IoT news of the week for February 28, 2020

Plume adds motion detection via Wi-Fi: We’ve been discussing alternative solutions to traditional motion detectors for some time now. This week, Plume debuted one of those solutions with the introduction of Plume Motion, which uses Wi-Fi to see and report on movement throughout a home. Plume says the detections can be used to trigger automations in a home, as well as to view motion in private areas where you wouldn’t want a camera-based solution. Plume Motion is included with the $99 annual Plume membership, so if you’re already a subscriber in the U.S., you should now have the optional feature. (Plume)

Get ready for improved stress tracking on future wearables: I’ve seen a few smart watches that measure stress, but they’re a bit lacking. That’s because they rely solely on your heart rate instead of measuring cortisol, which is a better indicator of stress. Caltech researchers have developed a small, non-invasive cortisol sensor made of graphene that’s just one layer of carbon molecules thick. If the sensor can be manufactured at large scale, we could see improved stress detection on wearables without adding any bulk. (Medgadget)

Wi-Fi radios smaller than a grain of rice! Kudos to the electrical engineers at the University of California San Diego for designing a super small, low-powered Wi-Fi radio that sounds ideal for certain IoT devices. You could fit five of these diminutive Wi-Fi radios in the same space as a single grain of rice. Of course, you’re not going to enjoy the same fast speeds and wireless range as a phone or tablet, but the results are impressive. They generate 2 megabits per second over a range of up to 21 meters using just a scant 28 microwatts of power. That sounds perfect for small sensors on a home wireless network. (UCSD News)

This LoRa project is the answer to the elusive mailbox sensor: While we get hundreds of calls a year on the IoT Podcast voicemail hotline, certain listener questions resurface on a regular basis. One of them is how to enable notifications from a mailbox when the mail has arrived. You’d think that you could just use a basic light sensor, but the challenging bit is the connectivity aspect — namely, how do you get a signal from such a sensor that’s likely too far away from your wireless home network? This project uses a low-cost, power-efficient ATmega328 microcontroller and LoRa radio running on three AAA batteries to do the trick. I still have an ATmega board from my Computer Architecture class, so I may give this a go! (HackADay)

Better boot those unauthorized devices from your enterprise network: If you manage an IT enterprise environment, you probably know that some employees connect personal devices to the corporate network. And I’m sure you try to block them from doing that, but you have to try harder. Why? Because more than half of the devices on most enterprise networks are consumer-grade or IoT devices, from smart speakers and smart watches to IP cameras, according to a report from Zscaler. And given how insecure some of these products can be, you don’t want them latching on to your network with the potential to infect work devices. That said, I really want to know who brings an IP camera to the workplace and why. Maybe to see who’s eating someone else’s lunch? (ZDNet)

Farm data yields a nasty crop of unhappy farmers: Until this week, I did not know that many U.S. farmers actually rent the land on which they grow crops. And you’ll never guess how I found out. Climate Corporation, which helps farmers gather and analyze crop data, started working with Tillable, a company that invests in rentable farmland. Farmers were surprised when Tillable started contacting farmland owners to make purchase offers so it could rent the land out instead, which could lead to higher rates for the farmers currently renting that land. And so farmers banded together on social media and concluded that Tillable may have had access to the valuable crop, land, and harvest data gathered by Climate Corporation. The company denies it, however, and in an effort to harvest good relations with farmers, has decided to cancel its relationship with Climate Corporation altogether. (NPR)

Eero routers get an Apple HomeKit upgrade: Apple last year announced HomeKit-enabled routers, but its hardware partners have been a little slow to deliver. This week, however, owners of the Eero router line have a software update waiting that enables HomeKit support. Once upgraded, owners can select the security and access levels of their HomeKit devices, namely Restrict to Home, Automatic, and No Restrictions. (Eero)

It’s time for smart home devices to have local failover options during cloud outages: After a service outage on Nest cameras this week, I decided to take a stand. I’m calling for smart home device makers to start designing their cloud-based products with some type of local backup options, even if they have reduced functionality. Something’s got to give here, because the smart home is increasingly being relied upon by millions to monitor, react to, and inform us of changes in the roofs over our heads. Server outages are a question of when, not if, even for the best of companies that have large-scale redundancy. (StaceyOnIoT)

Clearview AI is supposed to be for law enforcement. Is it? On the podcast a few weeks back we discussed Clearview AI, a company that has access to more than 3 billion images for facial recognition. Many of these images are supplied by us; they’re taken from public social media platforms and the like. If that wasn’t scary enough, the Clearview product was intended to be used by law enforcement agencies alone. Guess what? Its reported client list has leaked. As you might expect, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York appear on the list. So too does Macy’s, Best Buy, Kohl’s, Walmart, and the NBA. But because the list was illegally obtained, Clearview AI said it isn’t commenting on the validity of it. (BuzzFeedNews)

What’s next for Fitbit after the Google acquisition? Only Google and Fitbit know what new devices and services are planned for their health-tracking devices, but a survey from Google about potential WearOS features seems to provide a large clue. In light of that survey, I believe traditional Fitbit wearables will be made for some time. However, I also know that Google’s smartwatch platform isn’t even a close competitor to Apple’s watchOS. So, among the potential health-tracking data points we could see Google integrate are SPO2 tracking, sleep apnea detection, heartbeat alerts, and sleep analysis, to name a few. (DroidLife)