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.
More interesting material links:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
How fog computing pushes IoT intelligence to the edge
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/how-fog-computing-pushes-iot-intelligence-to-the-edge/
As the Internet of Things evolves into the Internet of Everything and expands its reach into virtually every domain, high-speed data processing, analytics and shorter response times are becoming more necessary than ever. Meeting these requirements is somewhat problematic through the current centralized, cloud-based model powering IoT systems, but can be made possible through fog computing, a decentralized architectural pattern that brings computing resources and application services closer to the edge, the most logical and efficient spot in the continuum between the data source and the cloud.
The term fog computing, coined by Cisco, refers to the need for bringing the advantages and power of cloud computing closer to where the data is being generated and acted upon. Fog computing reduces the amount of data that is transferred to the cloud for processing and analysis, while also improving security, a major concern in the IoT industry
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things Leaders Create OpenFog Consortium to Help Enable End to End Technology Scenarios for the Internet of Things
https://www.openfogconsortium.org/news/internet-of-things-leaders-create-open-fog-consortium-to-help-enable-end-to-end-technology-scenarios-for-the-internet-of-things/
a coalition of leaders in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, including ARM (NASDAQ: ARMH, LSE: ARM.L), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Dell, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), and the Princeton University Edge Laboratory have come together to form the OpenFog Consortium. The goal of this consortium is to accelerate the deployment of Fog technologies through the development of an open architecture, core technologies including the capabilities of distributed computing, networking, and storage as well as the leadership needed to realize the full potential of IoT. The OpenFog architecture brings seamless Intelligence from the Cloud to the IoT endpoints using an open standardized approach. The founding members will build initial frameworks and architectures that reduce the time required to deliver the end-to-end IoT scenarios.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things control system optimizes plants and factories
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/internet-of-things-control-system-optimizes-plants-and-factories/559b6d5adb26b2fbd390f81722dd7174.html
Technology Update: The Industrial Internet Control System (IICS) from GE Automation and Controls can enable a 7% increase in performance, 22% increase in productivity, and 40% decrease in maintenance costs, GE said. Here’s how this helps Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Implementing cloud connectivity for IoT and Industrie 4.0
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/implementing-cloud-connectivity-for-iot-and-industrie-40/3237ef1117216d38128abd8d7e6ea22b.html
As information technology and automation technology continue to converge, cloud-based communication and data services are increasingly used in industrial automation projects. Compatible I/O components compatible with Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) enable easy-to-configure and seamless integration into public and private cloud applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Will Tell You How Crowded Places Are in Real Time
http://www.pcmag.com/news/349783/google-will-tell-you-how-crowded-places-are-in-real-time
Thinking about making a trip to the mall for a little holiday shopping? Now there’s a way to see if it’s mobbed before you head out the door.
Holiday Gift Guide bugGoogle last year introduced a “Popular Times” feature in Search and Maps, which lets you see how busy a place typically is at different times of the day and week. Now, the Web giant is updating that feature with real-time data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Location-IoT technology to find pets
The new technology will help identify missing pets. Austrian tractive IoT-collar allows the pet owner sees their smartphone, where the animal wanders. The system operates worldwide.
Tractive solution, the GPS is used for Orange Business Services IoT-related services and sim-cards, which operate around the world. Unlimited service is important to tractive, as established in 2012, the company has customers in more than 80 countries.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/11/23/paikantava-iot-tekniikka-loytaa-lemmikit/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Efficient production can only be achieved through automation
Product customization – or the production according to orders – Serialization means, based on codes, sorting by robots, which adapts product line is always a single batch number of the product and is applied in particular to a specific customer. This success made possible by automation, rapid changes are key, write Omron’s marketing manager Dennis Verhoeven.
Manufacturers and machine builders are increasingly seeking cost-effective, flexible and safe solutions for automation. This provides a transparent supply chain, and can solve the traceability of the product packaging problems. This means that the requirement is to print your product packaging codes that person and / or the machine is able to read.
Products are identified in serialized code, which determines the production order to be used. This code determines the production and supply chain at every stage takes place.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5442&via=n&datum=2016-11-22_14:55:32&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finnish IoT sensor to concrete floor
Finnish IoT sensor concrete floor
News – 11/23/2016
Developed by Tampere-based Wiisteen humidity sensor is part of the humidity control solution Weber structures, building products manufacturing. The new IoT technology makes it possible to ensure sufficient drying of concrete floors before surface materials.
The service allows the floor moisture level of authentication is successful without drilling and breaking floor structures.
“Innovation is a combination of existing things in a new way,”
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/11/23/suomalainen-iot-anturi-betonilattiaan/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tosibox virtual lock VPN connections
Tosibox (from Oulu Finland) has presented yesterday in Nuremberg alkaneilla industrial drive technology of the SPS Drives fair in a new software product: Tosibox Virtual Central Lock is a software product information secure remote connections. Caverion, the building system and industrial services is one of the first true VCL Box’s users.
“Virtual Central Lock is designed for organizations that take advantage of cloud services or an existing server infrastructure, says the Real-Box’s CEO Tero Lepistö. The product allows organizations to centrally according to him, to set up and manage large amounts of data secure remote connections.
- Virtual Central Lock is designed for organizations that take advantage of cloud services or an existing server infrastructure. The product is also suitable for smaller companies, who have access to the top of a cost-effective and can, if necessary, to scale the service later. VCL’s time we open up a whole new door and we serve new customers and partners. This brings nousukiitoomme yet a boost, Lepistö enthuses.
VCL-lock allows organizations to centrally erect and manage large amounts of data secure remote connections.
VCL-Hub is scalable from small systems up to more than ten thousand a secured connection comprise entities. A company can buy the software with a flexible licensing model
Sources:
http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/11/23/tosibox-toi-iot-keskitinohjelmiston/
http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5453:tosiboxilta-virtuaalinen-lukko-vpn-yhteyksille&catid=13&Itemid=101
More:
https://www.tosibox.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Tosibox-press-release_TOSIBOX-UNVEILS-GROUNDBREAKING-SOLUTION-FOR-SECURE-REMOTE-CONNECTIONS-_22.11.2016.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud services may also have significant drawbacks
Cloud is a breakthrough, so that a new entrepreneur is no longer even consider purchasing their own servers for startup companies.
However, the cloud has properties that might in some cases be significant disadvantages compared with the processing of the data closer to their place of birth of the company’s own network.
First, the transfer of data to the cloud and back again whenever you consume some time. If the cloud data center is not quite next door but, for example, in another country, round-trip transmission delay can be dozens or even hundreds of milliseconds.
Also the application itself of onset and response times can cloud the virtual machines to be longer than those of our own, purpose-optimized servers.
Second, the transfer of data to the cloud, to store there and transfer back is not free. Payments are often modest per billing unit, but if the data is really a lot, also like to collect festive sums in addition to the actual treatment.
Moreover, the transmission of confidential data to the cloud and handling will always cause you to need to think on the security issues. The fewer the parties, the less interfaces and trust relationships should be reassessed.
Objects can be connected to the network using a network connection, Ethernet, bluetooth, WLAN, CAN, zigbee or by any widely used in the procedure a couple of dozen. Since many devices connected to the Internet of Things must be produced in large quantities and at low prices, their performance is not enough to power IP practice driving and have therefore not even an IP address. The first stop on the data is often IOT gateway, whose task is to convert the collected book on practical data transferred over the Internet.
At the same time when doing the transformation can be done appropriateness of accounting and calculation. Unnecessary data should not be transferred to and stored in the cloud, and the mass of data do not have to be the raw data.
During the pair last three years, these problems have woken up to develop systematic solutions.
There is need to optimally distribute the cloud and between their own network of installed servers.
The concept uses the two terms: edge computing and fog computing
Edge computing is old term. The use of the term is the faded but received during the last few years, an entirely new awareness of, inter alia, Intel, Dell and the HPE via the IOT gateway products trade names.
Cisco’s marketing department about three years ago thought “fog computing” is intuitive term. Cisco’s solution fog calculation can be performed, for example, to install the network edge routers or servers fog deeper into the customer network installed Aggregate Node.
Awareness of fog calculation is brought OpenFog Consortium, which was established a year ago, Arm, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and Princeton University.
