A later version of that code became the base for LEGO Mindstorms and a variety of other connected projects. But Dunkels realized that to truly build a platform for connected devices he needed even lighter weight code. So he built Contiki, an operating system of sorts of the internet of things. And now he’s commercializing all that he’s learned in a startup called ThingSquare. In the podcast we discuss the history of the internet of things and when we reached the tipping point that made the internet of things inevitable.

Listen to the podcast here.

Thingsquare Code lets developers of Internet of Things products program their wireless chips from a web browser. Before Thingsquare Code, developing Internet of Things products used to be time-consuming and would require extensive expertise on behalf of the developer. With Thingsquare Code, developers can quickly prototype and validate their products, directly from their web browsers.

“The latest IP/6LoWPAN solutions for IoT applications from Texas Instruments (TI) will be ready for Thingsquare Code,” said Oyvind Birkenes, general manager, Wireless Connectivity Solutions, TI. “Thingsquare opens the door to developers from various disciplines to connect their products faster to the Internet. This is truly revolutionary.”

“Thingsquare Code already works with a number of microprocessor platforms, including the ARM Cortex M3 and the TI MSP430,” said Thingsquare chief architect Adam Dunkels. “With our secure cloud connectivity solution, devices can be programmed without cables and without having to install compiler toolchains, which is a large step forward for IoT programming.”

Thingsquare Code is currently available for beta testers and will be available for use with a number of wireless chips for the emerging Internet of Things market developed by Texas Instruments and ST Microelectronics.

More info here.

Well, those startups now have seriously heavyweight competition in the form of LogMeIn, the remote connectivity specialist, and ARM, the British firm whose low-power chip designs underpin the vast majority of mobile devices, and which is now competing with Intel to own the IoT space.

LogMeIn has just launched its own PaaS for the internet of things, calling it Xively(the beta version was known as Cosm). And developers wanting to start creating connected devices on this platform are being offered the Xively Jumpstart Kit, which combines Xively with ARM’s mbed platform, for building devices using ARM’s microcontrollers. With this kit, the companies promise, developers can “rapidly progress from prototyping to volume deployment”.

Xively is based on LogMeIn’s Gravity infrastructure – the same one used to support the company’s cloud storage offering, Cubby — and it comes with development tools for writing and prototyping services, a provisioning engine for deployment and a scalable management console. It supports real-time messaging and directory and data services, as well as analytics, and it uses a “pay-as-you-grow” pricing model that should make the platform attractive to startups.

The directory services extend to a “commons” named the Xively Connected Object Cloud, through which different companies’ devices can interconnect. According to LogMeIn, a “fundamental philosophy” baked into the Xively terms of service states that “customers own their data and can choose whether or not to share all, part, or none [of] it.”

A showcase page for the platform shows early projects built on Xively that include the Visualight smart lightbulb and even some of the post-Fukushimacrowdsourced radiation-monitoring efforts (which used an earlier iteration of the platform, called Pachube at the time).

More info here.

“We will soon begin to move in a sea of data, our movements monitored and our environments measured and adjusted to our preferences, without need for direct intervention. What will this look like? How can we create and shape it? How can we introduce the relevant hardware to people who already possess data analytics skills?“

Developed by Alasdair Allan, Kipp Bradford, Robert Faludi, Kim Rees and Julie Steele the team uses Arduinos, XBee radios, 3d printed enclosures and cloud database tools to track temperature, humidity, noise, light, air quality, audience engagement, and foot traffic levels in real-time for each of the conference venues.

The sensor deployments gives conference attendees a better glimpse into their surrounding environment and the team wanted to remind them what actual data collection looks like “what it means to build your own sensors from scratch, deploy them into an environment where they might be kicked or stolen or partially blinded by a wall, fine-tune the reporting rates to work within the available bandwidth, and collate data from multiple sources reporting at differing rates. These things are the roots of data science, and we wanted to go back to them.“

More info here.

This is an exciting trend for consumer electronics in general, but we as an industry need to take a step back and realize that true connectivity extends beyond just the cloud.

