IoT news of the week for May 15, 2020
AI could be the secret to better energy harvesting : For IoT to become truly ubiquitous we need to ditch both wires and batteries. Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK and the Uppsala University in Sweden have been working on using different dyes on photovoltaic cells to help them work more efficiently on indoor light. Which is great, but they are also using machine learning to help the device powered by the solar cell determine when it’s likely to have more access to energy so it can change its behavior. Instead of a binary sleep-wake cycle, future devices could use machine learning to anticipate typical lighting patterns and schedule energy-intensive events like a software update for times when they may have ample light. Researchers are already using ML to make batteries more efficient, so the concept is already out there. Of course, I’m not sure I want my devices shutting down in the middle of the day for a software update, but we’ll see. ( IoTNow Transport )
How UPS is using the internet of things : Let’s talk about sensors at scale! TechRepublic sent a reporter to talk to Mike Allen, a transportation technology manager at UPS, and Juan Perez, the company’s CIO, and wrote a five-part series on how the logistics company is deploying sensors and changing its operations. More than 100,000 trucks are outfitted with sensors and GPS at UPS, leading to millions of messages a week, some 50-60 million of which are simply location data. The goal is to get sensors that measure the volume of packages each truck and electronic door locks for the trailers. I wish the series spent more time diving into how these sensors are powered, maintained, and their data ingested into buckets for real-time, short-term, and long-term use. But in another article in the series, we do get to read about drone delivery. ( TechRepublic )
Wink’s latest SNAFU : The Wink smart home platform abruptly went to a subscription model last week, giving users a week to pay a $4.99 subscription fee or see their devices stop working. Based on “feedback,” Wink’s management has now given users another week (until May 20) to decide whether or not to upgrade to a subscription fee. At the same time, I just received a notification from my connected garage door opener letting me know that it was no longer going to let me control my garage door using Wink. Indeed, I can still see my Chamberlain MyQ status in the Wink app, but I can no longer control it. I’m not sure if this is an effort by Chamberlain to stop supporting a failing platform, or if it’s a cost-cutting measure of its own. Chamberlain has had its own issues in the past with charging users for accessing its device through other platforms. We’ll keep an eye on this. — Stacey Higginbotham
Trend Micro anticipates the rise of OT-specific malware : Right now, much of the perceived risk in connected manufacturing environments is focused on malware infecting IT networks and, in the...