Fog edge computing and for computing are often used interchangeably. Especially in industrial automation applications, the network edge, however, is often understood as extending communication apparatuses “terminals”, ie information-generating and through a network controlled devices or be integrated programmable automation controllers to level up.
Mobile networks developing standards organization ETSI has taken the edge computing possibilities, particularly LTE and 5G networks seriously and strive to ensure compatibility between different manufacturers’ products and implementations. It was founded to promote the issue two years ago, particularly the standardization group, mec ISG (edge mobile computing industry specification group), which were the mainstays of Huawei, IBM, Intel, Nokia Networks, NTT Docomo and Vodafone.
Mec is a representative example of ETSI strong driving network functions virtualization (NFV). When the network will be executed in the standard server executable virtual machines, operators can increase the edge computing services for software upgrades to their networks easily.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/pilvipalveluilla-voi-olla-myos-merkittavia-haittoja-6601399
Tomi Engdahl says:
Energy Harvesting, Low Power Consumption Are the Way Forward for IoT, Wearables
http://www.designnews.com/iot/energy-harvesting-low-power-consumption-are-way-forward-iot-wearables/212976763446132?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20161123.tst004c
Energy harvesting has moved solidly out of lab and into the market and will be key to enabling the Internet of Things and wearable technology boom
Energy harvesting has moved solidly out of lab and into the market, and it will be key to enabling the ambitious projections for the number of future Internet of Things (IoT) devices and wearable technology that is expected to grow significantly in the next several years.
However, a top-down approach rather than the traditional bottom-up approach for power management is the way forward for device design to allow for energy harvesting to realize its potential, a longtime engineer and power-electronics expert said.
Speaking to Design News ahead of his talk, Zahnstecher said that many people still aren’t aware that there is a substantial production ecosystem for energy harvesting that is allowing engineers to use these technologies as they build power sources for new devices.
“In energy harvesting, there is a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) out there thinking that there aren’t usable amounts of power available [in energy harvesting], or that it’s still a lab experiment and not mature enough,” he said. “I’m dispelling the rumor with data and examples to demonstrate that this energy-harvesting ecosystem exists today. It’s nascent but it exists.”
Energy-harvesting technologies fall into three basic categories, Zahnstecher explained. There are transducers, which make the conversion from some type of ambient energy to usable, electrical power; power-management integrated circuits (PMICs), which, among other things, do the power conversion that’s required for the energy load; and storage, such as batteries or supercapacitors that store the harvested energy, he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Alexa, Make My ESP8266 Do Something”
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/23/alexa-make-my-esp8266-do-something/
The Amazon Echo and its diminutive Dot cousin have the handy feature of being able to control some home automation devices. If you own the right manufacturer’s hardware you can bend your home to your will using the power of your voice alone.
[Xose Pérez] had been sidestepping this problem by using a server running a set of scripts emulating a Belkin WeMo device, which Echo supports. The server could issue commands to his microcontrollers, but he wanted more. Why not cut out the middle man to incorporate the WeMo emulation directly on the ESP8266 that did the work?
He took the Fauxmo Python WeMo emulator he had been using, and ported it to an ESP8266 library that can be incorporated in existing code to make it appear to the world as a WeMo device.
Emulate a WeMo device with ESP8266
http://tinkerman.cat/emulate-wemo-device-esp8266/
My daughters love to talk to (or with) my Amazon Dot in their funny English: “Alexa, hello!”, “Alexa, li-on!” (actually “light on”). It’s so easy to use it to switch on/off things at home using the fauxmo python script by Maker Musings. In his post about Amazon Echo and Home Automation more than a year ago he explains how he reverse-engineered the protocol of the WeMo switches that Alexa supports.
I also have a server running the fauxmo script with an MQTT handler to control some of the Sonoffs I have at home, but this morning I woke up thinking: why should I use an external script to control my devices if I can code it in the firmware?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google, other tech giants outline ways to improve IoT security
They think it’s time to close security loopholes in connected home devices.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/22/google-other-tech-giants-outline-ways-to-improve-iot-security/
Google, Intel, Microsoft, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and a handful of other tech industry giants joined former FCC Chief Technologist Dale Hatfield to form the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group in 2010, in an attempt to develop a set of best practices for broadband management and security. Today, BITAG laid out its recommendations for a rapidly growing industry within the world of online communication: the Internet of Things.
Connected home devices occupy the wild west in terms of security and privacy practices; there’s little to no regulation in terms of the software that powers smart homes. BITAG says some IoT devices have security vulnerabilities relating to outdated software, unauthenticated and unencrypted communications, data leaks, malware, and service interruptions.
This isn’t just speculation: IoT devices enabled two widely publicized DDoS attacks in October, one that took out the internet across the United States and another that disabled the website of security researcher Brian Krebs. The Krebs attack infiltrated an estimated 145,000 IoT devices, mainly security cameras and DVRs.
BITAG recommends a handful of security standards for IoT devices, including timely, automated and secure software updates, password protection, and increased testing of customization options. The group also suggests implementing encryption best practices, plus the ability for these devices, particularly home alarm systems, to function if internet connectivity or the cloud fails. BITAG even wants to establish an industry cybersecurity program that includes a seal for certified “secure” devices.
http://www.bitag.org/documents/Press_Release_-_Announcing_Publication_of_BITAG_Report_on_IoT_Security_and_Privacy_Recommendations.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet Matrix, an Open Standard for De-centralized Encrypted Communications
http://www.securityweek.com/meet-matrix-open-standard-de-centralized-encrypted-communications
In the early days of the internet, communication was by email. Originally siloed by companies like Compuserve, AT&T and Sprint so that messages could only be exchanged with others on the same system, email is now ubiquitous. Pretty much anyone can communicate with anyone else without worrying about app or device or browser.
Today there are additional methods of communicating via the internet, such as chat and voice. These new methods, however, are currently similar to early email: siloed by different vendors so that users can communicate only with other users on the same system. Matrix.org aims to change this, so that any user on one system can communicate with any user on a different system; just like email today.
Matrix is an open standard for interoperable, decentralized, real-time communication over IP. It can be used for any type of IP communication: IM, VoIP, or IoT data.
To this end, Matrix has announced and launched the formal beta of the new Olm end-to-end encryption implementation across Web, iOS and Android. “With Matrix.org and Olm,” commented Hodgson, “we have created a universal end-to-end encrypted communication fabric — we really consider this a key step in the evolution of the Internet.”
Olm is the Matrix implementation of the Double Ratchet algorithm designed by Trevor Perrin and Moxie Marlinspike.
http://matrix.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Behold China’s Answer to Amazon Echo: The LingLong DingDong
https://www.wired.com/2016/11/behold-chinas-answer-amazon-echo-linglong-dingdong/
The Amazon Echo is remarkably useful. Alexa, the digital personal assistant within the cylindrical black gadget, plays music, helps with recipes, and orders stuff online. One thing it cannot do, however, is speak Chinese.
The LingLong DingDong can.
The name may sound funny to you, but this gadget is no joke. It could introduce millions of people to the power of a voice-activated, cloud-based smart home speaker. And it could help introduce the Echo to China.
Companies like Amazon and Google want their voice-enabled smart speakers front and center in your home. These clever devices are designed to be your primary interface to almost anything. Using nothing more than a wake word and a simple sentence, you can get the weather, set alarms or maintain a shopping list, and control your lights and locks. Whichever product and platform you choose becomes the focal point of your interaction with the internet. According to one report, China’s smart home market alone could hit $22.8 billion by 2018. “We think that the voice is most natural way to connect,” says Charlie Liu, LingLong’s senior marketing manager. “You just need to say what you want. We think it is really a huge market.”
The DingDong, which costs the equivalent of $118, provides news, weather, and stock updates. It answers questions, manages schedules, provides directions, and plays music and audiobooks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech giants warn IoT vendors to get real about security
Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group waves baseball bat at slapdash Thing-makers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/24/tech_giants_warn_iot_vendors_stop_building_st/
The heavyweights behind the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) are sick of Internet of Things (IoT) startups foisting insecure rubbish on consumers, and have fired a report that looks like a stern warning that IoT bandwagon-hoppers need to get their houses in order.
