Episode 335: Robots need a Myers-Briggs type

This week’s show starts off with old news that I forgot to tell y’all about last week: The Matter interoperability standard for the smart home is delayed until 2022. We talk about what that means and then turn to Google’s confusing fitness wearable strategy and the new Fitbit Charge 5 device. After that, we discuss human-computer interfaces and a new OT security report out from Honeywell. We also share an update on the Qi wireless power standard and I get angry about the Telsa robot marketing stunt designed to stop us from talking about the safety issues associated with the investigation of Tesla’s Autopilot by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I end with a review of the Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell devices that are now each available for $179.99. We close the news segment with a question from a listener about buttons to turn off connected lights.

Surely, this understates the actual breaches, right? Image courtesy of Honeywell.

This week’s guest is Lionel Robert, Associate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan. He published a paper this month discussing how robots should best rebuild trust with humans after making a mistake. The paper is really interesting, and we spend a portion of this segment discussing why we need to trust robots and what is classified as a robot. From there we talk about the personality characteristics that Robert believes will work for different robots based on their form factors, their jobs, and the people they work with. We even talk about the ethics of making robots too trustworthy. It’s a lot of fun.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Lionel Robert, Associate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan
Sponsors: Silicon Labs and Infineon

  • Google’s wellness and wearables strategy is super messed up
  • Kevin thinks your IoT products should offer real-time feedback
  • Google’s new Nest cameras are good for Google homes, but there are other options
  • Should this robot be an ESTJ  or an INTJ?
  • What even is a robot, anyway?

Episode 327: Amazon’s Halo health push and more Matter

Any Amazon Halo subscriber can try Amazon’s Movement Health service now, so Kevin and I explain what it is and what Amazon’s decisions around the Halo fitness tracker signal about the company’s interest in healthcare. We then cover the good news that Google will support connected Nest devices with security updates for up to five years after launch and Google’s new location tracking app for its Wi-Fi routers. Kevin wonders why Verizon needs its own smart display and tells us about Lenovo’s latest Google clock display while I share news of a smart building startup getting funding. We end with the news that ADT and Ring have settled their lawsuit about Ring’s use of the trademarked blue ADT octagon. After the news, we answer a listener’s question about changing Wi-Fi SSIDs and passwords and what that might mean for his smart home devices.

The Lenovo Smart Clock 2 can charge your phone using a Qi dock. Image courtesy of Lenovo.

Our guest this week is Nathan Dyck, chief product officer at Nanoleaf. We kick off the segment by focusing on the future of lighting before digging into a discussion of the Thread protocol. He talks about why Thread is such a positive choice for the smart home, and then we talk about Matter. He explains what the multi-admin feature is and tells us why he’s excited about the distributed ledger for tracking the provenance of a device. We end with a look ahead at some of the features he expects to see in smart lights after Matter is established. Enjoy the show.

Host: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Nathan Dyck, chief product officer Nanoleaf
Sponsors: Silicon Labs and Trek10

  • Amazon’s Halo isn’t about fitness, it’s a about health
  • How long should a thermostat get security updates?
  • Could Verizon’s new display offer a path to Amazon’s Sidewalk?
  • Nanoleaf didn’t start out making smart lights
  • Matter may make new features easier to develop

Episode 326: It’s about ethics in smart devices

Kevin and I start this week’s show with a discussion of his Amazon Prime Day purchases and then talk about the kerfuffle over smart thermostats and demand-response energy programs in Texas. I happened to be there at the time, and there is a definite right and wrong way to enroll people in the program. We also mentioned a more egregious example of digital overreach with Massachusettes pushing COVID-tracking apps to Android devices. After that, we explain Senator Amy Klobuchar’s interest in the Matter smart home protocol,  Arm’s confidential compute plans and share plans for a new LoRaWAN network. We round out the rest of the show with an update on Ecobee thermostat’s smarts and new devices from Wyze. We close by answering a listener question about the Ting fire safety device.

Ecobee participates in demand response programs such as those that caused frustration in Texas. Image courtesy of Ecobee.

