Episode 432: How to make IoT more consumer-friendly

This week we dig in on two topics that will make the internet of things friendlier for consumers. The first is the newly announced cybersecurity label plan from the White House that will create a way for consumers to see if their planned IoT purchase meets adequate cybersecurity standards. The second is our suggestion that device makers plan for failure when building a smart product, to help prevent consumers from spending hundreds or thousands on a connected device only to see it lose functionality when the manufacturer shuts down or sells. This happened recently for folks who spent $5,000 on VanMoof bikes and for folks who spent about $225 for a connected BBQ controller from iKamand. The iKamand app was turned off without notice to subscribers about 18 months after the company was purchased by Middleby Corp. Then we switch to a lighter topic. Literally, as we discuss LiFi and what the newly created IEEE standard for the tech may mean for the IoT. Then we discuss smaller news items such as funding for an IoT device that attaches to mobility aids to predict falls, Leviton updating devices to work with Matter, a new global eSIM plan for IoT devices from Verizon, and a new dev board that combines Arduino and Espressif’s ESP32. Finally, we answer a listener question about smart light bulb sockets.

The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark could indicate that your next IoT device meets select security requirements. Image courtesy of the FCC.

Our guest this week is Steve Hanna, a distinguished engineer at Infineon and the chair of the security working group at the Connectivity Standards Alliance. He’s on the show to tell us more about the need for a voluntary, government cybersecurity mark for devices, and explain why developing such a mark is so difficult. We talk about the FCC’s role in managing the program, the time frame for a mark, and how the government plans to think about keeping up with the always-changing security landscape. We also discuss how Infineon’s customers are changing their views about IoT security labels, and how the mark relates to work done by the Arm’s PSA security standard and the security elements that are part of the Matter standard. It’s a good interview, made better by the fact that Hanna sounds just like Mr. Rogers.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Steve Hanna, a distinguished engineer at Infineon
Sponsors: Wilderness Labs and Particle

  • Why we want a U.S. Cyber Trust Mark for consumer devices
  • What happened to this smart BBQ controller?
  • Leviton embraces Matter for its switches
  • Badges, QR codes, and building a layered mark for cybersecurity
  • Where will privacy fit into any security mark or standard?

 

 

 

Episode 375: Arduino gets $32 million for enterprise IoT

This week’s show is an exercise in controlled chaos, as I am once again quarantined in a hotel room (this time with my teen). Kevin and I discuss Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and Apple’s claim that HomeKit is the foundation of the upcoming Matter smart home protocol. Insteon users got a shock this week when their formerly dead hubs mysteriously turned on and their cloud-based integrations began working. We explain what we know. SmartThings is getting a new app, and Microsoft signed a multi-year deal to help Procter & Gamble with its digital transformation. In security news, we discuss new ransomware that starts on the IT side but can move over to the OT side to wreak havoc, as well as a new program from Dragos to help small businesses secure their OT networks. Finally, in chip news radar chip company Vayyar raised $108 million and Arm launched a new low-power image sensor for embedded vision. During the IoT Podcast Hotline, we answer a listener question about how to prepare his smart home for a move.

Arduino launched the Portenta line of boards for the enterprise a year and half ago. Image courtesy of Arduino.

Our guest this week is Fabio Violante, the CEO of Arduino. Arduino raised €30 million ($32 million) this week as it seeks to add software and hardware to meet the needs of enterprise and industrial product designers. We discuss why Arduino is branching out from the DIY market, and how it differentiates itself from other computing platforms such as the Raspberry Pi or Nvidia’s Jetson Nano. Violante also shares his observations about the state of the market and the popularity of certain connectivity options, protocols and cloud platforms. It’s a good show.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Fabio Violante, the CEO of Arduino
Sponsors: Nordic Semiconductor and Wirepas

  • Apple contributed a lot to HomeKit and we all will benefit
  • Who is the new Insteon owner?
  • Microsoft is helping Procter & Gamble make better paper towels
  • Good and bad news for OT security
  • Why Arduino is stepping up to the enterprise

Episode 365: Helium gets a new name and $200 million

This week’s show was recorded on the road, but we still cover all of the big news starting with LoRaWAN network Helium changing its name to Nova Labs and raising $200 million. We then discuss research from MIT that offers privacy for people captured on video and several options for connecting beehives. I then get depressed about a UK startup offering incentives for being healthy, Kevin gets excited about Eufy’s latest combo video doorbell and door lock, and we both try to figure out who the new Arduino Pro Portenta X8 is for. We also discuss a security flaw in Wyze cams, remind people about best practices for securing connected devices and share news that Google is also trying to build the ability to discover Bluetooth trackers into Android. Finally, we answer a listener question about deleting phantom devices from HomeAssistant and Amazon Alexa.

