Posts from the ‘News’ Category

Z-Wave hits market milestone with 900th interoperable smart home product

Z-Wave hits market milestone with 900th interoperable smart home product

The Z-Wave Alliance, an open consortium of leading global companies that oversees Z-Wave, claimed to be the world’s largest ecosystem for wireless home control products and services, has announced another milestone in the exploding smart home market: the certification of the 900th interoperable Z-Wave product.

With 900 (and counting) interoperable, brand-agnostic products already on the market, Z-Wave continues to extend its position as the most widely adopted protocol for control and automation products. The landmark 900th product is a Z-Wave addressable smoke alarm by BRK Brands, Inc., the makers of First Alert branded products, among other leading consumer and industrial brands.

“The Alliance congratulates First Alert for achieving this smart home landmark,” said Z-Wave Alliance Chairman Mark Walters. ”For Z-Wave, the milestones keep coming at an ever increasing pace. It was only four months ago that we announced the 800th certified Z-Wave product, and just 8 months before that for the 700th product. The growth of Z-Wave has followed the exponential growth of the smart home market because to a great extent, Z-Wave products and services are defining that market. We look forward to continuing our leadership in every sphere of the emerging smart home space and the Internet of Things.”

First Alert’s latesr Z-Wave addressable smoke alarm, ZSMOKE, offers the consumer added notification capability. If the smoke alarm is activated while the homeowner isn’t home, it can send its alert signal to a Z-Wave based home control gateway, which in turn can alert the homeowner via a text on their smart phone, wherever they may be. The homeowner can then react to the alert with an appropriate response, ranging from having a neighbour check on the house to calling the fire department.

LED lightbulbs access Internet to pave the way for energy saving LiFi technology

LED lightbulbs access Internet to pave the way for energy saving LiFi technology

Chinese scientists have claimed that Wi-fi connectivity from a LED lightbulb (LiFi) is now a step closer. Li-fi promises to be a cheaper and more energy-efficient technology than existing wireless radio systems.

The general availability of LED bulbs and the omnipresence of lighting infrastructure offers major energy efficiency benefits. Although millions of WiFi base stations have been installed worldwide to boost signals most of the energy is consumed by their cooling systems.  The energy utilization rate of WiFi is as low as five percent.  Compared with base stations, the number of lightbulbs that can be used is practically limitless and more energy efficient.

The Chinese scientists claim that a LED lightbulb with embedded microchips can produce data rates as fast as 150 megabits per second, which is speedier than the average broadband connection in China.

Chi Nan, an information technology professor with Shanghai\’s Fudan University said that experiments have shown that four computers under a one-watt LED lightbulb may be able to connect to the Internet under the principle that light can be used as a carrier instead of traditional radio frequencies, as in WiFi.

Chi Nan, who leads a LiFi research team including scientists from the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, plans to display ten sample LiFi kits at the China International Industry Fair that opens on November 5, 2013 in Shanghai.

The University of Edinburgh\’s Prof Harald Haas in the UK originally coined the term LiFi which is a type of visible light communication (VLC) technology that delivers a networked, mobile, high-speed communication solution in a similar way to WiFi. In 2011 Prof Haas demonstrated how an LED bulb equipped with signal processing technology could stream a high-definition video to a computer.

Earlier this year, the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute expounded that data rates of up to 1Gbit/s per LED light frequency were possible in laboratory conditions.

GE Launches 14 New Industrial Internet Predictivity Technologies

GE Launches 14 New Industrial Internet Predictivity Technologies to Improve Outcomes For Aviation, Oil & Gas, Transportation, Healthcare and Energy

GE announced 14 new Industrial Internet Predictivity technologies that will enable global industries to achieve outcomes such as minimal unplanned downtime, increased productivity, preventive maintenance, lower fuel costs and reduced emissions. GE’s solutions will be powered by Predix, a first-of-its-kind industrial strength platform that provides a standard and secure way to connect machines, industrial big data and people. GE is also expanding its ecosystem to include AT&T, Cisco and Intel, which will boost wired and wireless machine connectivity.

GE now offers customers 24 total Predictivity solutions, including 14 launched today. These solutions deliver asset optimization and operations optimization, providing more flexible solutions to manage machines and entire operations — helping them run better, consume less fuel, get serviced more efficiently and minimize unplanned downtime.

IEEE on the internet of things

Exploring the Impact of the Internet of Things

The “next big thing” is the Internet of Things, a world of networked devices equipped with sensors and radio-frequency identification aimed at interconnecting all things electronic to make them more intelligent and programmable. About 50 billion machines and devices could be linked by 2020, according to Cisco Systems, a leader in the IoT movement. Such smart devices are already being used, for example, to check soil moisture in vineyards, control the carbon emission of factories, alert drivers to traffic jams, and monitor patients’ blood pressure—all without human intervention. But people will have a major role to play as they generate and use the data coming from these myriad devices.

