According to Intel IoT is expected to be a multi-trillion-dollar market, with 50 billion devices creating 44 zettabytes (or 44 trillion gigabytes) of data annually by 2020. But that widely cited 50 billion IoT devices in 2020 number is clearly not correct! Forecast of 50 Billion Devices by 2020 Is Outdated. In 2017 we should be talking about about some sensible numbers. The current count is somewhere between Gartner’s estimate of 6.4 billion (which doesn’t include smartphones, tablets, and computers), International Data Corporation’s estimate of 9 billion (which also excludes those devices), and IHS’s estimate of 17.6 billion (with all such devices included). Both Ericsson and Evans have lowered their expectations from 50 billion for 2020: Evans, who is now CTO of Stringify, says he expects to see 30 billion connected devices by then, while Ericsson figures on 28 billion by 2021.
Connectivity and security will be key features for Internet of Things processors in 2017. Microcontroller (MCU) makers will continue to target their products at the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2017 by giving more focus on battery life, more connectivity of various types, and greater security. The new architectures are almost sure to spawn a multitude of IoT MCUs in 2017 from manufacturers who adopt ARM’s core designs.
ARM will be big. Last year, ARM’s partners shipped 15 billion chips based on its architectures. The trend toward IoT processors will go well beyond ARM licensees. Intel rolled out the Intel Atom E3900 Series for IoT applications. And do not forget MIPS an RISC-V.
FPGA manufacturers are pushing their products to IoT market. They promise that FPGAs solve challenges at the core of IoT implementation: making IoT devices power efficient, handling incompatible interfaces, and providing a processing growth path to handle the inevitable increase in device performance requirement.
Energy harvesting field will become interesting in 2017 as it is more broadly adopted. Energy harvesting is becoming the way forward to help supplement battery power or lose the need for it altogether. Generally researchers are eyeing energy-harvesting to power ultra-low-power devices, wearable technology, and other things that don’t need a lot of power or don’t come in a battery-friendly form factor.
Low power wide area networks (LPWA) networks (also known as NarrowBand IoT) will be hot in 2017. There is hope that f LPWA nets will act as a catalyst, changing the nature of the embedded and machine-to-machine markets as NB-IoT focuses specifically on indoor coverage, low cost, long battery life, and enabling a large number of connected devices. The markets will become a kind of do-it-yourselfers paradise of modules and services, blurring the lines between vendors, users and partners. At the same time for years to come, the market for low power wide area networks (LPWA) will be as fragmented and is already in a race to the bottom (Sigfox, said to be promising costs approaching $1 per node per year). Competing technologies include Sigfox, LoRa Alliance, LTE Cat 1, LTE Cat M1 (eMTC), LTE Cat NB1 (NB-IoT) and other sub-gigahertz options almost too numerous to enumerate.
We are starting to see a battle between different IoT technologies, and in few years to come we will see which are winners and which technologies will be lost in the fight. Sigfox and Lora are currently starting well, but telecom operators with mobile networks NB-IoT will try hit the race heavily in 2017. Vendors prep Cat M1, NB1 for 2017: The Cat M1 standard delivers up to 380 Kbits/second over a 1.4 MHz channel. NB-1 handles up to 40 Kbits/s over 200 kHz channels. Vendors hope the 7-billion-unit installed base of cellular M2M modules expands. It’s too early to tell which technologies will be mainstream and which niche. It could be that cellular NB-IOT was too late, it will fail in the short term, it can win in the long term, and the industry will struggle to make any money from it. At $2 a year, 20 billion devices will contribute around 4% of current global mobile subscription revenues.
New versions of communication standards will be taken into use in 2017. For example Bluetooth 5 that adds more speed and IoT functionality. In 2017, we will see an increase in the number of devices with the new Bluetooth 5 standard.
Industrial IoT to gain traction in 2017. Industrial applications ultimately have the greater transformative potential than consumer products, offering users real returns on investment (ROI) rather than just enhanced convenience or “cool factor”. But the industrial sector is conservative and has been slow to embrace an industrial IoT (IIoT), but is seems that they are getting interested now. During the past year there has been considerable progress in removing many of the barriers to IIoT adoption. A global wide implementation of an IIoT is many years away, of course. The issues of standards and interoperability will most likely remain unresolved for several years to come, but progress is being made. The Industrial Internet Consortium released a framework to support development of standards and best practices for IIoT security.
The IIoT market is certainly poised to grow. A Genpact research study, for instance, indicates that more than 80% of large companies believe that the IIoT will be essential to their future success. In a recent market analysis by Industry ARC, for instance, the projected value of the IIoT market will reach more than $120 billion by 2021. Research firm Markets and Markets is even more optimistic, pegging IIoT growth at a CAGR of 8% to more than $150 billion by 2020. And the benefits will follow. By GE’s estimate, the IIoT will stimulate an increase in the global GDP of $10 to $15 trillion over the next 20 years.
Systems integrators are seeking a quick way to enter the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market. So expect to see many plug and play IoT sensor systems unveiled. There were many releses in 2016, and expect to see more in 2017. Expect to see device, connectivity and cloud service to be marketed as one packet.
IoT analytics will be talked a lot in 2017. Many companies will promise to turn Big Data insights into bigger solutions. For industrial customers Big Data analytics is promised to drive operational efficiencies, cut costs, boosting production, and improving worker productivity. There are many IIoT analytic solution and platform suppliers already on the market and a growing number of companies are now addressing industrial analytics use.
In 2016 it was all bout getting the IoT devices connected to cloud. In 2017 we will see increased talk about fog computing. Fog computing is new IoT trend pushed by Cisco and many other companies. As the Internet of Things (IoT) evolves, decentralized, distributed-intelligence concepts such as “fog computing” are taking hold to address the need for lower latencies, improved security, lower power consumption, and higher reliability. The basic premise of fog computing is classic decentralization whereby some processing and storage functions are better performed locally instead of sending data all the way from the sensor, to the cloud, and back again to an actuator. This demands smarter sensors and new wireless sensor network architectures. Groups such as the Open Fog Consortium have formed to define how it should best be done. You might start to want to be able to run the same code in cloud and your IoT device.
The situation in IoT security in 2016 was already Hacking the IoT: As Bad As I Feared It’d Be and there is nothing that would indicate that the situation will not get any better in 2017. A veritable army of Internet-connected equipment has been circumvented of late, due to vulnerabilities in its hardware, software or both … “smart” TVs, set-top boxes and PVRs, along with IP cameras, routers, DSL, fiber and cable modems, printers and standalone print servers, NASs, cellular hot spots, and probably plenty of other gear. IoT world at the moment is full of vulnerable devices, and it will take years to get then replaces with more secure devices. Those vulnerable devices can be used to make huge DDoS attacks against Internet services. The 2016 October 21 cyberattacks on Dyn brought to light how easily many IoT devices can be compromised. I expect that kind of incidents will happen more in 2017 as DDoS botnets are pretty easy to build with tools available on-line. There’s no question that everyone in the chain – manufacturers, retailers and consumers – have to do a better job securing connected devices.When it comes to IoT, more security is needed.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Google releases DIY open source Raspberry Pi ‘Voice Kit’ hardware — here’s how to get it
https://betanews.com/2017/05/04/google-open-source-raspberry-pi-diy-voice-kit/
Google has long been focused on artificial intelligence. Its Google Now and voice assistance projects have used AI to better the lives of users. The Google Home voice-based hardware unit brings its assistant to life, making traditional inputs and displays unnecessary. With just the power of your voice, you can interact with the device — nothing else is needed.
The search giant has decided to take artificial intelligence to the maker community with a new initiative called AIY. This initiative (found here) will introduce open source AI projects to the public that makers can leverage in a simple way. Today, Google announces the first-ever AIY project. Called “Voice Kit,” it is designed to work with a Raspberry Pi to create a voice-based virtual assistant. Please keep in mind that the Pi itself is not included, so you must bring your own. For this project, you can use a Pi 3 Model B, Pi 2, or Pi Zero. Want a Voice Kit? Here’s how to get it. Heck, you might be getting one for free and you don’t even know it.
https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Biggest IoT Security Threat: Failure of Imagination
https://www.securerf.com/the-biggest-iot-security-threat-failure-of-imagination/?utm_campaign=Email%20Newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=51576901&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_8WWg8-BCTCShU9wboh-wC0yatQZmuknN4ljeqU-_ThHeyd7DuM-oq6QSj9ny9ioXd4jjx9W4vp-qJhg4RvYwjjPwunPztOKMjvA4FZf6PcPIoErI&_hsmi=51576901
IoT security experts agree that a rise in security failures is inevitable this year given that more and more companies are deploying IoT sensors and devices, many of which are not properly secured. In fact, analysts with Forrester and Strategic Cyber Ventures go so far as to predict widespread and large-scale security breaches. We believe the real reason for weak security is not a failure of technology, but a failure of imagination.
