From Cloud to Edge

 Considering a major rework of smarthome.

How The Migration From Cloud to Edge Powers Tomorrow’s Smart Homes

Carsten Gregeren  in Datanami

The edge is here to stay. The next generation of data processing is growing from strength to strength – reaching $274 billion in value by 2025 – with major benefits including better data management and security, lower connectivity costs, and reliable, uninterrupted connection. Edge computing, in my mind, is the logical successor to cloud computing, and it’s especially exciting to consider the implications for the Internet of Things (IoT).

As devices more often process data at the edge rather than in the cloud, experts believe the evolution will pave the way for increased artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics. The one-two punch of smarter devices with faster edge connections looks set to change our interactions with devices entirely. Consider, for example, door locks with instant facial recognition or smart induction stoves that automatically change cooking temperature. Increasingly, more autonomous devices will be able to make decisions on the behalf of users.

Let’s look at how the great cloud to edge migration powers the smart homes of tomorrow.

Smarter Devices, Smarter Homes

The concept of smart homes has always captured the popular imagination. However, it might not be the stuff of science fiction for much longer. Devices like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home have grown rapidly in just a few short years and consumers are becoming more accustomed to smart devices within the modern home.

Smart home or home automation is the process of automatically controlling different appliances or devices and programing them to replace several human interactions for handling essential functions. The connected sensors and devices are operated via IoT supported platforms, providing connectivity and control to them worldwide.

By 2025, IDC estimates that there will be more than 55 billion connected devices, with 75% of them connected to an IoT platform. And more of these devices are finding their way into the home. However, with more devices comes more data. IDC estimates that connected IoT devices will soon generate up to 73 zettabytes of data. Today’s centralized cloud networks may become overloaded with traffic due to such a spike in data. Therefore, edge computing’s distributed IT architecture may help to combat the impending data rush by transferring information to the network periphery.

In addition to storage benefits, smarter devices are also driving this migration from cloud to edge. Consider that devices are more often loaded with AI-optimized chipsets. These chips are smaller, more economical and less power-consuming. As a result, they enable devices to handle far more processes internally rather than externally, reducing the need to offload unnecessary processes to the cloud. ... ' 

Guaranteed Smart Home Privacy?

 Well tested in open contexts?

Peekaboo! A System to Guarantee Smart Home Privacy

Carnegie Mellon University CyLab Security and Privacy Institute

Daniel Tkacik, May 31, 2022

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab Security and Privacy Institute have developed a privacy-sensitive architecture for smart home applications. Peekaboo accepts requests from developers to share certain pieces of data, and guarantees only the minimum data needed to satisfy the requests is exchanged. The architecture has developers first declare all the data they intend to gather and under what conditions, where that data is being sent, and its granularity; an in-home hub then arbitrates between all devices in the home and the outside Internet. CyLab's HaoJian Jin said, "The Peekaboo protocol will allow users to manage privacy preferences for all of their devices in a centralized manner through the hub. Imagine not just a privacy nutrition label for an individual device, but a privacy nutrition label for an entire home."  ... '

MIT Media Lab RFusion Finds Hidden, Missing Things

A classic problem for mapping, decluttering the Smart Home

MIT Media Lab: RFusion

52.9K subscribers

This video presents a new robot from MIT called RFusion, which can find and retrieve hidden objects. The robot fuses RF (Radio Frequency) and vision-based perception in order to find items hidden under a pile, declutter, and pick them up. The technology has many applications across smart homes, warehousing, manufacturing, and logistics.

For more information, check out the following links:

* Website: RFusion.media.mit.edu

* Paper:  https://www.mit.edu/~fadel/papers/RFusion-paper.pdf

Amazon also Poses an Indoor Drone Camera

See also that Amazon/Ring has announced an indoor camera drone for security applications.    Announced at a much cheaper price than their rolling robot   You have to wonder how well a flying camera device will interact with other home residents.  Also noise?  But another interesting gizmo step forward for the smart home.  