The group – which counts vendors like Cisco, six US network operators, Google and even Disney in its members – makes the welcome (if obvious) statement that the IoT creates a new type of customer, a new type of victim, and vendors need to shoulder responsibility for them.
“The nature of consumer IoT is unique in that it can involve non-technical or uninterested consumers”, the report (PDF) notes.
Add to that the challenge in even figuring out what gadgets are on the home networks, the fact that device makers don’t even bother with “rudimentary security and privacy best practices”, and are easily compromised, and the IoT looks nightmarish to BITAG.
Spelling out what the Internet of S**t is habitually getting wrong, the BITAG report says:
Devices ship with outdated and vulnerable software, and vendors don’t care about product lifecycle or patch management; and
Communications are often unauthenticated and unencrypted, and home users don’t know how to isolate insecure devices from the rest of their networks;
BITAG’s recommendations reiterate what’s becoming a consensus among serious players, but will nonetheless be ignored by a significant chunk of the Internet of S**t ecosystem.
http://www.bitag.org/documents/BITAG_Report_-_Internet_of_Things_(IoT)_Security_and_Privacy_Recommendations.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
What I learned about LTE-M at the MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress 2016
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4443007/What-I-learned-about-LTE-M-at-the-MEMS—Sensors-Executive-Congress-2016?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20161124&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20161124&elqTrackId=37d8579b8230414bba5ab4450e7b5ea9&elq=ca9b183907c14e8ebea82c2eff77d2dd&elqaid=34925&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=30489
One of the keynote speakers at this year’s MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress in Scottsdale, AZ was Cameron Coursey, VP of Product Development at AT&T Internet of Things Solutions. His topic was The Future of Sensors and MEMS in the Internet of Things.
So what is LTE-M?
Well historically, LTE-M was formerly known as Cat M1 by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA). As the industry players looked to provide the next generation of IoT connectivity, two different standards have emerged under release 13 of 3GPP – CAT-M1 and NB-IoT
LTE-M is essentially a low-power, wide-area technology that can support the IoT with such technology that will foster lower device complexity while extending coverage using the existing LTE installed base.
AT&T will be deploying a pilot of the LTE-M network in the San Francisco
This technology will be able to connect a huge variety of IoT solutions like utility meters, asset monitoring, vending machines, alarm systems, fleets, heavy equipment, mHealth and wearables just to name a few.
Lower cost modules will be enabled to connect IoT devices to the existing LTE network, longer battery life of up to 10 years will be achieved for certain IoT devices, and better coverage for IoT devices underground as well as deep inside of buildings.
In order to make this system work, the missing ingredient according to Coursey, is MEMS and sensors. They can bring about the Internet of Countless Things, says Coursey if they:
1. Follow price, size and power consumption curves along the lines of radio technology or even better.
2. Have standardized I/O
3. Are simple to integrate and use with applications
Sounds like a good bridge to 5G to me.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s ‘Home Hub’ probably isn’t even hardware at all
Cortana in a box? Maybe not
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/24/microsofts_home_hub_probably_isnt_even_hardware_at_all/
Microsoft isn’t in a rush to follow Amazon and Google by planting a pair of creepy listening ears in your living room, disguised as a robot buddy. Microsoft’s fabled “Home Hub” may not even be hardware at all.
But you can see why tongues are wagging. Given the success of Amazon’s Echo speaker, and with Google launching a me-too clone of Echo last month, it isn’t surprising to find people speculating about new hardware.
After all, Microsoft introduced Cortana, a “virtual assistant” over two years ago. Cortana is a voice recognition system with some “AI-like” backend features – and the voice recognition portion, at least, is quite stellar. Microsoft now includes it into every copy of Windows 10 and it supports eight languages* in 14 countries.
And the home is one of the few areas where voice I/O is actually practical. At work, it’s intrusive; outdoors, noise is a problem. (That really only leaves the home and the car.)
The rumours were given credence when a Microsoft hardware engineering manager appeared to spill the beans via his LinkedIn CV.
▪ Together with software team in Beijing, Munich and Redmond developed 2 product concept, one is far field voice interactive smart home Hub, the other one is an IOT connectivity platform solution.
▪ Both product[s] stopped after first round of prototype build because of re-organization, performance has been proven and key concept of smart Home Hub has been put into Microsoft Windows and Device Group product roadmap.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ITU will consider own frequencies for IoT
The International Telecommunications Union, ITU is concerned about the adequacy of the frequencies for future tens of billions of devices connected to the Internet of Things. Began yesterday in Geneva workshop, where IoT spectrum issue considered more broadly.
ITU points out that the IoT networks will be introduced in various countries to existing and new radio technologies based on networks. Some of them works in fully licensed frequencies, part of the free frequencies.
ITU already been decided at WRC-radio meeting last year that the different radio networks and systems of technical and operating conditions will be examined to support narrowband, short-term and long-range and networked sensors harmonized use.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5460:itu-pohtii-esineiden-internetille-omia-taajuuksia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Manage your heavy machinery with browser!
Finnish company Epec is focused on intelligent machine control techniques. The company’s latest remote management solution is the globe, which allows machines can be all kinds of information over the Internet browser. The technique has been used, for example, domestic TTS Liftec manufactured by lifting trolleys.
IoT boom of the different remote management solutions have become increasingly popular road mobile machinery. The new non-road remote management solution is starting to be more the rule than the exception, and solutions will also be installed as retrofit existing machines in use.
Epec remote management of the mobile machines offers a lot of advantages. data management solution produced by the machine thanks to improved fleet management and optimization of work processes. Preventive maintenance is easier, so maintenance stoppages caused by faults are reduced.
GLOBE-based management solution will be integrated into the machine control system application, which allows construction machinery to collect the desired data to the cloud server.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5464:hallitse-tyokoneita-selaimella&catid=13&Itemid=101
More: http://www.epec.fi/fi/palvelut/koneiden-etahallintaratkaisut/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finnish Goods in its own cloud platform
IoT cloud service Product developer Thing2Data project to expand the added reality. Specification work and implementation of the first phase of the project is driven by Sovelto progressed rapidly. For the trial, the test applications for all mobile phone terminals HoloLens-visor.
The development project is based on the cloud service platform, which each individually identified as the goods to their knowledge and intellect connect. Now it is carried out first Thing2Data-service architecture includes individually interdependencies between the treatment of goods and basic information of the identified goods or condition.
The project consortium participants were informed of the release phase following organizations: Cursor, Fujitsu, National Emergency Supply Agency, Innofactor, Kouvola Innovation, the Finnish Transport Agency, Ministry of Transport, Microsoft, Information, The City of Vantaa and VR.
The consortium delegation has decided to organize the hackathon competition in the spring.
The consortium has listed APIs to test dozens of potential applications for various uses.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/11/26/tavaroille-oma-pilvialusta-lisatty-todellisuus/
More:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/thing2data?src=hash
http://www.sovelto.fi/application/files/7714/6052/4158/Sovelto_Thing2Data_arkkitehtuurin_ja_hankkeen_tekninen_tiivistelma_20160411_01.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Controlling a Game Room with Amazon Echo
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/27/controlling-a-game-room-with-amazon-echo/
If there are two things we love here at Hackaday, it’s games and automating mundane tasks by adding a lot of electronics and voice control. A game room is, therefore, the perfect sandbox for projects that get us excited in all of the right ways. Liberty Games, a UK-based games room company, already had a really impressive game room (as you might expect). They’ve just posted an awesome build log showcasing how they went about automating mundane game room tasks by adding a lot of electronics and voice control.
There were four tasks that Liberty Games wanted to be able to complete with voice control: releasing billiards balls on their pool table, adding credits to an arcade machine, releasing pinballs on a pinball machine, and control of a CD jukebox. For all of these tasks, they used an Amazon Echo, which already has built-in support for adding new “skills” (Amazon’s term for user-created Alexa commands). These skills allow the Echo to communicate with other devices using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).
In this case, those “other devices” were Raspberry Pis for everything except the jukebox, which was controlled with a Logitech Harmony Hub.
The Echo Voice-Controlled Games Room
https://www.libertygames.co.uk/blog/the-echo-voice-controlled-games-room/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Loyalty card? Really? Why data-slurping store cards need a reboot
An IoT marriage is the future
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/28/retail_loyalty_card_reboot/
Loyalty cards – the little buggers are everywhere these days.