The interconnectedness of the IoT has created a condition analogous to the rise of Big Data: the possible kinds and combination effects of IoT security failures have gone beyond our minds’ ability to identify and estimate risk. Not incorporating security that anticipates ever-more-sophisticated attacks leaves IoT devices and connected networks vulnerable. On a more prosaic note, many manufacturers simply don’t believe their products are likely targets. They fail to imagine the scenarios that could cause their products to become the doorway an IoT hacker uses to wreak havoc locally (within the local network of the attached device) or to a much wider community (such as spawning a DDoS attack like that against Dyn in 2016).
By failing to imagine the possibilities of an attack, manufacturers of consumer and industrial IoT products and sensors have gone to market with devices that not only have minimal or insufficient security, but in many instances, have no security at all. As a result, they’ve found themselves being reactive instead of proactive. They are often fighting the battles of yesterday, with the attackers perpetually one step ahead.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rapid Implementation of Data Protection & Authentication Solutions for Constrained IoT Devices
http://info.securerf.com/replay-rapid-implementation-of-data-protection-and-authentication-solutions-for-constrained-iot-devices?utm_campaign=Email%20Newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=51576901&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9-3vXNREssACTtEELo2K3mn3p1DQjW47pDRjh68oNWFv8xL8sDYWnpZAPZiz9-2lvI-xs32Vnw09NYnVnhQZoyCDzyTXfNtgL731amw1eFjhuIYxc&_hsmi=51576901
he rush to connect devices including industrial sensors, consumer electronics, vehicles, medical devices and wearables creates significant opportunities for manufacturers to differentiate products and grow profitability. However, many companies are deploying these constrained IoT devices with inadequate security because most security solutions are too resource-intensive to implement and manage. The risks incurred by inadequate security are significant and include privacy breaches, brand damage, revenue loss and other disastrous consequences.
Watch this on-demand webinar to hear how you can add authentication and data protection to your low-resource IoT devices in a couple days or less with asymmetric solutions that do NOT require a network connection OR the management of a universal database of keys and passwords.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brian Fagioli / BetaNews:
Google releases DIY open source Raspberry Pi voice kit hardware, will be included for free with the next issue of MagPi Magazine
Google releases DIY open source Raspberry Pi ‘Voice Kit’ hardware — here’s how to get it
https://betanews.com/2017/05/04/google-open-source-raspberry-pi-diy-voice-kit/
Google has long been focused on artificial intelligence. Its Google Now and voice assistance projects have used AI to better the lives of users. The Google Home voice-based hardware unit brings its assistant to life, making traditional inputs and displays unnecessary. With just the power of your voice, you can interact with the device — nothing else is needed.
“The first open source reference project is the Voice Kit: instructions to build a Voice User Interface (VUI) that can use cloud services (like the new Google Assistant SDK or Cloud Speech API) or run completely on-device. This project extends the functionality of the most popular single board computer used for digital making — the Raspberry Pi,” says Billy Rutledge, Director of AIY Projects, Google.
Rutledge further explains, “The included Voice Hardware Accessory on Top (HAT) contains hardware for audio capture and playback: easy-to-use connectors for the dual mic daughter board and speaker, GPIO pins to connect low-voltage components like micro-servos and sensors, and an optional barrel connector for dedicated power supply. It was designed and tested with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.”
https://developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/aiy-projects-voice-kit.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unique test solution from Rohde & Schwarz analyzes IP security mechanisms in IoT and mobile devices
https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/uk/news-press/press-room/press-releases-detailpages/unique-test-solution-from-rohde-schwarz-analyzes-ip-security-mechanisms-in-iot-and-mobile-devices-press_releases_detailpage_229356-396480.html
Adding the R&S CMW-KM052 analysis option makes the R&S CMW500 wideband radio communication tester a valuable tool for improving the security of IP-based data communications for mobile devices and Internet-of-Things modules. Users are provided with a detailed overview of security-related parameters in a controlled wireless environment. Developers can detect and close security gaps at an earlier point in the development process.
A test instrument for the entire development process
It is not necessary to install additional software on the DUT for the analysis. The DUT also doesn’t have to have a debug interface. In the Rohde & Schwarz solution, the R&S CMW500 sets up the wireless connection and functions as a wireless network during IP data communications with the World Wide Web. Developers can flexibly configure the cells to simulate real-world applications in the end customer’s target network. They only need a single test instrument for RF analysis in cellular and non-cellular networks, protocol tests and IP application tests as well as for analysis of security-relevant parameters for IP data communications. This is not available anywhere else.
Key security parameters clearly displayed
The new reporting module, R&S CMW-KM052 IP connection security analysis, is used in conjunction with the Rohde & Schwarz cybersecurity software R&S PACE2 to analyze IP traffic in realtime within a controlled test environment. The software generates statistics for the IP connections in realtime and outputs a clear overview of the results.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Week In Review: IoT
Ethics in IoT; new malware threat; IoT maturity.
http://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-iot-51/
Francine Berman, a computer science professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, talks about ethical issues in the Internet of Things in this interview. She says, “First of all, we’re just at the tip of the iceberg in what is arguably going to be a brave new world. And it’s highly heterogeneous: We’ll be seeing a lot more autonomous systems, we’ll be seeing enhanced humans and smart systems, devices, and organizations. When you put all of those together, and you start thinking about how to bring out the best of the Internet of Things rather than the worst of the Internet of Things, governance is really the key.”
Some IoT devices, such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, are useful gadgets, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes in this opinion piece. Still, users should be aware that those devices are listening at all hours of the day and night, unless you tell them to stop listening, he notes. Privacy and security issues are what trouble him the most.
Malware
A new botnet dubbed “BrickerBot” is wreaking havoc among unsecured IoT devices, “bricking” them or rendering them useless by exploiting vulnerabilities, similar to what the Mirai malware does.
The e-Security business of Thales has joined the Industrial Internet Consortium.
The SARA-R410M quad-band LTE Cat M1 module is new from u-blox.
ABI Research analyzed more than 500 companies for their IoT service capabilities and found 59% of organizations were worthy of a high IoT maturity ranking. That figure is almost double what the market research found its first survey of organizational IoT maturity, during September 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UL, MIPI Bolster IoT Security
Hardware initiative starts next year at UL
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331696
UL (formerly Underwriters Laboratories) and the MIPI Alliance are the latest groups to expand security initiatives for the Internet of Things. They join groups such as the IoT Security Foundation, picking up the pace on what looks to be a never-ending journey toward a safer IoT.
UL hopes to roll out by the end of the year a software security standard for IoT gateways and a set of best practices for software security in consumer IoT products. Its aims to ramp up its first initiatives in hardware security next year.
The MIPI Alliance put out a separate call for participation in a new security working group. It aims to draft a security framework this year for systems using MIPI interconnects across areas including automotive, mobile and IoT.
The efforts are among many that some experts say fall short. “Regulations are necessary, important and complex–and they’re coming. We can’t afford to ignore these issues until it’s too late,” said Bruce Schneier, a security expert and Harvard lecturer, in testimony to the U.S. Congress last November, following the Mirai attack.
“The government could impose minimum security standards on IoT manufacturers, forcing them to make their devices secure even though their customers don’t care. They could impose liabilities on manufacturers…The details would need to be carefully scoped, but either of these options would raise the cost of insecurity and give companies incentives to spend money making their devices secure,” Schneier said, noting consumers typically don’t want to pay more for security.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Welcome to the HiKey 960
http://www.96boards.org/product/hikey960/
The HiKey 960 development platform is based around the Huawei Kirin 960 octa-core ARM® big.LITTLE™ processor with four ARM Cortex®-A73 and four Cortex-A53 cores with 3GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM memory, 32GB of UFS 2.0 flash storage, and the latest generation Mali™ G71 MP8 graphics processor. The board is provided by Archermind and LeMaker through multiple channels
Initial software support for the board is provided in the AOSP source tree based on the Android Common Kernel using the Linux 4.4 kernel release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Glaring Vulnerabilities Make Many Commercial Drones ‘Insecure by Design’
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/05/06/2021226/glaring-vulnerabilities-make-many-commercial-drones-insecure-by-design
Drones, many readily available on ecommerce shops such as Amazon, are plagued by vulnerabilities that could give attackers full root access, read or delete files, or crash the device. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) published a warning about one model, the DBPOWER U818A WiFi quadcopter, last month, but according to the researcher who reported the vulnerabilities, multiple drone models — manufactured by the same company but sold under different names — are also vulnerable.