While the IoT offers plenty of business opportunities, it also, naturally, presents challenges for engineers, who must build ever more complex systems, deal with a lack of standards, and figure out ways to analyze the deluge of data. Societal issues also intrude, such as the need to keep personal information private while regulating who uses it and for what purpose. These and other issues are why the IEEE Future Directions Committee, the organization’s R&D arm, recently launched its IoT initiative.

“IoT offers the possibility for IEEE members and its societies to integrate their knowledge and skills to create value and impact industry,” says IEEE Member Roberto Minerva, chair of the initiative’s working group. “Applications of IoT are wide-ranging; specialists are needed to develop and improve specific technologies while others work with a more general system view. In addition, the interdisciplinary challenges posed by IoT could be a means to creating larger synergies within IEEE, especially in the areas of education, conferences, and publications.” Minerva is head of innovative architectures in the strategy department of Telecom Italia, in Turin, Italy.

“The idea behind the initiative is to develop ‘thought leadership’ in the marketplace,” adds Harold Tepper, senior program manager for IEEE Future Directions, in Piscataway, N.J. “Then, when people want to know more about IoT, they think of IEEE as the place to go for information, whether it’s papers in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library or its videos and conferences.”

To that end, the group has developed a website, organized a conference, and is about to launch a journal.

Nest smoke detector

Nest Gives the Lowly Smoke Detector a Brain — And a Voice

The $129 Nest Protect, launching this fall, is a handsome white square with rounded corners and an op-arty sunflower pattern. When smoke or carbon monoxide reaches a government-specified level of peril, the device performs like every other alarm. But what sets Nest Protect apart is its vocal warning before things get that bad. This feature has the potential to save lives: Millions of people intentionally disable smoke alarms because they’re fed up when the alert blares at the slightest hint of charred bacon. Nest’s verbal alert gives owners a chance to head off a heart-palpitating klaxon call when none is warranted, making it less likely they’ll rip out the batteries in disgust. And the Nest Protect will never wake you at 3 a.m. to inform you that the battery is low—instead, when the lights go down at bedtime, its gentle ring of light provides a status report. A green glow means all is fine; a yellow circle tells you that it’s time to replace the battery.

IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things

IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT)

Conference Overview

The IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things 2014 will be held in Seoul, South Korea in March 2014. This flagship conference will feature a comprehensive technical program including numerous sessions, tutorials, and an industrial exhibition. The program will feature prominent keynote speakers and vendor exhibits. We invite you to submit original technical papers for presentation at the conference, and for publication in the proceedings. Proposals for tutorials, sessions and industry exhibits are also invited. Extended abstracts describing research at the initial stage or relevant industrial results are also invited.

Theme of the Conference

The theme of IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things 2014 is to investigate how progress in technologies and applications of IoT can be nurtured and cultivated for the benefit of society.

The goal of WF-IoT is to promote the state of the art in scientific and practical research of the IoT. This conference will gather researchers and practitioners from academia, standardization, industry, and the public sector in an effort to present their research and innovation work and share their experiences regarding prototyping and initial service offerings.

Important Dates:

• 11 October 2013: All Papers, Tutorials and Special Session Proposals Due
• 30 November 2013: Papers, Tutorials & Exhibition Acceptance Notification
• 31 December 2013: Papers – Camera-ready Submissions Due
• 31 January 2014: Final Tutorial Material Due
• 6-8 March 2014: WF-IoT Conference

New Ultra Low-power Internet of Things Kit for Smart Cities, Appliances

Thingsquare News

Internet of Things startup Thingsquare today announced the availability of the Thingsquare Internet of Things evaluation kit. Unlike many Internet of Things solutions, the Thingsquare system does not depend on a gateway. Instead, all devices are connected directly to the Internet, using a wireless radio with much lower power consumption than WiFi. Using self-forming and self-healing mesh networking, the range of a Thingsquare system can be very large – a single network can cover an entire city.

Building on the success of existing Thingsquare-based systems, the new Thingsquare kit opens up a new range of applications, including street lighting, smart appliances, meter reading, and wireless sensing. The kit is built on the Texas Instruments (TI) low-power CC2538 2.4 GHz System-on-a-Chip (SoC), an IoT-ready integrated radio transceiver and ARM® Cortex™-M3 microcontroller.

“We are excited to see ready-made evaluation kits for the emerging IoT market,” said Oyvind Birkenes, general manager, Wireless Connectivity Solutions, TI. “The Thingsquare software with TI’s CC2538 SoC opens new application opportunities to further grow the Internet of Things.”

“With direct Internet-connectivity for the radio chips, the Thingsquare evaluation kit makes prototyping and building IoT applications faster than ever before,” said Thingsquare CEO Adam Dunkels. “The TI CC2538 SoC is a powerful platform that can be taken directly to production.”

The Thingsquare evaluation kit is available for immediate purchase for 795 EUR from the Thingsquare website.