Amazon’s indoor camera drone is ready to fly around your house  in ArsTechnica

Amazon's crazy indoor, flying drone camera—the ambiguously named "Ring Always Home Cam"—is actually for sale now in the US. This was announced a full year ago, but now it's available "exclusively by invitation" for $249.99. This is a "Day 1 Edition" (read: a beta product). So Amazon isn't letting just anyone buy it. You can request an invitation to give Amazon money on the product page.  

https://amzn.to/3AS4DCC

Amazon Alexa Developers

Amazon Alexa Smart home developer highlights in September.  

Join the Developer Community.

Ask questions during Developer Office Hours, hear from members of the voice community on Alexa & Friends, and join the conversation in the Alexa Community Slack.  ... 

Amazon Wants to Own the Living Room?

Is this because it has been unable to completely own the home, front door or the car?  Looking forward to seeing this.

Why does Amazon want a branded TV?  by Tom Ryan  in Retailwire

Amazon.com reportedly plans to market its own branded TVs in the U.S., possibly as soon as October.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Business Insider said the TV will be designed and manufactured by China-based TCL, range between 55 to 75 inches and have Alexa built in. Amazon Devices and Lab126, the R&D team behind the Kindle and Fire TV Stick, are collaborating on the project that’s been covertly in development for nearly two years.

Amazon is also developing a separate TV product that it is designing in-house, according to the report.

In the TV space, Amazon offers a streaming service, Amazon Prime Video, to Prime subscribers and sells a wide range of Fire TV devices that hook up to TVs to deliver streaming content. An Amazon Basics TV has been sold in India Since late 2020. Amazon earlier this year partnered with Best Buy to sell Toshiba and Insignia TVs that run on Fire TV software.

It is unknown whether Amazon plans to compete head-on with Sony, LG and Samsung or target the budget market as a way to further extend Alexa technology’s reach into households. A few analysts seem to be betting on the latter.  ... '

Amazon Alexa Live 2021

Attended some technical portions of this, was informative. Here a followup of things presented, announced.

Everything new announced at Amazon Alexa Live 2021

By Michael Bizzaco, July 21, 2021 9:00AM

Amazon Alexa is one of today’s go-to voice assistants. Available on hundreds of devices, from smart speakers to displays and thermostats, Alexa grows more popular every day, with over 100,000 million device owners and 900,000 registered developers producing Alexa-powered products. Speaking of the latter, Alexa Live 2021 has finally arrived. This year’s free virtual symposium is a great place to learn about all of the new developer tools and services that Alexa will be capable of in the near future. Here’s everything announced at this year’s event.   ... '  

Amazon Encrypts Doorbells

 Long Awaited, we are just a bit more secure,  deserves it.

Amazon rolls out encryption for Ring doorbells  in ZDNet

Privacy advocates have been asking for Amazon to encrypt its popular Ring doorbells audio and video traffic, and Amazon is finally delivering it.

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Zero Day | July 13, 2021 -- 19:02 GMT (12:02 PDT) | Topic: Security

Did you know that that handy video your Ring doorbell takes of anyone coming by your door isn't private? If you get a Ring Protect Plan, not only are your videos kept in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, your videos can still be seen by outsiders. A sufficiently motivated hacker, or your local police force, can easily watch who's walking by your door. Until now. Starting today in the US (and soon, throughout the world), you'll be able to encrypt your video stream to keep it private.

When deciding on a work safe security system. Whether for a large or small business, these 10 options for commercial properties will help secure your workplace.

This is done with Amazon's Video End-to-End Encryption (E2EE). If you decide to install this optional privacy feature, you'll need to install a new version of the Ring application on your smartphone. Once installed, it uses a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) security system based on an RSA 2048-bit asymmetric account signing key pair. In English, the foundation is pretty darn secure....,

Towards Communal Computing

 Good thoughts, having now been involved in many smart home setups and updates,  the direction needs to be much broader.   And these adaptations also need to learned over time.  This article presents the model needs, but not the actual solution. 

Communal Computing    in O'Reilly Radar

How do we build devices that are shared by default?  By Chris Butler

Home assistants and smart displays are being sold in record numbers, but they are built wrong. They are designed with one person in mind: the owner. These technologies need to fit into the communal spaces where they are placed, like homes and offices. If they don’t fit, they will be unplugged and put away due to lack of trust.