Many Commercial Drones ‘Insecure by Design’
https://threatpost.com/many-commercial-drones-insecure-by-design/125420/
Drones, many readily available on ecommerce shops such as Amazon, are plagued by vulnerabilities that could give attackers full root access to the device, read or delete files, or crash the device.
The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) published a warning about one model, the DBPOWER U818A WiFi quadcopter, last month, but according to the researcher who reported the vulnerabilities, multiple drone models– manufactured by the same company but sold under different names – are also vulnerable.
The issue with drones, Valente says, is two-pronged. They contain two appealing attack vectors: an open access point and a misconfigured FTP server. If an attacker was within WiFi range of the drone they could easily obtain read and write permissions to the drone’s filesystem and modify its root password, Valente told Threatpost last week.
Valente discovered she could overwrite the drone’s remote password file after identifying inconsistencies with its permissions.
In one instance she found that by overwriting the password, an attacker could remotely log in to the device through Telnet. A user would see a login prompt but would only have to type “root” for the user name and press enter to get in–no password required.
Like any attack dependent on Wi-Fi, an attacker would need to be in close proximity to the drone to carry out an attack, Valente claims
“One experiment I tested was to connect my laptop to the drone access point and share that connection to other devices. In this setup, multiple devices were able to have access to the drone and the drone’s open ports,” Valente said,
“The scenarios are limited by an attacker’s creativity,” Valente told Threatpost.
An attacker could also see or download any videos or photos on the drone and delete files on its SD card, Valente said.
US-CERT reached out to DBPOWER, a British company that also makes portable LED projectors, IP cameras, and portable car jump starters, about the vulnerabilities. After failing to hear back after 45 days, the group published a Vulnerability Note, acknowledging Valente for her findings.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon to control 70 percent of the voice-controlled speaker market this year
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/amazon-to-control-70-percent-of-the-voice-controlled-speaker-market-this-year/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
Amazon is dominating the voice-controlled speaker market, according to a new forecast from eMarketer out this morning. The maker of the Echo-branded speakers will have 70.6 percent of all voice-enabled speaker users in the U.S. this year – well ahead of Google Home’s 23.8 percent and other, smaller players like Lenovo, LG, Harmon Kardon, and Mattel, who combined only account for 5.6 percent of users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
RF MCU packs sub-GHz radio
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4458344/RF-MCU-packs-sub-GHz-radio
The SAM R30 system-in-package from Microchip meets the power-conscious needs of battery-powered wirelessly connected systems, including connected home, smart city, and industrial applications. This single-chip RF microcontroller integrates an 802.15.4 sub-GHz radio, providing multi-year battery life in a compact 5×5 mm package.
The SAM R30 system-in-package is available in two QFN packages. Housed in a QFN32, the microcontroller costs $4.11 each in lots of 10,000 units.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MEMS ICs monitor industrial equipment
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4458359/MEMS-ICs-monitor-industrial-equipment-
MEMS accelerometers, the ADXL1001 and ADXL1002 from Analog Devices, enable high-resolution vibration measurements for early detection of bearing faults and other common causes of machine failure. According to the manufacturer, their noise performance over high frequencies is on par with piezoelectric technology and make the devices a good fit for new condition-monitoring products.
http://www.analog.com/en/products/mems/accelerometers/adxl1001.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Philips launches wireless smart office lighting rather than PoE to reach the masses (UPDATED)
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2017/04/philips-launches-wireless-smart-office-lighting-rather-than-poe-to-reach-the-masses.html?cmpid=enl_leds_smartlightingiot_2017-05-08
With wired Ethernet opportunities limited, the lighting giant is now embedding ZigBee in lights and luminaires, and selling it as a service.
Philips Lighting today launched a wireless lighting-as-a-service initiative for commercial offices, hoping to convince building managers to implement smart Internet-connected lighting schemes that Philips has addressed to date with more expensive wired offerings based on Power over Ethernet (PoE) that appeals to a narrower audience.
The new cloud-linked Philips InterAct Office system embeds sensors and ZigBee communication chips inside LED ceiling lights and luminaires, and reduces energy consumption by controlling lights more intelligently
InterAct Office does not replace Philips’ PoE smart lighting push, but “complements” it, Philips said. The company noted that InterAct could attract many more building managers because it is more suitable for minor retrofit jobs, which represent the bulk of opportunities in the commercial office market, compared with the more complicated, disruptive, and expensive new wiring involved in PoE.
In PoE lighting, both electricity and data travel over Ethernet cable. One of its main advantages is that it can slash electrical costs on new buildings and major retrofits by eliminating traditional electrical cabling and the associated certified electricians’ costs. Ethernet cable, known for carrying data, can handle the low voltages that drive LEDs, renowned for their low energy needs.
The PoE solution we have is aimed specifically at those large renovations of offices where they redo the entire caving and rip and replace the ceiling and so forth; and it’s ideal for new buildings,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Osram launches Simplux LED-centric smart lighting platform
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2017/04/osram-launches-simplux-led-centric-smart-lighting-platform.html?cmpid=enl_leds_smartlightingiot_2017-05-08
Designed for small- to mid-size commercial spaces with 100 network nodes maximum, Osram’s Simplux is intended to be an easy-to-install and -commission smart lighting system that can scale to full IoT applications.
Osram calls Simplux a standalone wireless control system — meaning that it does not require a central light management system — and the company touts ease of installation and commissioning as a key feature. Still, Simplux networks can also be connected to Osram’s Encelium networked light management system via a software upgrade for full Internet of Things (IoT) functionality.
In the Simplux installation, the ZigBee Wireless Lighting Controller does not connect to a centralized system. Instead, a smartphone can be used to communicate with the controller directly via Wi-Fi. The smartphone provides simple commissioning capabilities and Osram supplies pre-set default settings to allow lighting designers/specifiers to immediately have access to functionally controlled lighting on a room-by-room, zone, or individual-fixture basis.
Osram touts that the Simplux system provides a plug-and-play avenue to meet demanding energy regulations such as California Title 24-2016 and ASHRAE 90.1-2016.
Osram believes that the Simplux platform can be utilized with any LED luminaire.
But other luminaire manufacturers, or even installers, can add the Connected Lighting Module to LED-based products. Or at the lighting system installation level, designers/specifiers can have installers add the plug-load modules directly to junction boxes with relay power controls and 0–10V outputs to link with compatible drivers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IIoT Analytics
http://semiengineering.com/iiot-analytics/
A real-world look at how Marvell utilized Optimal+ product analytics for its manufacturing and test operations.
This case study discusses Marvell’s approach using Optimal+ IIoT product analytics software for their semiconductor manufacturing and test operations.
http://www.optimalplus.com/resource-center/collateral/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developing A Life-Saving Innovation
http://semiengineering.com/developing-a-life-saving-innovation/
NI’s guest blogger looks at how a team of researchers developed a cardiovascular homecare solution.
Ideas that come from the lab will be just ideas if you cannot bring that knowledge to the community. Our idea is driven by the reality of the increase in cardiovascular disease in the community. As reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), there was about 17.3 million people around the world died from CAD in 2008, representing 30% of all cases of death globally. This number is expected to grow to 23 million by 2030.
Protecting the heart is crucial for every family. Cassandra system is the solution for cardiovascular homecare. This is a monitoring system that enables ECG recording data transmitted from home directly to the server in the hospital.