More than 20 years later and despite advancements in technology elsewhere in retail, and with the advent of things such as CRM, the loyalty card remains very much the same.
Still, they are logging items purchased by customers, gathering data that helps retailers build a profile then target them with offers or incentives to come back to the shop or restaurant again.
But with new data streams now available to retailers, it raises the question: is the importance of the loyalty card scheme and its data diminishing?
One of the reasons for this is that retailers haven’t yet moved quickly enough to make their loyalty proposition digital.
A report from mobile engagement firm Urban Airship found that the majority of consumers (62 per cent) were more likely to use their loyalty card if it was on their phone – and it’s perhaps unsurprising that the Tesco Clubcard and Nectar Card both have released smartphone apps to fill this void.
Integrating other data touch points – such as those from the Internet of Things (IoT) and a web browser – with the loyalty scheme data could prove to be even more beneficial, especially if this is done in realtime.
It’s an emotional connection that retailers will be hoping loyalty cards can begin to help offer along with personalised interactions, says Jason Foster, the former head of big data, analytics and marketing technologies at Marks & Spencer.
“[Loyalty schemes] need to get back to traditional retailing where the shopkeeper knew every customer that walked in the door, what they like, don’t like, who they live near and members of their family,” he said. “This used to enable traders to give a highly personal shopping experience to every customer.”
Another big consideration for retailers is that a huge part of their customer base is set to be “Generation Z” – who may be happier to share their data if it benefits them, but are also savvier in the way they shop.
The Rare report found that 65 per cent of loyalty scheme members said they would still shop with the brand if the loyalty programme no longer existed, meaning that for the majority of people a loyalty proposition wouldn’t affect their intention to purchase. However, on the flip side, a third of people think it’s a vital component of their relationship with that brand.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sevenhugs Smart Remote is a Universal Direction Aware WiFi, Bluetooth and IR Remote Control (Crowdfunding)
http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/11/25/sevenhugs-smart-remote-is-a-universal-direction-aware-wifi-bluetooth-and-ir-remote-control-crowdfunding/
You may have all sort of remote control devices around your home from the traditional IR remote control for your TV, air conditioner, audio system etc.., as well remote control apps for WiFi or Bluetooth objects such as smart light bulbs or water pumps running on your smartphone. Sevenhugs Smart Remote promises to replace them all, and all you have to do is to point the remote control to your devices, or setup virtual actions to your door or window to order a Uber drive or check the weather.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Smart Wand for all us Muggles
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/26/a-smart-wand-for-all-us-muggles/
Arthur C. Clarke said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Even though we know that something isn’t “magic”, it’s nice to see how close we can get. [Dofl] and his friends, big fans of the magic in Harry Potter, thought the same thing, and decided to create a magic wand that they could use themselves.
The wand itself is 3D printed and has a microcontroller and WiFi board, a voice recognition board, a microphone, and a vibrating motor stuffed inside.
The wand converts the voice into commands and since the wand is connected to WiFi, the commands can be used to communicate with your WiFi connected lights (or your WiFi connected anything, really.) Five voice commands are recognized to turn on and off music, the lights, and a “summon” command which is used in the video to request a hamburger from delivery.com. For feedback, the motor is vibrated when a command is recognized.
We Made A Smart Wand Which Lets Muggles Cast 5 Spells That Actually Work
http://www.boredpanda.com/we-made-a-smart-wand-for-muggles/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Week In Review: IoT
http://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-iot-28/
Disillusionment with the IoT; addressing IoT security and privacy; IBM sets up consulting unit.
The Internet of Things may be entering the infamous “Trough of Disillusionment” in the Gartner Hype Cycle, according to some observers. “There’s a general malaise growing around IoT. Where is this shiny, artificially intelligent, fully connected future of things we were promised?” iobeam CEO Ajay Kulkarni writes in this analysis. Others are more sanguine about the IoT. Clearly, there will be arguments on this for years to come.
The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group this week published a report, Internet of Things (IoT) Security and Privacy Recommendations. The group said in a statement, “Potential issues contributing to the lack of privacy and security best practices include: lack of IoT supply chain experience with security and privacy, lack of incentives to develop and deploy updates after the initial sale, lack of secure over-the-network software updates, devices with malware inserted during the manufacturing process, and more.”
IBM announced that more than 1,500 industry experts are available through its Watson IoT Consulting Services, while making access to its Watson IoT Platform free and open to businesses getting their feet wet in IoT development.
http://www.bitag.org/report-internet-of-things-security-privacy-recommendations.php
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Home Needs Data Standards
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1330860&
There is a compelling need for companies to come together to develop and enforce a system of ethical data collection and processing in the smart home.
Today, more than 90% of consumers in both the U.K. and the U.S. are concerned about their online privacy and 76% are modifying their online behavior because of this concern, according to research done by Truste.
As concerning as today’s numbers are, this problem will be compounded dramatically by the proliferation of cameras and microphones entering the smart home as part of the whole home personal assistant. These devices included on home security systems, nanny cams, gesture recognition systems and web cams will be shared by every application and service operating in the smart home.
Without standards governing what data can be extracted from these streams and a certification system to enforce those standards, it will be impossible to assure consumers that extremely sensitive data will not be used inappropriately. Ethical failures by a small number of unscrupulous players have the potential to damage the entire industry.
But, privacy is not the only requirement that must be satisfied.
Data quality is of critical importance to the emerging whole home personal assistant. These machine learning technologies will provide financial advice, monitor security systems and manage calendars. They are very powerful but they are also exceptionally dependent upon being fed high quality data streams.
Imagine a situation where data quality is not preserved.
A recent study of consumer grade sleep quality sensors by a major university reviewed the performance of five devices. Two of these devices produced data that was useful but not as good as an in-facility sleep study. The other three failed entirely, providing data that was almost random. With such low quality inputs, a personal assistant would provide advice that could be potentially harmful to the consumer and their family members.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft opens IoT laboratory in Finland – an investment of EUR 14 million
Microsoft will set up the Internet of Things focuses on laboratory and the Foundation in Finland. The company invests in IoT workshop called the Foundation for the US $ 14 million in facilities and equipment, as well as start-up businesses. The start of the new laboratory is also supported by the Innovation Financial Centre Tekes.
Microsoft IoT laboratory will be called to Espoo, offering IoT solutions for creative Finnish Startup and small businesses with hardware know-how, and ongoing support related to cloud services.
IoT laboratory to be operational early next year. There is equipment needed for the construction of IoT prototypes. These include Azure IoT Starter Kit Development Kit, 3D-printers and a variety of Connectivity Device, such as Bluetooth, NFC and satellite navigation.
“One of the biggest challenges faced by startups in the development of IoT system is to change the idea of a prototype. IoT purpose of the workshop is to accelerate this process IoT system of innovation in mind ”
IoT workshop opens its doors in the first quarter of 2017. Companies receive immediate access to a wide range of advanced equipment needed for IoT prototyping for fast and easy construction. These include Azure IoT Starter Kits, 3D printers, as well as connectivity such as Bluetooth, NFC and satellite equipment.
IoT workshop is Microsoft’s first Suomi100 anniversary project. After the establishment of the operational activities of IoT workshop has independent control of its own personnel, independent of Microsoft.
Sources:
http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/11/30/microsoftilta-iot-laboratorio-suomeen-14-miljoonan-euron-sijoitus/
http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5499:microsoft-perustaa-iot-laboratorion-suomeen&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
AinaCom bring IoT-machine connections
Finnish telecom operator AinaCom that the sale of wireless machine-machine interfaces that operate all over the world. Most preferably, machinery IoT access is available for EUR 1.5 per month in Finland and abroad in three euros a month.
AinaCom machine interfaces are suitable for controlling, managing, monitoring or data collection, as well as more general data communication solution.
Customers can manage their subscriptions and monitor their traffic. Data packets of 10 and 50 megabytes.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/11/29/ainacom-iot-koneliittymat/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things requires its own networks
In local lan networks, there are many options such as WLAN, Bluetooth or Zigbee technology. Long-distance WAN networks, on the other hand difficulties.
