If this year’s CES has taught us anything, it’s that
2016 will be the year of the Internet of Things (IoT). We’ve caught
glimpses of exciting IoT related products, services, and technologies in
the past (
Philips Hue and the
Nest Thermostat among others).
Those devices have only scratched the surface of home automation, as you can now add
garage door openers,
washer/dryers,
doorbells and more to the ever-growing list of smart home electronics, but we have yet to see these products work together to create the
smart home we’ve always dreamed of. There’s
been a growing revolution in smart home devices, but now that the
technology giants have dove into the foray, the market is bustling with
new products.
Given how saturated the smartphone market is, it’s easy to see why
many companies are seeking to diversify into this newer market. That’s
why 2016 is shaping up to be IoT’s break-out year. Who are the players,
what are they creating, and who will win? It’s a bit early to make any
definitive statements, so we’re going to provide the information you’ll
need to pay attention to future developments in this rapidly expanding
field.
Standards, Galore! Standards at War!
Life would be so much easier if everyone stuck to only a few
standards, but life isn’t that simple. Each standard has its own pros
and cons, and the market naturally gravitates towards the standard that
is the most robust, inexpensive to implement, cross-compatible, etc.
We’ve seen this play out time and time again in the software world, such
as in the race to build the best mobile operating system. Clearly,
Android came out on top as more companies adopted the OS to compete in
the lucrative smartphone business.
However, the IoT space is a completely different beast. Here we’ve
got companies competing to build the best chipset, the best OS, the best
appliances, and conglomerates competing to push the best frequency for
inter-communication between IoT devices. With potentially billions of
dollars on the line (the Consumer Technology Association estimates that
the Internet of Things will drive the consumer technology industry to
$287 billion in revenue), expect to see these companies go all out in
promoting their IoT offerings. Let’s explore things from the bottom-up
to get a better understanding of the market.
1) Chipsets
Qualcomm’s IoT Chips Shown off at CES
First things first, you can’t have a home appliance without the
necessary electronics underlying it. Old, “dumb” appliances had no need
for features like Bluetooth, WiFi, and other sensors that smart home
devices necessitate. Both big and small names in the industry have
stepped up to the plate recently with reference platforms aimed at
development and chipsets aimed at production. Among the key players
you’re likely already familiar with include
Samsung with the ARTIK platform,
Intel’s IoT platform,
MediaTek’s LinkIt Smart 7688 development platform, and
Qualcomm’s development platform, Other companies are looking to embed their chips into your future everyday smart home products too, including
Marvell,
Broadcom,
Atmel, and
GainSpan.
Who will dominate this space depends heavily on how what partners each
company can acquire, which leaves the bigger names like Samsung, Intel,
and Qualcomm in a favorable position. Still, it’s too early to say how
things will play out. We’ve seen how manufacturing issues of Apple’s A9
chip culminating in what’s now known as
chip-gate resulted
in Samsung’s chipset business losing a major partner in a short
time-spam. With the competition being so fierce, it’ll be exciting to
see how things play out.
2) Operating Systems
Behind every great chip there’s a great OS. Windows dominates
desktops/laptops, Android dominates smartphones, but who will dominate
the smart home?
Google’s Brillo,
Huawei’s Lite OS, and
MediaTek with OpenWRT are just some of the players we’ve seen before.
MicroEJ is
another player that has been building operating systems for embedded
systems for years now and is making an entry into the IoT space. These
operating systems are all based in some form on existing platforms but
have been modified to operate on very low-power hardware. Each is taking
an open approach to development in order to entice manufacturers to
adopt their OS.
3) Intercommunication
Operating systems aren’t the only way some companies are making their foray into the field. We certainly can’t forget about
Apple’s HomeKit,
LG’s LINK,
Huawei’s HiLink, and
Google’s Weave.
With these platforms, you can build compatible hardware that uses these
frameworks in order to have intercommunication between IoT devices
and/or your smartphones.
4) Frequencies
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IoT products from Crow, a ULE Alliance Partner
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Lightify Products, a Partner of ZigBee
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Z-Wave based Products
Devices communicating with each other relies on some form of
communication protocol such as Bluetooth, WiFi, NFC, etc. We’re
intimately familiar with all of these after having been exposed to
devices that cater to our smartphones that are built with these
protocols in mind. But in the smart home, are these protocols sufficient?
We can pretty quickly rule out Bluetooth and NFC as contenders given
their limited range. WiFi is a contender and is already seen in many
current generation smart home appliances, but with the sheer number of
WiFi-enabled devices on the market, interference is a major concern.
Anyone who attended CES can attest to this fact.
