Tag Archives: Sensors

Interacting with the Atmel-powered morphing table

Last week, Bits & Pieces reported that MIT researchers had created a morphing table with Atmel microcontrollers (MCUs) under the hood. Today, we’ll be taking a closer look at the platform’s interactive features.

Dubbed inFORM: Dynamic Physical Affordances and Constraints through Shape and Object Actuation, the Atmel-powered table is equipped with a number of ATMega2560s, along with 900 individually actuated white polystyrene pins that make up the surface in an array of 30 x 30 pixels.

An overhead projector provides visual guidance of the system, with each pin capable of actuating 100mm and exerting a force of up to 1.08 Newtons each. Actuation is achieved via push-pull rods that are utilized to maximize the dense pin arrangement – making the display independent of the size of the actuators.

MIT’s latest configuration of the morphing table features two separate interfaces – adding a display so viewers can observe the individual who is manipulating the surface. As HackADay’s James Hobson notes, MIT’s advanced platform opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for the tactile digital experience.

“The inFORM also has a projector shining on the surface, which allows the objects shown from the other side to be both visually and physically seen — they use an example of opening a book and displaying its pages on the surface,” he explained.

“To track the hand movements they use a plain old Microsoft Kinect, which works extremely well. They also show off the table as a standalone unit, an interactive table. Now all they need to do is make the pixels smaller.”

Interested in learning more about the Atmel-powered morphing table? You can check out MIT’s official project page here.

Atmel and Hillcrest Labs team up on sensor hubs

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Atmel and Hillcrest Labs recently expanded their collaboration in the context of Atmel’s Partner Program to deliver turn-key sensor hub solutions. As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, sensor hubs are increasingly being used to offload sensor management from a main processor.

Essentially, the combination of Hillcrest’s SH-1 sensor hub software and Atmel’s ultra-low power microcontrollers provides ‘always on’ features such as context awareness and gesture recognition, all while minimizing system power consumption.

In related news, Hillcrest also debuted a SH-1 sensor hub product designed to efficiently manage inertial, magnetic and environmental sensors using Atmel’s versatile SAM D20 ARM-powered Cortex M0+ based microcontroller (MCU). According to Chad Lucien, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Hillcrest Labs, the SH-1 sensor hub is targeted at smartphones, tablets, wearable electronic devices and the Internet of Things (Iot).

“The SH-1 sensor hub is a complete software package that includes high performance, low power sensor fusion, context awareness and gesture recognition algorithms, optimized sensor drivers, and the hub/host interface which communicates with an application processor,” Lucien explained.

“The software transforms data from up to six different types of sensors—including inertial, magnetic and environmental sensors—into application-ready information and is designed to perform consistently regardless of the sensor supplier used. The combination of the low power sensor hub microcontroller and Hillcrest’s software is available for Android smartphones and tablets, wearable devices and a variety of other sensor-enabled devices.”

Meanwhile, Espen Krangnes, Senior Product Marketing Manager, MCU Product Marketing, Atmel Corporation, noted that the harmonization of software and hardware was critical to ensure advanced functionality and extended battery life for next-gen devices.

“Hillcrest’s heritage in developing cutting-edge motion processing software and our past experiences with the team made them an essential partner for our new program, and we look forward to working with them to develop products to address this rapidly growing market,” Krangnes added.

IoT: A quiet revolution is taking shape

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Over three-quarters of companies are now actively exploring or using the Internet of Things (IoT), with the vast majority of business leaders believing it will have a meaningful impact on how their companies conduct business.

Based on current estimates, the number of “things” predicted to be connected to the Internet by the end of this decade range from a staggering 30bn to 50bn.

Clearly, consumers will likely soon be awash with IoT-based products and services – even if they may not realize it. As Clint Witchalls notes in a recent report sponsored by ARM, data is therefore a fundamental component of the IoT’s future.

Indeed, fitting sensors to a potentially infinite number of “things” will generate untold amounts of new information. However, most business leaders remain confident that their organizations will be capable of managing and analyzing the data flowing from the predicted rapid expansion in IoT networks. The solution will be finding an acceptable balance that does not slow the system down to the extent that it becomes unworkable. This is obviously a challenge for organizations, but one that is surmountable.

“There is this very simple equation that we’ve learnt,” explains Elgar Fleisch, the deputy dean of ETH Zürich. “People will use a technology if the perceived benefit is larger than the perceived risk. As long as the perceived benefit is bigger, people don’t worry as much about the risks.”

To be sure, says Witchalls, the IoT is a quiet revolution that is steadily taking shape. Businesses across the world are piloting the use of the IoT to improve their internal operations and are preparing a stream of IoT-related products and services. Consumers might not (initially) recognize them as such, but that will not stop them from being launched, as few end users need to know that user-based car insurance, for example, is an IoT-based application.

Yet some important unknowns remain, Witchalls acknowledges. Perhaps most importantly, nobody knows what the winning business models are going to be. Even seasoned management consultants will struggle to provide definitive answers. Simply put, it is likely a matter of experimenting with different models to see which ones work.

The main message for latecomers and doubters? Consider the opportunities offered by the IoT—if nothing else than to improve internal operations. To be sure, there is a consensus that companies which are slow to integrate the IoT risk falling behind the competition. As such, the next step for business leaders is to decide what IoT commitments and investments they are ready to make, and where.

