Photos from the frontier: The Internet of...

Photos from the frontier: The Internet of Things

Rick Merritt

4/11/2012 9:01 AM EDT

We provide a few glimpses of the diverse frontier of electronics and distributed computing where networkedsensors are finding new homes in an Internet of Things. Networked sensors are finding their way into anincreasingly broad set of applications marketers have dubbed The Internet of Things. The following photogallery provides a few glimpses of this diverse frontier in electronics and distributed computing.

At its core, the Internet of Things is all about the mote, the tiny module that combines some sort of sensor andcommunications, and perhaps a bit of memory and computing capability. One example (below) is a motedesigned by IBM using the network technology of startup Dust Networks, recently acquired by LinearTechnology.

The devices are appearing where once no semiconductors were found, in everything from hydraulic pumps towristwatches, board games and bandages. Indeed the apps frontier is almost comically diverse.

In a keynote at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T,talked about wireless sensor networks measuring both the moisture content of farm fields to automateirrigation systems and the fullness of dumpsters to calculate the most efficient routes for garbage trucks.

“If you think about our future think trash, think dirt—there’s money there,” he quipped.

Chip makers pursuing these apps include nearly every microcontroller maker, broad analog companies suchas Maxim and Texas Instruments and niche players such as Ember Corp. (whose development kit is shownbelow). A host of mainly wireless networking options are making claims to this territory from Bluetooth toZigbee.

One hot debate is whether today’s Internet protocols are just fine for this work or specialty energy-savingtechniques are needed. Both are in use or in development now.

In any case, all sides agree the end goal is to deliver the smallest possible motes with as much smarts as

possible with what little energy can be harvested or stored in tiny batteries that typically must last for years.

We welcome you to this tour of a few frontier towns in the Internet of Things. We’d love to hear about whatnew technologies or applications you may be pioneering at other points on this horizon. Much of the future ofelectronics is being written in this new Wild West.

Smart cities1.Smart factories2.Smart buildings3.Connected vehicles4.Networked bandages5.Intelligent hospitals6.Dick Tracy 20127.The e-fitness craze8.Smart home monitors9.The networked remote10.Indoor location services11.Games get networked12.Three chips per light bulb13.

Smart citiesThe CityTouch system (below) from Philips automates the job of controlling outdoor municipal lights. It iscurrently in use in Prague and the London boroughs of Croydon and Lewisham.

Streetline Networks created a system (below) to track availability of parking spots using sensors combinedwith mesh networking technology from startup Dust Networks, now part of Linear Technology. The system,now in use in Hollywood and Sausalito, embeds sensors in the pavement (bottom).


Smart factories

Endress+Hauser Process Solutions AG, (Reinach, Switzerland) created wireless network adapters (below)using technology from Dust for process automation systems including an ultrasonic level transmitter, a flowmeter and a temperature transmitter.

Researchers from Lulea University of Technology in Sweden created IPv6 wireless sensor nodes (below) forKamstrup heat meters and Siemens valves used to measure and deliver heat in district heating networks.


Smart buildings

Perhaps the biggest gold mine in the broad Internet of things sector is the smart meter. The concept ofeventually putting every home and office electric meter on a distributed network has attracted chip, softwareand networking giants and startups alike—and of course all the existing meter makers.

It’s early days for the smart meter. Zigbee grabbed an early lead with use in more than a million smart metersto date as the link mfrom the meter to the so-called home area network or HAN. But next generation metersare expected to adopt the Smart Energy Profile 2.0 specification which includes optional implementationsbased on HomePlug powerline networking and Wi-Fi in addition to Zigbee.

Debates still rage over whether the smart meters linking upstream to theutility network should use powerline networking, a new variant of Wi-Fi inthe works, cellular networks or available underused and available WiMaxspectrum and services.

While the debates go on, prototypes are being shopped around to all thestakeholders including this mock up (right) of a smart meter using theG3-PLC standard and chips from Maxim.

Tomorrow’s smart buildings require plenty of other pieces to fall in to place.For example, Philips and others are working on smart lighting systems.

Another example comes from startup Vigilent which has developed andenergy management system (below) and analytics services tailored for energy-conscious data centers. It useswireless sensors based on Dust’s technology.


Connected vehicles

The automobile will become a roving Internetnode some day. Some cars are already on theNet with various audio, video and GPSsubsystems. Much more work is ahead tomake such capabilities standard features oftomorrow’s car and to increase the numberand kinds of devices they enable.

The QNX Porsche Carrera concept (bottom)grabbed attention at CES 2012 as oneexample of a connected car. It uses the TexasInstruments OMAP 4 processor and WiLinkcombo chip among other devices to power itsinfotainment system, personal navigation andwireless options.

For its part, NXP provided chips that enable an electric motorcycle from eBike (above left) to be remotelymonitored and even started up from your smartphone. Watch out!


Networked bandagesKeith Errey (left), chief executive of startup Isansys demonstrates hisLifetouch ECG cardiac monitor, one of a whole class of e-bandages andpersonal monitors now in the works. Errey helped start Toumaz Technology,one of the pioneers in the field.

Errey aims to get his devices into hospitals and clinics initially in England and

India. Like many devices in the category the Lifetouch monitors in real time arange of signals—heart, respiration, temperature and blood pressure amongothers. The continuous data provides deeper insights one-time measurementscannot supply, Errey said.

He notes that 200,000 people die in U.S. hospitals each year, in part due toinadequate monitors or mistakes in health care such devices could eliminate.“If you know what’s going on in the body, you can anticipate health eventscoming,” he said.

