IoT news of the week for June 30, 2023

Mexico is embracing Mioty as a scalable industrial IoT network: FábricaDigital, a network of several large enterprises in Mexico, has signed a deal with the Mioty Alliance to make the Mioty long-range, low-power IoT network viable for businesses in its network. FábricaDigital works with companies including Google, Honeywell, Continental, and Safran Group. Mioty is a competitive technology to other LPWANs such as Sigfox, plus LoRaWAN, and NB-IoT, but we’ve been hearing more about it in the last few months. (RCR Wireless)

Add EV carmakers into the mix of smart energy management players: It’s clear that using connected appliances to help residential homeowners manage their energy use is gaining in importance. I have been curious how big smart home companies such as Google or Samsung SmartThings might compete against the large electrical companies such as Schneider Electric or Legrand. We’ll toss startups into the mix as well. But I hadn’t really considered that carmakers outside of Tesla would get involved. Yet here comes GM with several products for EV charging, energy storage, and software to manage it all. GM launched these products as part of its Ultium Home line of business, and I frankly can’t wait to see who else decides to jump into this sector of the smart home. It’s looking to be a confusing mess for the average homeowner, though. (The Verge)

The Flipper Zero tool is making bank bringing hacking to the masses: If you ever wanted to embrace your inner Mr. Robot and physically access cars, open garage doors, and get entry into secured buildings, then you may be interested in the Flipper Zero device. I’ve written about it before, but it’s a $169 multipurpose tool designed to help hackers with penetration testing and let others explore the world around them. Like any tool, it could be used for good or for less legit purposes. Brazil, for example, won’t let its citizens import it because it’s worried about those less legit uses. Apparently, the company behind the Flipper Zero sold $25 million worth of the devices in 2022 and is on track to sell $80 million worth of them this year. I’m thinking I should get a physical lock for my garage door now. (TechCrunch)

Another story about private businesses using facial recognition: It’s been well reported that retailers are using facial recognition to prevent shoplifters from entering their stores. This story from the New York Times proves that it’s still going on, and asks some of the hard questions, such as: When private businesses use this technology, who is watching out for the people affected by it to ensure they aren’t unfairly penalized? And even bigger, as more and more places use facial recognition and share images among different stores, does using this technology to keep people out of stores become a punishment of its own, one issued without due process and able to continue for an indeterminate amount of time? This isn’t just a story about preventing people who have been caught stealing from accessing stores; it’s also the future of policing that’s happening privately and behind the scenes in municipal police stations. And it’s clear that this technology is harming innocent people and having what might be considered outsized effects on even the guilty. (NYT)

Better resource allocation through cash payments? There’s a massive heat wave underway in my former state of Texas, and when it’s that hot, worries about the Texas grid abound. One solution is using demand response programs to let utilities dial back demand for electricity by controlling homeowners’ smart thermostats to raise the temperature by a few degrees, usually from about 5  p.m. to 8 p.m. The problem is that when it’s really hot, most people get upset when utilities raise their thermostats or homeowners opt out of participating that day. This writer, who is a professor and the CTO at an energy venture fund, argues that utilities should be incentivizing customers to raise the temperature by paying them to do so. But utilities already offer rebates to customers when they enroll in demand response programs (I got $85 to enroll in Austin Energy’s), and I worry that people with money and larger homes that require more energy to cool will simply decide they don’t need the money and would rather keep the AC on. But I do agree that more cities need to incentivize homeowners to put in smart thermostats and more utilities need to implement or expand their demand response programs to help offset demand. (NYT)

Deutsche Telekom’s IoT creators business will add Helium support: Deutsche Telekom operates a business called IoT Creators that tries to make it easier for companies to add connectivity to their devices. This week the IoT Creators business added support for the decentralized LoRaWAN network operated by the Helium Foundation. (Fierce Wireless)

NTT is creating a digital twin of the Tour de France using IoT: NTT will set up a digital twin of the Tour de France and women’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift using data gathered from the bikes and sensors on the bikers. The bikes will transmit their location data constantly using a radio network. That data will get aggregated on race motorcycles or planes. Then they will transmit the data using a microwave link to the end of the race, where a “truck-based edge-computing device” will analyze the data and then give near real-time location on what’s happening. And because NTT embraces whatever is hot in tech, it will also feed historical race data and other information to a version of ChatGPT, so fans can get relevant information simply by asking. I actually think tying deep data and stats with a platform like ChatGPT could be an amazing way to follow and get information about a current sporting event. (NTT)

We cannot ditch batteries soon enough when it comes to the IoT: Research from the EU indicates that globally we will dump 78 million batteries from battery-powered IoT devices every day by 2025.  This research makes a lot of assumptions about how long a connected door lock or sensor might last, and assumes someone will replace the batteries when they die, but even if it overshoots the mark, batteries are a problem. Aside from the e-waste issue, they cost money both to buy the battery and to maintain them. We simply don’t have enough hours in the day to change all of the potential batteries in connected devices deployed at scale in businesses, stores, and warehouses.  (RCR Wireless)

Mouser now stocks Atmosic dev kits: So if you’d like to get rid of batteries in your IoT device, I have great news. Mouser, an electronics distributor, has signed a distribution deal with Atmosic, a chip company whose boards let developers build connected devices that can use a single battery for a product’s entire lifespan. Atmosic is already powering TV remotes and I expect to see its electronics inside electronic shelf labels. This isn’t for devices that require a lot of juice, but it’s a start. (Atmosic)