There are alternatives in the form of
ZigBee,
Z-Wave,
EnOcean, and
DECT (yes,
this is the protocol that your parent’s old cordless phone ran off of),
of which the ZigBee Alliance and ULE Alliance have formed around. Both
alliances purport their wireless communication protocols to be the
superior option for IoT devices, and several major companies have
aligned themselves with one of the alliances. The standards war is just
heating up, so we’ll have to wait and see which protocol most companies
will gravitate towards in the future. There can be only one winner in
this area, otherwise we could end up with a convoluted mess of
incompatible IoT devices.
One Device to Rule Them All
While the major companies duke it out over whose chipset and
operating system should prevail, most OEMs will likely rely on consumers
using their accompanying smartphone apps to operate their devices.
Which is fine, because smartphones are everywhere these days. Hence, we
should expect to see some kind of integration of each new IoT device
with your existing devices. Your smart home will definitely be smart,
but it will take some time before you can expect to see a truly
interconnected home. Unless of course you’re willing to spend a ton of
money buying smart home devices from only a single manufacturer, you’re
unlikely to be able to shop around for the time being.
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Samsung Family Hub Fridge (Credits: CNET)
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Samsung Smart Hub TV (Credits: HardwareZone)
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Samsung SmartThings
Samsung is the exception here, though. Their new
family hub refrigerator and their
SUHD TV line-up
are part of the company’s IoT strategy that deviate from the norm.
Rather than relying on your existing smartphone or computer to control
the smart devices in your home, Samsung wants you to spend several
thousands on their highest end smart home devices if you want to control
your smart home. Many people spend a lot of time in their living room
and kitchen, so it’s not a strange decision to have the smart home
center around the fridge and TV, but we can’t help but feel that Samsung
is pushing these devices as a cash grab when competitors like LG
partner with Google on Weave for their Signature appliance line-up.
IoT Security
The future sure sounds exciting, huh! With every cool new connected
device there comes a possibility for abuse. Spying, hacking, identity
theft, and other crimes are constantly on the public’s mind thanks to
the proliferation of cyber-security attacks. With potentially every
device in our home connected to the network, security should be a major
concern to anyone interested in IoT products. We’ve got the standard
ways of monitoring home networks and authenticating certain devices to
access your smart home devices (passwords, fingerprint, etc.), but some
companies are looking to tackle this issue in some unique ways.
On the enterprise front,
PFP Cybersecurity aims to provide businesses a way to detect
zero-day vulnerabilities in
software. The company has created an external power monitor that
detects tiny anomalies in power patterns from the baseline (which is
determined through a calibration step before the system goes live on the
network), which can occur whenever the software has been modified. PFP
Cybersecurity hopes to eventually partner with chipset makers to embed
their power detection chip into the boards that go on enterprise IoT
devices, however the company is still at an early stage and is looking
to make waves as the IoT field expands.
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Monitoring Power on Cisco Router
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Software Output on Router Monitoring
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Chip-based Monitoring (Proof of Concept)
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Baseline Analysis of Power Consumption
For consumers, you thankfully don’t have to worry much about
sensitive data being stolen from your smart toaster or coffee maker, but
a malicious actor could hack into your network to make these devices
operate when you’re not home, running up your power bill and potentially
causing you bodily harm should any fires break out. Sound paranoid?
Consider the fact that
hackers have demonstrated vulnerabilities in
several smart car line-ups already, and the kinds of catastrophic
damage to human life that could occur if such a hack were to occur in
the real world.
If you’re looking to monitor the smart devices on your network, a company named
Domotz provides
a cheap solution for that. The product can be installed on existing
raspberry Pi or NAS setups, or by purchasing one of the company’s
devices that comes with the software pre-installed. It monitors all of
the devices on your home WiFi (and soon, ZigBee) network and allows you
to set up alerts and access nearly every connected device you own. If
you own a smart home appliance, you can power on/off the device from
your smartphone, for instance. The service integrates nicely with your
existing home monitoring systems such as IP cameras and even allows you
to remote desktop into your Windows computer so long as RDP is enabled.
The product itself is available to install for free, but using it
requires a $2.99/month subscription to use it. Not bad, considering the
price of most remote desktop and IP camera software that this solution
offers among others. We should expect to see products such as these in
greater numbers as the IoT field expands, which is why the company is
working on partnering with tech support services such as BestBuy’s Geek
Squad.
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Domotz Android App
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Domotz Android App, Device List
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Domotz iPhone App
This will be an exciting year for the smart home, and it’s looking like your smartphone (or maybe even your
smartwatch) will
be at the center of it all. Keep your eye out for developments in this
space, but save your wallet for later. It’ll take some time for these
companies to duke it out in this space and converge around a superior
standard, and buying in right now may result in a lot of your devices
being incompatible with each other. That is unless you’re willing to
dish out thousands to buy into a single ecosystem such as Apple’s
HomeKit or Samsung’s SmartThings