The Beewise robotic beehive is ready for occupation. Image courtesy of Beewise.

Our guest this week is Doug Stovall, the CEO of Ossia, an over-the-air wireless power company. Ossia’s technology, called Cota, uses the 5.8 GHz spectrum to send 5 watts of power to devices that have a Cota chip and are able to accept it. There’s no charging pad or wire involved.nWe discuss the company’s recent FCC approval, which brings the technology to the U.S., as well as a deal with Archos, a French smart home device maker. Stovall says we’ll see Cota-enabled products in 2023 and maybe a smart home camera in time for the holidays. We dig in on how to think about efficiency when it comes to power delivery and what kind of impact over-the-air wireless could have before we play a game where I say a device and Stovall tells me how it should be powered. Enjoy the show.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Doug Stovall, the CEO of Ossia
Sponsors: Save our Standards and RAKwireless

  • Helium has a new name, $200 million and a mysterious revenue model.
  • What is it about IoT beehives?
  • Well, this is an innovation in smart locks.
  • Charge a smartwatch over-the-air? Sure.
  • Let’s play Name That Power Source.

 

Episode 356: Smart home improvement is now a thing

This week’s show starts with a healthy portion of chips, with the main course being Nvidia’s reported acceptance that its deal to acquire ARM isn’t likely to happen. We then turn to the U.S. Commerce Department’s plans to combat the chip shortage crisis, new ML chips from Silicon Labs, Google’s first TinyML Coral microcontroller, and an Arduino-like RISC-V product. Feeling full from all of this chip ingestion we discuss how Peloton is trying to work out its excess inventory challenge. Two smart tracking companies raised some funding this week: Pebblebee on the consumer side and newly launched Tag-n-Trac for shipping and logistics. We then discuss how Thread turned the Wemo Stage controller from “meh” to “must-have” and share details of new Philips Hue fixtures. Rounding out the episode is a listener question from Michael asking if Alexa can control his Google Nest thermostat.

Peloton is changing its production plans, but we still think it has value. Image courtesy of Peloton.

Our guest this week is Oisin Hanrahan who is the CEO of Angi, the home services company formerly known as Angie’s List. He’s on the show to talk about startling data his company discovered late last year. According to Angi’s data, for the first time ever, smart home investments were in the top three home improvements made by homeowners. Hanrahan explains what homeowners are doing and why they are willing to invest in more technology. He also offers advice to device makers who want to attract the pro-installer business and makes recommendations on how pros think about the smart home. It’s a great interview.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Oisin Hanrahan, CEO of Angi
Sponsors: Rightpoint and Hologram

  • Nvidia may be giving up on its ARM-acquisition
  • $52 billion for U.S. chip factories won’t fix the real problem
  • Peloton could learn a thing or two from Apple
  • Painting, bathroom remodels, and smart home drive home improvements
  • What a pro wants

Episode 343: Return of the connected bunny!

We kick off this week’s podcast with a focus on chips and hardware starting with an explainer on Arm’s new Total Solutions for IoT and why it will help developers and device makers speed up time-to-market for connected products. We then talk about plans to put Linux on Arduino devices that were outed in a release from Foundries.io and plans for scalable ways to provision and secure connected devices at the manufacturing stage from Infineon. We skipped over to Amazon’s new Alexa Connect Kit SDK and what it means before tackling the new colors for Apple’s HomePod mini and a hew Apple hire. In smaller news, we discuss Tesla’s insurance plans, Wyze’s new battery-enabled doorbell, and why I should have purchased a Pixel 6 Pro, despite its giant size. We then share a crowdfunding campaign designed to bring one of the original connected devices of yesteryear back to life. Click here to resurrect your Nabaztag connected bunny. Finally, we talk about your responses to our question from the IoT Podcast Hotline related to connected devices for workshops.

The Nabaztag bunny gets resurrected. Image courtesy of Olivier Mével.

