IoT news of the week for Jan. 20, 2023

Is Apple making my “HomePad”? For at least two years, I’ve been suggesting (or at least hoping) that Apple should make a smart display to compete with Amazon and Google. I’ve referred to the product idea as a HomePad. We don’t know the name of this mythical product, but we do have reports that it’s in the works. According to Marc Gurman, Apple is progressing toward offering a low-end iPad specifically suited for smart home interactions. The device will reportedly have a magnetic attachment that would allow it to be mounted. I suspect it will also mount to some type of HomePod dock, but I’d buy one even if it didn’t. (Bloomberg) — Kevin C. Tofel

This smart vest doesn’t seem very smart: Upon first glance, the $220 Carhartt X-1 Smart Heated Vest sounds smart. The word “smart” is right in the name, after all. Digging into the details though, I’m disappointed. The vest uses Bluetooth to communicate with a companion mobile app and regulates your temperature with AI. So far, so good. That AI feature monitors the current temperature, the surrounding environment, and the amount of layers you’re wearing under the vest. But you have to manually select your activity type and mark off all the layers you’re wearing in the app before doing anything. Seems like a pretty dumb smart vest to me for the price. Maybe version 2 will eliminate the manual steps required to boost the vest’s intelligence. (The Verge) — Kevin C. Tofel

Gonna make you sweat (Everybody drink now): At $129, the Nix Hydration Biosensor is a wearable sensor to monitor your sweat output. I can do that by looking at the shirt stains under my arms, of course, but Nix adds an impressive feature. It analyzes sweat production and calculates how much electrolyte loss your activity is causing. Using that data, the Nix can tell you how much water and how many electrolyte supplements you need to top up your tank. I’m impressed for $129. I’m less impressed that a four-pack of single-use sweat sensors sets you back $25. And my apologies to C+C Music Factory for the slight tweak to its 1990s dance hit in the headline, but in my defense: How often do I get to use a throwback like this? (CNN) — Kevin C. Tofel

We’re smartly securing our homes in the U.S.: Research firm Parks Associates published a data report this week looking at the high level state of the U.S. smart home. According to the company, 40 percent of households now use a smart lock or some other smart security system. Since security is a logical first step foothold for a homeowner to take with IoT, that suggests there’s still a large addressable market for these products. I’m curious if these smarter systems are actually reducing theft and break-ins, but I haven’t seen any data on that. Additionally, more than half of households (54 percent) have some type of connected health product, while only 38 percent have purchased at least one smart home device, according to Parks. The full report contains more interesting data points and is freely available by providing contact information. (Parks Associates) — Kevin C. Tofel

Energy harvesting in the IIoT: Element 4 announced a multi-solution to recharge batteries in Industrial IoT environments this week. The startup company uses vibrations, radio frequencies, solar, and other sources to recharge batteries using its Gallium 1.0 solution. The product itself has no batteries, but can essentially replace a battery. It attaches directly to sensors built by other companies, capturing power which is then used to grab and send sensor data over a LoRaWAN network. Given that smaller sensors don’t require much power, I can see this as a viable, renewable power source. Indeed, Element 4 says the Gallium 1.0 can create power from light as low as 50 lux. No, this won’t work for every IIoT sensor, but it does help eliminate the need to install and/or replace small batteries in many of them. (Taproot Edmonton) — Kevin C. Tofel

The U.K. is moving ahead on a smarter grid: Back in the early 2000s, the smart grid referred to adding connected meters to homes and business to remotely track electricity use, as well as adding sensors on power lines and transformers to track outages as they happened. Today, a smart grid should refer to a two-way grid that allows users to send power back to the grid as needed and allows utilities to also control demand through connected appliances. The U.K. is heading toward that goal and its largest tool appears to be electric cars and their chargers. The U.K. government and its electricity regulatory agency published an Electric Vehicle Smart Charging Action Plan that offers funding and education around a network of chargers that can pull energy from the grid or push it back into the grid as needed. The goal is to have a network of such chargers by 2025. It’s a good indication of where we’re heading in the next few years. (IoT for All) — Stacey Higginbotham

What do you call it when Industry 4.0 meets the blockchain? This article calls it the machine economy, and the two authors spend a lot of time painting a picture of a world where smart contracts, NFTs, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and decentralized finance all become tools for companies that have connected their operations using the IoT. The authors suggest that new business models that arise could involve creating a DAO that purchases an expensive machine and shares in the profits or using NFTs to protect IP while sharing data between partners. I am a big believer in the opportunity of blockchain technologies and autonomous contracts for the internet of things, but I worry the profiteering around cryptocurrencies will keep the benefits and serious efforts to a minimum for a while. (Journal of Innovation) — Stacey Higginbotham

Amberflo raises $15 million to enable usage-based pricing: In the prior blurb, I talked about using decentralized ledgers as a means to enable more granular pricing and new business models for industrial applications. Amberflo, a startup that launched in 2020, wants to help make usage-based pricing easier for businesses to implement. I’ve spent the last decade or so waiting for usage-based pricing to hit the big time, and it always seems to be just around the corner. Amberflo’s idea is to decouple the metering of usage from the pricing or billing, and Amberflo provides the accurate metering for customers. This makes it easier for Amberflo’s end customers to create pilot programs and adjust the pricing based on whatever factors matter to the customer. (Amberflo) — Stacey Higginbotham

Check out this $4 IoT module with all the radios: Sipeed has launched the Sipeed M0S IoT module that will cost $4 and have Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 6, and Zigbee all combined with a 320 MHz RISC-V microcontroller. This module will compete with the small ESP32-C4 and newly announced ESP32-C6 modules, but the pricing, performance and radios have me wondering how long it will take before we see this module become a baseline in IoT devices. That will, of course, mean another victory for RISC-V! (CNX Software) — Stacey Higginbotham