Apr

04

What the internet of things can learn from Minecraft and Lemmings — GigaOM

Once we have a home full of connected devices do we really want to individually manage all of them? Mike Kuniavsky, a principal in the Innovation Services Group at PARC, explains in this weeks podcast how we’re going to have to think differently about programming devices for the internet of things. Devices will need to know what they contain and how those elements might contribute to a certain scenario in the home.

For example when you want to watch a movie, you shouldn’t have to program 6 different devices in your home to tell them what they should do when you toggle on your movie setting, your devices should have some sense of what they are capable of and how to enter a set mode. As he did in his chat in February at our San Francisco Internet of Things meetup, Kuniavsky, likened this device behavior to video games like Minecraft or Lemmings, where preset general behaviors determines how the game unfolded as opposed to rigid and specific actions. He explains all this and more in the podcast. Check it out.

Listen to the Podcast

(download this episode)

Mar

25

AT&T to launch Digital Life in 15 markets, hopes to enter home automation field

AT&T is finally set to launch its Digital Life home automation service, and it’s ready to do so in a big way. Initially planned for just eight markets, the telephony giant has expanded its coverage to 15 starting this spring, with the hope of 50 by the end of the year. Essentially a way to monitor your home, Digital Life packages may include live video, the ability to remotely toggle the light on and off, change the thermostat, unlock the door and more. Customers are able to set up programs and alerts via smartphone or tablet applications or the web. AT&T should bring some heavy clout to the home automation party, though it won’t be the first big-name communications company to do so. For more information on Digital Life and what it offers, have a peek at the source below.

Mar

13

Belkin WeMo Switch and Motion

Home automation and smartphones are a natural fit. As such, we’re seeing the proliferation of systems that let you turn lights on and off, brew coffee, monitor security cameras and control other things around the home from anywhere, just by tapping on your phone’s screen.

The WeMo Switch + Motion is a $100 kit from Belkin that acts as a simple home automation system. Plug the self-contained unit into an electrical outlet, connect a light or an appliance, then pair the WeMo your smartphone over Wi-Fi. Once everything’s hooked up, you gain the ability to switch lights (or whatever) on and off without leaving the comfort of your bed. Activating the included motion sensor will give you a truly automated setup, but if all you need is the Switch, it’s available on its own for $40.

Feb

07

The Next Decade Is The Internet Of Things | Arctic Startup

Since 1980‘s and 1990‘s we were constantly talking about world globalization and how interconnected we have become, partially thanks to the internet. In todays world, I think we need to coin a new term “internetiolization”, if we can pronounce it that is.

You might think that you live in the world of the internet, where everything is connected. But in truth, you have no idea how interconnected its about to get. Thanks to companies such as Sensinode out of Oulu, Finland, every little device is going to be able to communicate to every other little device and be connected to the global “Internet of Things”.

Just imagine for a second that every light switch, device (TV, Fridge) and door lock in your house being connected to each other and the internet. So that you can adjust the overall brigthness of your living room to your preferred level of lumens. Now imagine that you can do that from anywhere in the world, through your mobile phone? Cool, right?   Well, it gets better. All of these devices could theoretically be connected to a wider grid, containing for example street lights. The system could then measure the amount of light that your house emits, couple it together with the amount of light needed on the street and power the street lights accordingly. If you connect light sensors and motion sensors to the grid, you can have the lights follow your car on a highway and not have any lights anywhere where it is not needed. This interconnectedness is what machine to machine communications could become. This new internet can and will be an order of magnitude bigger than what we currently have.

Nov

15

The Internet of Things, Taking On a Life Of Its Own

As this article is being published, European politicians and heavyweight representatives of some of the biggest companies in the world have been convening in Brussels, Belgium to discuss the Internet of Things. The event, The 4th Annual Internet of Things Europe: Shaping Europe’s Future Internet Policy - The road to Horizon 2020 was expected to be a significant one, attracting more senior participants than ever this year, such is the growing momentum around the topic.