Interested in learning more about the rapidly evolving IoT? Part one of this series can be read here, part two here, part three here and part four here.

Sensirion and Atmel develop smarter sensor devices

BSN* talks Atmel and ARM

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This week, The Bright Side of News (BSN*) crew sat down with Atmel reps on the sidelines of ARM TechCon 2013 in Santa Clara to discuss two major announcements: the expansion of Atmel’s ARM Cortex-A5 MPU lineup and a series of new sensor hub partnerships.

“These two are clearly forward-thinking products that will hopefully put [Atmel] as front runners in newly expanding parts of the ARM universe,” writes BSN* Editor in Chief Anshel Sag. “Atmel first talked to us about their sensor hub and the introduction of the SAM D20 Cortex M0+ based design. Their MCU is designed in conjunction with a special development board in order to make it easier for companies to develop certain sensor fusion more easily. And because of the MCU’s low-power and design it can be integrated into tiny package sizes enabling sensors and sensor fusion within a single package.”

As Sag notes, this is because Atmel’s $600 development board is capable of enabling not only the connectivity of multiple sensors from various vendors, but also providing an easier software stack to make sensor fusion possible.

“After all, the truth is that sensor fusion will be the future of most mobile computing and it makes sense that someone would need to make it easier to combine different sensors together,” Sag continues. “Atmel is working with Bosch, Intersil, Kionix, MEMSIC and Sensirion to make sensor wings in order to work with the Xplained development board. By doing this, these companies not only increase the possibility that their sensors will get used, but they also make it easier to buy more of their sensors.”

Sag also discusses Atmel’s updates to its ARM Cortex A5-based solutions which are designed to expand the company’s capabilities.

“This chip is their SAMA5D3 MPU and is designed to increase the versatility, durability and gaining more features. Atmel’s goal is to enable these Cortex-A5 chips to be used in virtually any low-power application with or without the need for [a] display,” he adds.

“One of the variants of this chip, the SAMA5D36, is a superset device which enables the use of an LCD, two ethernet ports, and dual CAN support. All other models sacrifice on one of those three things, but this chip enables all three fully. There is also the SAMA5D36 and SAMA5D35 which support ambient temperatures in the range between -40 degrees to 105 degrees celsius. This would enable some very interesting industrial applications as well as potential for some automotive applications.”

The full text of the BSN article can be read here.

A closer look at Atmel’s Xplained kits

Electronics User Experience with Sally Carson, co-founder of Pinoccio

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By Eric Weddington, Marketing Manager, Open Source & Community

Sally Carson, co-founder of Pinoccio

In February I did an interview with Eric Jennings, co-founder of Pinoccio. Pinoccio is a new Open Source Hardware business, building “a complete ecosystem for the Internet of Things”. The Pinoccio is a pocket-sized microcontroller board, with wireless networking, rechargeable LiPo battery, sensors, and the ability to expand its capabilities through shields, much like an Arduino board. It features the new Atmel ATmega256RFR2, a single-chip AVR 8-bit processor with low power 2.4GHz transceiver for IEEE 802.15.4 communications.

Pinoccio featuring new Atmel ATmega256RFR2

Eric Jennings, along with his partner Sally Carson, co-founded Pinoccio. In my interview with Eric Jennings he said:

Eric Jennings: Sally Carson, Pinoccio’s other co-founder, is an expert in the intersection between humans and technology. What I mean by that is that she thinks very deeply and carefully about the psychology of humans interacting with computers. Human-computer interaction, user experience, and usability all fall under her umbrella. I consider her contribution a secret weapon in what we’re trying to achieve with Pinoccio.

A Secret Weapon?!… I had to find out more what Eric meant, and just what exactly is Pinoccio’s Secret Weapon. I contacted Sally Carson and asked her about the intersection of User Experience (UX) with electronics and the design of the Pinoccio. Along the way, I learned some good lessons on why Design is important, even to just a set of electronics.

Eric Weddington (EW): What intrigued you about the Pinoccio to co-found a hardware startup company?

Sally Carson (SC): Well, I was always a creative kid, always drawing or making something. And, I always loved fiddling around with gadgets and electronics. In high school, I became an audio/video nerd. I got into skateboarding and playing in bands with friends. But, a huge part of both of these hobbies was the A/V part. So, for example, I filmed tons of footage of my friends and I skating. I would make these skate videos, editing the footage down using two VCRs. I’d use a 4-track to mix in audio, or I’d splice in the audio from an old Nintendo, like from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every time we ollied or did a trick, there would be the “bloop” sound of a turtle jumping. So, I wasn’t like, busting out the soldering iron, but I was trying to find all of the different ways I could combine the electronics that I had access to.

Later on, I became a Web Designer and suddenly all of my creative output was virtual and done on a computer. I missed the physicality of using my hands to make things. Tim O’Reilly was a big influence on me, and I tried to keep up with whatever O’Reilly Media was putting out. I cut my teeth on the Web Design In a Nutshell book. I listened to podcasts of ETech and the Web 2.0 Conference.