To fully operate, Cassandra contains 2 main components: a wireless ECG monitoring device (wECG) and a data hub. The wECG is designed as a small, lightweight, flexible patch to continuously record the heart electrical activity. The data is transmitted to the NI MyRIO-based data hub via Bluetooth and to the Internet server through Wifi. The reliable range of Bluetooth transmission is 20 meters, which in consequence, covers about 200 m2 area. There are up to 16 wECG devices connecting to the Hub at the same time. HRV scanning software and cardiovascular disease prediction algorithms are developing and will soon be implemented into the Hub. The Hub can be installed at home or hospital’s patient so that it can actively monitor the patient’s cardiovascular health.
In Cassandra project, we are currently using a smartphone as a mobile data hub, which helps us to connect wECG with the online database. For this reason, the smartphone is required to constantly run with 3G connection. This significantly reduces our product reliability.
Benefits of using LabVIEW and NI tools NI MyRIO kit was chosen to build the data hub because of two reasons. First, the kit is powerful enough to receive and process the signal in real-time, which is really important to this project. Second, the NI LabVIEW is a user-friendly design software with Graphical Design Method, which allows us to design and implement within 3 months.
As in use Bluetooth protocol as the only wireless connection between wECG and the hub, the lack of this protocol on NI MyRIO is a critical issue.
Our software includes 2 parts: the connection between the ECG device and Android smartphones via Bluetooth Low Energy Protocol (BLE) and the data transfer protocol between the smartphone and the website.
After six months, our effort was proved as the result shows that the proposed Cassandra system can be used as that multi-signal monitoring for continuous ECG monitoring during daily activities
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless Test: Too Many Protocols
http://semiengineering.com/wireless-test-too-many-protocols/
Vendors struggle to balance new technologies and markets, and almost perpetual updates, against limited resources.
Testing wireless communications is getting far more difficult as more markets begin adding wireless communications and standards groups push to improve the speed, power and security of existing protocols.
There is already a long list of protocols, and it’s growing further as new communications technologies are added into the mix. With the addition of 5G, the new 802.11ax standard, and other short-range communications updates, just keeping track of all the standards is a chore. But for test and measurement companies, which already offer a comprehensive portfolio of instruments and software for testing the protocols used in autonomous vehicles, cellular communications, the Internet of Things, and other application areas, it also is putting pressure on them to limit their focus.
Anritsu, Astronics Test Systems, Keysight Technologies, LitePoint (a Teradyne company), National Instruments, Rohde & Schwarz, and Tektronix are among the top vendors vying for a piece of the ever-expanding wireless testing market.
Slicing up markets
Then there are the low-power IoT protocols, such as the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer, powering ZigBee, LoWPAN, and others.
Cellular connectivity is pushing forward into 4.5G LTE in addition to 5G. “Industry and academia see the 5G standard moving along three vectors,” Buritica said. There is the effort to boost data transmissions to 1 gigabit per second or faster, he noted. There is work on ultra-reliable, low-latency connections, which would be incorporated in V2X technology. And then there is enhanced machine-to-machine communication, for the IoT and other applications, providing “bursty signals” for use in smart metering and other applications.
NI has been working with commercial and academic partners on development of massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) technology for beam steering and beam forming. The company is employing software-defined radio and millimeter-wave technology for greater bandwidth. Meanwhile, for 5G, the company is allowing for flexibility for the international standard as it is developed in the next few years.
NI isn’t alone in developing test solutions for individual markets.
Still, “RF goes ahead in leaps and bounds,” Vondran said. “Moore’s Law is going to enable bigger pipes, especially for the mobile devices. You don’t see a lot of wearables with a cellular link yet. But change in the test and measurement industry is usually slow. We’re a necessary evil.”
The company is working with Audi on self-driving car technology, dealing with “the latency of protocols” in automotive electronics, she noted. And it is supporting “new flavors” in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the Bluetooth 5 standard and IEEE 802.11ax in particular, Gurney said. Tek is also interested in LoRa, Sigfox, and LoWPAN.
“All products have to go through regulatory testing,” Gurney noted.
Conclusion
There is a lot going on in wireless communications these days—perhaps too much. In many ways, the wireless market is looking like the Wild West of protocols and standards. New markets, new requirements, and pressure to utilize bandwidth more efficiently and with lower power, all are driving the development of new protocols and approaches to communications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Testing for IoT Power Concerns
http://www.electronicdesign.com/power/testing-iot-power-concerns?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20170508_ED-003_166&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=10949&utm_medium=email&elq2=7abf6995d730425f84df9b80b5a56cfb
To achieve efficient digital power management for the IoT, voltage/power-rail sequence testing and scrutiny of dc-dc converter voltages are essential.
Like all embedded systems, those considered part of the Internet of Things (IoT) require power, and that power needs precise management for the system to function as designed. A typical IoT-related system will comprise a number of elements that generate and/or process analog, digital, and serial-data signals.
An IoT system’s power comes from a 12-V supply initially, which feeds one or more power rails at different voltages (3.3, 1.8, 1.5, and 1.1 V). These rails in turn supply power to the CPU and other on-board devices. For efficiency’s sake, each dc-dc supply typically comprises several dc-dc converters in parallel. These four converters are known as “phases” or “channels.” For example, the 1.1-V rail might actually be supplied by four 1.1-V converters in parallel, each supplying 25% of the total output current to the rail.
The phases of a given dc-dc converter, such as the 1.1-V example above, are switched on and off by a PMIC in concert with the load’s changing power requirements. The PMIC time-interleaves the PWM outputs into a single output.
Ideally, each PMIC phase is balanced when under a steady-state load condition.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia joins Tampere for smart city development
Nokia has joined the Tampere City Smart Project. The project explores the use of digital technologies in city services. Nokia brings to the project 5G and objects on the Internet. They are expected to play a decisive role in future development.
Smart Tampere is a city-wide financial project designed to create a pilot environment for testing, testing and deploying technology solutions.
Developing areas include smart lighting, intelligent energy, smart user experience in large audience concentrations, information management, digital healthcare and smart mobility. Tampere has succeeded in securing public and private investments of up to 6-10 billion euros to make the city more intelligent by 2030.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2017/05/09/nokia-lahti-tampereen-alykehitykseen/
More:
Grow.Smart.Together.
http://smarttampere.fi/about/grow-dot-smart-dot-together
Tampere is the most attractive and one of the most rapidly growing regions in Finland. Yesterday Tampere was the birth-place of Finnish manufacturing industry. Today it is the hot spot of intelligent machines and digitalization. Tomorrow Tampere will be an ideal ecosystem of Internet of Things.
The World Economic Forum ranks Finland as the number one in university-industry collaboration in R&D activities. Tampere hosts the number one university in Finland in industry collaboration according to the Times Higher Education list.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Enabling the human possibilities of smart cities
https://networks.nokia.com/smart-city
Intelligent infrastructure and applications developed by and for citizens lead to smarter, safer and more sustainable cities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Green Boosts Environmental Effectiveness
Internet of Things technology is bringing advances to environmental work, from fuel savings to green farming.
https://www.designnews.com/automation-motion-control/iot-green-boosts-environmental-effectiveness/31865078156681?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170509.tst004t
Turns out IoT technology offers benefits to the environment. With all the attention on environmental challenges that came during Earth Day last month, we decided to show some of the green advantages of IoT. Digital security firm, Gemalto, has identified environmental applications for IoT. Some of these efforts are new, while others – such as green farming – have been around for years.
Intelligent, autonomous cars are primed to usher in a new era of green driving by allowing cars on the road to communicate and process what other vehicles are about to do. “This is one of the promises that IoT can bring but had not yet been fully implemented,” JC Lazcano, VP of M2M sales for North America at Gemalto, told Design News .
When implemented, sensor-enabled IoT systems will allows traffic to move at one speed with only a few meters between vehicles, thus reducing the fuel inefficiency brought on by the speed and gear changes of human-operated vehicles.
Gemalto noted that IBM’S Watson IoT Platform has been used to create a driverless car called Olli.
The company pointed out that the Iberian Lynx was re-established in Spain after using IoT technologies to track and monitor the few remaining wild lynxes.
Smart and connected homes can prevent this unnecessary energy use.
Sensors Detecting Changes in the Environment
“In some cities in the US and Europe, they have already deployed connected sensors to help the city planners find ways to better manage pollution made by noise and contamination,” said Lazcano.