The Internet (or Web) of Things is the next big wave in the Internet’s development - at least as disruptive as the web itself. Using smart-tagging and advanced connectivity to digitize dumb products - from bikes and bottles to refrigerators and cars - and connect them to the Internet, will allow people and companies to interact with them in new and almost unimaginable ways. Objects will be able to talk to and control each other, and collect, receive and send information. The implications of this are enormous and wide-reaching, and were due to be further unraveled at the conference.

Rob van Kranenburg, founder of a European think-tank on the Internet of Things, is one of the event’s moderators. He notes that this year, in addition to attracting CEOs, CTOs and innovation leaders from major technology and telecommunications companies, there has been a strong senior presence at an EU government level.

“This reflects the growing realization among a wide range of stakeholders that the Internet of Things will be extremely disruptive, affecting everything,” van Kranenburg says. The nearest analogy is what has happened with the Internet and the browser, which over the last two decades have challenged all sorts of business and consumer norms, he adds.

Sep

06

Futurist’s Cheat Sheet: Internet of Things

The next phase of the the Internet will be about connecting things. The Internet of Things will be central to the infrastructure that we build…

What Is It?

Think of a thing. Really, it could be anything. A chair, a toaster, parts of a car, the lights in your house, the electricity meter, the security cameras in your offices, a fire hydrant, traffic lights … really, anything or everything that can exist could be connected to the Internet. Another name for the Internet of Things is a network of things. The network can monitor your home, your car, infrastructure (utilities such as electricity or water), traffic patterns and a variety of other possibilities to create a more informed and responsive system through data analysis.

Aug

28

Smart Sutures That Detect Infections - Technology Review

Surgical sutures are mindless threads no more. Researchers have now coated them with sensors that could monitor wounds and speed up healing.

The electronic sutures, which contain ultrathin silicon sensors integrated on polymer or silk strips, can be threaded through needles, and in animal tests researchers were able to lace them through skin, pull them tight, and knot them without degrading the devices.

The sutures can precisely measure temperature—elevated temperatures indicate infection—and deliver heat to a wound site, which is known to aid healing.

Apr

16

A Startup Puts the Internet in Your Couch Cushions - Technology Review

Sensor-filled Ninja Blocks connect the Web with whatever’s nearby.

Whoever has been stealing Mark Wotton’s newspaper should look out: He’s formulating a revenge plan, and it involves ninjas.

Well, technically, it involves Ninja Blocks—little computerized, sensor-equipped boxes that Wotton helped create. The blocks connect to the Internet to carry out preset actions in response to stimuli. For example, via an online service called Ninja Cloud, Wotton could set a Ninja Block equipped with a motion detector to automatically take photos of the paper thief and upload them to Facebook.

A Ninja Block might also be programmed to turn on a hall light when a child cries in her crib, or sound an alarm when the cat jumps onto the sofa. Wotton built the small devices and corresponding Web service with two cofounders. “Chances are people will have good ideas [for the devices] we’ve never thought of,” says Wotton, the company’s chief technical officer.

Mar

14

New computer chip seeks to create an “internet of things”

The Flycatcher, a new computer chip from a UK firm, will be capable of connecting traffic lights, parking meters and possibly even forests in the future.

According to the BBC, the firm, Arm Holdings, says that tiny microcontrollers based on what has been termed “Flycatcher” architecture, will be able to create an “internet of things” able to connect to nearly every conceivable device or appliance.

The miniscule microchip (0.03 inches squared) is said to be the lowest powered of its kind ever created and will soon be in motors, sensors, lights and heating systems.

Mar

02

Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web. by Ninja Blocks — Kickstarter

The internet of things for the rest of us.

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Want to bridge the things in your life with the web? Maybe you want to get an alert when your friends are playing on Xbox Live, or send an SMS to your phone when someone is at your front door. Even if you’re an electronics expert, or a programming prodigy, these are complex, finicky projects. Ninja Blocks puts aside the complexity of electronics, networking, and coding and allows you to focus on creating.

Ninja Cloud

This is the Internet of Things the way it should be: Ninja Cloud is seamlessly integrated into your Ninja Blocks, allowing them to easily listen and talk to web services such as Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Weather and more.

How it all works

Ninja Blocks are simple but powerful open source hardware backed by an amazing web service called Ninja Cloud that allows your Ninja Block to talk to your favorite web apps.

