Applied AI Weekly News

Justin Grammens

We've all heard the saying, "It takes a village". During my career I have seen open communities, open standards and open software transform the building of technology. Having open standards allows progress to made that is more than the sum of its parts. People working on open source initiatives are driven to work together, not against each other. They are focused on a common goal, not competing ones. Most importantly, they are doing the work because they have a passion for it. IoT is missing this important piece today. Sure, there are are few projects, but the numbers are still far too small. Standardization from the network all the way to the application layer is key in making these systems interoperate. With out interoperability, the communication fails and the whole power of IoT falls down. Let's demand more companies back an open IoT/M2M platform that can be used by everyone.

Sam Schroeder

The Internet of Things is all about devices, but we shouldn't forget people are still behind it all. This space is very active with abundance of conferences, IoT Meetups, and one off events happening all over the world. If you want to see projects people are doing get out and meet them. Many times, the interesting stuff isn't posted on the internet.

Image credit: Creative Commons, some rights reserved

News

Why ‘Access’ Will Define the Internet of Things

As internet access spreads to further areas of the world, there will continue to be challenges with regards to devices communicating with each other. To help with this growing problem two similar organizations have been formed. The Industrial Internet Consortium and the All Seen Alliance. Putting standards in place that give open access to everyone around the world will lead to a more educated and informed human race.

Six Unique Prototypes On The Fringe Of The Internet Of Things

Currently, many IoT devices are utilitarian in their design. Gadgets can measure our pulse or monitor temperature and humidity. But as tech becomes ubiquitous we'll see more speculative projects. Kevin Holmes, writing for the creatorsproject at Vice, reviews a few of the more peculiar.

Good Vibrations Power IoT for an Offshore Mussel Ranch

Catalina Sea Ranch is planning to raise mussels off shore from Huntington Beach in California. By using Verizon Wireless's LTE network CSR plans to keep a real time watch on farm conditions using sensors and cameras.

Business

Cisco to Open 3 More IoT Innovation Labs

"Cisco sees the IoE/IoT/M2M market being worth $19 trillion over the course of the coming decade". Even if they are off by a factor of ten, it's still going to be a huge market. These new opportunities require hardware and services that Cisco provides, so it's no wonder they are so interested in this space. The nagging question is, why are we not seeing these innovation labs in the US?

The Internet of Things for Seniors

"Look at where the population of your customers is at and follow that trend" is sage business advice. In fact, as you look over the past 50 years, there are whole new industries spawned from the baby boomer generation. Using technology, IoT for Seniors is the next logical phase to help that aging generation.

Industrial

How the Internet of Things Is Transforming Manufacturing

"The Internet of Things" spawned from the industry terminology of Machine to Machine ( M2M ) communication. While M2M has been around for more than a decade, only 10% are connected industrial operations! The market is ripe for new innovation and companies with deep pocketbooks are ready to purchase products that will enable them to improve their efficiency.

Development

Internet of Things Alliances Formed

Nest Labs, Samsung, Arm and others have joined forces to build an industry trade group around how devices communicate in a home network. The new protocol they are building on is called “Thread”. It will enable IPv6 for lower power usage and is already available for chips that are running the Zigbee Standard. There already exists competition in this space from two other groups: OIC and AllSeen Alliance.

Ant-Sized Radios for IoT Are EM Powered

Genius! Engineers at two California universities have come up with a way to power a radio via the incoming electro-magnetic waves. This provides an amazing opportunity to keep all these devices of the future online and powered for extremely long periods of time.

DIY

"Hello World" for Hardware - Build Your First IoT Project in a Weekend

When learning how to program a computer, historically your first exercise was to print some words on the screen. Now, when building hardware the first thing to do is make something blink.

Crowd Funding

Automate Your Blinds

Another project in the home automation space comes to light. This one is around the blinds in your home. Getting this solution integrated with more blind manufactures in the future seem like a great idea. Apparently others agree as the project has already hit their funding goal!

xWifi: An Open Source Fingertip-Sized Wifi Module

xWifi module is a fingertip-sized open hardware and software wifi module that has launched an Indiegogo campaign. It has UART, SPI interfaces, GPIO and PWM for intelligent control. Using a device of this size, there's a wide variety of applications for creating exciting Internet of Things solutions!

Network

Choosing Your Messaging Protocol: AMQP, MQTT, or STOMP

As you start diving into the technology behind the Internet of Things, you will encounter a myriad of different protocol options. There is a growing trend towards lightweight publish/subscribe models when developing devices. This article covers some of the difference and similarities you should be looking for as you start integrating some of the more popular IoT protocols.

Events

@Things Expo - Santa Clara, California

November 4-6 in Santa Clara, CA

Delegates to @ThingsExpo West will be able to attend three separate tracks: Consumer IoT, Enterprise IoT, IoT Developer.

There are 45 breakout sessions in all, with Keynotes, General Sessions, and Power Panels adding to three days of incredibly rich presentations and content.

Agenda | Speaker List | Registration | Event Brochure

IoT World Forum 2014 - London, UK

November 25-26, 2014

Agenda | Speaker List | Registration

Internet of Things Conference - Sydney Olympic Park

May 7, 2015

Agenda not yet available.

Survey

Pew Research Center's Report

PEW Internet Project has issued a comprehensive report looking at the future of the internet. It’s no surprise to us that there are significant technological changes ahead. A global network is being built with smart sensors, augmented reality, continued disruption of business models and analytics mapping for the physical and social worlds. This will mostly impact:

Bodies ( Wearables )
Homes ( Consumer )
Communities ( Efficiency )
Goods and Services ( Business )
Environment ( Energy )