Our guest this week is John Cowan, co-founder and CEO of EDJX, a company building out a distributed software platform for developers. We start off talking about a new project EDJX is implementing with the military at Camp Mabry in Austin. We talk about the necessary hardware for sensor deployments in cities and how those might become the new infrastructure for edge computing. Cowan then explains why containers aren’t the correct match for a highly distributed computing platform at scale, and how serverless solutions can help answer this need. We discuss compute, networking and databases, so prepare to get nerdy. Enjoy the show.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: John Cowan, co-founder and CEO of EDJX
Sponsors: Very

  • Details on Arm’s plans to help the IoT
  • Amazon’s new SDK takes Alexa to more hardware
  • Bring a vintage IoT bunny back from the dead
  • Why the military needs low-latency edge computing today
  • How EDJX thinks about data decay and assurance

Episode 308: Chipageddon and deets on the Pi Pico

Silicon is the theme of this week’s show, starting with a rundown on the chip shortage affecting the automotive and IoT world. Then we talk about the Los Angles Police Department requesting footage from connected doorbell cameras during the Black Lives Matter protests before moving on to Amazon’s new Kickstarter-like program for new Alexa products. In new product news, we cover Wyze’s color-changing light bulbs, Facebooks’ rumored smartwatch, and a peer-to-peer mesh network using the ClusterDuck protocol. We then share a new command for Google Assistant, discuss funding for an AI chip company, speculate on Verizon’s purchase of a robotics software startup, and dig into the many DIY options for building your own image recognition models. We end by answering a question about products that might help you save money on your electric bill.

If you want to see Amazon build a scale that works with Alexa for $34.99, you can pre-order it today. If enough people order it, Amazon will make it. Image courtesy of Amazon.

Our guest this week is Alasdair Allan, technical documentation manager at Raspberry Pi Trading, the commercial arm of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Allan explains why the Foundation decided to build its own chip for the first Pi Pico microcontroller and why the Pi Foundation even built a microcontroller in the first place. He also discusses how the Pi Pico differs from an Arduino, talks up some use cases, and dives into ways it might be used for machine learning at the edge. After declining to tell me what might be next for the Pi Foundation, he did point out that no one assembles a chip design team to build just one chip, so it sounds like there’s a lot to look forward to.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Alasdair Allan, technical documentation manager at Raspberry Pi Trading, the commercial arm of the Raspberry Pi Foundation
Sponsor: Very

  • What’s behind the chip shortage and how long will it last?
  • We can’t expect Ring to police the police, so here’s what we should expect
  • Project OWL is a public safety or industrial mesh network
  • The custom-chip in the Pi Pico is designed for flexibility
  • Tiny ML means less internet in the IoT

 

Episode 292: We play with Whoop bands and Wyze cams

First up on this week’s show are Forrester’s predictions for the year ahead in IoT, followed by me talking about my latest tech gadget, the Whoop Strap. Whoop recently raised $100 million in funding for its subscription-based band designed for hardcore athletes. From there we talked about the new Arduino Oplà IoT Kit, the real steps we’d like to see companies take with their green gadget efforts, and the FCC’s decision to allocate spectrum for both unlicensed use and cellular connected-car technology. In our news bits, we talk about Amazon, Mercedes, Google Nest, and Starlink. From there, Kevin reviews the latest version of the Wyze Camera that launched this week. We close by answering a listener question about smart light sockets.

The Whoop strap is a fitness tracker/coach that requires a monthly subscription.

Our guest this week is Nate Clark, the CEO of Konnected. Three years ago he launched the company with a Kickstarter project: A replacement for motherboards inside old alarm systems, turning the existing panel and sensors into a smart security system. DIYers love the ability to control their existing sensors and Clark explains where the product is going and how he handled SmartThing’s transition from its Groovy IDE to the cloud. He ends with advice for anyone who wants to build a business in the smart home.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Nate Clark, the CEO of Konnected
Sponsors: Silicon Labs and Very

  • Forrester predicts COVID-19 making IoT pretty ubiquitous
  • Whoop is a different kind of fitness tracker
  • Wyze’s third-generation cam looks familiar
  • SmartThings’ platform shift explained by a developer
  • Advice for people building a niche connected product

Episode 261: Set up a secure IoT network and Wyze has new gear

With the spread of COVID-19 and people staying home, robots are gaining ground in jobs, so Kevin and I discuss what jobs are at risk and what happened with automation during the last three recessions. We also talk about the rules that need to be in place if we want to track people during the pandemic in the U.S. and in other Western democracies. Then we cover a Russian botnet, racist digital assistants, confidentiality with Alexa, a new Arduino module, and the new scale and activity tracker from Wyze. Kevin and I take some time from the current worries about the coronavirus to envision the world we want when all this is over and discuss medical device privacy.  We end with a listener question about the new Nest subscription plans expected sometime soon.

Ready for a new IoT prototyping device? Check out this Kickstarter project. Image courtesy of Frame.IoT.

