IoT news of the week for August 27, 2021

Foghorn gets a big win with Saudi Arabia’s Aramco: Foghorn, a startup providing data processing and analytics at the edge for industrial IoT clients, has signed a deal with Aramco, the oil and gas giant. Aramco will use Foghorn’s software for analyzing camera input in its plants and on its rigs. Specifically, Aramco will use it for in-plant safety where the system will look for workers or equipment that are out of compliance with safety codes, and on rigs to detect potential issues and then automatically shut down the process as opposed to waiting for human workers to notice them and manually shut the process down. It will also use computer vision analysis for flare detection to control emissions. This is a pretty big win and adoption of technology for such a large oil and gas provider, so it’s a big deal for Foghorn. (Foghorn)

Soracom signs deal with indoor air quality firm: IoT connectivity and services provider Soracom has signed a deal to provide cellular connectivity for Charge Analytics’ indoor air quality monitoring system. Charge Analytics started in 2018, and in many cases, its sensors eliminate the need for a person to manually test indoor air quality in industrial and warehouse environments. The sensors also provide more constant monitoring. With a lack of staff after the pandemic and a new appreciation for ventilation and indoor air quality, Charge Analytics is seeing interest grow. And if it succeeds, so does Soracom. (Soracom)

SmartRent listed on the NYSE this week: SmartRent, which sells smart home services and devices to the multi-family market, began trading on the NYSE under the ticker SMRT after completing a SPAC merger. As part of the terms of the SPAC, SmartRent raised $450 million. On their first day of trading, its shares shot up to $15 from its initial pricing of $12 per share before falling back down to $11.94. The deal gives SmartRent lots of cash to blow in a market that is certainly heating up. Latch, another company selling software for the rental market, has filed to go public via a SPAC, and RealPages, a company that has been investing in tech for apartment communities, purchased Stratis a year ago. (SmartRent)

A deep dive into Arm’s flexible plastic chip: Last month, chip design firm Arm published an article in Nature about its newly developed flexible IoT chip, which is cheap to make and is printed on a plastic substrate as opposed to rigid silicon. Arm put a full 32-bit microcontroller on this plastic film, which is a pretty impressive feat. We’ve had a few other efforts to bring radios and a bit of storage to tags that could fit on curved packaging, but nothing as powerful as a 32-bit MCU. (I know calling this powerful is odd, but truly it is way better than the 8-bit devices I’m used to.) Developing flexible and cheaper electronics will let us attach sensors to even more things and track even more data. The design still needs work, though. For those who want to understand the current limitations and where research needs to happen, they should check out this article. (Scientific American)

Electric vehicles are driving an automation boom: We are hearing a ton about how more advanced cars, including electric cars, are creating a global chip shortage, but the need for more finely tuned electric cars is also leading to more spending on factory automation equipment. Rockwell Automation, Durr AG, and Kuka are apparently beneficiaries of this trend, which should see automakers investing more than $37 billion in North American plants through 2025, according to LMC Automotive. More than 77% of that spending will be directed at SUV or EV projects. (Reuters)

Nordic Semiconductor is betting big on Wi-Fi: Nordic Semiconductor has long been known for its low-power cellular and Bluetooth IoT radios, but after a spate of acquisitions it’s investing in Wi-Fi as well. This makes complete sense, as Nordic is well known in the IoT space and likely wants to keep its customers happy as they add Wi-Fi to their product specs. Let’s see if they can make Wi-Fi less of a power-hungry beast. (Enterprise IoT Insights)

Is this the future of automotive ownership? Lynk & Co, a mobility joint venture between Geely Holding, Geely Auto Group and Volvo Car Group, has launched the ‘01’ SUV. The new vehicle is always connected thanks to tech from Orange Telecom, and is designed to be shared. The connectivity features allow owners to generate downloadable billing reports and ask for predictive maintenance updates. The car can roam across Europe, and Lynk envisions people being able to buy it and rent it out, or for companies to buy fleets of this vehicle and rent them out to consumers or business units. (Orange Business)

Link Labs touts a huge improvement in BLE battery life: Link Labs, a 7-year-old IoT platform provider, says it has technology that can extend the battery life of Bluetooth Low Energy tags by up to three years longer than current BLE tags. The company says its new technology also improves accuracy in asset location to within one meter. The technology, which Link Labs calls XLE, achieves lower-power consumption with proprietary calculations between its tags. So this isn’t an off-the-shelf option for everyone, but if you’re into it, Link Labs uses the technology in its AirFinder OnSite IoT asset-tracking platform. (Link Labs)