Just because something is connected to the Internet, doesn’t mean it’s truly part of an Internet of Things (or as we like to call it at Qualcomm, the “Internet of Everything”). What’s unique about the Internet is its openness — the ability for one website to link to any other and leverage information in novel ways. Remember when the word “mashup” was all the rage in Web talk? Why was that? Because you just could. You could have one website leverage data and APIs from another website and mash that up to deliver a completely new, cool Web service, a la LivePlasma.com, Pageflakes.com, HousingMaps.com, etc.

So what’s the problem? Aren’t all these hot new connected IoT devices connected up to the cloud? Well, that’s the problem. We are oversimplifying the landscape. Each specific device seems to connect to its particular cloud service. There isn’t really one cloud. Every manufacturer has their own cloud service, and often these clouds are closed, proprietary environments. Devices that live in their own siloed cloud cannot speak to one another, meaning they cannot benefit from the data, context or control of nearby IoT devices. That is why we currently need a separate app to control — and interface with — each connected thing we buy. This may be acceptable in the near term, but it cannot scale.

More info here.

So it took that data and tweaked its approach. Now when it sees a slowdown it reaches out to the client to try a new plan or just make sure the clients don’t cancel. In the future it may offer new pricing plans to adjust for slack usage.

That’s just one way connected devices and the data they offer can be used for benefitting a business. But the value of constant connectivity to a firm goes far beyond that — and could change the way businesses operate. Even after a product goes out the door, the company responsible can still keep an eye on it. That has big repercussions for business and consumers — and not all of those repercussions may be welcome.

For example, the constant contact can also help tweak a design or improve the function of a product — even out in the field. In a recent conversation, Splunk’s Tapan Bhatt walked me through a few examples such as the one above, where the company’s machine logging data helped businesses adjust. For example, the makers of the Nest thermostat use Splunk to analyze data uploaded from hundreds of thousands of homes, and tune their algorithms for energy performance.

Medical device manufacturer iRhythm uploads remote monitor data to Splunk to make sure devices run as expected, as well as help ensure that patients can use the devices intuitively. In many ways this isn’t new. Jeremy Conrad at Lemnos Labs pointed out to me in a conversation last month that many manufactured devices are tweaked again and again after the first manufacturing run to smooth out perceived and real flaws in the design.

The shift is that it can now happen constantly and that the changes might be implemented weeks or months after the product has been manufactured. Advertising firms and online publications have been using such data to refine their products for years. The Huffington Post’s love of A/B headline testing is well documented, while the use of eye tracking in web site design is a common practice. But more connectivity in devices means the fine-tuning and easy tracking that are common in digital products are now available in the real world.

More info here.

Using the MQTT (the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) format, the IBM MessageSight appliance is capable of processing over 13 million messages per second, all of which could arrive from as many as 1 million end-nodes.

“It’s a huge breakthrough in scale,” said Mike Riegel, who is the IBM vice president of mobile and application integration middleware.

The IBM MessageSite was one of a number of new products and updates that the company announced as part of its Impact conference, being held this week in Las Vegas.

IBM designed this appliance, which will be available for customers on May 24, to specifically work with what is being called The Internet of things.

The Internet of things is not a network, but a new buzzphrase describing the growing use of network-connected embedded microprocessors, often connected to sensors or other data-gathering instruments. Because microprocessors are now so inexpensive and networks are so pervasive, such embedded systems could provide a wealth of data that organizations in most industries could use to monitor and improve operations.

For instance, a new car today may have dozens of microprocessors that run millions of lines of code, Riegel said. The car maker could ingest all the data these embedded systems produce, supplying their customers and themselves with pertinent information about how well the vehicle is operating.

By 2020, there might be as many as 22 billion embedded systems and other portable devices connected to the Internet, according to IMS Research. Collectively, these systems may produce more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data every day, estimated the IT research company.

More info here.

The KTH School of Electrical Engineering (EES) announces one PhD Student position in the area of visual sensor networks.

Free access compliments of: Academic Press

Free access for a limited time only!

More info here.