M2M | Bach Seat

Tag Archive for M2M

RB | November 29, 2013

Comments Off

Activity Tracker For Dogs

Fitbark is one of a small number of startups working to support and even improve the health of dogs. Business Insider reports that Fitbark just raised $80,000 on Kickstarter from 697 backers — more than double the amount it was seeking to support its product and mission of fun and responsible dog parenting.

“We looked around and realized there’s a black hole in the way we track the health and activity of our dogs throughout time,” Fitbark co-founder Davide Rossi tells Business Insider. “If you cannot measure it, you can’t improve it.”

Daily goals dogs

New York-based FitBark recommends daily goals for your dog based on breed, weight, size, and age. From there, a dog owner can tweak those recommendations. The article says FitBark aims to provide rich information with actionable insights for dog owners. That way, owners can quickly gauge what kind of day their dog is having, even if they’re away from him or her. They can also use that data to share with the veterinarian at their dog’s next check-up.

FitBark’s “Bark charts” let owners know if their dog is moving less than normal, which could mean the dog is sick. Owners can also gain better insight into how their dog acts around different people. The author says the data can be used to suggest that their dog is more active with one pet sitter than the other. Or maybe one boarding home makes their dog exercise more than the other.

BI reports that if FitBark notices that a dog is nowhere close to hitting his or her daily goal, the owner may get a notification suggesting to take their dog on a walk. But if the dog is with a pet sitter, the owner could call and check-in.

How it works

The FitBark device attaches to a collar and collects data on the dog’s activity levels 24/7 and sends the information it collects to FitBark servers when the wearable device is within range of an authorized smartphone or a FitBark base station. Once this occurs, the dog’s data is analyzed and sent back to the owner’s phone. Owners can then compare his or her dog’s actual activities levels to the dog’s daily fitness goals.

Down the road, Fitbark envisions trainers or even veterinarians tapping into its API to help carry out a custom exercise plan. “Trainers will complain that they prescribe or recommend a program for dogs and owners, but there’s no way to monitor compliance,” Rossi says.

Another application could be for lifestyle recommendations. So a developer could make an app to suggest certain types of pet foods, sync that up with Fitbark, and see if there are any noticeable changes in activity.

GigaOm points out that Fitbark pulled an earlier attempt at crowdfunding the device to rethink the business model, scrapping the monthly subscription fee and opting for a fixed price tag of $69 via Kickstarter or $99 for general retail.

Wearable tech market

Broadcom (AVGO) CEO Scott McGregor has announced its entry into the wearable tech market with the company’s low-cost, low-power Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices (WICED) hardware platform for connected mobile devices. PCMag reports that Broadcom sees a lot of potential for simple, inexpensive, purpose-built products that use one or more connectivity technologies like FitBark.

rb-

I covered a similar product called Tagg back in 2012 here. A lot of things have changed since then. Machine to Machine communications and the Internet of Things is all the rage. The Cloud is a viable business model. Big-data analytics is allowing the NSA to spy on the world. And now all of that has come together, M2M dog tags run thru big-data analytics stored in the public cloud so the NSA can spy on U.S. dogs. What a country!

The 5 PetTech Sites That Your Pet Wishes You Were Visiting (alleywatch.com)

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2013, BRCM, Broadcom, Cloud, Computing, Dogs, Fitbark, Internet of Things, IOT, Kickstarter, M2M

RB | September 10, 2013

Comments Off

Is Connected Car Data Worth $1,400 Annually?

Michael Strong at TheDetroitBureau.com reports that Continental AG and Cisco (CSCO) recently demoed a highly connected car using the internet to improve vehicle safety and infotainment options at the recent Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, MI.

The firms believe they’ve produced a connected car that provides a balance between giving consumers a safe, connected driving experience while providing companies with a chance to offer services that enhance the driving experience: for a price.

According to the article, the companies involved in bringing the Internet to cars collect an enormous amount of information about drivers. This presents a variety of challenges when it comes to privacy, who owns the information, how can or should it be used and what’s it worth?

