IoT news of the week for April 9, 2021

Happy IoT Day, or simply Friday if you don’t go for hashtag holidays. Let’s get to this week’s news.

Pelion scores Johnson Controls as a customer: Arm’s Pelion business unit has signed a deal to become the device management service for Johnson Controls’ smart buildings platform. As sensors and computers proliferate as part of building infrastructure, Pelion will handle the security and data associated with those devices. It’s a pretty significant win for Pelion, which Arm spun out as its own company last year. It’s also a win for smart buildings, which are getting closer to reality as companies try to build out partnerships and standards to manage the wide variety of different technologies and try to make meaning out of building data. (Johnson Controls)

A look at two smart building standards: Speaking of Johnson Controls and smart buildings, Erik Paulson, who works at Johnson Controls and is the assistant secretary of the newly created Brick Consortium, has published a long post explaining the differences between the Brick Schema and Project Haystack. Both are open source projects trying to create common labels for devices deployed in smart buildings, but they get used differently in implementation. Paulson uses very clear examples to walk through how the two differ and does a great job with illustrations to explain how to implement and query data using each framework. He is obviously working with the Brick Consortium, so be aware that his explainer isn’t unbiased, but it is a really good one for anyone trying to get smarter about smart buildings. (Medium)

It only took a pandemic, but Target’s CIO is finally excited about the IoT: Target CIO Mike McNamara spoke on a panel this week for Protocol, during which he laid out how the retailer used its existing in-store camera network to create an app that counts the number of guests in a store so Target could abide by capacity restrictions in different areas. McNamara said that for the fastest and most accurate counts, all of that computing needed to take place at the edge, so now he’s stoked about the possibilities of edge computing. We also learned that Target has 4,000 developers and data scientists, which is pretty darn impressive. (Protocol)

Hackers are bad, but your employees are probably worse: Much of the discussion around cybersecurity in the industrial world revolves around malware and infected USB sticks. But this article offers some good level-setting. It points out that employees and former employees are often bigger potential threats, either because they don’t follow best practices or perhaps because they’re upset and have access to equipment. The story also notes that industrial hacks are a bit more challenging because in many cases, it takes knowledge of the equipment to cause real damage — which is another strike against employees. (Automation World)

Low power chipmaker Atmosic releases two new reference designs: Atmosic makes low-power Bluetooth radios that work with energy harvesting technology to power a device without batteries. The company has released a reference design for connected remote controls that won’t need a battery and for conned e-ink badges. This week it also announced reference designs that will use solar energy harvesting for remote controls, keyboards, and one for beacons/sensors that will be available during the second quarter of this year. I’m stoked to see more batteryless sensors available, even if they are Bluetooth, and thus limited to connecting to nearby bridges or cell phones. (Atmosic)

The GAO cautions that a two-way electrical grid is uniquely vulnerable: I’m a big proponent of a two-way electrical grid where devices in the home or office can report their need for electricity to a server while utilities report their capacity and pricing to that same device. From there, the server can allocate energy supply and demand between devices in the home or office, or between the utility and the home. However, with that exchange of information comes the potential for an exchange of malware or data leaks. With that in mind, the General Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report noting that this could create new vulnerabilities in the nation’s various electrical grids. The GAO isn’t wrong; in fact, it should be looking at other industries as well. For example, I’ve been worried about the security of hospitals and doctors’ offices as the rise of at-home medical devices creates potential security holes in hospital networks. Obviously, when we exchange data, we can also exchange viruses. (Defense One)

Real talk about 5G: I am so glad to have come across this article, which notes that despite the hype around 5G, even Nokia — which is pushing 5G equipment — admits that 80% of industrial IoT use cases are running just fine with 4G/LTE. If you have 5G FOMO, just click on through and relax. (Enterprise IoT Insights)

Thinking differently about infrastructure: This article should be required reading ahead of the U.S. government trying to pass a huge infrastructure package. It’s a bit meandering, but it ultimately asks us to rethink how we view infrastructure and its effect on the environment. The idea is that much of our prior infrastructure investments have led to environmental and cultural destruction while promoting economic gains. But what if we also factored in the environmental costs of our infrastructure investments? What might we build then? (Noema)