Each Ninja Block comes with an RGB LED and built-in temperature sensor and accelerometer. Four expansion ports and a regular USB port allow you to add further inputs and outputs.

Ninja Cloud allows you to control your Ninja Blocks without writing a single line of code.

Feb

16

Open source ‘blocks’ connect the offline world with the web

Hard on the heels of our recent story about EVRYTHNG comes word of yet another venture that brings us one step closer towards an Internet of Things. The spotting this time? Ninja Blocks, an open source hardware project based in San Francisco that aims to provide “a two-way bridge between the things in your life and the web services you use every day.” READ MORE…

via springwise:

Feb

14

Bits meet bite: Check out the connected toothbrush | GigaOM

Want to really embrace the quantitative self? Forget tracking your sleep and start tracking your dental hygiene. Beam Technologies, a year-old startup, is set to introduce a Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush and app that will launch next month. The toothbrush contains a sensor and Bluetooth radio that will send your brushing information to a smartphone app. Later versions will also track how long you spent in certain areas of the mouth and might add some kind of gamification layer to help encourage better brushing. Alex X. Frommeyer, the CEO and founder of Beam, says the Beam Brush should hit shelves in early March and retail for about $50 for the base and $3 for a replaceable brush head. The Android app is ready, and the iOS app should be ready when the toothbrush launches or soon after.

Feb

06

How To Connect 50 Billion Devices to the Internet - Tech Europe - WSJ

The concept of machine-to-machine communication, the “Internet of things”, has been around for a long time. As a post on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Insights blog says:

Look around you for a second and count the number of electronic devices, machines and gadgets. All of them—light bulbs, cars, TVs, digital cameras, refrigerators, stereos, cranes, beds—will be connected to the Internet over the next 15 years, if they aren’t already.

This is the potential of the “Internet of Things”: billions and billions of devices and their components connected to one another via the Internet. 50 billion devices by 2020, according to companies like Ericsson. The Internet of Things will radically alter our world through “smart” connectivity, save time and resources, and provide opportunities for innovation and economic growth.

The blog post is to promote a new report from the OECD which can be downloaded as a 45-page PDF document. Aimed at legislators, the paper describes some of the challenges that have to be faced in order to create networks capable of securely handling billions of devices.

Feb

03

“

When predicting technology trends, Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of Sketching User Experiences may have said it best:

“If history is any indication, we should assume that any technology that is going to have a significant impact over the next 10 years is already 10 years old!”

This theory holds true for several technologies. For example, the first mobile telephone call was made in 1946, many years before the first commercial cellular network was launched in 1979. GPS was in use for nearly 30 years in government and military programs before it became a must have for personal vehicle navigation. And, the formation of the Internet as we know it began in the 1980s, but wasn’t truly incorporated into virtually every aspect of modern human life until a decade later.

Applying this premise to radio frequency identification (RFID) seems to hold true as well. The technology itself was well over 10 years old in 2004 when retail giants began pushing it as a means of driving efficiencies into their supply chains. While these initial retail programs didn’t succeed according to plan, and mass adoption didn’t happen the way many analysts predicted, these initiatives did kick off a high level of interest from retailers, product manufacturers and many other industries and markets focused on improving their business and service processes. Between 2004 and now, something else happened that makes one ask if RFID is ready to have that significant impact Buxton mentions.

”

Reshaping the Way We Think about RFID | ThingMagic’s RFID Blog - Radio Frequency Identification Company and Industry News

Jan

27

A Big Texan Breakthrough for the Internet of Things | Motley Fool

Remember the last time your dishwasher texted you when it broke? Unless you’re Bill Gates, you probably have the kind that just sits there and leaks while you’re on vacation. Such smart devices do exist, but connected appliances are most likely to be sold as part of a complete package, with touchscreen controls and sophisticated solutions most people don’t really need.

But simple solutions to large problems — like a suddenly dangerous appliance alerting you to its problem — are always valued. That’s why Texas Instruments designed the SimpleLink wireless processor, which should be able to get just about anything with a silicon controller online with ease. If this is what manufacturers and consumers need for broader adoption, it could position TI as the go-to company for getting hooked into the Internet of things.