Using smart sensors, farmers can reduce the amount of waste they produce and monitor their agricultural processes so they can adjust operations based on weather, humidity, sunlight, and other external factors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nema17 3D printed Linear Actuator & ESP32 WebGui
https://hackaday.io/project/21883-nema17-3d-printed-linear-actuator-esp32-webgui
Nema17 Stepper motor 3D printed Linear Actuator (250mm+ stroke 2Kg+ dead weight lift) with Ramps driver & ESP32/ESP8266 WebGui.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Affordable Water Level Measuring Station
https://hackaday.io/project/21579-affordable-water-level-measuring-station
An Affordable cloud connected water level measuring station for developing countries.
The main goal of this project is to develop an affordable cloud connected measuring station to measure water levels in rivers and other types of surface water. Placing a lot of these low cost but accurate stations would allow local governments to easily monitor the water levels and quickly take action in case of an upcoming flood.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How dense is the edge at your typical micro-data center?
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/05/how-dense-is-the-edge-at-your-typical-micro-data-center.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cimdatacenternewsletter_2017-05-09
As places like factories, big stores, and logistics warehouses get increasingly instrumented and automated, demand for computing capacity to process the data those instruments generate in real-time is growing, fueling the rise of micro-data centers, which provide a relatively simple way to extend the edge of the corporate network to these facilities.
The micro data center on the factory floor, for example, is the edge of the network whose core is the enterprise data center, often located far away from the plant. Data collected from factory equipment gets processed at the edge, and only a small fraction of it is sent back to the core.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This candy dispenser is the best possible use of Google’s new AIY kit
https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2017/05/09/candy-dispenser-best-possible-use-googles-new-aiy-kit/#.tnw_wRfuQZdp
Google’s new AIY (DIY, but with AI) Voice Kit debuted less than a week ago, and already someone’s put together the mother of all distractions with an automatic candy dispenser.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amazon unveils Echo Show, an Alexa-powered speaker with a 7″ touchscreen and video calling for $229.99; preorders open now, ships June 28 — Look out, world: Alexa is coming to a screen near you. Today Amazon unveiled the Echo Show, a WiFi-enabled home device with a seven-inch screen
Amazon unveils the $230 Echo Show, with a screen for calls, shipping June 28
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/09/amazon-unveils-the-230-echo-show-with-a-screen-for-calls-shipping-june-28/
Look out, world: Alexa is coming to a screen near you. Today Amazon unveiled the Echo Show, a WiFi-enabled home device with a seven-inch screen that is the newest addition to its Alexa-powered Echo range of home hubs that plays media and responds to voice commands.
While previous versions of the Echo have been all about asking Alexa questions and getting responses from her, this new device takes a more IRL turn: one of the main selling points is that you can use the Echo Show to make and take video calls, with other humans.
The device, which comes in black and white versions, will cost $229.99 and will be shipped from June 28, with preorders available now. It appears that it will be available first in the U.S. only.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amazon adds voice calling and messaging on all Echo devices and the Alexa app — Amazon may have flopped with the Fire Phone, but don’t count it out of the telephony game just yet. Alongside Amazon unveiling its newest Echo device earlier today — the Echo Show with a seven-inch video screen …
Amazon enables free calls and messages on all Echo devices with Alexa Calling
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/09/amazon-enables-free-calls-and-messages-on-all-echo-devices-with-alexa-calling/
Amazon may have flopped with the Fire Phone, but don’t count it out of the telephony game just yet. Alongside Amazon unveiling its newest Echo device earlier today — the Echo Show with a seven-inch video screen — the company also announced Alexa Calling, free voice calls and messaging services that you use through all Echo devices (not just the Show), as well as for users of the Alexa app for smartphones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Docs show Microsoft’s plan to turn Windows 10 PCs into Echo rivals with HomeHub feature, which includes an “always on” welcome screen for lists, notes, more — Microsoft has been working on a new HomeHub feature for Windows 10 to better compete with devices like Amazon’s Echo.
Microsoft is planning to turn Windows 10 PCs into Amazon Echo competitors
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15596488/microsoft-windows-10-homehub-feature-screenshots
Microsoft has been working on a new HomeHub feature for Windows 10 to better compete with devices like Amazon’s Echo. HomeHub is designed to create a family environment for a PC with shared access to calendars, apps, and even a new welcome screen. Microsoft is even planning to support smart home devices like Philips’ Hue lights, to enable Windows 10 to act as a hub to control and manage smart home hardware. While we’ve heard about HomeHub before, The Verge has obtained internal concepts of exactly how Microsoft is imagining HomeHub will work.
The major addition is a new welcome screen that includes an “always on” digital corkboard to let families use to-do lists, calendars, and notes. The welcome screen is really designed for kitchen PCs and new smaller hardware with screens that will support Cortana voice commands from across the room. Microsoft appears to be readying Windows 10 for future devices that are similar to Amazon’s new Echo Show hardware
Microsoft is tentatively planning to support Hue, Nest, Insteon, Wink, and SmartThings devices with its connected home app. Cortana will be used to send commands to devices, just like Amazon’s Echo. Microsoft has been working with PC makers including HP and Lenovo to create new hardware or refresh existing PCs with a focus on this new home effort.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Switchboard: Distributed Automation made Easy
https://hackaday.io/project/20997-switchboard-distributed-automation-made-easy
A small Python framework for the tinkerer to make distributed automation as simple as possible
Description
IoT automation is conceptually simple: when (a) happens do (b) and wait 3 seconds before also doing (c). But what if (a) comes from a Raspberry Pi, (b) is a desktop computer and (c) an ESP8266 WiFi module? Who should be in charge of controlling this functionality? What should we do if WiFi becomes temporarily unavailable?
These are a few of the many hard questions I had to ask myself when deciding how to connect my devices together in a meaningful way. To this end I’ve been slowly piecing together a Python framework called Switchboard which takes care of device connectivity, availability, is easy to write logic for and is dynamically configurable through a command line interface.
Motivation
With existing offerings such as openHAB, Home Assistant and Vera, do we need yet another automation hub/framework/solution? Depends on your needs. Switchboard has a combination of features that make it unique and very powerful if you mostly want to automate and not just remote control your devices on a local network:
Low-key solution that is small, simple and extremely easy to setup and configure
Fine-grain control over devices
All the data stays on your local network (unless you serve it to the outside world)
No reliance on a stable internet connection (I live in Australia)
Perfect for the tinkerer: easy to create and debug your devices
No complex rules that are hard to configure. Just inputs, outputs, and the full power of the Python programming language to do whatever you want
Automate pretty much anything, not just your home (e.g., automated flower-watering system)
Downsides: at this early stage there aren’t 1000 libraries to connect to a 1000 commercially available devices, a mobile app etc. (yet), A certain amount of programming skill is required.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Cities Need Smart Partners
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331717&
The time is now to make every city a smart city.
If you ask electrical engineers, venture capitalists or city employees what the terms smart city and Internet of Things means, each will likely have their own variation. It’s time to define these terms and create consensus about the goals and implications of a smart city so we can start exploring the technologies required to build them.
A crude shorthand for smart city could be sensorized city–a city in which thousands or even millions of small digital sensors are deployed nearly everywhere–on vehicles, people, buildings and infrastructure.
The data from these sensors is collected in real-time and brought back to a central location for analysis by a person or computer. Signals then must travel back out again to actuators that can put decisions into action. In many cases, the time to sense, decide, and actuate is milliseconds.
Smart city projects strive to bring the benefits of automation, speed and computation to complex municipal systems and to make these systems more adaptive, responsive and scalable. Because these systems tend to be large and distributed, sensor networks play an important role in achieving the smart city vision. Gathering real-time data about distributed systems and giving people the ability to make decisions about that data are at the heart of the smart city.
Right now, quick and accurate sensors such as accelerometers, pressure gauges and thermometers are widely available at relatively low-cost. In addition, high capacity storage, processing and computing services are widely available on-demand at low, scalable costs such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud.
The missing element in this equation is a low-latency, flexible, reliable and secure communications network–both wired and wireless–that can gather real-time data from sensors, deliver it for local processing and decisions and return those decisions to the world for action.
So a more comprehensive definition of a smart city could be a city with an advanced communication network that connects real-time sensors with automated decision and response tools and then conveys data needed to make decisions to those who need it.