Our guest this week is Mary Beth Hall, director of wireless strategy and marketing with Panasonic. We dig into the reality of 5G deployments inside manufacturing plants and what it will take to actually see real deployments instead of mere pilots. She’s responsible for putting 5G inside Panasonic’s line of Toughbook handheld computers used in industrial settings, so she has good insights into what’s real and what’s hype. She also shares her thoughts about what 5G will offer manufacturing customers when they finally adopt it. But she can’t actually tell us when that moment will come. I enjoyed her honesty.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Mary Beth Hall from Panasonic
Sponsors: Bsquare and Edge Impulse

  • Smart thermostats aren’t the problem in Texas, communication is
  • The Senate wants more information on smart home interoperability. Us too.
  • Why I’m excited for Arm’s confidential compute plans
  • Why most factories are fine with 4G wireless
  • Why 5G will help carriers deliver five nines

Episode 325: The IoT goes to Congress

Hello! This week we start with Congress, where the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings related to interoperability and lock-in tied to smart home devices. We drew special attention to testimony by Jonathan Zittrain, who wrote a long, but insightful statement about the development of the web, the benefits gained when using interoperable protocols, and what the government should do to ensure the openness of the IoT. After that, we discuss Amazon’s use of person detection on its new Echo Show devices to use motion-sensing as a trigger for routines and Apple’s planned features for its next smartwatch. We then talk about the new Level lock and why you may want to wait before buying a smart lock. In our news roundup, we track the rise of smart home devices, IKEA’s new $199 picture frame speaker, a new cellular module, and Accenture’s acquisition of umlaut, an industrial IoT engineering firm. We close on a question from a listener about which devices will support Matter going forward.

IKEA’s new speaker hides within a picture frame, but IKEA has limited art available. Image courtesy of IKEA.

Our guest this week is Lesley Carhart, an incident responder at Dragos. Carhart’s specialty is industrial IoT incident response which means she’s been busy, given how often ransomware attacks have taken out critical infrastructure in the past few months. She explains how she got into doing industrial security and how it differs from IT security (which she also did). She shares what industrial clients want IT security professionals to understand, and shares how people can get into the field of providing industrial IoT security. In my favorite moment, she explains the Purdue Model of security used by manufacturing and industrial clients. Understanding these things will only become more important as we place more assets online. Please listen.

Host: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Lesley Carhart, an incident responder at Dragos SponsorsBsquare and Edge Impulse

  • A few remedies to prevent lock-in by the tech giants
  • Wellness is gaining ground in the smartwatch world
  • Maybe wait on that smart lock purchase
  • Hardhats may be necessary for industrial IoT security response
  • What the OT world wants the IT world to know about security

Episode 323: Stick with Sidewalk, y’all

This week’s show is going to get controversial with a discussion of Amazon’s Sidewalk. Kevin is out on vacation this week, so my friend Chris Albrect of The Spoon is here to co-host.   We start with a rundown on why I think you should participate in Amazon’s Sidewalk network but also explain how to opt out. We then talk about how tech-savvy lawyers helped push Amazon to drop arbitration clauses, the meatpacking hack, and new rules from the Army’s CIO on IoT devices in the home. Then we focus on fitness, discussing the potential for connected rower Hydrow to go public, Google’s plans for Fitbit, and the speculation around Apple’s upcoming Airpods. We end by answering a question from an electrician about what we’d like to see in a newly built smart home.

The Level Lock. Image courtesy of Level.