Around 2004, I started to specialize in Interaction Design, and I was really interested in the Interaction Design Institute of Ivrea — where Massimo Banzi was teaching, and where Arduino was being developed. They were teaching Interaction Designers to prototype and test their product ideas by quickly building a physical prototype. This was fascinating to me — you could still be a Tech nerd but also build things with your hands. That blending of physical and virtual was super compelling; I always thought I had to choose one or the other.

Then, I got the first issue of Make when it came out, and I was totally enchanted. Make had found this incredible group of people who were tech geeks like me, but who knew how to build real things with their hands. I filled sketchbooks with ideas for DIY projects that I personally wanted to build. But, I still felt this barrier to entry and I hadn’t yet found a community of Makers who could help me. Every project I wanted to build needed to be wireless and Web-enabled, but that seemed totally out of reach for someone like me who wasn’t deeply technical.

I think there are a lot of people out there like me, who are somewhat geeky, but not super “deep geeks.” They want to build wireless, web-enabled projects but they don’t know how and they’re not sure it’s even possible. With Pinoccio, we’re providing all of that scaffolding for you. Your board is talking to the Web wirelessly within minutes of taking it out of the box. It already has a rechargeable battery that can last for weeks or months. From there, it’s up to you to start imagining possibilities for this platform. We want you to focus on the specifics of your project, instead of losing momentum trying to figure out all that other stuff.

So, with Pinoccio, I got really excited about enabling other people to build cool projects like the ones I had been dreaming about for years. There’s something really magical about creating a tool that enables other creative, talented folks — there’s this amazing multiplier effect.

EW: The Pinoccio could be looked at just the electronic guts of a larger system, as just a set of functions to be implemented. You and Eric Jennings see a need to approach the problem differently with Pinoccio. What led you to do this differently?

SC: The two most basic questions that I ask when I’m designing a product are: “Is it useful?” and “Is it desirable?” I want the answer to both questions to be yes.

If we had approached Pinoccio as “just a set of functions to be implemented,” we would have been building something useful, but not desirable. And that’s when you run the risk of commoditization. Your customers won’t have any particular loyalty to you, they’ll simply comparison shop between functionally similar products and choose whatever’s cheapest. Even if you’re first to market, this makes you vulnerable to cheaper knock-offs in the future.

So we want to be both useful *and* desirable. What does that look like? Let’s take Sugru as an example. Sugru is this magic, self-curing rubber that you can use to fix or modify practically anything — tools, electronics, everyday objects around the house. I had a sample packet laying around for a few months. I understood what it was, I understood the usefulness of it, but it wasn’t yet desirable in my mind.

Once Fall rolled around, I was commuting by bike at night, and I was frustrated with my new headlight. It had this recessed on/off button that was nearly impossible to press with thick gloves on. I used Sugru to fatten up the button and make it taller. The next day, once the Sugru had cured, I tried turning my light on and off with gloves and it was way, way better. I FELT SO SMART AND AWESOME! That was the moment that I fell in love with Sugru, because of how it made me feel about myself. I felt clever, capable, and industrious.

Now Sugru is both useful and desirable to me. I want to use it again, because I want to feel smart and awesome again. I want to show off what I “made” to my friends. It’s less about the Sugru, it’s more about how it made me feel. That “a-ha!” moment is what we’re shooting for with Pinoccio. We want to build a useful tool that makes people feel smart and awesome. We want to reduce those frustrating barriers to entry so you maintain your motivation to see a project through to completion. Then we want you to share what you built, show it off online, and collaborate with others who are working on similar projects.

EW: How is the process of designing the User Experience for the Pinoccio different than for other products?

SC: When I’m designing for the Web, I try to put together a functional prototype as quickly as possible, even if it’s just a clickable simulation comprised of sketches. Then I test it with real users. But, this is harder to do with hardware, it takes a lot longer to get to the functional prototype phase.

So, we used conferences like the Open Source Hardware Summit as an opportunity to interview potential customers and ask them about what they have actually done in the past. Have they tried to build a web-enabled project? How were they powering their projects? What tools did they use? What was frustrating? What worked well? This is a lot different than asking them if they think they would use Pinoccio, or asking them what features they’d like to see. We tried to identify existing pain points, based on the actual previous experiences of our target audience, then shape features around those insights.

EW: What part of the design process of the Pinoccio surprised you?

SC: I wouldn’t say I was surprised by this exactly, but I am constantly amazed by how awesome our community is. They’re brilliant, creative, and determined. They’re also incredibly generous and it’s super fun to see them sharing ideas and helping each other. I guess it surprised me how much idea exchange is already happening between members of the Community. It’s really rewarding to see that happening, and being an open source hardware company made it possible.

EW: What was the biggest challenge of the design process of the Pinoccio, and how did you overcome it?

SC: Well, for Web-based products, we try to build a Minimal Viable Product, get something into the hands of users as quickly as possible, see how they respond, then iterate and evolve the product organically from there. That’s a lot easier to do with software, because it’s relatively fast and cheap to put together an MVP.

Hardware is slower, it’s more expensive, and it’s inherently a “Waterfall” process — meaning there are a series of linear dependencies and the project can’t advance until each phase is complete. For each iteration, you have to make design changes to the board, order components, order PCBs, get the boards assembled, test them, rinse and repeat. It’s a weeks-to-months iteration cycle, instead of the hours-to-days cycles that we enjoy in Web Development.

