCP, RPL, CoAP, and other IETF protocols as well as multicasting.
The spec can use multiple modulation techniques including FSK, O-QPSK, OFDM. It supports IETF security protocols such as PANA, EAP-TLS and HIP-DEX for network access authentication and key distribution, and AES-128-CCM-based message authentication and encryption. It works with existing metering protocols, such as IEC TC13’s DLMS/COSEM, ANSI C12, OpenADR, GOOSE, IEC 61850 and DNP3.
The spec is finished and undergoing validation testing using several vendor’s implementations. Certified products are expected to ship by June 2017.
http://www.jupitermesh.org/