Our guest this week is Ken Goto, the co-founder and CTO of Level Lock. I invited him on the show because I am fascinated by how well the company has adapted to changing software requirements for the smart home. So I asked him what sort of planning that took and how the company approaches things like Homekit, Alexa, Matter, and even Amazon’s Sidewalk. Goto is actually a big fan of Sidewalk, and talks about what it can offer customers of the lock and what it does for him as a developer. We close with a look ahead at the technology he’s really excited about seeing in the smart home. Enjoy the show.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Christ Albrecht
Guest: Ken Goto, CTO of Level Lock
Sponsors: Bsquare and Very

  • If you opt-out of Amazon’s Sidewalk, do it for the right reasons
  • The Army is alerting teleworkers to smart home security flaws
  • Why not take a smart rower public
  • How Level tried to future proof its devices
  • Level’s CTO explains why he’s excited about Amazon’s Sidewalk

 

 

Episode 321: Google decides Matter matters

This week’s show focuses on news from Google I/O 2021 where it’s clear the search giant is trying to build out a fairly open ecosystem based on the Matter protocol and WebRTC for audio and video streaming. Google also said it would use Wear OS for Fitbit and combine Wear OS with Samsung’s Tizen OS. Google also announced a CarKey deal with BMW. There’s bad news on the data-sharing front from Imperial College London and Northeastern University, where researchers tracked how many connections popular smart home devices opened, and what it means for privacy. In security news, Consumer Reports found flaws in four security cameras and video doorbells, and we discuss the Eufy video camera bug. Additionally, cyber risks are so high that the CEO of Swiss Re, a reinsurer, said insurance for cyberattacks was becoming impossible. Finally, we mention the new Echo Frame options, although Kevin is still not a fan. In our hotline, we answer a question about Matter and keeping a SmartThings hub.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaking at Google I/O 2021. Image courtesy of Google.

Our guest this week is Mark Hanson, VP of Innovation at Sony Semiconductor America. We talk about embedded computer vision and what it means to have machine learning taken care of on the image sensor itself. It enables lip-reading applications, occupancy sensing, and new ways to track inventory in stores. (He’s very excited about  inventory sensing cameras.) Hanson also says the sensor and its DSP can provide training at the edge, allowing a user to show the sensor images and then have the sensor later recognize those images. We also talk about how product designers can figure out if they need a camera for a particular use case.  Hanson really wants to get new ideas from everyone listening about use cases for embedded computer vision, so see if any of the interview sparks your creativity.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Mark Hanson, VP of Innovation at Sony Semiconductor America
SponsorVery

  • Google will embrace Matter in most displays, smart speakers and on Android
  • Do you know who your smart devices talk to?
  • Cyberattacks are becoming too big for insurance to cover
  • Why adding ML to an image sensor makes sense
  • How to use a “dumb” sensor to offload some computing tasks

 

Episode 320: Project CHIP becomes Matter and hacked pipelines

This week’s show hits on two of the biggest stories of the year for the smart home: Project Connected Home over IP is now called Matter and Amazon’s Sidewalk Network adds Tile as a participant. We also discuss what it means for Zigbee after the Zigbee Alliance changed its name to the Connectivity Standards Alliance.  The Colonial Pipeline ransomware also merits some attention. We then spend time on some news bits such as Amazon updating its Echo Show devices for the video calling era we seem to be in, Wyze’s new earbuds with noise-canceling technology, and the new Phyn leak detection sensors. We also discuss the FragAttack vulnerabilities and try to explain them. We conclude by answering a listener question about whether we’ll see Thread on phones anytime soon.

The Phyn puck, cable, and extension node combine to create a compelling option for sensing leaks. Image courtesy of Phyn.

Our guest this week delves even deeper into the Matter protocol. Kevin Po, a senior product manager at Google, is involved in the Matter working group. Po explains the multi-admin feature that will let consumers swap ecosystems with ease if they have Matter-certified devices, and lets me pester him with specific questions for those who might have multiple ecosystems in one home, or those that might want to use different smartphones.  He also lays out some of the security features and explains where he thinks device makers should try to differentiate themselves as the Matter standard develops. He also foreshadows some Google-related Matter news at Google I/O next week, so we should probably pay attention.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Kevin Po, a senior product manager at Google
Sponsor: Very

  • Project CHIP becomes Matter and the Zigbee Alliance becomes the Connectivity Standards Alliance
  • Why the Colonial Pipeline really shut down
  • Amazon’s Sidewalk network is better than Apple’s Airtags at one thing
  • Will Matter let me have Alexa and Google in my home?
  • Is Matter an attempt for the big three tech firms to dominate the smart home?