I think the way that we address this is to bring assembly in-house. That will really allow us to take advantage of these Agile methodologies that we’re used to — rapid iterations of testing and refining. It will let us tighten up those cycles of iteration.

EW: What are some common mistakes that you see in hardware product design, that don’t take into account User Experience?

SC: Well, I think for any tech product, be it hardware or software, it’s tempting to think about features first, and to create a list of technical requirements as a starting point.

What we try to do instead is to think deeply about who our customer is. We think about what Peter Merholz calls their “emotional requirements.” What are their needs, motivations, and goals? What excites them? What frustrates them? How does Pinoccio fit into their lives, and how does it fit into a typical day? We answer these questions via different methods of qualitative research, including ethnography and interviews. It’s not enough to ask your target audience if they think they would like a particular product or feature. People are famously bad about self-reporting, it’s better to observe what they actually do, as opposed to asking them what they think they might do or might like.

Let’s go back to my bicycle light again. I’m going to hypothesize around what happened. The designers knew they were designing a light. They decided on some features — it’s possible they even asked customers what features they’d like — and they decided the light should have three modes: blink (for visibility and longer battery life), steady/low beam, and steady/high beam. They explored the interface — how do you use a single button to turn it on/off and to cycle through the three modes? The single button may come from a cost constraint. The flat, rubber button may have been an attempt to waterproof the light for riding in the rain. But did they observe real customers actually using the product? Not just in a lab setting, but in the real-world, during a typical day? Here in the States, in the late Fall, daylight saving ends and suddenly we’re all biking home in the dark. This is the time of the year that I start using my bike light. And because of the colder weather, I’m usually wearing gloves. If they had observed customers like me, in everyday conditions, they would have seen how hard it is to press that button with gloves on. And they would have seen me cursing under my breath, vowing to never buy a light from them again.

I think the best products make their customers feel smart. When you’re building complex technology products, if you do a bad job with the User Experience, the customer will blame themselves, “I suck at computers.” But it’s not their fault, it’s yours. And no one wants to keep using a product that makes them feel dumb. Frustration, hacks, and work-arounds are all super valuable insights. These are signals that a need that’s not being met. When I used Sugru to make the button easier to push, this was a work-around that signaled a need was not being met.

The key is to learn who your customer is, and to build empathy for them. Let that shape your product.

EW: How do you extend User Experience to the Pinoccio shields that are being developed?

SC: We talk to customers, we try to identify pain points that they’ve experienced with existing tools out there. We also talk to them about what they’re planning on building with Pinoccio. So, we just sent out a survey to our IndieGogo campaign funders asking them what their first Pinoccio project would be. Their answers will inform which shields we produce first. Then, once we have some shields produced, we’ll conduct qualitative research — observe actual customers using them during a typical day, in a typical setting. For example, we might go to a Makerspace where we know someone is building a project with Pinoccio, and just be a fly on the wall while they’re working on their project. Where do they get stuck? Where do they feel frustrated, or need help? That will help us refine the experience for the next iteration.

EW: There are many different solutions in the Wireless field, and the networking of objects that communicate wirelessly. What are some of the challenges of the user experience in this area, and what is Pinoccio doing to help users in this area?

SC: I think to-date, most solutions out there are either (1) so technical that only deep geeks can make use of them, or (2) they’re user-friendly but they’re constrained to a very specific use case, like home automation.

Our challenge is to build an extensible enough system that can support a variety of use cases, a robust enough system that we don’t lose the interest of those deep geeks, and yet still offer something that is easy for less technical folks to understand and use. For that final piece, we’ll be building a series of web-based tools that will help get those less technical folks up and running quickly and easily.

EW: You and Eric Jennings are located in different parts of the country, yet you have a start-up company together. What are the tools that you use to work together?

SC: Yep, Eric’s in Reno, and I’m in Ann Arbor. Eric and I use a number of tools, and have found a set up that works really well for us. We usually have IM running in the background, and ping each other throughout the day. We also do a daily Google Hangout — basically our “Stand Up” meeting in the Scrum parlance. Because we’re a young company, we’re happy to let these calls go long, and meander from detailed product decisions, all the way to long-term roadmap stuff.

We use Git for collaborating on code. We also have an internal documentation site that we use for asynchronous communication. It’s just a WordPress install running the P2 theme — it’s well-suited for short updates that can grow organically into longer discussions. We can archive pages that have evergreen info, and can easily search for and reference them later:

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/p2

EW: What are your future goals with Pinoccio?

SC: I want Pinoccio to become just another tool in the average person’s workshop, makerspace, or art studio, sitting there right next to the duct tape. When they have an idea, they’ll grab a couple of Pinoccios and quickly throw together a prototype. I want this to feel totally unremarkable. Pinoccio is just another tool at their disposal that expands their capabilities. The object — the board itself — is less important. What’s important is that it enables them to build what they want to build, and it makes them feel smart, industrious, and clever (which they are!).

1:1 interview with Michael Koster

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Series 3 – Why IoT Matters?

