Tech Talk

The Case for the Intranet of Things and the Smart Home

2013-06-13

Eclipse Technologies for the Internet of Things and the Smart Home - QTOOTH

The following thoughts come from Kai Kreuzer. He raises a good point when he questions what it all really means when people discuss the “Internet of Things” or, as he makes a great case for, the Intranet of Things. In other words, many of us want our home and office technology to be networked and to work well together, and hopefully saving money and precious resources in the process, but this doesn’t mean that we want the information that this network produces to be readily available over the internet. So, here’s what he has to say on the subject:

“The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the big hypes at the moment – and as usual with such a buzzword, it does not mean much at all (or rather it means something different, depending on who you talk to).IoT is often used synonymously with M2M (machine-to-machine). From my point of view, this is not a valid equation – the IoT is trifold, M2M just being one part of it. M2M was coined by the telco operators and thus it usually meant in the past to stick a SIM-card on a remote device and have it communicate through the GSM network. Work was usually done in customer projects which had the goal to remotely administrate and monitor distributed devices, be it solar panels, trucks or coffee machines. None of these solutions actually wanted to connect anything to the Internet, they were usually proprietary and closed – or if you want to formulate it positively: they were targeting vertical markets.
A step towards more openness of M2M is the Open Source M2M initiative at Eclipse led by Benjamin Cabé. This will hopefully help on standardizing the used communication protocols and make it much easier for many people to program embedded devices and make them connected. Nonetheless, the focus here is still on connecting proprietary devices through unreliable and low-bandwidth networks (like GSM), so it is a good match for the classical M2M use cases mentioned above.

iPhone - QTOOTH

Another “movement” that likes using the term IoT is all the cloud-enabled gadgets ( I call them Cloudy Things) that are popping up here and there. Think of things like Nest, Koubachi, Withings, Fitbit, WeMo etc – each of these gadgets comes with its own cloud service, for which you need to register a user account, install a separate app and let all your data flow to some cloud service. Ok, these gadgets are connected to the Internet, but effectively they are totally disconnected from each other. The user serves as the point of integration, using his smartphone, switching from one app to another. Is this really the ultimate answer?

No, there is one more thing to it – a big part of what is the Internet to all of us is actually the private part that is under our own control: The Intranet! Nobody wants to make his printer, scanner, VoIP telephone etc. publicly available on the Internet – and yet they are part of the Internet, merely behind the firewall of the local router.

And here we enter the space of the Smart Home – Smart Home technologies again are a part of the Internet of Things, but they are neither M2M nor Cloudy Things – they are the Intranet of Things. There are two simple reasons: Firstly, you don’t want your house become unusable just because your DSL connection is down – things still have to work when you are offline! Secondly, you want to be in control of the data and process it the way you need. It shouldn’t be a dozen of cloud services that grab your data exclusively and then decide, what you will at all see of it and how you are allowed to use it.

Actually the three parts (M2M – Cloudy Things – Intranet of Things) are not disjunct, but also clearly overlap. Yet, the intention behind them is quite different.

Let me give you an example that everybody should be familiar with: The Smart Meter. In the European Union Smart Meters are aggressively pushed to the households. But what is the intention?

M2M: Smart Meters are a mandatory part of the smart grids through which the utility companies want to move towards a distributed system of power generation, driven by the renewable energies. A possible way of connecting the meters is via GSM using a SIM-card. This is clearly M2M: The companies need the data from these distributed remote devices for their own purpose, the customer does not have any benefit.

Cloudy Thing: As the customer does not have any benefit from the original M2M use case, the utility companies try to offer him at least something – they visualize the gathered consumption data in a nice chart that the customer can view after login at the companies cloud service, right next to his invoices. How this is presented and with which granularity is completely up to the company. The raw data is not available to the customer.

Intranet of Things: A Smart Meter is only really interesting for the customer, if he himself can get hold of the data. Unfortunately this is not really in the focus of the utility companies. Otherwise, you could have use cases like: Is the “idle” consumption a few hundred watts higher than usual? -> possibly something was not turned off! Is the current consumption higher than what the photovoltaics produce? -> maybe a bad time to start the washing machine. Is my average daily consumption lower than last month? The investment in the new fridge might pay off.

OPENHAB Powering the Smart Home - QTOOTH

You may wonder, how you can avoid relying on Cloudy Things for your Smart Home – well, this is what I founded openHAB for! It is the missing part of your Intranet to give you (and not the cloud services) full control of your devices and your data. It already supports a long list of devices, like KNX, Homematic, Philips Hue and many more. Others are currently under development like digitalSTROM, EnOcean, AVM Fritz DECT ULE, Z-Wave etc.), so soon there should hardly be anything missing what is currently hip in the Smart Home market.