While privacy and data ownership issues are still up in the air thanks to the U.S. government. Andreas Mai, director of product management at Cisco, believes data generated by a connected car is worth about $1,400 a year. He breaks it down this way:

Drivers can save $550 through better fuel economy, less time stuck in traffic, lower insurance rates, etc.
Society can save $420 by employing car platoons to speed up traffic and increase a road’s capacity.
Service providers can earn $150 by providing traffic guidance, navigation, parking, emergency services, etc.
Automakers can save $300 in lower warranty costs, profitable apps, etc.

The key, according to the article, is to maximize the information that can be collected (and re-sold) is convincing drivers that they get a tangible benefit from releasing the data, such as shorter commutes or lower insurance rates (thanks Flo). According to a survey by Cisco, 74% of drivers were willing to share vehicle information. However, who or what owns that information still needs to be sorted out, he said. They must balance all of those things against the driver’s wants and needs: connectivity, infotainment, and cutting-edge safety features.

Continental and Cisco teamed up to keep the bits flying. As a vehicle moves it needs to prioritize the critical needs of drivers and passengers for network connectivity, according to the article. Digital Trends explains that Continental will supply the hardware and Cisco will provide the software. The car can switch between 3G, 4G, WiFi, and Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) on the go, depending on service quality and cost to the customer. DSRC system is part of the emerging vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology system that allows cars to communicate with each other directly – and autonomously.

A Cisco software router loaded in Continental hardware performs the network switching. The router sends signals first to a Cisco-managed “Connected Car Cloud,” which then relays information to whatever network appears optimal at the moment.

The Cisco on-board software system can seamlessly switch between available 3G, 4G, and other wireless networks based on cost and quality of service preferences. “Connected vehicles are opening up a vast field of opportunities for services to make driving safer, more efficient, and more comfortable,” said Ralf Lenninger, head of innovation and strategy, Continental’s Interior Division. “This is why we are looking at ways to connect the moving vehicle in a highly secure, fast, and reliable way.

The Cisco and Continental proof-of-concept connected car show how auto manufactures can provide the same amount of network security that is available at home (oh NO!) or in the office. Cisco provides one highly secure software gateway that delivers Cisco’s core networking capabilities and optimizes multiple communication links and mobility services to and from the vehicle. Security against cyber attacks will become more important as more vehicles include connected functions.

rb-

I recently covered Ford’s efforts to understand connected cars by studying the commlinks of space-based robots here.

The savings claims seem suspicious to me. The “lower insurance costs” are just cash savings. ~~Oh, yeah Walmart is still in business.~~ What is going to be the costs to the drivers after the insurance companies get their Hadoop big data analytics on the data from the magic boxes they are installing? Will they use the data you provided them to change the rules on your policy to raise your rates? It only takes a small leap to think about what the NSA could do with the data.

Just in case someone at Cisco or Ford or anybody else is reading this, here are some suggestions from Veracode to secure connected cars..

Infographic by Veracode Application Security

Cisco’s remedy for connected car security: Treat the car like an enterprise (gigaom.com)

Category: Cars | Tags: 2013, Automobile, Cisco, Cloud, CSCO, Insurance, IOT, M2M, Michigan, PII, Privacy

RB | July 9, 2013

Comments Off

Brake Lights That Can be Seen Around Corners

Kevin Fitchard at GigaOM reports that the Ford Motor Company (F) is testing a new concept in the connected car world. The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker is experimenting with wireless brake lights that can be seen around corners. Ford is testing the vehicle-to-vehicle safety research in Germany with experimental radio-equipped S-MAX vehicles that communicates with other vehicles. The S-Max alerts nearby vehicles when the car is braking, long before drivers can see it.

The Ford test is really part of a larger vehicle-to-vehicle communications effort that Ford and other global automakers have pursued for years. (rb- I have covered connected cars many times here, here, and here). The author claims the idea is to connect every vehicle on the road into a massive automotive network. Each car itself would be an individual actor, but they would also become aware of the actions and intentions of the vehicles around them.

In such a network, the article states that drivers are no longer dependent solely on their senses to react to road and traffic conditions. An electronic brake light is the most obvious use case for such a system. GigaOM says that eyes and feet can only act so fast, but a dashboard light warning the driver of a pile-up just out of sight could be a lifesaver. Chief technical officer and vice president of Ford Research and Innovation, Paul Mascarenas, told Australia’s Car Advice that “Car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communications represent one of the next major advancements in vehicle safety.”

rb-

The Ford system is one of 20 being tested in Germany so it will be many years before a standard system emerges. Ford is also involved with the University of Michigan’s Safety Pilot Model Deployment, a field test of more than 2800 vehicles.