Our guest this week is Josh Datko, founder and chief engineer at embedded security firm Cryptotronix who is here to school us all in IoT security. We start with his advice for consumers, including advice on splitting off a separate IoT network in your home. We then discuss the difference between embedded security and IT security and discuss the importance of security engineers in product design. We end with Datko explaining the difference between secure enclaves, trusted execution environments and other security terms that may mystify you. Enjoy the show.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Josh Datko, Cryptotronix
Sponsors: MachineQ and LiveWorx

  • Automation and robots get a boost from the coronavirus
  • How to handle sensor data during a pandemic
  • Yes, I bought the Wyze scale for some reason
  • Here’s how to secure your smart home
  • Why the embedded world needs security engineers

Episode 260: How to make telemedicine work in a crisis

Kevin and I kick off this week’s show discussing COVID-19 again. We start with a virus tracker for Home Assistant, a handwashing sensor, relaxed healthcare rules, disaster relief networks, Israeli tracking software, and Kevin’s tips for connected workout gear and online resources to keep you fit while quarantined. We then talk about a partnership for smarter SIMs with Thales Telstra, Microsoft, and Arduino before talking about some scary security research. Smart speakers, Sonos’ new OS, Amazon open-sourcing its checkout-free shopping system, and a smart ring that doubles as an activity tracker, round out the news. Finally, we answer a question about whole-home smart lighting.

Only 13% of connected device makers have any sort of bug reporting program according to a new survey.

Our guest this week is Nick Dawson, who has had several roles at the intersection of medicine and design at places such as Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Kaiser Permanente. We talk about the state of telemedicine today and where it may go after COVID-19 forces changes in the current medical system. We also talk about the role of connected health gadgets in these times, and advice for individuals who want to help solve some of the medical challenges facing us today. I learned a lot about why it’s 2020 and we still don’t have widespread telehealth.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Nick Dawson, designer
Sponsors: MachineQ and LiveWorx

  • Smart things for a viral pandemic
  • Make ways for DuckLinks
  • Smarter SIM cards are coming to the IoT
  • What’s holding back telemedicine today
  • Go ahead and buy an oximeter if you’re worried

Episode 251: Here’s what people at CES said about CHIP

This week’s show was dedicated to a wrap up of CES 2020. Kevin and I shared how the show has changed in the last 15 years, talked about technology for Boomers, the Withings ScanWatch and ran through several new maker boards. We covered the $2 Wemos W600-PICO board, a new Arduino board for industrial use and a RISC-V development board. From there we moved on to pretty light switches from Iotty and Legrand as well as Mixtile’s local AI as part of a smart home hub. I also saw a connected chai-maker at a friend’s house that handled personalization well using Bluetooth and we talked through the SmartThings app migration that started this week. We also covered an industrial IoT acquisition and a plant-powered sensor that sent data to space. Our question this week was about light switches, and we need your help.

The Withings ScanWatch offers medical-grade heart monitoring and sleep apnea detection. Image courtesy of Withings.

Our guest segment this week is comprised of five different guests who I cornered at CES to talk about the new Connected Home over IP standard.  First up was Lee Ratliff, senior analyst with IHS Markit, who explains why he thinks CHIP is a positive development, what each player is likely to bring the standard and why the IP aspect of the standard matters so much. Then I spoke with Tobin Richardson, CEO of the Zigbee Alliance and Chris LaPrè, a solutions architect at the Zigbee Alliance, about the need for schemes and a name change for the Alliance. Matt Johnson, SVP and general manager of IoT at Silicon Labs, shares his take on CHIP and as the company behind the Z-Wave standard, talks about what happens to Z-Wave as CHIP gains ground. Scott Harkins, Vice President Connected Home Resideo, explains why Resideo is backing CHIP and why he’s not giving up on the Open Connectivity Foundation, or any of the other standards efforts Resideo is involved in. And finally, Brian Van Harlingen CTO of Belkin International talked about how CHIP could help his company and whether or not he thinks it’s going to happen. There’s a lot here, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the show.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guests: Lee Ratliff, senior analyst with IHS Markit; Tobin Richardson, CEO of the Zigbee Alliance and Chris LaPrè a solutions architect at the Zigbee Alliance; Matt Johnson, SVP and general manager of IoT at Silicon Labs; Scott Harkins, Vice President Connected Home Resideo; and Brian Van Harlingen CTO of Belkin International.
SponsorsMachineQ and IoT World

  • Say goodbye to the old guard at CES
  • Healthcare startups and maker boards catch our eye
  • Get ready for the SmartThings app migration
  • Why the Zigbee Alliance is contemplating a name change
  • What’s so special about IP anyway?