So far remote from the sensors are networked to a conventional 2G or 3G mobile data. The key problem is when energy consuming radio modems, as a rule, the power supply is dependent on the battery. Another problem of major expenditure, when every anturoitu item needs its own interface. In addition, the 3G modem is expensive.
Lora, Sigfox and Weightless
In response, the need has arisen low-power and low cost lpwan technology (low power wide area network), or in fact three competing radio standard: Lora, Sigfox and Weightless. They are designed specifically to meet the needs of the Internet of Things. Finland have landed Lora and Sigfox.
Lpwan radio circuits, energy consumption is negligible. The same coin-cell battery can serve as a power source for ten years. Modems price is EUR pair, when the 3G modem price is several times higher.
lpwan used by low standards, license-free frequency range, which in Europe is 868 megahertz.
The lower the frequency, the higher the permeability, while more extensive range and coverage area per base station. This lowers the price of construction of networks, when one base station covers a large area.
A common weakness is a modest ability to transmit data. In many cases the use of it does not matter, since it is sufficient that the data can pass every now and then, slowly and in very small bursts. This is typical, for example, meter reading applications.
The standards are not compatible with each other. This forces the user to think about exactly what features are best suited to their own needs.
Lora (or LoRaWAN, Long Range Wide Area Network) requires chip maker Semtechin radio circuit, but otherwise it is completely open to technology.
Also, public Lora networks have emerged.
Commercially successful lpwan technology is Sigfox. The developer has the same name in a French company that builds, operates and licenses Sigfox networks in different countries. Together, they form a global network.
Weightless has developed an open standard, which is divided into three version.
Flagship is called the P-version, which allows for two-way communication with a flexible data stream, but the problem is poor access to technology. N-version is only able to transmit the data of 100 kilobits per second. W version gives lpwanin the highest data transfer rate, up to ten megabits per second. It uses the free strip of terrestrial TV broadcasting frequency bands.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/esineiden-internet-vaatii-omat-verkot-6600635
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Amazon developing premium Echo-like device with a 7-inch touchscreen set at an angle and high-grade speakers, to be announced as soon as Q1 2017
Amazon Said to Plan Premium Alexa Speaker With Large Screen
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-29/amazon-said-to-plan-premium-alexa-speaker-with-large-screen
Amazon.com Inc. is developing a premium Echo-like speaker with a screen, a sign the world’s largest online retailer is trying to capitalize on the surprise success of its voice-controlled home gadgets and fend off competition from Google and Apple Inc.
So-called smart home gadgets are one of the latest computing battlefields fought over by the largest technology companies. However, they have so far failed to match the popularity of smartphones and personal computers.
Amazon’s planned expansion of the Alexa-powered line coincides with growing competition from Alphabet Inc.’s Google Home speaker and Apple Inc.’s interest in building a home device using its Siri digital assistant.
The new Amazon device will use an optimized version of Fire OS, the software that runs Amazon’s Fire tablets and Fire TV set-top box.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Develop a process to make informed decisions with Big Data
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/develop-a-process-to-make-informed-decisions-with-big-data/934e9b547bcadd3c39bc377ea98e0ffc.html
Big Data can help synthesize information and provide users with the exact data they need to make informed, intelligent decisions. Developing a process that benefits everyone in the plant from the top on down is crucial.
There is a tremendous amount of information out there; dissecting the information can be overwhelming. Especially when the information comes from different sources and may not be accessible to everyone who needs it. Big Data can help synthesize this information and provide users with the exact data they need to make informed, intelligent decisions. Knowing how to capture the Big Data and make it useful is the key.
In an enterprise manufacturing system, it is important to be able to see the whole picture when evaluating a problem.
Manufacturing business intelligence software is designed to help simplify this process. The business intelligence systems available today provide the ability to bring real-time and business data together into a centralized location and allow users to align data collection with goals and objectives. Reports and information generated from these systems are standardized, repeatable and can be available enterprisewide. These business software systems provide data aggregation, actionable alerts, and predictive analysis. They allow users to optimize the information and allow users to create business decisions quickly and intelligently.
The business intelligence software systems include both data collection and visualization, but the key item that brings everything together is the abstraction layer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Industrial connectivity platform with IIoT capabilities
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/industrial-connectivity-platform-with-iiot-capabilities/6bb041f98d59e46013eca359f41a6f6a.html
Product Exclusive: Kepware’s KEPServerEX Version 6 is an industrial connectivity platform designed to work with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and features streamlined server deployment and integrated security to meet the needs of globally connected and standardized environments.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Remote IO modules with EtherNet/IP
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/remote-io-modules-with-ethernetip/ff2d5ea92b77809c4fadfe5c7621d647.html
Moxa’s ioLogik E1200 line of remote input/output (I/O) modules features support for EtherNet/IP and a restful API and are available with a wide range of input and output types.
Moxa’s ioLogik E1200 line of remote input/output (I/O) modules features support for EtherNet/IP and a restful API. The ioLogik E1200 is designed as an alternative to expensive and proprietary I/O modules that can interface with IT systems. The Moxa ioLogik E1200 series is available with a wide range of input and output types, including voltage, current, digital, pulse, frequency, RTD, thermocouple and more. Existing owners can gain the additional functionality for free by downloading the new firmware and completing the online registration process.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intelligent automation series part 6: Understanding the process of automation systems
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/intelligent-automation-series-part-6-understanding-the-process-of-automation-systems/176f9ab52e99bfae484b42a29c1757a5.html
Automation pyramid part 6: The easiest way to understand the pyramid as a whole is to see how information moves from Level 1 to Level 5 and how to get value out of data analysis.
The first five installments of this series covered the different levels of the automation pyramid and how to turn process data into information. Levels 1 and 2 consist of the process equipment, instrumentation, and control systems that automate production. Level 3 is comprised of the information systems used to collect and analyze raw data from the control system.
Level 4 provides more detailed analysis tools combined with other information systems such as quality control that add context to the raw process data. Level 5 forms the basis of a fully connected enterprise with bi-directional integrations between production and business operations systems. The easiest way to understand the pyramid as a whole is to see how information moves from Level 1 to Level 5.
Much like the flow of raw material through the process, data can be traced through the various systems that turn it into information. This begins with raw material brought into the facility. A Level 1 and 2 system monitors the tank levels as material is unloaded from supply trucks or rail cars.
This provides operators with a real-time view of what is available for processing and can trigger alarms if the tanks are close to empty or in danger of overflowing.
Understanding how the tank levels fluctuate over time requires a process historian to collect and store the amount of material in the tanks. Combining the analysis tools at Level 3 with the skills and experience of operators and production staff yields some information but may require a lot of effort to get the most value out of this information.
Level 4 systems reduce the amount of effort required to find actionable insights, by means of statistical analysis tools and additional data sources to provide the context to turn raw data into information.
Integration of Level 5 systems might include a data entry system the operators use to generate an unloading ticket that combines quality control data, information from the shipping company, and actual process data to verify shipped and received quantities. This system can be synced with accounting systems to ensure shipping/receiving information is correct.
This approach can be applied to any part of the process, resulting in an overall system to understand the health of the entire process at any given time.
Implementing the automation pyramid
What the facility must understand is what level it currently is at. From there, the next step is to prioritize what systems at the current or next level would provide the most value, and search for who can best design and implement those systems.
Other common systems companies implement as they need more information are manufacturing execution systems to track downtime, additional statistical analysis tools that may include machine learning algorithms, or even finding ways to implement Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices, such as beacons, safety tracking devices, or even Geo-fencing in the facility for a real-time view of their staff’s locations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Front-End Modules Make Smart Connections for IoT
http://mwrf.com/mixed-signal-semiconductors/front-end-modules-make-smart-connections-iot?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20161129_MWRF-001_870&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=8670&utm_medium=email&elq2=35ff2ccde3e84195add106094f203f2b
The integration of RF/microwave functionality in highly integrated front-end modules paves the way for smaller, lower-power, cost-effective IoT solutions for a wide range of applications.
The basic idea of the Internet of Things (IoT) may seem simple: wireless communications between sensors and the Internet. But for engineers faced with designing its component parts, such a simple description is much less than the tip of the iceberg. Challenges are presented by every component within an IoT product, the software that enables it, and the network that coordinates and secures it.
