IoT news of the week for June 28, 2019

Zebra Technologies acquires Profitect: Zebra Technologies, which provides RFID products to warehouses, sports teams, and more, has built a business of connected products that track people, inventory, and equipment. The company has now acquired Profitect, which layers prescriptive analytics on top of data coming in from consumer packaged goods companies. If Zebra provides the physical infrastructure, Profitect provides the smarts on top of it, which makes this a good acquisition. The deal was announced in May and closed this month. (Zebra)

Resideo makes another acquisition: Resideo Technologies has acquired Pittsburgh-based LifeWhere, a company that uses machine learning to predict the failure on home appliances, such as water heaters and HVAC equipment. Resideo is the spin out of Honeywell’s consumer-facing products, which all still use the Honeywell brand name. Since spinning out in October of last year, Resideo has acquired three other companies including whole-home water sensing company Buoy and Whisker Labs. Based on these deals, it’s clear that prediction, in the form of using energy, reducing water usage and leaks, and in making sure homeowners don’t experience appliance breakdowns, is a central theme of how Resideo plans on making the home smart. After my own gadget burnout, I like where Resideo seems to be heading. (Resideo)

Amazon the panopticon? Will Oremus takes a look at how Amazon has quietly become not just a source of online data, but a source of real-world data. And it has done so without triggering much oversight into its role in creating a future surveillance society. Oremus links services such as Amazon’s Ring doorbell to its facial recognition product (Amazon Rekognition) and the Amazon Echo to the creation of a new surveillance apparatus. It’s worth a read. (Medium)

Philips Hue intros Bluetooth bulbs: My colleague Kevin can rejoice because Philips this week released a bulb that supports Bluetooth and Zigbee, which means he can enjoy the bulbs without a hub. Hue has had Zigbee bulbs since the beginning, but its embrace of Bluetooth will boost the standard while also making connected lighting more accessible to folks who don’t want to mess with a hub. Now they will be able to buy Bluetooth-enabled Hue bulbs for the same price as the Zigbee-only counterparts in the traditional A19 option and in the BR30 floodlights. Color-changing, tunable white and plain old white bulbs are available. I will say, however, that I find Bluetooth’s range issues to be a challenge, even in mesh bulbs I’ve tried. But that was a while back, so I’ll see if things have changed. (CNET)

Tariffs on Chinese goods will raise smart home device prices: The latest round of tariffs could boost the price of cellphones by $70 and laptops by $120, but it’s going to have an outsized effect on devices with smaller margins, where the increase in cost will have to be passed along to consumers. Expect prices on smart home gadgets to increase as well. For example, about an hour after I wrote the prior paragraph I received an email from June Life, maker of the June oven, noting that its prices would increase by $100 on July 1 to offset the rise in costs associated with the tariffs. (The Verge)

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs project releases its plans for Toronto: This is a massive document that discusses what Alphabet wants to accomplish with its plans for a smart city on a 12-acre plot of land in Toronto (that could expand to 350 acres). Its goals include 10 multi-use buildings, streets designed for multiple mobility options, an emphasis on walking and micro mobility over cars, and more. To dig in, check out the Sidewalk Labs site. (Sidewalk Labs)

A good perspective on what’s wrong with Sidewalk Labs: While the plan for Toronto includes almost 1,500 pages of ideas, goals, and some steps toward implementing those goals, it only includes four on data governance, which has some activists worried. I don’t blame them. Government has a very different goal than corporations do, and providing for citizens isn’t generally profitable. It’s a social obligation. Figuring out how to bridge the divide here is going to take more than four pages, so start by reading this article to dig into some of the issues. (Medium)

Big names in tech take on device identity: ARM, Intel, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are part of the new IoT Technical Working Group within the FIDO Alliance, which works across industries to build device authentication that doesn’t require passwords. This particular working group’s goal is to create a standard to onboard a huge number of IoT devices to a network. Creating a standard is a pretty common issue in enterprise settings, although several platforms have claimed to solve it within their own proprietary ecosystems. Even the Thread Group believes it has solved this challenge — at least for Thread devices. Intel is submitting its own onboarding mechanism to the group (ARM already uses it). The hard part won’t be developing tech to solve the problem, but getting everyone to agree where the problem needs to be solved (on the chip, in the network, etc.) and then getting them to adopt the FIDO standard. We’ll see. (CRN)

Add Ars Technica to your reading lists: I’ve long loved Ars for its smart and in-depth tech coverage. Now it’s turned to the industrial IoT as part of a week-long deep dive into topics such as jobs, AI, security, and more. I even learned where the phrase Industry 4.0 came from. It’s only eight years old! Check out the whole series. (Ars Technica)

Y’all, I’m kind of meh on the smart home: I wrote about the things that surprised me most after my move and after setting up my new smart home, and it’s the last item that really upset me. (StaceyonIoT)

I wrote about 5G and the software-defined factory: The future of factories is flexible, connected, and wireless, I argue in my latest IEEE column. (IEEE Spectrum)

Updated: This story was updated on July 12, 2019 to reflect that Profitect offers prescriptive analytics, not predictive.