When all of the building blocks are in place, smart city technology enables first responders to stitch together real-time video and data from sensors, body and dashboard cameras to improve their response times and save lives.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Moteino Framework
Automation framework based on wireless Moteino nodes.
https://hackaday.io/project/2197-the-moteino-framework
The Moteino automation system is a decoupled framework of internet connected things designed to add convenience, monitoring, security and safety to a residence, living space and beyond. It is powered by a range of devices that are based on the Moteino wireless Arduino compatible development board. The small size and versatility enable you to build low power nodes that gather environmental data, or devices that control things in your home.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Home Automation Cluster
https://hackaday.io/project/605-raspberry-home-automation-cluster
A high availability Raspberry pi cluster for home automation purposes. Simple, low on energy, but very stable.
One year ago I started my home automation project. It then consisted of a large (Windows) server and php web interface hosted externally.
Changes where made on the web interface which would be polled by the server.
If the server found a change in state for example a light bulb, it would execute a command. In this case turn on the light bulb over X10.
Running a full server (with its power cost) for something this simple is overkill. And since I’m trying to get a grip on my power usage, it seems a good idea to reduce the computing power, and power cost.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Elisa Innovation Challenge Product Development Contest will be launched for the third time in Finland. New intelligent solutions are being sought in a competition focusing on articles and industrial internet products. The main prize is € 50,000 and sparring aid.
A competing product can be a networking device, software product, or service that utilizes the fastest growing potential of the Internet.
” IoT is affirmative phenomenon, as the software development lightened the small Startups and large companies can really compete in the same market, ” says Elisa IoT product and corresponding service development director Tommi Eklund.
Participants of the competition will have access to the Elisa IoT platform and the necessary software tools to develop their competitive products. In addition, Elisa provides participants with training tools.
The contest ideas must be submitted to Elisa by 28 June 2017.
Source:
http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2017/05/10/iot-kisan-palkintona-50-000-euroa/
More:
Elisa Innovation Challenge
https://elisa.fi/innovation-challenge/
Elisa organizes an Innovation Challenge that culminates at the finals in December, 2017. Elisa will give a prize of EUR 50,000 to the winning team.
Tomi Engdahl says:
iguazio’s Continuous Analytics Solution
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/iguazios-continuous-analytics-solution
In industries like financial services, healthcare and IoT, organizations are faced with the challenge of complexity across the entire data lifecycle. To help enterprises solve big data operational challenges and generate real-time insights, iguazio has developed a new Continuous Analytics Solution.
Deploying a continuous data consumption approach, the solution reduces time to insights from hours to seconds, eliminating data pipeline complexities while seamlessly integrating with Apache Spark and Kubernetes.
By integrating with the open-source Spark and Kubernetes frameworks, it accelerates insight generation and enables rapid deployment of a variety of stateless analytics services and data processing tasks.
Continuous Analytics With iguazio’s Data Platform
http://www.iguaz.io/
A redesigned stack with real-time, unified data
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Invoke Smart Speaker Brings Microsoft’s Cortana AI to Your Living Room
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/invoke-smart-speaker-brings-microsofts-cortana-ai-living-room/
If the future of computing really does look like Her, and everyone will soon be talking to their devices and falling in love with the soothing voices in their ears, Microsoft is sitting pretty. Or at least, it ought to be: Its Cortana virtual assistant already integrates seamlessly into Windows 10, works on iOS and Android, and will start showing up in cars soon. It’s good for work, good for play, even has a cool name. Yet Cortana gets left out of the voice assistant in-crowd, because it’s missing one key thing: a smart speaker like the Google Home or Amazon Echo.
HARMAN Reveals the Harman Kardon Invoke™ Intelligent Speaker with Cortana from Microsoft
http://news.harman.com/releases/harman-reveals-the-harman-kardon-invokeTM-intelligent-speaker-with-cortana-from-microsoft
Voice-activated speaker with Cortana combines intelligence, unparalleled sound, and elegant design
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Is Planning To Turn Windows 10 PCs Into Amazon Echo Competitors (
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/09/1839225/microsoft-is-planning-to-turn-windows-10-pcs-into-amazon-echo-competitors
peaking of Amazon’s Echo devices, it appears Microsoft also wants a slice of this nascent market. The Verge’s Tom Warren claims that Microsoft has been working on a feature for Windows 10 that would allow it “to better compete with devices like Amazon’s Echo.” Dubbed HomeHub, the feature is designed to create “a family environment for a PC with shared access to calendars, apps, and even a new welcome screen.”
Microsoft is planning to turn Windows 10 PCs into Amazon Echo competitors
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15596488/microsoft-windows-10-homehub-feature-screenshots
Tomi Engdahl says:
Where’s the LoJack for Embedded Systems Security?
https://www.designnews.com/cyber-security/wheres-lojack-embedded-systems-security/54750155156765?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170510.tst004t
Michael Barr, CTO of the Barr Group told an audience at ESC Boston 2017 embedded systems have become a battlefield of cyberattacks and someone needs to do for embedded systems security what LoJack did for automotive.
You might remember the commercials for LoJack – the aftermarket tracking system for catching car thieves. By tracking your vehicle and sending the information directly to the police LoJack not only enabled law enforcement to recover stolen vehicles, but to also discover the location of chop shops and other locations of illegal activity. It worked so well the company, started in the late 1980s, is still around today, in the age of GPS.
Now Michael Barr, CTO of the Barr Group, is calling for the same thing in embedded systems security.
The concept, which Barr semi-seriously referred to as “LoHack” to a keynote audience at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) 2017 in Boston, would externalize embedded security, moving it away from developers’ internal systems and onto a cloud-based service. “Remote hacks require [network] packet exchange,” he said. “If we could have cloud-based data traffic analysis and learning algorithms in place we could have device makers watching out and learning about attacks on their devices to a system that updates the security of all our networks.”
Barr Group estimates 60% of new products being developed will have Internet connectivity (meaning some sort of Internet of Things functionality). However, 22% of those surveyed said they have zero requirements related to security; 37% said they have no coding standards or do not enforce their coding standard; 36% use no type of static analysis tool; and 48% do not even bother to encrypt their communications over the Internet.
Barr pointed to the recent Mirai malware attacks as an example.
It all adds up to an IoT peppered with security holes – leading Barr to explain that we ought to be calling it the IoDT – the Internet of Dangerous Things. “We’re living in a scary word, a dangerous world, and an interesting time to be an embedded systems developer,” Barr said. From retail to healthcare applications and beyond developers are told adding intelligence to devices is a surefire way to add value both for the consumer and the company (not to mention increase profits). But in the process of adding connectivity designers have opened the door to all manner of cyberattacks – some that are even life threatening. One only need look as far as recent cases showing the
According to the Barr Group’s survey 25% of respondents reported their embedded systems project could injure or be life threatening. “What’s going wrong?” Barr asked. “We’re living in a world where attacks are increasing, but we should be living in a world where these systems are benefitting us.”
For Barr the IoT is already growing too unruly for cybersecurity to remain in silos. But the challenge remains finding solutions to secure all of the types of processors and connection protocols available to IoT devices – not to mention staying one step ahead of malicious hackers. “Security is an arms race, attackers are always getting stronger,” he said.
Barr said that developers – “designers of dangerous things” – must be ever mindful of their ethical duty to pay attention to cybersecurity. ‘The number one things we’re going to do is not ignore security anymore, especcially when we’re designing dangerous things,” he said while also asking developers to adopt bug-reducing software best practices and to use use cryptography where appropriate.
Barr also advocated that engineers adopt an approach of practicing “defense in depth.” The idea is that security should be layered so that if one system fails, another system picks up on a breach or error. “You have think like this at each layer. What kind I do at each layer to add additional layers of security so there is no one weak link.”
“ You have to think like that at every layer. You have to think who would attack, why would they attack, and what kind of motivations would they have.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Q&A with Pete Chronis, Chief Information Security Officer
http://www.turner.com/blog/qa-pete-chronis-chief-information-security-officer
From an industrywide perspective, what trend is most intriguing to you right now?
The Internet of Things is a total game-changer. A few years ago, almost all connected devices were desktop and laptop computers running Microsoft Windows or Mac OS. Today, the majority are phones and tablets running iOS or Android. Tomorrow, practically everything around us will be connected. My Nest thermostat at home runs on Linux. Right now, many of these consumer devices are far less secure than they need to be, particularly for commercial and government adoption. And we’re already seeing an uptick in incidents of IoT devices being hacked and used to collectively participate in massive security attacks. So the potential of IoT devices to reshape and improve society is inspiring, but the sheer number of potential new security vulnerabilities is staggering. From a career perspective, it’s a great time get into infosec.