Then there are the privacy concerns. I wonder what Ford or worse yet the Feds will do with all the data generated by these vehicle-to-vehicle communications systems. I think it is likely the automakers will make the data available to GPS or navigation providers of traffic problems on a road if too many smart brake lights go off.

Here’s what connected cars will be doing by 2020 (venturebeat.com)

Category: Cars | Tags: 2013, Automobile, autonomous vehicles, Brake, Dearborn, F, Ford Motor Company, M2M, Michigan, S-Max

RB | January 24, 2013

Comments Off

Another Net for IoT

Kevin Fitchard at GigaOM writes about the French start-up Sigfox that wants to take on the mobile service providers. Sigfox plans to build a new network just for the Internet of Things (IoT). Thomas Nicholls, Sigfox business development chief, and internet of things of evangelist said that cellular networks are built to connect humans, not objects. Sigfox is proposing to build an alternate wireless network dedicated solely to linking together the internet of things.

The Toulouse France-based start-up argues that the majority of objects linked to the network will connect rarely. A GPS tracker in a vehicle or shipping container may send out its coordinates just once a day. A smart meter may link back to its utility company’s servers once a week. Many of the sensors being embedded in devices from vending machines to security cameras only transmit when something goes wrong, meaning an M2M module may wait months if not years between connections to the Internet of Things. Connected home appliances like LG Electronic’s (LGLD) new Smart Thinq refrigerator, GPS tracking devices, smart meters and medical alert sensors are all the types of devices that Sigfox hopes to target.

Mr. Nicholls added that Sigfox thinks there’s a huge opportunity in the growing business-to-consumer connected device space. The assortment of gadgets and wearable devices making their way into the connected home and onto our bodies are typically connected by local area networking technologies like Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Wi-Fi. But he thinks there’s a big case to be made for replacing those technologies with Sigfox according to the article.

The author claims that as Sigfox achieves economies of scale, its radio will not only shrink, their costs will fall to just a few dollars per module. Due to the huge efficiencies in running its network, Sigfox can support a device connection for little more than a dollar a year, Mr. Nicholls said. At those prices, gadget manufacturers can include IoT connectivity costs into the device costs without requiring customers to sign up for a subscription.

Not only would using Sigfox give these devices a range far beyond local networks, but they would also be “on” right out of the box, the Sigfox IoT evangelist said. It also wouldn’t require any signing up or logging on, as the machine-to-machine communication would just work out of the box.

To host these devices over power-hungry and expensive cellular radios makes little sense, the business development chief said. The better course is to attach these devices to a network optimized for their use cases — one that can support billions of devices each sending relatively little data at distinct intervals, the start-up believes. “Our network is structured in a radically different way,” Nicholls claims in the GigaOM article. “There is really no notion of a network. You only connect when you have a payload to deliver.”

Sigfox has developed a wireless architecture using ultra narrow-band modulation techniques that can theoretically support millions of devices with only a handful of network transmitters. Using the unlicensed frequencies commonly used for baby monitors and cordless phones (868 MHz in Europe and 915 MHz in the US), Sigfox says it can offer the same coverage with a single tower that a cellular network could provide with 50 to 100 cell sites. Sigfox is building a network covering all of France with 1,000 transmission sites, and Mr. Nicholls estimates that the company could do the same in the US with 10,000 transmitters.

The author describes the embedded radio modules as about the size of two thumbnails, and they transmit at power levels 50 times lower than their cellular M2M counterparts. Such low consumption levels mean that objects that normally have no external power supply could stay connected for as long as 20 years before their module batteries would need recharging, Mr. Nicholls said.

rb-

Apparently, Sigfox’s ultra narrow-band technology can only support bandwidths of 100 bps (YEAP THAT’S BPS, NOT KBPS) — which makes it far slower than even the poorest 2G data connection so it will be popular with wireless service providers who will try to connect everything to the Internet of Things.