Having mentioned Eclipse M2M above: openHAB is not a competition, but a perfect complement to it – while the Eclipse M2M projects allow building devices, openHAB brings them (and many others) together and introduces the user to the network of “machines”. openHAB itself is built on Eclipse technologies: Equinox, Jetty, EMF, RCP, Xtend, Xtext, Xbase,… Once the openHAB MQTT binding is ready, this can be a really cool combination!

If you have read up to here, I am convinced that you share my enthusiasm that openHAB is the missing piece to make the IoT really useful to the end user – please therefore support us and vote for openHAB at the IOT challenge, where we participate – it is just a simply click. I count on you!”

via Eclipse Technologies for the Internet of Things and the Smart Home | Kai Kreuzer.

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Hotel Wireless Access is Top Demand of Guests

2013-06-10

Hotel wireless access is the top customer demand of guests in their rooms and throughout the hotel properties, according to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) in April 2013. This survey includes responses from 500 North American hotel guests, including business and recreational travelers.

KEY FACTS

90 percent wished hotels offered WiFi as an amenity, making it the top priority of both business and recreational travelers.
More than 90 percent of hotel guests surveyed indicated they wanted WiFi in their hotel rooms, not just in common areas.
40 percent of business travelers said they would not stay at a hotel without internet.
#WiFi is becoming the key differentiator for hotel properties, as technology continues to enhance the guest experience.

Good to know we’re not alone in our desire to have access whenever and wherever we need it. These answers are no surprise to us here at QTOOTH!

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Apple’s Tim Cook On Why The Nike+ FuelBand Works And Google Glass Doesn’t

2013-06-04

As the future of wearable wireless technology slowly reveals itself, it is interesting to see how everyone has different views on what form it should take. One of the big takeaways from the All Things D conference was the interview with Apple’s Tim Cook who had some specific observations when it came to wearing a device on the face versus wearing it on the wrist:

Mossberg/Swisher: Is the future wearables?

Cook: I think so. I wear this. It’s a FuelBand.

I think Nike did a great job with this. It’s for a specific area. It’s integrated well with iOS. There are lots of gadgets in this space now…[As for] the ones that are doing more than one thing…there’s nothing great out there that I’ve seen. There’s nothing that’s going to convince a kid that’s never worn glasses or a band to wear one. So I think there’s lot of things to solve in this space, but it’s an area where it’s ripe for exploration. It’s ripe for us all getting excited about. I think there will be tons of companies playing in this.

I see it as something, as another very key branch of the tree. You think about the post PC era, and we really started talking about this several years ago. I think the iPhone pushed us toward that fast and the tablet accelerated it. I think wearables could be another branch on this.

Cook: I’m interested in a great product. And I think in terms of glasses, I wear glasses because I have to. I can’t see without them. So I kind of have that problem. I don’t know a lot of people who wear them who don’t have to. People who do wear them generally want them to be light, to be unobtrusive. They probably want them to reflect their fashion, their style and so forth. And so I think from a mainstream point of view, this is difficult, this is difficult to see.

I think the wrist is interesting. I’m wearing this [FuelBand] on my wrist. It’s somewhat natural. But as I said before, I think for something to work here [gestures to wrist], you first have to convince people it’s so incredible that they want to wear it.

Because you two guys are wearing watches. If we had a room full of 10-20 year olds, and we said ‘everyone stand up who has a watch on,’ I’m not sure anyone would stand up. I don’t see it. Their watch is this [pulls out an iPhone]. I don’t think it has to be just that. I think there are other wearable ideas that could be interesting. The whole sensor field is going to explode. It’s already exploding. It’s a little all over the place right now, but with the arc of time, it will become clearer I think.

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Jabra adds headset support for Siemens’ OpenScape

2013-06-03

Here’s a development that we here at QTOOTH have been hoping for for sometime: more seamless switching between devices on our Bluetooth devices. Wireless device maker Jabra and Siemens’ Enterprise Communications arm seek to solve this by partnering to support the latter’s OpenScape Mobile Call Swipe feature, which allows you to switch devices without losing connection or switching headsets.

Here’s how it works: with a swipe, you can move a voice conversation from an office phone or laptop to a mobile device. It’s all part of the “unified communications” trend that essentially aims — through technological cooperation — to make conversations about who you’re talking to, not how you’re talking to them.

Jabra’s Holger Reisinger says that the feature is “solving a longstanding, low-tech challenge for mobile workers, moving from the office to the car without having to interrupt the call to change device.” In a news article on ZDNet it was asked, “Is seamless device switching a nice-to-have feature, or is it really solving a productivity-killing issue at the office?” From our perspective? Absolutely critical. In fact, we’d prefer not to have to do the “swipe”. We want our Bluetooth enabled devices to seamlessly, and intelligently, switch from one device to another, from one wireless environment to another, automatically. And we want it now! (Yeah… we know, it’s coming. But hopefully sooner than later.)