By Tom Vu, Digital Manifesto and Michael Koster, Internet of Things Council Member

Three-part Interview Series (Part 3)

Tom Vu (TV): Describe how Internet of Things matters? Why should anyone care? Should futurist, technologist, data hounds, product extraordinaires, executives, and common consumer need to understand what’s to come?

Michael Koster (MK):

There are two main effects we see in the Internet of Things. First, things are connected to a service that manages them. We can now monitor things, predict when they break, know when they are being used or not, and in general begin to exploit things as managed resources.

The second, bigger effect comes from the Metcalfe effect, or simply the network effect, of connecting things together. Bob Metcalfe once stated that the value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected compatible communicating devices. Since then it’s used to refer to users, but maybe Bob was thinking way ahead. Notice the word compatible. In this context, it means to be able to meaningfully exchange data.

When we connect physical objects to the network, and connect them together in such a way as to manage them as a larger system, we can exploit the Metcalfe effect applied to the resources. We are converting capital assets into managed resources and then applying network management.

Because Internet of Things will be built as a physical graph, it’s socialization of everything, from simple everyday devices to industrial devices. Metcalfe states that 10X connections is 100 times the value. Cisco is projecting that the Internet of Everything has the potential to grow global corporate profits by 21 percent in aggregate by 2022. I believe these represent a case for pure information on one end, and an average efficiency gain over all of industry on the other.

This has the potential to change things from a scarcity model, where the value is in restricting access to resources, thus driving up price, to a distribution centered model, where value is in the greater use of the resource. Connecting things to the network is going to reverse the model, from a model of “excluding access” to “inclusion access”, a model where you push toward better experience for consumer/customer/co-business.

Crowdsourcing of things is an example, where models are inverted. The power arrow is going in the opposite direction, a direction equalizing toward the benefit of the massive body consumers and people. This in turn, helps shift the business model from a customer relationship managed by vendors, also called advertising, to vendor relationship managed by customers. This is called Vendor Relationship Management, or VRM, pioneered by Doc Searls. This reverses the power arrow to point from customer needs toward business capability to meet needs, and needs are met now that the vendor is listening. A lot of this is not just IoT but also open source nature, and the big changes happening in people, where sharing being held more valuable than the exclusion of access.

Inverting the value model, breaking down artificially bloated value chains, creating a more efficient economy, I believe it important to create a layer of connectivity that will act as the necessary catalyst to the next Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, Industrial Internet. Break down the scarcity-based models, exclusion of access, turn it around. Instead of excluding access and driving prices up for limited resources, we will yield higher more efficient utilization of resources.

michael-koster-2-Maker-Faire-2013-SanMateo-Atmel-Maker-Movement

Michael Koster describing Internet of Things and the Maker Movement and Open Source Importance of this Development with Booth attendees at Maker Faire 2013 in San Mateo

It matters on a Global Scale, by giving us better resource utilization. SMART Grid alone has resulted in up to 19.5% efficiency improvement, with an average of 3.8% improvement over all deployments already. We do not have enough energy storage or transmission capacity to deal with the major shift to solar energy sources now in progress worldwide. We are going to have to adapt, learn, monitor, manage, and control our usage in ways only possible with large scale sensing and control.

For the spirit of IoT, it’s not only in making peoples/consumers lives more convenient, solving their first world problems, but its more in the ability to manage resources together as a larger system, from the individual out to a global scale. Especially, this holds true with the effects of globalization, balancing, localization, connectivity, and ubiquity. It’s for the people. Social Media had it’s transformation across many things, Internet of Things will also have an efficiency and business transformation.

Companies like Atmel play an important role in creating the building blocks for embedded control and connectivity by means of progressing the ARM / AVR / Wireless / Touch portfolio of products, all of which are the necessary thinking and connecting glue of the Internet of Things. Internet of Things has a large appetite for ultra low power connectivity using wireless standards. Wireless Sensor Networks are key technology for the IoT, so much that WSN was probably the number one issue in the early deployment. There are many competing standards: Zigbee, SA100.11, Bluetooth, Body Area Network, Wi-Fi Direct, NFC, Z-Wave, EnOcean, KNX, XRF, WiFi, RFID, RFM12B, IEEE 802.15.4 (supporting WPAN such as ZigBee, ISA100.11a, WirelessHART, IrDA, Wireless USB, Bluetooth, Z-wave, Body Area Network, and MiWi).

michael-koster-Maker-Faire-2013-SanMateo-Atmel-Maker-Movement

Michael Koster Exhibiting with Atmel Booth at Maker Faire 2013 San Mateo

Tom Vu (TV): What would be the most important design decision that supersedes the eventual success of an open source Internet of Things compliance?

Michael Koster (MK):

The first most important decisions are to do open source design based on needs and use cases. I don’t think we can build an IoT if its not open source, or if it’s not connected to the real world use cases.

Just like the Internet, built on open source and open standards, the starting data models are important for building on and building out. HTML and http and URLs allowed many platforms to be built for the web and supersede each other over time, for example Server Pages, SOAP, Javascript, and AJAX. A browser can understand all of the current platforms because they are all based on common abstractions. We believe that the Semantic Web provides a solid basis of standard web technology on which to base the data models.

Tom Vu (TV): Describe the importance of Internet of Things silos and other M2M standards currently at large in the development community? What are the differences?

