IoT news of the week for February 17, 2023

Allegion Ventures puts money into self-storage startup: Stuf Storage, a startup offering to connect landlords with underused real estate with consumers who need a place to store their stuff, has raised $11 million in funding from Allegion Ventures and Altos Ventures. The startup decks out available commercial space with storage containers and sells access to those containers to consumers. Landlords get a cut of the storage fees and consumers get a place to keep their excess items that is likely located closer to their home than other storage options. Allegion Ventures is trying to make investments in companies that are helping to disrupt the core access control market that Allegion is in, so this deal makes some sense. Worst case, Allegion can sell more locks and access tech. (Stuf)

IKEA’s new air quality monitor sensor is coming in time for spring allergy season: After some speculation, IKEA has announced its new air quality monitor, which measures VOCs, particulate matter, temperature, and humidity. If it added carbon dioxide, this sensor would have all of the air quality indicators I’d like. The VINDSTYRKA sensor will be available in April and will work with IKEA’s Dirigera hub. (IKEA)

Resideo has added water heaters to its demand response programs: Resideo has a new partnership with A.O. Smith, which makes water heaters, to help customers reduce demand on the electric grid during peak times. Resideo’s Grid Services business manages demand response programs for 27 utilities. Traditionally these programs dial back a customer’s thermostat when power demands get too high. Through this partnership, Resideo is adding hot water heaters, which are usually the second-largest consumer of electricity in a residential home. This is a good first step toward a more responsive grid. (Resideo)

Here’s a new smart yoga mat: There aren’t a lot of details here, but I figured I’d flag this smart yoga mat for those interested in connected fitness devices. This mat has embedded sensors and connects to an app to measure the intensity and quality of various yoga poses. The app doesn’t offer real-time feedback, but shares the data after the class is complete. I’m more of a real-time feedback person when I’m trying to master a complex pose, but I can appreciate how others might want to stay in the moment and not worry about their poses while trying to get a few moments of Zen. What’s cool is that as the tech to create these devices and apps becomes more accessible, we’ll likely see both types of yoga mats hit the market. Connectivity and sensors will simply enable different feature sets appealing to different types of buyers. (SMRTYoga)

Forget big data and focus on new data: I like this post because it’s written by one of the Big Data evangelists from a decade ago. These technologists were out there proposing solutions for querying the massive amounts of data that were flooding data centers thanks to digitization and cheap storage and compute. But as most folks dealing with sensor data realize, it’s not the amount of data that matters, but what you can do with it. And most businesses want to use recent data, like data from the last hour or day or week. Which means that querying big data isn’t the problem; quickly finding the right recent data that can deliver insights is. I wish the writer talked about the technical challenges associated with this new problem, but I do appreciate him setting the record straight on big data’s lack of importance. (MotherDuck)

Hi Solutions wants to make professionally installed smart homes more accessible: This article profiles Hi Solutions, a publicly traded roll-up of smart home integrators in “NFL cities” that wants to provide a middle tier for smart home installations. The idea is that the company will have and continue to acquire professional installers and outfit them with pre-built packages of existing professional and DIY smart home gear. With high-end systems integrators charging tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars for proprietary packages and companies such as Vivint and ADT on the lower end, there’s certainly room for a company that can package together a bunch of Lutron, Sonos, Ring, and other gear and sell it to a consumer for under $10,000, plus a monthly fee. (CEPro)

Manufacturing companies are really buying into private 5G: Manufacturers are relying on cellular networks, specifically private 5G, for their digitization plans, based on data from Nokia and Kyndryl. The two companies signed a partnership agreement last year to offer private 5G and now have more than 100 clients, with 90% of them in the manufacturing sector. And the two companies have added Palo Alto Networks to provide security for their deployments as an additional service. For more on why manufacturers are turning to private 5G, check out my visit to John Deere. (RCR Wireless)

Put this podcast in your feed: The most recent Vergecast podcast is all about repairing your gadgets and keeping old gadgets alive, making it a perfect podcast to listen to while you read Janko’s story at the top of this newsletter about why Meta can’t just open source the software behind its Portal communication device. The recording has interviews with a guy who repairs old HomePods and a gentleman who is keeping old Harmony remotes running, plus the CEO of iFixit, who can be found whenever someone is talking about repairing old (or not-so-old) gadgets.  (The Verge)