The problems are subtle at first. Your Spotify playlist starts to have recommendations for songs you don’t like. You might see a photo you took on someone else’s digital frame. An Apple TV reminds you of a new episode of a show your partner watches. Guests are asking you to turn on your IoT-enabled lights for them. The wrong person’s name shows up in the Zoom call. Reminders for medication aren’t heard by the person taking the medication. Bank account balances are announced during a gathering of friends.

Would you want your bank account balances announced during a dinner party?

This is the start of a series discussing the design of communal devices–devices designed to work in communal spaces. The series is a call to action for everyone developing communal devices–whether you are creating business cases, designing experiences, or building technology–to take a step back and consider what is really needed.

This first article discusses what communal devices are, and how problems that appear result from our assumptions about how they’re used. Those assumptions were inherited from the world of PCs: the rules that apply to your laptop or your iPad just don’t apply to home assistants and other “smart devices,” from light bulbs to refrigerators.  It isn’t just adding the ability for people to switch accounts. We need a new paradigm for the future of technical infrastructure for our homes and offices. In this series of articles we will tell you how we got here, why it is problematic, and where to go to enable communal computing.

The Wrong Model

Problems with communal devices arise because the industry has focused on a specific model for how these devices are used: a single person buys, sets up, and uses the device. If you bought one of these devices (for example, a smart speaker) recently, how many other people in your household did you involve in setting it up?  ... " 

China Rise in Smart-Cities

Are we too regulated, too cautious of uses of automation?  Interesting smart city stats. 

A Global Smart-City Competition Highlights China's Rise in AI,

By Wired, July 9, 2021  in ACM/Wired

Four years ago, organizers created the international AI City Challenge to spur the development of artificial intelligence for real-world scenarios like counting cars traveling through intersections or spotting accidents on freeways.

In the first years, teams representing American companies or universities took top spots in the competition. Last year, Chinese companies won three out of four competitions.

Last week, Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Baidu swept the AI City Challenge, beating competitors from nearly 40 nations. Chinese companies or universities took first and second place in all five categories. TikTok creator ByteDance took second place in a competition to identify car accidents or stalled vehicles from freeway videofeeds.

The results reflect years of investment by the Chinese government in smart cities. Hundreds of Chinese cities have pilot programs, and by some estimates, China has half of the world's smart cities. The spread of edge computing, cameras, and sensors using 5G wireless connections is expected to accelerate use of smart-city and surveillance technology.

From Wired

Indoor Spy Drones: Always Home Cam

Not quite understanding this, except for unusual purposes, say maybe recording meetings or filming demonstrations?   There are lots of people filming things on Youtube these days, say a cooking demo.    But would it be controllable enough for that?  Seen previous examples of indoor drones, but none successful to my knowledge.  This one like others is noisy indoors, so not really a spy drone.   I like the general idea of having an indoor drone checking out the place, challenging invaders.  Taking poles from inhabitants?  Reminding them to do chores?  Make sure all are OK.   But really?  Expensive.  

Ring's New Always Home Cam Is Actually an Indoor Spy Drone

500+Gizmodo Security by Sam Rutherford 

Among an avalanche of new Echo and Ring devices announced by Amazon today, there’s one that stuck out as a clear step towards our dystopian future: the Ring Always Home Cam.

While its name might suggest that the Always Home Cam is simply just an updated home security cam, it’s way more than that. Ring describes the $250 Always Home Cam as an “autonomous indoor camera that will automatically fly to predetermined areas of the home, giving you multiple viewpoints with just one camera,” but you can’t fool me, I know a drone when I see one.

Based on Amazon’s press images, the Always Home Drone features a set of rotors on top enclosed in a plastic shroud, along with a camera built into a rectangular shaft that hangs below. When not in use, the shaft docks into the Always Home Cam’s cradle, presumably to recharge and offload any backup video recordings.