Michael Koster (MK):

The IoT has started off fueled by crowdfunding, VC money and other sources that have to some extent built on a business model based on vertical integration. Vertical integration has a big advantage; you need to have a self-contained development to get things done quickly for proof of concept and demonstration.

Vertical integration is also a big driver of the current machine-to-machine, or M2M, communication market. This is the paradigm supporting the initial deployment of connecting things to services for management on an individual thing basis.

The downside of vertical integration is that it leads to silos, where the code developed for a system, the data collected, and even the user interfaces are all unique to the system and not reusable in other systems. Moreover, the vertical integration is often seen as a proprietary advantage and protected through patents and copyrights that are relatively weak because they apply to commonly known patterns and methods.

It’s not always this way, though. As an example, the Eclipse foundation is open source, allowing their M2M system to be used for vertical application development as well as integrated with IoT Toolkit data models and APIs to enable interoperability with other platforms.

The European Telecommunications Standardization Institute, or ETSI, also has an M2M gateway that is a combination of open source and paid license code. New features are enabled through Global Enablers or GEs that implement a particular function using an OSGi bundle consisting of Java code. The Smart Object API can be built into ETSI through a GE bundle, which will enable an ETSI M2M instance to inter-operate with other IoT Toolkit instances. This is the power of the approach we’re taking for interoperability, which is obtained by adding a Smart Object API layer to the system.

Tom Vu (TV): Explain horizontal and service interoperability for Internet of Things, why is it so important?

Michael Koster (MK):

Connected things connect through WSN gateways and routers to Internet services that fulfill the application logic for the user. Today, for the most part, each vendor provides a cloud service for the devices they sell, e.g. Twine, Smart Things, or the Nest thermostat. There are also some cloud services that allow any connection, providing an API for anyone to connect, for the purpose of integrating multiple devices. But the dedicated devices mentioned earlier don’t work with the generic cloud services.

Many IoT services today are based on providing easy access to the devices and gateway, with open source client code and reference hardware designs, selling hardware on thin margins, and Kickstarter campaigns. There is typically a proprietary cloud service with a proprietary or ad-hoc API from the device or gateway to the service, and a structured API to the service offering “cooked” data.

These systems contain a highly visible open source component, but much of the functionality comes from the cloud service. If a user wishes to use the open source part of the system with another service, the APIs will need to be adapted on either the device/gateway end or service end, or both. It’s not exactly a lock-in, but there is a fairly steep barrier to user choice.

Internet of Things (IoT) in Silos

There is the beginning of an ecosystem here, where some devices are being built to use existing services, e.g. Good Night Lamp uses Cosm as their cloud service. Other services that allow open API connectivity include Thingworx and Digi Device Cloud. These services all use very similar RESTful APIs to JSON and XML objects, but have different underlying data models. As a result, sensors and gateways must be programmed for each service they need to interact with.

The current system also leaves users vulnerable to outages of a single provider. Even if there was a programmable cloud service that all could connect to that ran user applications, there would be a vulnerability to provider outages. Much better and more robust would be an ability to configure more than one service provider in parallel in an application graph, for a measure of robustness in the face of service outages. Even more, it should be possible to run user application code in IoT gateways, local user-owned servers, or user-managed personal cloud services. Today’s infrastructure and business models are at odds with this level of robustness for users.

In terms of business and business models, a lot of the connection and network infrastructure today was built on a “value chain” model. These are businesses that are built on a model of vertical integration. In these models, value is added by integrating services together to serve one function, hence vertical. With the Internet of Things, traditional value chains are collapsing down and flattening. There is a bit of a disruption in the business model (services, etc), but also new opportunities emerge to create new Internet of Things services, which is good for business and consumers.

Companies will continue to build out vertical models to specialize in their services. IoT can potentially augment service models with the customer even further and offer creative possibilities of cost savings and experience and deploy more customer centric business fabrics, which will result in better service for consumers.

If companies build their vertically based infrastructure of applications integrating into the IoT Toolkit platform, the basic enablement for horizontal connections will already exist, making it easy to create horizontal, integrative applications based on automatic resource discovery and linkage.

Access to the knowledge can enhance the customer experience and ROI for businesses. We are at the brink of the new era, where companies and products can arise from the information economy; only now motivation via implicit or explicit engagement is tied to things, assets, information, sensors, education, and augmentation; and everything is more intertwined and involved.

Tom Vu (TV): Please assume the role of a futurist or even contemporary pragmatist. How does the landscape of Internet of Things fit into that picture for an individual?

Michael Koster (MK):

It goes back to the idea that your life is going to change in ways that we are no longer be driven by the scarcity pressures we experienced as hunter gatherers. IoT will trigger the overall shift from the resource accumulative, to the interaction driven and resource sharing-enjoying model due to the ubiquitous connectivity and the right kind of applications we can use to bring this experience to maturity.

We expect the Internet of Things to be where the interaction moves away from screens and becomes more like everyday life, only more convenient, comfortable, and easy to manage. We’re still looking for the valet, the system that simply helps us manage things to enable us to become more as people.

Tom Vu (TV): Do you have any insights into how industries like Semi-Conductor can help share the responsibility of making Internet of Things for the People and by the People?