- See more at: http://www.turner.com/blog/qa-pete-chronis-chief-information-security-officer#sthash.KEN0Mox5.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Let’s be honest, here’s why you suck at IoT
http://readwrite.com/2017/05/05/why-you-suck-iot-cl1/
From the outside, it seems like building an IoT product should be easy. But that probably hasn’t been your experience.
You may say to yourself, “why is my team struggling to deliver a valuable and usable product, and are we going to miss our big opportunity?”
Let’s be honest — you suck at IoT. You suck at it because you underestimated the complexity of the problems you need to solve, because the “IoT experts” you hired have actually never done this before, because you outsourced all of your engineering capabilities in the ‘90s when all you cared about was cost reduction, and because you’re unwilling to pursue business models that are dramatically different from your current business.
But don’t worry; these are solvable problems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
17 How-To Intel® IoT Technology Code Samples Now Available in Python*
https://software.intel.com/blogs/2017/03/17/17-how-to-intel-iot-technology-code-samples-now-available-in-python?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=Broad_Commercial_IoT_Enthusiasts_EMEA&utm_campaign=DRD_17_57
These applications are part of a series of how-to code sample exercises using the Intel® IoT Developer Kit, Intel® IoT Gateway, Intel® Edison board, cloud platforms, APIs, and other technologies, and are designed for anyone interested in learning IoT development.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft is extending Azure IoT to the edge of the network
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/10/microsoft-is-extending-azure-iot-to-the-edge-of-the-network/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
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Microsoft Build 2017
May 10 – 12, 2017
Microsoft is extending Azure IoT to the edge of the network
Posted 8 hours ago by Frederic Lardinois (@fredericl)
The launch of Azure IoT Edge was one of Microsoft’s slightly more esoteric but interesting announcements at its Build developer conference in Seattle today. While “the cloud” is all about moving compute and data storage into the data center, there are plenty of situations where you want to avoid the round trip between the device and the data center, or where you can’t depend on having that network connection to begin with.
With IoT Edge, Microsoft now makes it easier for developers to move some of their computing needs to these devices. IoT Edge can run on Windows and Linux and on devices as small as a Raspberry Pi with only 128MB of memory. The Microsoft services that can run on these devices include Azure Machine Learning, Stream Analytics (which came to Edge devices earlier this year), Azure Functions, Microsoft’s AI services and the Azure IoT Hub.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/campaigns/iot-edge/?ranMID=24542&ranEAID=TnL5HPStwNw&ranSiteID=TnL5HPStwNw-7SFy1vNX88rf5aY46V_0Cg&tduid=(3e41a0ef2a9f569ba859a21e0b8dc112)(256380)(2459594)(TnL5HPStwNw-7SFy1vNX88rf5aY46V_0Cg)()
Tomi Engdahl says:
Azure IoT Edge arrived in preview. The technology, which supports both Windows and Linux, extends cloud computing to IoT devices.
Source: https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/10/microsoft-introduces-azure-cosmos-db-a-globally-distributed-database-with-5-consistency-choices/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Another IoT botnet has been found feasting on vulnerable IP cameras
Children, please welcome Persirai to the class
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/10/persirai_iot_botnet/
Researchers have discovered yet another IoT botnet.
Persirai targets more than a thousand different internet protocol camera models. Researchers at Trend Micro warn that 120,000 web-connected cameras are vulnerable to the malware.
Consumers would, in most cases, be unaware that their devices are even exposed to the internet much less at risk of compromise. Hackers are using a known but seldom patched vulnerability to hack the cameras.
The development of Persirai comes just weeks after the arrival of Hajime – the “vigilante” IoT worm that blocks rival botnets – and months after the infamous Mirai IoT botnet. Mirai was used to attack a key internet domain resolution hub last October, leaving scores of high-profile websites unreachable to millions.
Persirai: New Internet of Things (IoT) Botnet Targets IP Cameras
Posted on:May 9, 2017 at 5:03 am
Posted in:Internet of Things
Author: Trend Micro
By Tim Yeh, Dove Chiu and Kenney Lu
http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/persirai-new-internet-things-iot-botnet-targets-ip-cameras/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon officially unveils touchscreen Echo Show
It’s an Echo with a screen, and it costs $229.99
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/5/9/15590978/amazon-echo-show-touchscreen-price-release-date
Amazon has officially unveiled its latest Echo product: a touchscreen device with built-in Alexa called the Echo Show. The device was extensively leaked this week, but is now available to preorder from Amazon for $229.99.
The Show has the same basic capabilities as the regular, voice-only Echo (like setting timers and listening to music), but the built-in display adds plenty of new functionality. The Show’s screen will give users more information about their Alexa queries (displaying a full weather report or the steps in each recipe, for example), and can be used to play videos, including news briefings from the likes of CNN, and content from YouTube and Amazon Video.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sleep, Sense, Connect: Low-Power IoT Design
http://www.electronicdesign.com/embedded-revolution/sleep-sense-connect-low-power-iot-design?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20170510_ED-003_229&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=11005&utm_medium=email&elq2=d3d12c0d778448adbab8e290bf724021
A wireless IoT “thing” sleeps, senses and connects. How efficiently it does these tasks impacts energy consumption, which also involves design tradeoffs between functionality, size, and battery lifetime.
Simply put, the typical IoT device performs three basic functions: sleep, sense, and connect. In many cases, the IoT device must do these functions wirelessly while powered by a battery, allowing it to be placed virtually anywhere in a household or business—or even on roaming livestock. Several standard wireless protocols, such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and Thread, are available for connectivity, each with its own performance tradeoffs, and many manufacturers choose to optimize their designs with proprietary wireless solutions.
Operating in a battery-friendly way translates into low power with ramifications for both average and peak power consumption. Extending the battery life between either recharge or replacement is particularly important when the batteries are expensive, hard to reach, or are in sensitive systems such as security or health monitoring.
The familiar 1.5-V AA alkaline batteries have a capacity around 2700 milliamp-hours (mAh), for example. The smaller form-factor 3-V CR2032 lithium coin-cell batteries are typically rated around 225 mAh and have an additional limitation of about 20-mA maximum discharge. Both of these are common solutions due to their low cost and small form factor. The higher-capacity lithium-thionyl-chloride (LTC) batteries find applications in metering, where their longer life and low self-leakage offset their higher cost. They typically have a 3.6-V nominal output and are limited to low output current.
The operating life of the battery-operated IoT thing can be roughly estimated by the capacity of the battery pack divided by the average current drawn from the battery. IoT devices are designed to minimize this average current consumption, and how that’s done depends heavily on the application profile, meaning the proportion of time and energy spent in the each of its fundamental activities.
IoT sensors typically spend the vast majority of their time asleep, so idling the device for low sleep power is a must.
Semiconductor devices for IoT are designed for ultra-low leakage, a few microamps in a retained state, on par with the self-discharge rate of the battery. This residual leakage supports circuitry that remembers the state of the device (for example, its wireless connection information) for quick resumption of activity once awakened.
Energy consumption in sensing operations can vary widely with an application’s specific requirements, but often scale with the processor MIPS (millions of instructions per second) required for the task.
The energy-consumption profile is also a strong function of the selected RF communications link, and choosing the most appropriate wireless protocol requires firm understanding of the system constraints.
Wi-Fi can deliver up to 72 Mb/s over the air on a single 20-MHz channel, but its power consumption is too high for most battery-operated IoT applications. BLE offers 1 Mb/s over the air, effectively around 250 kb/s delivered, with good power efficiency, but its star topology can’t handle many nodes. ZigBee and Thread offer the resilience and scalability of mesh networking, but with effective data-transfer rates well below the 250 kb/s over-the-air bit rate.
All of these technologies operate in the 2.4-GHz ISM band, which suffers from limited range. Going to RF bands in the range 168 MHz to 969 MHz, 802.15.4 standards offer many well-studied modulation schemes promising low power consumption and high link budget, typically with low data rates and customized software stacks.
Considering power constraints, frequent high-power RF transmissions may dominate energy consumption of the device, and they may violate battery peak-current constraints or necessitate a bulk capacitor to source peak current.
Application Profile for an IoT Device
Let’s consider the example of a nifty IoT device: a wall-mounted, battery-operated Thread wireless dimmer switch featuring a touchpad to dim the lights or change their color. The lightbulb itself is connected to the power mains, but the wall switch is battery-operated. Thus, you can place it anywhere in the room easily, relocate it when you want to, or even place it in a mobile remote-control unit.