One of the more daunting challenges is the need for unprecedented levels of functional integration to reduce the size, design complexity, and cost of IoT devices. Radio-frequency (RF) front-end modules (FEMs) could very well offer a solution, as they are designed to provide performance and functionality in miniature packages with low power consumption.
Projections for the global acceptance of IoT technology predict billions, even trillions, of these devices operating in many different applications, and no single design solution will serve all purposes. In some cases, sensors will remain almost continuously in a sleep mode, coming to life only briefly either when externally instructed, on a schedule programmed into it, or when it detects trouble in the device to which it is connected. In these environments, wireless-enabled sensors should be able to operate for up to 10 years on a coin cell or cells.
In other applications, IoT sensors will be partially or continuously operational, requiring access to mains power or biasing from energy harvesting or wireless power transfer. The multitude of IoT applications may be diverse, but one core requirement remains the same: the need to make every element of an IoT device extremely small, highly integrated, efficient, and frugal with power. Studies project that the cost of IoT devices may have to drop 10 to 100 times and power consumption from milliwatts at present to microwatts or even nanowatts in the future.
Cost-Effective Miniaturization
Integration is the key to achieving serious miniaturization in IoT applications, with the design of RF FEMs including as many functions as possible within a single package. Aided by system-on-chip (SoC) devices that perform analog-to-digital conversion, baseband functions, and overall subsystem control, RF FEMs can deliver a cost-effective solution for IoT applications, with very high performance in a very small footprint. Ever-increasing integration of IoT functions means more functionality will be included in smaller system-in-package (SiP) devices, allowing IoT capabilities to squeeze into even smaller, cost-effective, lower-power solutions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Controlling Your Instruments From A Computer: Doing Something Useful
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/29/controlling-your-instruments-from-a-computer-doing-something-useful/
Do you know how to harvest data from your bench tools, like plotting bandwidth from your oscilloscope with a computer? It’s actually pretty easy. Many bench tools make this easy using a standard protocol with USB to make the connection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Joy of the ESP8266 and Blynk
http://hackaday.com/2016/12/01/the-joy-of-the-esp8266-and-blynk/
I also find it hard to pass up a bargain. So when I saw a robot kit at the local store that had been originally $125 marked down to $20, I had to bite. There was only one problem. After I got the thing home, I found they expected you to supply your own radio control transmitter and receiver.
I didn’t have anything handy.
However, I did have a few ESP8266 modules handy. Good ones, too, from Adafruit with selected 5 V I/O compatibility and an onboard regulator. I started thinking about writing something for the ESP8266 to pick up data from, say, a UDP packet and converting it into RC servo commands.
Seemed like a fair amount of work and then I remembered that I wanted to try Blynk. If you haven’t heard of Blynk, it is a user interface for Android and Apple phones that can send commands to an embedded system over the Internet. You usually think of using Blynk with an Arduino, but you can also program the embedded part directly on an ESP8266. I quickly threw together a little prototype joystick.
Inside Blynk
The GUI part of Blynk is really simple. You build a screen, add widgets and tap them to configure them. The joystick has some basic configuration items
When you create a Blynk app, you generate a long hex number that identifies your application. That number is the key to connecting your microcontroller to the user interface.
The basic steps are easy:
Open Blynk and create a new project
Select a project name and the type of hardware you’ll use
The software will show you an “auth token” (the long hex number)
You can write the number down or press a button to have it sent to your e-mail (much easier)
Press the create button and you’re done
Next Steps
To complete the joystick project, you’ll need to tackle the following issues:
Programming the Blynk firmware into the ESP8266
Communicating with the Blynk user interface from your custom code
App Control With Ease Using Blynk
https://hackaday.com/2016/03/10/app-control-with-ease-using-blynk/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Home Shifting to Voice Control
http://www.btreport.net/articles/2016/11/smart-home-shifting-to-voice-control.html?cmpid=enlmobile1212016&eid=289644432&bid=1601662
According to Parks Associates, smart home applications are increasingly shifting to voice control. The research house says 44% of U.S. broadband households have used voice control functions on at least one of their connected smart home platforms, including 64% of heads of household ages 18-24. The high usage rates among Millennials suggest that voice controls are quickly becoming the preferred means of interaction with Internet-connected devices, and younger consumers especially will see greater value in new smart home platforms with voice control as standard in the user interface.
“The emergence of voice control in personal digital assistants like the Amazon Echo has helped expand this type of interface as a key differentiator throughout the IoT,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphone Innovation Ignites IoT Creativity
http://semiengineering.com/smartphone-innovation-ignites-iot-creativity/
To leverage sensor-based technology at the edge of the IoT, both designers and ecosystems are changing.
The unrelenting drive to add more sensor-based features at a lower cost in smartphones has opened up opportunities for companies large and small to create innovative IoT edge products. With close to 15 billion MEMS-based sensors shipped in 2015 (expanding to 30 billion by 2020) at an average selling price of $1 (Yole Développement “Status of the MEMS Industry report for 2015”), many design teams are creating sophisticated sensor-based products.
For example, advanced technology drones, created by DIY experimenters or teams at small companies, can take full advantage of cheap smartphone sensors to create flight control, autopilot, navigation, and imaging systems. Hobbyists can now create inexpensive drones that rival those created by the military industry, sans weaponry, of course!
Small groups within large companies are developing innovative technology, such as the team of IC designers at Google that created a contact lens containing a sensor that measures glucose levels in tears, to improve diabetes treatments.
A new breed of designers has arrived that is leveraging the advances in sensing technology to build the intelligent systems at the edge of the IoT. These systems play in every space: on your body, at home, the car or bus that you take to work, and the cities, factories, office buildings, or farms where you work. The energy that you consume and how you travel, by air, land, or sea, all have IoT edge solutions being developed. And, space probes, telescopes, and satellites explore the far edges of the universe. It’s no surprise that the new breed of designers are not only taking advantage of rapidly-evolving sensing technology, but they are tapping into cheap computational capacity and networking to develop and deploy IoT devices for some of the largest new markets in high-tech, consumer, and manufacturing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is The IoT Here To Stay?
http://semiengineering.com/is-the-iot-here-to-stay/
The bright, shiny prospect of IoT may be losing its luster.
Look at almost any forecast for the Internet of Things market, and you’ll see some big, impressive numbers. Bain says IoT vendor revenues will top $470 billion by 2020. McKinsey predicts the IoT market will be increasing from last year’s $900 million to $3.7 billion in 2020 for a compound annual growth rate of 32.6%. IHS estimates the number of installed IoT devices will rise from 15.4 billion in 2015 to 30.7 billion in 2020 and 75.4 billion in 2025.
Market research firms define IoT devices and the IoT market in different ways, hence the disparity in certain forecasts.
IDTechEx last month issued a report on the IoT, based on conferences, interviews, research, and travel by its analysts, and it was not another glowing forecast. “Our forecasts do not repeat the mantra about tens of billions of nodes being deployed in only a few years. The many analysts sticking to such euphoria ignore the fact that, contrary to their expectation, very little IoT was deployed in 2016,” IDTechEx stated.
And then there was this TechCrunch blog post by Ajay Kulkarni, co-founder and CEO of iobeam, headlined, “There is no IoT.”
He writes, “There is no broad, homogeneous set of applications that we can call IoT. Instead, there are many, varied sets of applications, each enabled by the same tech trends, but manifesting themselves in different ways.”
Clearly, the concept of the IoT may still be viable, yet some people are disappointed in the reality of IoT, which is not coming along as easily and quickly as expected.
There is no IoT
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/20/there-is-no-iot/
There’s a general malaise growing around IoT. After years of hype, more hype and even more hype, people are now starting to wonder: Where is this shiny, artificially intelligent, fully connected future of things we were promised?
Certainly a botnet of hacked IoT devices launching one of the largest DDoS attacks ever seen has not helped.