Michael Koster (MK):

Yes, of course, everyone has a part in the build up and build out of Internet of Things. From business to academia, in the home and across the planet, the march to Internet of Things is inevitable. Again and again, the familiar signs of disruption are being seen. We see that happening today with the very first initial releases of connected products. There is a movement in Makers, with substantial global activity. Which is quite harmonious to open source and open hardware. This will be even wider spread once critical mass takes effect with products more and more becoming connected and smart via Internet. The power of the sensor proliferation is akin to Twitter having 10 people registered and using their Social Fabric versus 100s of millions. The more everyday devices and things are connected, the more the power of IoT will overwhelmingly surface.

It’s only how well we integrate and collaborate together across industry to propel this next phase of Internet to the next level. Every potential disruptive technology has a turning point. We are at that point and we are all part of this movement. In turn, the Internet of Things will make better products, a better user experience, and optimized efficiency across all resources. How we decide to apply this technology will make all the difference.

This very notion forces industries to be more aware, efficient, and productive. Sensors and connected devices will help supply chain, manufacturing, research, product roadmaps, experience, and ultimately drive an economy of growth. The enterprise begins to have a visibility, transparency to customers, people. Ultimate, it’s a true nervous system, connected via an enterprise level to a personal consumer level.

SMART, AWARE, and SENSORY are new enhancements to business to include customer habits and patterns of use, threaded right into the production routine and product design. Internet of Things will help sculpt a more consumer oriented and customer centric world of products. Customers will have direct influence in the manufacturing of individual products and instances of products. Companies can help by being part of the community, albeit in the field of electrical engineering, design, data, to software development on the cloud. Internet of Things will have touch points between customers and business as much as the electrical power grids have influence across all business today.

The new ecosystem will have micro scale and agile manufacturing at a level of customization unimaginable today. It’s the next driver for brilliant machines, maybe artisan-machines that work for individuals but still live on the factory floor.

You can work with the developers and work toward expanding businesses that can embrace the development world. Help build the $50 cell phone or connected devices that bridge fiscal and energy compliance for a better world.

Ride the long tail wave… and the inverted business models… Make more accessibility to all products and be responsible in accessibility… From crowdfunding or crowdsourcing, like Kickstarter or Makers, someone is going to figure out how a sensor can do more, in a very impactful and human experience paradigm. The new innovations will come from everywhere; from the 14 year old in Uganda who takes apart her cellphone to repurpose it into a medical monitoring device, from the basements and garages of millions of makers and DIY’ers worldwide who have sure genius among them.

It is super important to get the very latest hardware out to the open community so that innovation can be leveraged, taken to new levels of creativity and crowdsource ideation for collaboration and massive cross-contribution. Accessibility, documentation, development, ecosystem for software support for the MCUs are all too important. Atmel holds building blocks to many of these pieces, combined with their development tools and evaluation ecosystem (Atmel Studio 6, Atmel Spaces, Atmel Gallery) and involvement with Makers and Arduino.

Open Hardware / Open Source will come to be de-facto standards. Bundle open source along with the open hardware to make it even more accessible and embed rapid guide start for newcomers. Right now a key piece is the Wireless Sensor Net. If there were a good open source WSN available and supported by manufacturers, it could enable a groundswell of connected devices.

Build open source and open hardware educational IoT developer’s kits for ages 8 and up, for high school and college, to hit all levels of involvement and expertise. Support community hackspaces and places (ie Noisebridge) where everyone can learn about the digital world and programming.

We are seeing the leveling out of the development happening in all parts of the world. Radical innovation is happening everywhere. Open Source is helping shape this curvature. This is the broader whole tide that we are seeing. Pinocchio is one great innovation emerging from Makers and Open Source, then we have IoT hubs such as SmartThings, Thingworx, or Xively (formerly Cosm). There is a lot of crowdfunding, ideation, blooming of disruptive products looking to change the scene of things to come….
Support open source and open collaboration in everything, to create a culture of sharing and innovation, a culture of synergy in building the Internet of Things together. Involve customers as participants and makers of their own experiences. Make sure everyone has access to the information and support they need to build, maintain, hack, and repurpose their devices over time to promote a healthy ecosystem.

This time innovation is going global. The ideation is happening everywhere. There are many global Silicon Valley type hubs, other metros in the world, as well as global accessibility to the same information. We see startup mentality blossoming across all geo-locations. Again, Semi-Conductors is contributing, helping pave the back-plane for innovation & connectivity for the development layers on top. Global village of innovation is coming of age… Now.

Also read Part 1 and Part 2 of the Interview Series.

1:1 interview with Michael Koster

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A candid conversation of Internet of Things
By Tom Vu, Digital Manifesto and Michael Koster, Internet of Things Council Member

Three-part Interview Series

Series 1 – Inspiration and requirements for Internet of Things

Tom Vu (TV): What inspired you to build the IoT Toolkit and educate the IoT community about data models for the Internet of Things?

Michael Koster (MK):

Michael Koster, System Architect, Open Source Internet of Things, Member of Internet of Things Council

A little over a year ago my partner and I started researching the Internet of Things (IoT), with the idea of creating a system as a sort of “valet” to help manage things in our lives. At the time we lived off the grid, and generated our own energy, maintained our own water system, and spent significant time away from home. We looked at what was available, and there was nothing available in ready-to-use systems that would not require at least a layer of programming to work together in the ways we imagined.