Such devices “will open up a whole new body of knowledge—we’ve neverbeen able to do this cheaply enough in a normal environment,” he said of thecontinuous tracking.


Intelligent hospitalsElectronic intelligence is coming to the hospital in many forms from surgical robotics to the so-called “healingenvironments” under study at the Eindhoven labs of Philips. The company aims to reduce known stressorslike PET-CT scans for cancer by creating an automated waiting room that uses special lighting, music andvideos to create a calm environment.

Philips is applying similar ideas to the average hospital room and intensive care units as well, tying together

capabilities from its lighting, medical and consumer groups. Networked capabilities include smart badges thatcan project a doctor or nurses name on a wall when the person enters the room.


Dick Tracy 2012

It’s not the Dick Tracy watch, the video conferencing gadget on your wrist made famous by the 1930’s comicstrip. But today’s Internet of Things sector includes devices that are getting pretty close to it.

The Casio G-Shock (below) uses a nRF8001 Bluetooth chip from NordicSemiconductor to tap into data on your nearby smartphone. The wristwatchsells for less than $200, delivers email notifications and text alerts and canrun up to two years on a button cell.

For a few dollars more you can get the MotoActv (right), a Motorola devicethat includes an MP3 player, FM radio and GPS so runners and cyclists canlisten to music and track their position, powered by TI’s Omap 3 andWL1271L wireless combo chip. Besides Bluetooth, it also supports Wi-Fi andthe ANT+ protocol popular with fitness gadgets.


The e-fitness crazeA group of athletes not satisfied by the way technology was being applied tosports launched startup 4iiii (pronounced “Four Eyes,” ) to push the edge.The resulting Sportiiis heads-up display fits on your glasses and links overANT+ to as many as seven sensors that can be placed on or around an athleteor his gear.

The device provides LED notification lights and responds to voicecommands. It is just one of a growing host of connected fitness gadgets. Chiefexecutive Ian Andes (left) demos the gear on his digitally outfitted cycle.

Smart cities1.Smart factories2.

Smart buildings3.Connected vehicles4.Networked bandages5.

Intelligent hospitals6.Dick Tracy 20127.The e-fitness craze8.Smart home monitors9.The networked remote10.Indoor location services11.Games get networked12.Three chips per light bulb13.

Smart home monitorsThe home of the future will have its own tablet computer from which you can monitor a growing set of digital,networked sensors.

LS Industrial Systems designed the LSMKE-D1 in-home display (below) to track energy consumption andcarbon dioxide emissions. It also acts as an MP3 player, digital photo album and gives access to weatherforecasts. It rides a Zigbee network and is powered by TI’s CC2530 SoC and CC2591, 2.4 GHz RF chips.

Ember’s Zigbee chips power a similar tablet that runs software from iControl (below). The iControlOpenHome platform manages security and other home automation systems andis aimed at customers including broadband service providers who want toextend their networks in and around the home.

Even the lowly thermostat has become a networked device accessible from anyWeb browser. The Nest Learning Thermostat (above right) developed by AppleiPod inventor Tony Fadell and his new team at Nest uses six built-in sensors todetect light, motion and more. It automatically optimizes the use of heat andcooling systems based on patterns it detects in its ARM Cortex A8-based TISitara processor. It links both to the home Wi-Fi and Zigbee networks.


The networked remoteAs the TV becomes smart and gets on the Web, so does the lowly remotecontrol. The intelligent television will sport combo wirless chips that link tohome nets over Wi-Fi and to remotes on Bluetooth, say proponents of theshift such as Nordic Semiconductor and Philips.

Nordic product manager Thomas Embla Bonnerud shows the company’snRFready Smart Remote design (below). It uses a Synaptics touch padsupporting gesture commands and a six-axis of motion accelerometer.

Tom Dubil (left), a product manager with a Philips group that build 85 millionremotes a year, says service providers from AT&T to Verizon want to makeremotes that work much like their smartphones. The move from infrared toRF increases bill of materials costs from a few cents to nearly two bucks, butit actually lowers power requirements and adds two-way interactivity, henotes.


Indoor location services

Nokia Research is leading work on a new Location Extension protocol to ride on top of Bluetooth 4.0. Theeffort is one of many to bring location-awareness to malls, exhibit halls and other large buildings usingtechnology that could someday be built into off-the-shelf Wi-Fi gear.

"We want to take what's been done in navigation outdoors and bring it inside," said Fabio Belloni (below), aprincipal researcher in Nokia's radio systems lab who demonstrated the technology at a Silicon Valley event.


Games get networkedSifteo Game Cubes use a proprietary low latency 2.4 GHz network to support games that can be downloadedfrom the Web. Sifteo chief executive David Merrill says the concept owes a tip of the hat to Xerox Parcresearcher Mark Weiser (1952-1999) who popularized the concept of networked “tabs” as oneimplementation of his vision of ubiquitous computing.

Each Sifteo cube packs a motion sensor and a 128x128 color display. A set of three sell for $149 including acharging dock and PC dongle for the 2.4 GHz network. About 15 games are available, some for free, andmore are on the way thanks to the release last year of a developer’s kit.


Three chips per light bulbIf NXP gets its way it could sell as many as three chips in every light bulb(below). Quite an Internet of Things bonanza! These LED lights can bewirelessly controlled thanks to NXP transceivers, LED drivers and powermanagement chips in each bulb.

Even parking in San Francisco is now an IoT transaction from a smartphone.Paying can be handled at the meter via a tap using near-field communications(NFC), or it can be done remotely over the Net when a smartphone alert letsyou know in a coffee shop that your time on the remote meter has expired.

NXP is inside the meter and the smartphone with its NFC chips. And yes,there's an app for that.

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