Part of the problem, like with any massive transformation, is because of the nature of exponential growth curves: Change takes time, and will come more slowly at first.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Connected cars: IoT’s value proposition
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/talking-things/4443080/Connected-cars–IoT-s-value-proposition?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20161201&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20161201&elqTrackId=6a56f4eab0864531a63b4d1b43e6596b&elq=6e06e3ff167b491eae0f9f82e9bb3943&elqaid=34990&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=30545
As with most enterprise technologies, the adoption and rollout of IoT is probably a little slower than the hype cycle of a few years ago would have led us to believe. As with any potentially revolutionary technology, IoT has gotten off to a slower start because businesses have struggled to determine its value proposition. Businesses invest in technologies for two primary reasons: to generate revenue or to reduce costs. Just as with computers in the 1970s, mobile handsets in the early 1990s, and software-as-a-service in the 2000s, businesses in 2016 and beyond will be shouldering the burden of the investment and development of IoT. Businesses want to ensure that IoT can live up to the promise of revenue generation and cost cutting that has been so heavily promised over the past few years.
These are difficult issues to address in most areas of IoT, but we will get there, just as we did with all the other technologies I have mentioned. One area where the value proposition is relatively obvious and has had much attention focused on is the automotive industry and connected cars. There, whether it’s shared assets, driverless trucks, logistics, etc., the possibilities are endless, and the cost savings and returns more measurable. What makes this area even more valuable is its direct connection to the end consumer.
We’ve previously spoken on how specific areas like trucking have obvious ROI triggers that can drive adoption. But in connected cars, the service delivery is orchestrated around a person and that person’s data, which can have value beyond the immediate automotive application, including shopping offers or personalized car insurance. So now, connected car data begins to look significant enough that companies are willing to make more speculative investments ahead of the near term revenues. Another reason that this is a lucrative area is due to inefficiencies involved in our current transportation based infrastructure. Massive amounts of land are devoted to roads, street parking, and parking lots–in Houston alone, almost 25 percent of downtown land is devoted to street and garage parking.
My company recently published a white paper on the implications of data exchange in the connected car space. Currently, the numbers appear relatively small–GM’s OnStar system gave them an early lead, but even a colossus like Toyota has roughly 5,000 connected cars today.
Implications of the Data Exchange on the Connected Car Business Models
http://www.interdigital.com/white_papers/implications-of-the-data-exchange-on-the-connected-car-business-models
Tomi Engdahl says:
Agricultural IoT: Outstanding In The Field
http://semiengineering.com/ag-iot-outstanding-in-the-field/
The Internet of Things for agriculture. Yes, it’s a thing—and a huge market.
The Internet of Things represents many different things, for multiple industries and markets. For farmers, it offers the opportunity to take part in another Green Revolution.
Precision agriculture is the term often applied to IoT-based farming. What that means is using sensors and other technology to improve agricultural production, involving all fertile land available, and automating as many tasks as possible to leave farmers with more time to analyze and implement technology. For farmers, that also means not having to hire more farmhands at planting and harvest seasons. Big-data analytics can review weather forecasts and patterns to predict optimal periods to get seeds in the ground and when to harvest.
This is big business, and it is “greenfield” in almost every respect. Agribusiness has been slow to adopt the most advanced technology, so it is largely starting from scratch. But it is also a market where the benefits of data gathering and analytics can greatly improve efficiency of an operation, and the results show rapid economic return.
There are four key areas for precision agriculture: Productivity, pest control, water conservation, and continual value.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT, Architectures, And Security
http://semiengineering.com/iot-architectures-and-security/
ARM CTO Mike Muller discusses how markets and technology are changing in a very candid one-on-one interview.
SE: Security is a growing problem. How do we deal with it?
Muller: However fast the world is moving, if you look at fundamental hardware and system design, it’s running on a two- to three-year development cycle. And if you look at the devices that have been hacked, it’s five to eight years old. Maybe it was three years old. But there’s a real time lag, and the old stuff doesn’t go away. That’s one of the real challenges.
SE: That’s particularly true for cars, right? The average time people hold onto a car is 11 years.
Muller: People are listening. They are starting to build better products. But this is a story that’s going to repeat itself a lot of times before it becomes old and stale news. There is no sudden, rapid fix. It’s not as if all the devices out there have appalling security. You can buy modern IoT devices that are secure and do handle security well. Everything has flaws. But one of the things we think is important for devices going forward is the ability to make them securely upgradeable in the field. Once you’ve lost control of an IoT device, it’s really important to be able to get that control back. You can do everything you can to try to prevent losing control, but if there is a flaw you need to be able to securely re-flash a device even if you’ve lost control of the application at the top level. Architecturally, that’s one of the important things to press on.
SE: Security can be cumbersome to use, though. Most people don’t like to reset their passwords.
Muller: The only way that changes is failure in the field. That changes attitudes. There will be waves of attacks. So what does it take what they’re doing with the right investment to move up the bar? There is no perfect. It’s a matter of moving up the bar.
SE: What does that do to the user experience? With multi-factor authentication it can be painful to log onto online banking, for example. Will that improve?
Muller: We will only get mass deployment of IoT if we also make it simpler. I may have to do three- or four-factor authentication to make sure I am who I say I am, but once I’m done with that I can control my devices, change all of their passwords and update them. But you will have to have that kind of system to make sure you can control your devices. If you have to go around and individually press the button on your phone at the same time you are pressing the button on a device and running downstairs to press the button on your router to change the password, that’s not going to scale. That’s where we are at the moment. That’s fine for the millions and billions of devices, but you won’t get to trillions of devices if that’s how you manage them.
SE: Where do you see the bottlenecks in the future?
Muller: Some of it involves how you integrate with existing systems. If you build a brand new city, it’s a very different problem than saying you want to retrofit San Francisco into a world where everything is already there. The operating practices and the computer systems are already there. That’s a very different challenge. That systems integration piece is a bottleneck. You can’t just wave a magic wand and say, ‘We all comply with Standard X so everything talks to each other.’ You have to deal with legacy. Legacy is the bottleneck.
SE: This is also the part of the market that is not following Moore’s Law, right?
Muller: Yes, but the world doesn’t need 100 million different microcontrollers. It can get by with hundreds or thousands of microcontrollers that enable 100 million different products. The economics become a question of whether you can take standard hardware product, write software and apps, and create the system you want to deploy. It’s not a question of whether you can build a custom SoC. Most of the applications out there don’t need a custom SoC.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Cities, Challenging Issues
http://semiengineering.com/smart-cities-challenging-issues/
Research points to massive savings and better quality of life, but getting there isn’t so simple.
Smart cities are coming. Not everything will be connected, and not everything will be connected at once. Still, governments around the globe are beginning to tap into a world of connected devices and sensors for reasons ranging from cheaper lighting to less traffic, lower crime, and improved air quality.
Smart cities encompass all manner of usage models and equipment — parking meters, traffic lights, power and water meters, mobile telephone networks, apps on every resident user’s handheld phone, including cameras and microphones. The engineer’s challenge is integrating all of these devices using common communication links, ubiquitous GPS technology, algorithms that make sense of the data collected, and central repositories for relevant data.
“You need a horizontal platform,” said Mike Muller, chief technology officer at ARM. “Without that horizontal platform you don’t get innovation. You need the ability to let someone come in from the outside and go, ‘Here’s a brand-new thing that you can do by shuffling all of the pieces you had before.’ In a vertical application, people will have a view of how those pieces come together and what those pieces are. But you don’t enable the innovation from the outside without making it horizontal.”
Motivations behind smart cities vary greatly from one city to the next, and from one region to the next.
“In American cities it’s quite clear that IoT is a way of reducing operating costs and taxpayer burden,”
There are enough studies underway or completed to show that collecting, mining and utilizing data can lead to all sorts of improvements. “Research by (UCLA urban planning research professor) Donald Shoup has found that up to 30% of the traffic in metropolitan areas is due to drivers circling business districts in order to find a near-by parking space,”
“The trend is to build platforms that decentralize intelligence at the edge,”
A Movidius device is inside a new generation of cameras from Hikvision of China, which is capable of counting cars in a given traffic flow, identifying accurately 96% of the time the exact make and model of the car in the image captured.
Safety vs. privacy
That assumes the same kinds of cameras will be used everywhere, of course. But a major sticking point for rolling out certain features in ultra-connected environment such as a smart city is privacy.