Interoperability between multiple devices is quickly becoming a common feature as people try to build their own ‘Internet of Things’—getting all their smart, devices to be connected to the ‘cloud.’ Once they buy the device on Kickstarter, they can easily enjoy the remote control ability and automation afforded for a while. We found a lot of vendors selling devices that connected to services—services such as the Internet. Some vendors offered open source clients but still tied the devices to their service. We wanted to pull together devices with multiple services, such as combining the home environmental control, energy management, and water, garden, and livestock automation. This requires multiple devices connected together by algorithms, controlling valves, doors, fans, lights, blinds, batteries, etc. Very often, the vertically integrated devices and services didn’t allow all the devices to be connected because they weren’t built on a standard that was interoperable.

Soon they started to think about ideas on how they could create new relationships and interactions between devices and humans by integrating devices from two or three of these systems together. They quickly found out connecting the systems were quite complex.

This is becoming more common as people try to build their own Internet of Things. Once they buy the device on Kickstarter, they enjoy the remote control ability and automation afforded for a while. Soon they start to think up ideas about how they could create new relationships and interactions between things and between themselves and things by integrating devices from 2 or 3 of these systems together. They quickly find out that it’s not straightforward.

There is a service, IFTTT (IF This Then That) which has software connectors that hook up to the APIs of some popular IoT services and provides a rule engine to apply simple logic predicates to conditions and generate actions, if this, then that. All well and a good proof of the need, but not sufficient for the general use case.

We then decided to investigate the DIY approach, and started from the bottom, through online resources like Sparkfun and Evil Mad Science. We also used components like Arduino, many of which are driven by megaAVR (ATmega) or ARM Cortex-M3, both are AVR and ARM microcontrollers with a strong open hardware, IDE and ecosystem tied to it. We put together a few networkable connected sensors, like a weather station, environmental sensors, ambient LED displays, and power monitoring. We found it relatively easy to connect these to Xively formerly Cosm, Pachube, for monitoring and recording, and quickly discovered a number of limitations to what we wanted to accomplish.

We discovered the same situation with the vertically integrated systems, that there was no open, standard way to connect many different devices together and build a larger application to manage things together. Some Platform-As-A-Service vendors run rules engines, similar to IFTTT, and other application logic inside their platform, but we were looking for a way that enabled us to choose where we wanted to run the software, particularly in both the cloud service and in a local hardware gateway. This allowed more embedded devices and connected sensors to potentially grow into a larger system without a central hub, where IoT is being driven.

This is important because our network connection was often impacted by weather and other variables. We realized that everyone would be impacted to some degree, even with DSL or cable service. Our experience with frequent service interruptions taught us the importance of being able to tolerate interruptions in the network connection. Even if the network connection could be made reliable enough, the services are subject to outages and “latency events”, which make them unsuitable for critical services without backup.

After a few months of inquiry and investigation, we decided a robust, common way of interacting between all devices and things was a requirement. It felt like the early days of the Internet. Before the web, before the invention of hyperlinking, HTML and the http protocol, there were no common ways for people to interact within a document, such as creating hyperlinks.

The Internet of Things is at a similar stage of development. IoT needs a standard to interact with other machines; the standard enabling software for easier interaction is essential.

A platform that provides a base set of common tools and services, similar to an operating system, is also a requirement for IoT users. This platform would enable them to get started quickly with their IoT ideas.

Accessibility and interoperability were key to enable a user to start building smart, connected devices in the era of the Internet of Things.

It became clear that if we could find a standard way to do what everyone expects the Internet of Things to do, and make it as easily accessible and usable as the web is today, that we could help enable the Internet of Things to scale and evolve into what conceivably is the next stage of the internet.

We studied a number of IoT use cases, collaborated with the IoT community, and began to map out what was needed in a common set of tools everyone could use, share, contribute, distribute, and enhance. We wanted to take what already existed in standards, infrastructure, and system components, and build an open source platform that we, and others, could use to create our own end-to-end IoT systems and products.

In the platform, we wanted to provide machine to machine (M2M) connections from sensors and devices, along with application software, and re-use common data models that can easily span across devices and other IoT data streams to build out a common language for descriptions and connections.

We started this process with Social Media, reaching out to like-minded people on LinkedIn. During our investigation, we learned that the issues we discovered weren’t widely known and discussed. Many people there were using no common tools for IoT.

We realized community learning was required to an already steep learning curve on some technologies like RDF and Linked Data. This was one of the reasons we started this IoT blog series to educate people about semantic data modeling and Linked Data driven APIs. Around the same time, we started the Open Source Internet of Things Meet Up in Silicon Valley to meet other like-minded people and build the community.

The founding principle is to create a community around Open Source and Internet of Things. The gravitating principles follow two successful fundamentals: community and interoperability. In fact, the very nature of Internet of Things resonates well with Open Source and Conway’s Law. We want to build a system. Create the structure we envision, based on community and sharing.

You can also read Part 2 and Part 3 to learn more about Michael and IoT.

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