In a first implementation, which we’ll call the synchronous implementation, we have a device that spends most of its time asleep, waking up its MCU briefly eight times a second. Each time it wakes up, it operates capacitive sense circuitry designed to detect the presence and location of a finger on the touchpad. If no finger is detected, it goes right back to sleep.
When a valid gesture is recognized, the device connects via Thread to an RF mesh network to send a control message to the light bulb.
In our second implementation, which we’ll call the wake-on-touch implementation, the dimmer is built with an EFR32 Wireless Gecko SoC from Silicon Labs, configured to wake up on detection of a finger touch, rather than periodically. The finger-touch detection triggers further MCU-driven evaluation for finger gestures.
In both of these implementation options, planning for battery life involves considering sleep-mode energy consumption, device response time, and requirements of the RF communication link.
Connection
The dimmer switch connects with the wireless mesh network every two minutes and checks for messages from the internet gateway, in an operation called the long poll transaction. It also checks with the network for system updates every 30 minutes during the over-the-air query transaction.
In our dimmer switch, we use Thread mesh networking, which leverages the 802.15.4 DSSS-OQPSK physical layer in the 2.4-GHz ISM band. Thread enables IoT devices to be addressable using IPv6, allowing easy translation at a border router to internet traffic, and therefore access from virtually anywhere in the world. This means you could use an iPhone to remotely monitor or dim your light bulb, and you could read whether your battery-operated wall switch was online or it needed a replacement battery, or even the timestamp of the last time someone used it.
To optimize battery life, it is useful to compare energy consumption per day in each operating mode.
Keys to successful design of a wireless IoT device include characterizing the device’s sleep, sense and connection intervals, and then further analyzing energy consumption within each task.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Andy Rubin-backed Lighthouse unveils smart security camera that can identify people and pets, and ships in September for $399 with a one-year service — The team at Lighthouse, a startup out of Android co-founder Andy Rubin’s Playground accelerator, doesn’t see its new hardware product as a home security camera.
Lighthouse is an Andy Rubin-backed smart security camera that identifies people and pets
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/5/11/15615994/lighthouse-home-security-camera-3d-sensing
The team at Lighthouse, a startup out of Android co-founder Andy Rubin’s Playground accelerator, doesn’t see its new hardware product as a home security camera. Instead, they see it as an “interactive assistant.” But Lighthouse, at least at first, will definitely be perceived as another new entrant in the smart camera market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google-funded ‘super sensor’ project brings IoT powers to dumb appliances
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/11/google-funded-super-sensor-project-brings-iot-powers-to-dumb-appliances/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
The so-called ‘smart home’ often comes across looking incredibly dumb. Either you have to shell out lots of money to replace perfectly functional appliances for their Internet-connected equivalents — which might then be vulnerable to hacking or whose functionality could be bricked at manufacturer whim.
Or you go around manually affixing sensors to each appliance and moveable fixture in your home — and end up with the equivalent of interior pebble-dashing comprised of stick-on gadgetry; a motion sensor and/or ugly-looking Dash-style button on everything.
you’re typically letting out a flow of what can be highly sensitive personal data to be sucked into the cloud for profit-seeking entities to pore over.
Researchers at CMU’s Future Interfaces Group are taking a different approach
The system involves using a single custom plug-in sensor board that’s packed with multiple individual sensors — but, crucially from a privacy point of view, no camera.
uses machine learning algorithms to process the data it’s picking up, so it can be trained to identify various types of domestic activity, such as (non-smart) appliances being turned on
The idea is a “quick and dirty” smart home system that’s aiming for general-purpose sensing in each room it’s located in
When I suggest to Harrison a Google Home connected speaker could utilize the system to provide a layer of domestic intelligence for homeowners
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Cities Need Smart Partners
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331717&
The time is now to make every city a smart city.
If you ask electrical engineers, venture capitalists or city employees what the terms smart city and Internet of Things means, each will likely have their own variation. It’s time to define these terms and create consensus about the goals and implications of a smart city so we can start exploring the technologies required to build them.
A crude shorthand for smart city could be sensorized city–a city in which thousands or even millions of small digital sensors are deployed nearly everywhere–on vehicles, people, buildings and infrastructure.
The data from these sensors is collected in real-time and brought back to a central location for analysis by a person or computer. Signals then must travel back out again to actuators that can put decisions into action. In many cases, the time to sense, decide, and actuate is milliseconds.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building One Interface Subsystem For Multiple IoT SoCs
http://semiengineering.com/building-one-interface-subsystem-for-multiple-iot-socs/
Adding flexibility to a design by supporting multiple protocols in an interface subsystem.
When designing SoCs for Internet of Things (IoT) applications, designers quickly realize that their most efficient use of resources will result in chips that can address multiple end applications. Consumer products require connectivity or edge devices, and networking or enterprise companies are broadening their reach to home networking and cloud services, like remote processing, that complement the other layer devices. Designers often need to address several of these applications at once, with a single ASIC. With the cost of ASIC tape-outs increasing, and designs being constrained by pin counts, designers are looking for ways to support more of the solution space with a single chip.
To address this need, designers are adding flexibility to their SoCs by integrating interface IP subsystems.
Is your SoC for a home router, a wireless hub or a car?
A single SoC may support different wireless or wired solutions based on the configurations or price range. One of the best ways to build-in SoC flexibility is to add a PCI Express (PCIe) interface. PCIe 3.0 can support 8 Gbps of data throughput and connect to many modular wireless systems. A PCIe interface not only supports different storage devices but also can connect to many wireless interfaces as well. Since 10G Ethernet support requires similar performance, and is also useful for IoT devices, designers often choose to offer it within the same PHY as the PCIe interface.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smarter programming can ease developers Bluetooth burdens
http://www.electropages.com/2017/05/smarter-programming-can-ease-developers-bluetooth-burdens/?utm_campaign=&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=article&utm_content=Smarter+programming+can+ease+developers+Bluetooth+burdens
Bluetooth connectivity has become so widely available these days it almost seems like a consumer right. Spare a thought though for developers who have to implement the Bluetooth interfaces that enable this connectivity, especially in tightly constrained embedded systems.
The good news however is they can avoid many complex RF integration issues by using certified Bluetooth interface modules to implement the hardware. But once the hardware is completed the interfaces still need programming to correctly interact with the Bluetooth protocol.
The challenge here is two-fold. The first is since Bluetooth interfaces are supposed to be low cost, their hardware resources can be very limited, demanding careful optimisation of program code to get the most out of them. The second is that Bluetooth is quite complex so implementing it takes a detailed knowledge of the wireless protocol and the ability to reflect that in efficient code.
Laird modules tackle the first challenge by having enough computing power on-board, thanks to an ARM Cortex M0 microcontroller and related memory resources to store and run applications independent of a host.
The second challenge is tackled by supporting smartBASIC, a version of the BASIC language originally developed in the 1960s as a way of teaching computer programming.
Careful Optimisation
The end result of this careful optimisation of the hardware module, the customisation of the smartBASIC programming language to make it an accessible event-driven programming environment, and the provision of canned functions, routines and drivers, is to make it much easier for developers to add Bluetooth to their designs.
What can you do with it? Since the modules can be set to launch an application when they power up, developers can use them to implement a complete design, linking a radio interface at one end right through to the physical interfaces (GPIO etc.) supported by the module at the other.
Developers can also make it easier to create product variants by defining a standard application programming interface (API) to their host system, and then writing applications that work with the API at one end and a variety of wireless functions at the other.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth module for IoT applications
Fujitsu’s Bluetooth Smart Module is designed to reduce cost and time to develop battery-powered wireless devices for IoT solutions.
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/bluetooth-module-for-iot-applications/ac5696ceea730c40763392c1fd3c6525.html
Fujitsu’s Bluetooth Smart Module is designed to reducecost and time to develop battery-powered wireless devices for IoT solutions. Fujitsu’s model, PN MBH7BLZ07, measures 11.5 x 7.9 x. 1.7 mm. With its industrial temperature range of -40 to 85 C, low 10.5 mA power consumption, and embedded antenna, this module is ideal for wearable, Internet-enabled devices in healthcare, fitness, and consumer entertainment applications.