When it comes to privacy, Ring says the Always Home Cam “only records when in flight; when it’s not in use it sits in a doc and the camera is physically blocked. And, it’s loud enough so you hear when it’s in motion.” In other words, anyone who doesn’t want to be recorded will be able to hear this thing coming by listening for the signature buzz emitted by so many drones. So much for spying on the kids, but you’ll definitely be able to freak out pets.  ... '

Google Luaunches a new Operating System: Fuchsia

Interesting.   What is it, just a transition for the 'Nest Hub'?  Linkey to persist.  Lots more at the link, but still a bit unclear.  Does this mean that a google OS for the smart home is here to stay? See more below.  Following. 

Google launches its third major operating system, Fuchsia

The Google Nest Hub is the world's first commercial Fuchsia device.   By Ron Amadeo   in Arstechnica

Alexa Measuring Energy

First I had heard of this, lots of interesting measure graphics at the link.

Alexa can estimate how much electricity smart home devices consume

By Patrick Hearn, January 26, 2021  in Digitaltrends

A smart home is convenient, but is it energy-efficient? Alexa can now tell you. Today, Amazon rolled out a new feature called the Energy Dashboard. It shows the amount of energy consumed by Alexa-compatible smart home devices. Just open up the Alexa app to see how much energy is used by smart home devices connected to your Alexa system, including smart plugs, switches, water heaters, thermostats, and TVs.

The Energy Dashboard shows not only daily, but also weekly and monthly trends. It’s not the same as having an energy monitor installed in your home, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction to giving Alexa even more functionality than before.

In addition to the Energy Dashboard, Amazon also rolled out Guard Plus. This is a subscription service that extends the original features of Alexa Guard with a host of new features, including hands-free access to an Emergency Helpline. It also provides Smart Alerts that monitor for trouble within your home.  ... ' 

Making Smart Plugs Smarter

Considering a broader view of 'smart', more like cooperative towards goals.

Engineers make smart plugs smarter  by National University of Singapore

Singapore is in the midst of its Smart Nation transformation, and researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have a new invention that could take it a big step forward.

It is a network of smart electrical sockets controlled by a central computer, optimizing energy use throughout a building or even across buildings. The team that created this was led by Associate Professor Sanjib Kumar Panda from the NUS Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

So far, most people have used smart appliances in a very piecemeal way. For example, an appliance, such as a television or an air conditioner, is connected to the Internet, and then controlled remotely from a mobile app. However, this approach is actually inefficient, so the NUS team set out to improve it.

"The current trend is to put a computing unit in every new appliance, which generates a lot of e-waste and drives up costs, so we are avoiding that," said Dr. Krishnanand Kaippilly Radhakrishnan, who worked with Panda to develop the technology.  ... " 

Smart Electrical Outlet/Socket (SEOS) system

The NUS researchers' Smart Electrical Outlet/Socket (SEOS) system monitors and controls every socket in a building in real-time.

Each socket has a chip that communicates with the central server over WiFi. When an appliance is connected, the socket recognizes it through an electronic sticker on the plug, known in the industry as Near Field Communication. This is a concept similar to tapping a person's staff pass to enter the office. The electrical specifications of the appliance are then called up from a database.

Operators of a SEOS-enabled network can track and quantify how much energy various devices consume—including calculating energy costs—and then configure the system to deliver power only when needed.

The SEOS system can be programmed to completely switch off appliances when not in use, rather than waste electricity by leaving them on idle or standby. Appliances left on when not in use make up 25 percent to 50 percent of a building's electricity consumption. ... " 

Procter's Virtual CES Home of the Future

Recall that I originally established this blog to continue communications with P&G's 'Home of the future'. visitors in the middle 00's.  Linked directly to a store of the future. I often headed tours and discussions there, as part of a  team that managed that effort.  Often bringing in new technologies.  There are many posts about it in this blog.  It went away for a time, but now is roaring back with slightly different direction.  Smarter and Greener.  Will  aim to visit and report on it.

You can visit the current effort online at CES online, below is an intro through which you can get to the CES site.

Step Inside P&G’s Greener and Smarter Home of the Future

The CPG giant is hosting a virtual exhibit at CES 2021.    By Paul Herbert,  AdWeek

Even if people spend only half as such time at home in the coming years as they had throughout the majority of 2020, Procter & Gamble would still be in a better position than it was prior to the pandemic.

