IoT news of the week for Nov. 5, 2021

Phyn launches a smaller, cheaper leak detection system: Phyn, which makes devices that can scan for leaks and even shut off water in case of leak detection, has launched a new product. The Phyn Plus, Smart Water Assistant + Shutoff, is a smaller, cheaper version of the original Phyn water monitor and shutoff device that sold for $699. The new product still requires a plumber for the installation, but at $499 is less of a punch to the wallet. I have a Phyn device that simply attaches to an indoor pipe and monitors my home for leaks, but it does not include the ability to automatically shut off the water if a leak is detected. Given the correlation between climate emergencies and water leaks, there is definitely more interest in devices like Phyn’s products these days. (Phyn)

Generac buys Ecobee because energy management needs to be smarter: This week, Generac, which makes generators and energy storage devices, said it would buy Ecobee in a deal worth $770 million. There are a lot of angles to this deal, but the two most interesting are what it says about the business opportunities available for smart home products and what it says about the future of energy consumption and use in an era of unrestrained climate change. Both are depressing. The fact that Ecobee sold at a price that’s only about 5x what it raised is bad news for the few remaining stranded smart home companies building dedicated devices that also haven’t found an exit. Ecobee was being pushed hard by competition from Amazon, one of its investors, which just launched a $60 thermostat. Ecobee also struggled to get a subscription business off the ground and branch out into new hardware. As for the future of energy and the smart home, Generac’s decision to buy the maker of a device that controls the largest consumer of electricity in most North American homes (HVAC) offers it an interesting opportunity to build a smarter, more resilient home energy management service or system. (Generac)

Senet and Thingy will work together to expand LoRaWan coverage and services: Senet, a company that provides LoRaWAN gateways and coverage, has signed a partnership with Thingy, an environmental sensor company. Through the deal, Senet will provide coverage for and certify Thingy’s AQ Wildfire and Air Quality Monitoring Systems. Thingy will also share its coverage with other LoRa-capable sensors that want to use its network. The Thingy wildfire monitoring network will be deployed across the Western U.S. to help monitor for wildfires. (Senet)

Enjoy this profile of a scientist trying to remove batteries from the IoT: I loved this profile of Josiah Hester, a computer scientist working on ways to reduce the IoT’s reliance on batteries. Most of the research focuses on energy harvesting, but the article also covers the idea of “intermittent computing,” where computer scientists build computers that can survive  small, unexpected fluctuations in power. The article is packed full of cool computing ideas, such as a privacy-centric device to track smoking that can “film” and transmit data constantly for 20 hours on a single charge. What’s nice isn’t just the science, but the focus on the ethics and impacts of the various research projects. (The Bulletin)

Amazon makes it easier for dev teams to deploy Lambda functions to containers: This is a small announcement that’s likely of interest to IoT developers, simply because so many IoT companies rely on AWS Lambda functions and containers. Basically, developers might use several different AWS accounts for building their software, but they tend to centralize their container images to a single account. But previously, if they did that, any Lambda function used by that software had to reside in the same account as the one that owned the container image. It was a bit of a pain. Now developers no longer have to do it. (AWS blog)

Software PLCs beckon to the industrial IoT: Right now, companies managing industrial processes such as making food or refining gas rely on hardware-based programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to literally monitor and control their manufacturing processes. Large vendors such as Rockwell Automation, Siemens, Honeywell, and others sell the PLCs and add on software and monitoring sensors. It’s a big business, but much like virtualization has disrupted other hardware-centric companies in the networking and computing sector, it’s coming for industrial controls. And the question is how the biggest players plan to respond and what smaller upstarts might get in their way. This report outlines the topic and name-drops startups to keep an eye on; it also explains the strategy that bigger vendors are using to ease their way into software PLCs. (IoT Analytics)

Rockwell Automation buys Avata for deeper systems integration: When a company is in the midst of a digital transformation effort, one of the bigger challenges on the tech side is connecting industrial systems (OT systems) to IT systems. With this acquisition, Rockwell Automation, which makes tons of software and equipment for the OT world, gains a systems integrator and software expertise that can tie the OT data into Oracle’s cloud and other IT software. The two companies had started working together through a formal partnership back in March, and apparently the results were good enough that Rockwell decided to bring the team in-house. (TEDMagazine)

Wi-Fi adapts to the needs of the IoT: The Wi-Fi Alliance has certified Wi-Fi HaLow, a new standard for bringing Wi-Fi to the internet of things. Wi-Fi HaLow supports ranges up to 1 km and sips power. In this story, I ask if we need another low-power, long-range wireless option and explain how it might work.  (Stacey on IoT)