Sigfox does not seem to be the answer for devices that send large quantities of data or keep up constant connections to the network like telemedicine aren’t the “things” that Sigfox intends to connect to the Internet.

M2M and the Internet of Things: A guide (zdnet.com)

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2013, Ambient Devices, Bluetooth, Cellular network, Internet of Things, IOT, M2M, Machine-to-Machine, SigFox, Wi-Fi, ZigBee

RB | October 2, 2012

One comment

Texas School ID Cards Track Students

Updated 07-27-13 According to Chron, Northside Independent School District Texas spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said the microchip-ID program turned out not to be worth the trouble.

Updated 01-19-13 The student lost her lawsuit against the district. The student and her family had sued the district, claiming that her first amendment rights were being violated (she claims the RFID tag is “the mark of the Beast”), but the school removed the RFID chip from her ID and the court found that that was a reasonable accommodation.

Updated 12-02-12 A self-described teen-aged Anonymous hacker claims to have hacked the website of Texas’s Northside Independent School District in support of a student who refuses to wear an RFID ID badge according to the San Antonio Express-News. The district’s site was never compromised, Northside spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said.

In a statement posted on Twitter, the teenaged hacker wrote: “Now it is your school and your rules, but you seen what I did to your website, and have a simple deal for you, weather you accept it or not, is up to you,” the statement reads. “If you still want to do this tracking idea on the students, at least have a meeting with each and every students parents, so they know what is going on.”

Updated 11-21-12 It is not surprising to me that Wired is reporting that the school district is being sued over the program. According to Wired, the family claims that the student refuses to wear the badge because it signifies Satan.

A Texas school district is putting tracking chips into new, mandatory student IDs to keep tabs on students’ whereabouts while on campus. According to Sophos’ Naked Security blog, Texas’s Northside Independent School District‘s John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School are performing a pilot test of the technology.

FOX 29 TV in Texas reports that students will be required to wear the cards on a lanyard around their necks and will be charged a fee for losing them. Their location will be beamed out to electronic readers throughout the campuses.

The one-year pilot program, which will cost the district $261,000, is also expected to increase attendance, and could bring an extra $2 million to the district in state funding as a result, District spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said. He stated that the program will be re-evaluated next summer.

In a letter to parents, school administrators stated that the ID cards will store no personal information and that they’ll work only on school grounds. “Think how important this will be in the case of an emergency,” the letter reads. “In addition, the ‘smart’ student ID card will be used in the breakfast and lunch lines in the cafeteria and to check out books from the library. Because all students will be required to wear their ‘smart’ ID, staff will be able to quickly identify Jay students inside the school.”

FoxNews reports that a coalition of privacy and civil liberties organizations and experts have called for a moratorium on the technology, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Sophos blog reports that some parents are protesting, comparing the tags to RFID tags used to track cattle. Steven Hernandez, a father of a student who attends the school and the only local parent to attend a protest late last month, told KSN News that the new badges amount to “a spy chip”.

His daughter, Andrea, a sophomore, told KSN that she’s decided to wear her old photo ID even though students were told the new micro-chip ID is mandatory: “It makes me uncomfortable. It’s an invasion of my privacy.”

Northside ISD’s Gonzalez rejected that criticism, saying the pilot program and the “smart” ID cards have been used successfully in Houston’s Spring Independent School District for at least the past five years. “This is non-threatening technology,” he said. “This is not surveillance.”

rb-

There is a great deal of bluster around this article on the blog. Look around people, your passports and driver’s licenses have RFID tags. What about proximity card readers? Have you checked the Visa in your wallet? Isn’t near field communications (NFC) the hot topic in the VC world?

I will bet a cookie that some of the same folks blustering about ID tags also favor gutting public education funding, yet the object to efforts to increase alternate sources of revenue for Texas schools by using chips in student ID cards.

San Antonio NISD Schools Tracking Kids with RFID pilot program (blacklistednews.com)

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2012, ACLU, IOT, K12, M2M, Privacy, RFID, Spychips, Wireless

Bach Seat

Tag Archive for M2M

Brake Lights That Can be Seen Around Corners

Related articles

Another Net for IoT

Related articles

Texas School ID Cards Track Students

Meta