In fact, privacy concerns are driving demand for lensless optical sensors. Rather than producing images with the kind of visual acuity of a camera, they generate data and rough images.
“This is a new kind of optic that is extremely flat and easier to use,”
Power matters
Power is one of the constant themes in all of these implementations. Utility bills are line items in government spending, and savings through deployment of smart technology can be in the millions or even tens of millions of dollars per year. So not only do technologies in smart cities need to do something valuable, they also need to do it using less energy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Optimizing Multiple IoT Layers
http://semiengineering.com/optimization-across-iot-layers/
Where and how IoT engineering teams are approaching design optimization among various layers of the IoT.
As the number of connected devices rises, so do questions about how to optimize them for target markets, how to ensure they play nicely together, and how to bring them to market quickly and inexpensively.
IoT is broad term that encompasses a lot of disparate pieces for devices, systems, and connected systems. At the highest levels are hardware and software, but within those two groupings there is everything from back-end processors to analog sensors, multiple layers of software, many thousands of IP blocks, and as-yet undocumented use cases. Architectures are still evolving, communications protocols and technologies are in flux, and security is just beginning to get widespread attention from chipmakers.
Nevertheless, there are a number of developments that could have broad impact across these different areas:
1. Different packaging approaches, which could provide significantly faster assembly strategies for disparate parts.
2. Better utilization of hardware-software co-design to maximize work done per cycle, and a better understanding of what works best in hardware versus software.
3. More system-level design approaches.
Hardware-software integration
While hardware is almost always more efficient in terms of power and performance, software is much easier to adapt to specific use cases. The challenge is balancing that flexibility with power and performance. That may require rethinking the fundamental interaction between software and hardware, as well as the best ways to utilize each. For example, how many cycles does it take for software to complete an operation, and is there a better way to do that.
“Each application must be optimized for the specific target, so flexibility is needed in all of the IoT layers to be able to target the design for the specific task at hand,”
Tighter integration
Behind this discussion about hardware versus software is another discussion about how to optimize each, rather than worrying about which one is driving the other.
The system view
While an enormous amount of existing technology is being used to design and build IoT devices, there needs to be a shift in mindset about how this technology goes together with the least amount of extra development time or expense.
“If I have a great idea for my startup, and it’s an IoT product, I need to look at it systemically,”
Conclusion
The Internet of Things means many things to many people, but the bottom line is that ultimately it will be a collection of devices that will need to communicate with each other and to perform some localized functions. How each of these gets optimized, and for which markets, is still being worked out, but it will not be a one-size-fits-all type of solution.
If initial indications are correct, the direction appears to be more customized implementations for very specific applications, each with a different set of criteria for what makes an optimal device. If the market plays out that way, it will require new approaches, new methodologies, as well as some new technologies and tools, and some fundamental shifts in how the chip business is run. When it comes to the IoT, this is anything but business as usual, but it is still business.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Solution-ready platforms, IIoT application expansion major focus at Advantech conference
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/solution-ready-platforms-iiot-application-expansion-major-focus-at-advantech-conference/e9a6190c892bb4c663fcad780ba841e6.html
Executives at Advantech’s 2016 IIoT World Partner Conference focused on solution-ready platforms (SRPs) and sharing platform business model to accelerate the Industrial Internet of Things’ (IIoT) application development. Energy and environment, smart manufacturing, industrial equipment manufacturing, and networking are among areas of focus.
Improving industrial connectivity was one of the main themes at Advantech’s 2016 Industrial Internet of Things World Partner Conference (IIoT WPC) in Taipei, Taiwan, from Nov. 10-12. The meeting focused on accelerating Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) application development in several industries, worldwide. Advantech, which started as a hardware company, is transforming into an IIoT solutions company offering device-to-cloud solution-ready platforms (SRPs) that integrate hardware and middle-ware.
“SRP removes obstacles in the transformation toward intelligent technology for our clients, at the same time as helping us expand IoT technology to various industries,” he said. “Among all groups in Advantech, the Industrial IoT (IIoT) group focuses on SRP; hardware-software integration as its core technology.
Advantech also showcased its new campus with several IIoT applications, which included a control room for real-time video production line monitoring and data analysis, a solar-powered, auto-sensing green house, and smart building management system.
“IoT is gradually becoming a reality, it’s not just ‘I Only Talk’ anymore as mocked by some skeptics,” said Chaney Ho, president of Advantech. Ho also predicted that SRPs will count for 50% of Advantech’s IIoT revenue in 10 years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Connecting information, engineering and operational technologies
Asset performance management provides the power of combining all systems into one that can deliver actionable intelligence.
http://www.plantengineering.com/single-article/connecting-information-engineering-and-operational-technologies/ca9ec3c1e0acabb044b6f7e0ad4f6e5c.html
As operations technology (OT) has become more sophisticated, organizations now have access to an enormous volume of performance data. In order to achieve optimal performance from assets, it is essential for organizations to find ways to best manage and use available data in real time. Realistic 3-D models of assets can help operations and maintenance teams forecast problems, develop better planning strategies and improve performance. It is now possible for companies to converge their information, operational and engineering technologies in order to integrate processes and information flows between them. That means it’s possible to support asset performance modeling that is immersive, realistic and able to deliver actionable intelligence.
The convergence of IT, ET and OT
Asset performance modeling integrates digital engineering models with IT and OT systems used to monitor and improve asset performance. Courtesy: Bentley SystemsThe convergence of physical assets embedded with electronics, instrumentation, sensors and controls (operational technology) with IT software and systems used to support the business enables the seamless collection, communication and exchange of data to improve operational performance.Going a step further and connecting that data to digital engineering models adds one more dimension: a visual representation of the real world to further aid decision-making and improve asset performance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Talking Things
Connected cars: IoT’s value proposition
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/talking-things/4443080/Connected-cars–IoT-s-value-proposition?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20161201&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20161201&elqTrackId=3bdee61a2e634b9788731ccbf699562a&elq=9d044c620c3241b1b89ab9d34092c5ab&elqaid=34988&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=30543
Tomi Engdahl says:
IIoT success requires a change of mindset
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/iiot-success-requires-a-change-of-mindset/2bf2ab7f046951186101257795edd8cf.html
Speakers at the 2016 Global Automation and Manufacturing Summit (GAMS) event at IMTS 2016 discussed the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) from a variety of perspectives, which are highlighted.
“I think what we all need to do is step back and look at what you’ve been doing and look to change things,” said Jack Nehlig, president of Phoenix Contact USA and the keynote speaker at the 2016 GAMS event. “Have some young people criticize what you’re doing and think about what you could do. Institutional memory is a problem. I don’t think we know what we don’t know. Once we get that mindset fixed, then things will get a lot easier.”
Who will rule the clouds?
In the first general session, experts looked at the increase in cloud computing and the use of either open-architecture platforms or proprietary platforms such as GE’s Predix.
In either event, manufacturing will need to move toward adoption of IIoT at some point, said Dr. Shi-Wan Lin, co-chair of the architectural task force for the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and chairman and co-founder of Thingswise LLC.
“Plant managers should be in the driver’s seat because they know what is needed,” said Lin. “Pick some of those simple problems and apply the idea to the IIoT. Start early with some concrete project that will help optimize plant production. Coordinate your plant operation and increase the intelligence in the operation. This will take years, but everyone’s going to need to start sooner or later.”
“We think there’s a whole thing around quality,”
Robotics: The rise of the machines
The second session focused on the increased use of robotics and their integration into manufacturing. It’s a process that Control System Integrator Association (CSIA) CEO Jose Rivera sees happening already, fueled by the use of robots in everyday life. “There’s a cross-pollination from residential to industrial,” Rivera said. “You’re going to have robots that will be interfacing with humans in a much deeper way. That will help manufacturing on the plan floor.”
How maintenance and Big Data can coexist
The final panel focused on one of the most promising areas for manufacturing improvement through IIoT-maintenance. The potential to move from predictive or preventive maintenance to the concept of prescriptive maintenance requires a significant philosophical as well as technological shift.
“The power of analytics and Big Data is that you can analyze trends and patterns,” said Sal Spada, a member of the discrete automation team at ARC Advisory Group. Spada shared some of the research data from ARC, including a slide that said current machine utilization in the machine tool industry was less than 45%.