In October, the maker of household staples from laundry detergent to toilet paper reported $19.3 billion in quarterly net sales—a 9% increase compared to the same time last year, with each of its business segments seeing gains. Before Covid-19, growth had been in the mid-single digits.

“The biggest trend that we have seen is that there’s an elevated and heightened interest in cleaning, health and hygiene because people are spending more time at home,” said Marc Pritchard, P&G’s chief brand officer. 

No one doubts that the vaccine will get people out and about again. At the same time, multiple data sets suggest trends such as high unemployment, investments in household renovation and people’s preference to work remotely (at least some of the time) will continue to keep many of us home for a good while.   ... " 

C by GE Turns to Cync

 Wish that this had happened so strongly when I was connected, nice to see them back connected to IOT Home.  But will this direction survive?

C by GE gets rebranded under new ownership, expands beyond lighting  By Brian Heater@bheater in TechCrunch

There’s a decent chance you missed the news back in May — there was, after all, a lot going on at the time. General Electric sold off its more than 100-year-old GE  Lighting division to smart home company Savant. Today, the division’s new owner is announcing a key rebranding effort, six months after the initial deal.

Clearly there’s still value in the GE name, even divorced of its original parent company. In its new home, the C by GE line is getting a rebrand, however. Seems totally reasonable — C by GE was never the most straightforward name. Going forward, the line will be rebranded as “Cync” — which, if not better is, at the very least different.

Along with the change in ownership, the name connotes a broadening of scope — that much was probably an inevitability under Savant. GE Lighting  is becoming a larger smart-home brand in its new home. CES, which kicks off next week, will find the company introducing a new thermostat and a range of outdoor products, including a new smart plug. The brand will also introduce a connected camera and fan speed switch.   ... "

Making Smart Thermostats More Efficient

 Beyond the simplest adaptable method.

Making Smart Thermostats More Efficient

MIT News

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Russia's Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) collaborated on the design of a smart thermostat that uses data-efficient algorithms to learn optimal temperature thresholds within seven days. The thermostat's algorithms use reinforcement learning and are event-triggered, making decisions only in response to events defined by specific conditions reaching a threshold. Skoltech's Henni Ouerdane said, "A learning thermostat can potentially learn how to adjust its set-point temperatures in coordination with other HVAC devices, or based on its prediction of electricity tariffs in order to save energy and cost."

IKEA Smart Home

 Have not seen too much of a move by IKEA as yet, especially in linking to other capabilities.  But here is one example.

IKEA's smart home system now supports scenes

Long-awaited shortcut buttons appear to be coming soon, too.

Jon Fingas in Engadget

IKEA is filling an important feature gap in its smart home system. The Verge reports that IKEA is adding scene support to Home Smart through a firmware update (1.12.31) for its Tradfri gateways, making it easy to control multiple devices at once without having to rely on other companies’ platforms. You can quickly dim the lights and silence your Symfonisk speakers when you’re getting ready for bed, for instance.... " 

Sonos Makes a Small Smart Home Move

Not expected, intriguing. Hoping to compete with other players in the space?

Sonos speakers can now communicate with GE Appliances  They can notify you when the oven is preheated or a dishwasher load is done.

Igor Bonifacic, @igorbonifacic in Engadget .... 

WalMart Competing with Geek Squad

Done well and priced well could attract and engage many consumers.   

Has Walmart come up with an answer to Best Buy’s Geek Squad?  In Retailwire by George Anderson

Walmart is taking part in a pilot program to test the viability of offering consumer electronics and technology services to its customers at a fraction of what similar services such as Best Buy’s Geek Squad cost.

The retailer is setting up kiosks — four Dallas-area locations and another in Springdale, AR — that will enable customers to sign up for in-home installation of computing devices, smart home products, televisions and WiFi. It will also offer repair services for damaged smartphones and other electronic devices.

Walmart is looking to roll out the service in 50 locations by the middle of next year, and shoppers in areas with the service will be able to access it online. The kiosks will be staffed by True Network Solutions, which is partnering with the retailer to provide the service.  ... "