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BRCK – Your Backup Generator for the Internet.

2013-05-26

Found this story through GOOD Magazine and their excellent daily email newsletter.

BRCK – the easiest, most reliable way to connect to the internet, anywhere in the world, even when you don’t have electricity.

Here is Their Story

Anyone who has worked in the field — or anyplace far from the world’s most wired urban areas — knows how hard it can be to get connected and stay online. And yet the equipment used to connect in Kenya, or India, or the rest of the developing world is the same as that used in New York and London, even though the conditions are completely different.

At Ushahidi, we face this problem all the time. We realized that what we really needed was a smart, rugged device that could connect to the internet any way it could, hop from one network to another, create a hotspot for multiple devices, while plugged in or running on battery power.

The idea behind BRCK is that all kinds of jobs require steady connectivity, even when infrastructure is spotty due to wireless connections that come and go, intermittent power, or devices that can’t share connections. Seeing this, we set out to redesign connectivity for the world we live in – Africa. As we laid out what such a device would look like — physically robust, able to connect to multiple networks, a hub for all local devices, enough backup power to survive a blackout — We realized that the way the entire world is connecting to the web is changing. We no longer only get online via desktops in our office, we have multiple devices, and we are all constantly on the move. So we designed the BRCK for the changing way we connect to the web around the world, from cafe-hoppers in San Francisco to struggling coders in Nairobi .

The BRCK is like a backup generator for the internet.

It works when the electricity goes out and it works when the internet goes down.

Portable and easy to set up,
It supports up to 20 devices,
WiFi powerful enough to cover multiple rooms,
8 Hour battery backup,
16 GB harddrive,
8 GPIO pins to connect sensors,
Software infused allows for apps, remote management, and data collection,
Documented API.

Our motto has always been “if it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.” Our aim is to move the BRCK from its current prototype phase into a field-ready product. We need your help to achieve this goal of taking the prototype to production.

Check them out on Kick Starter:

via BRCK – your backup generator for the internet by Ushahidi — Kickstarter.

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What is the Difference Between Bluetooth Technology & Wi-Fi?

2013-05-06

What is the difference between Bluetooth technology and Wi-Fi?

What is Wi-Fi®? Is it the same as Bluetooth technology?

Wi-Fi is short for “Wireless Fidelity” – a user-friendly nickname for devices that have been certified by an industry group called the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Bluetooth technology is built into electronic gadgets and allows them to connect directly with each other wirelessly.

Bluetooth technology and Wi-Fi share some pieces of technology, but are used for very different things.

Wi-Fi is often referred to as “wireless internet”, because that’s what it is most often used for, accessing the internet. When you see people surfing the web in a cafe, they’re probably using Wi-Fi.

Bluetooth technology is in lots of the devices that you already have and can be used for all sorts of things. It works for both voice–like talking hands-free on a headset or speakerphone–and data like pictures, music and documents.

How can you use Bluetooth technology?

Setting up Bluetooth products is easy. Bluetooth devices do most of the work for you–they can find and identify one another and all you need to do is push a button to give them permission to communicate. Also, because the devices work directly with each other, you can use Bluetooth technology almost anywhere.

Music – with Bluetooth wireless technology you can listen to music from your music player, mobile phone or computer using speakers, headphones, home stereos and many other devices.

Printing – with Bluetooth wireless technology you can also print your favorite pictures wirelessly directly from your Bluetooth enabled phone or PC.

Input – Bluetooth technology allows you to control your PC, laptop and more without the hassle of cords.

Transfer – Easily transfer photos, music and other information between your mobile phone and your PC or laptop using Bluetooth wireless technology.

Wi-Fi is great for the internet

You can use Wi-Fi to connect to the internet through a stationary access point. An “access point” is an extra piece of equipment that Wi-Fi generally requires to allow devices to connect and work together. While possible, it’s hard to make Wi-Fi products, like a laptop, PC and a printer, connect and work together directly. This also means Wi-Fi works primarily in fixed locations, sometimes known as “hot spots.”

Bluetooth technology goes with you

When you’re in the car, you can use Bluetooth technology to talk hands-free on your phone or computer using a headset, speakerphone or car kit.When you’re away from home and want to use your laptop, but can’t find a hot spot, no problem. You can use Bluetooth enabled 3G and 4G cell phones to tether your laptop and use the 3G and 4G speeds as an internet connection.

Speed

The speed of your Wi-Fi connection depends on how many other people are connected to the same “access point.” If the coffee shop or airport terminal is crowded, your Wi-Fi internet connection may slow down a bit.Because Bluetooth products talk directly with each other, it’s very rare that having many products connected at one time will slow down the speed of your connection.

via Bluetooth Technology | Wi-Fi | Bluetooth Technology Website.