IoT News of the week for January 12, 2019

Here comes Tretur, Ikea’s relatively inexpensive smart blinds: After rumors, hints, and leaks, Ikea’s smart blinds are finally a real thing. Dubbed Tretur, these shades will cost between $113 and $181, depending on window size, when they arrive on April 1 in the U.S. The battery-powered motors are recharged by an included USB brick, although IKEA hasn’t said how often you’ll need to use that. As part of the company’s Tradfi smart home products line, they’ll work with that hub and integrate with Alexa, Google Home, and HomeKit. Blinds can be grouped or work independently through voice control or IKEA’s companion app, or by using the included remote. (Fast Company) Kevin Tofel

Withings brings ECG on the cheap to battle Apple Watch 4: Apple isn’t the only smartwatch game in town when it comes to personal electrocardiograms. At CES 2019, Withings debuted the $129 ECG Move, which measures heartbeat rhythm. To do so, you’ll keep a finger on the watch’s crown to complete a circuit for 30 seconds. Like other Withings wearables, it also tracks steps, sleep, and various exercise activities, albeit without a digital display. Information is shown in the Withings app, with steps also shown on the analog face of the watch. Withings says the ECG Move is currently under FDA certification review and the product should arrive in the second quarter of this year. (Ars Technica) Kevin Tofel

A private beta for Google Assistant on Sonos One begins: Finally! After teasing us in 2017 with an announcement of Google Assistant support in 2018 — and failing to meet that deadline — Sonos is moving this integration forward again. Currently in private beta, the company plans to expand testing to a wider audience in the coming weeks. (Pick me!) Implementation will follow based on test results, so we’re no closer to an actual deployment date for the Assistant joining Alexa on the Sonos One speakers. At least we have some real progress taking place. (Variety) Kevin Tofel

Lenovo turns its latest Android tablets into Echo Show devices: Amazon added Echo functionality to its own FireHD tablet line last year, and now it has an actual Android partner doing the same. Lenovo introduced a pair of 10-inch tablets at CES costing $199 or $299, depending on specification options, and both have full Amazon Alexa support. That means they work just like the Echo Show for displaying information and controlling your Alexa-enabled smart home. You’ll need the tablets in a powered dock for Show Mode, just like you do with Amazon’s own slates, but that dock is included with the tablets. It’s great to see Amazon further expand Alexa-capabilities, but I suspect this is a bigger win for Lenovo to help it sell more tablets with the currently unique feature not found on competing Android slates: being Alexa-compatible. The Lenovo tablets will be available on Amazon later this month. (Lenovo) Kevin Tofel

Avnet gives the Raspberry Pi some industrial cred: Avnet showed off an industrial gateway at CES that is built on a modified Raspberry Pi device. Avnet added ports to handle industrial protocols and a trusted computing module for added security on the hardware, and swapped out the memory for something a bit more resilient. The idea was to help developers familiar with prototyping on a Pi device bring their designs to a production environment without having to switch platforms. The device isn’t available yet, but will be later this year. –Stacey Higginbotham

What the industrial internet can learn from Sony’s hack: Back in 2014, Sony Pictures was hacked and its executive emails were released. It was embarrassing and expensive for the studio, and it also freaked out corporate America. But Sony wasn’t hacked directly. Instead, hackers targeted an outside contractor who had access to the company’s servers. This week, The Wall Street Journal published a thorough dive into an attack on the U.S. electric grid that began the same way. Thanks to a hack on a small Oregon contractor, Russian hackers were able to access part of the electric grid. So while companies now have to consider how contractors access their servers, it’s not just people who are weak links. Small devices such as HVAC systems or temperature sensors can also give hackers a way in. Hackers walked away with Target’s credit-card data after attacking through an HVAC system, and research firms documented a way into a casino’s systems using a temperature sensor on a fish tank. Connected systems are more complex and security needs to change to meet those needs. (WSJ)  –Stacey Higginbotham

5G is the new natural: At CES, the rest of the tech world was finally talking about what the trade press has known for a while: 5G can mean many things, and companies are so eager to tout their awesome new tech that anything called 5G can be anything at all. It’s like the natural label on food. It means nothing, but consumers like it. What’s sad and frustrating is that there are actual 5G standards on file with the 3GPPP, and those standards are blazingly fast and can solve several challenges of wireless networks today. But the new 5G label is applied to devices beyond that. And worse, the Wi-Fi Alliance stepped in late last year and renamed its tech using the 6G label. Soon a G won’t mean anything at all. (CNet)  –Stacey Higginbotham

Baidu creates open source edge computing platform: Chinese cloud provider Baidu launched OpenEdge on Wednesday as an extension of its Intelligent Edge computing platform. It ties back into the Baidu cloud and seems comparable to the Microsoft IoT Edge product. (Datanami)  –Stacey Higginbotham