IoT news of the week for Oct. 1, 2018

What’s inside Google’s Home Hub? This week, Google unveiled the Google Home Hub device, which has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a 7-inch display. It also updated its Google Home software to let users control smart home devices visually from both their phone and the newly launched Home Hub. At first we thought the Home Hub would run Android Things, but it turns out it’s running a version of Google’s Chromecast platform. So instead of using the IoT platform for this device, it’s running a TV platform. Is it because Google was trying to keep costs low (this is the lowest-cost Google Smart Display device out there) that it chose a chip that can’t run the full Android Things platform? (Ars Technica)

Check out the first Actions on Google: GE has introduced some connected light bulbs that work directly with the Google Home Hub; users don’t even have to pair the Bluetooth-based bulbs with the hub. It’s the first example of the Actions on Google being used in a commercial integration. The Actions are to help device-to-device communication and pairing. Much like Apple’s HomeKit pairing process, which requires the user to scan a barcode, or Amazon’s new Wi-Fi pairing, which works like the Google pairing, we’re seeing device makers try to create easier ways to get products online. These bulbs will help advance user adoption of smart home products. Too bad we don’t have a standard. (CE Pro)

A deep dive into the battle to control the smart home: Ben Thompson of the newsletter Stratechery weighed in on the smart home this week, noting how Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook are all striving to become the key provider in this area. I agree with much of his take, in particular on the strengths and weaknesses of each company, and especially how social communication (talking to your friends) seems to be Facebook’s strategy. I don’t think it’s the right strategy, but Facebook is playing to its strengths. The business models behind each company’s rationale for controlling the space is also important. I think he’s missing a bit of Google’s rationale, however, and it’s an area where Google is weak: it wants to use its AI capabilities to make compelling products to sell.  Because the revenue from ads in a world with fewer screens and different ways of accessing information will cut into Google’s revenue, it has to shift to selling hardware. AI will help it make those hardware products more compelling and perhaps deliver higher margins. (Stratechery)

Blockchain could make smart cities behave like enterprises: Two E&Y consultants have laid out a vision for how smart cities could use the blockchain to enhance their operations. Examples include using the blockchain to secure public data, such as transportation data, which could make it difficult to “hack” a city by changing the train scheduling data, for example. It also talks about grouping procurement orders for different city departments under one order to help the city get volume discounts. In this example, a smart contracts system based on the blockchain would act sort of like an enterprise resource planning software package for the city. If you’re into smart cities and blockchain, this is pretty cool article. (Government Computing)

Google lays out its predictive maintenance case: This summer at the Google Cloud event, the company showed off customers using its cloud services to build IoT projects and offered several examples of how one could use Google Functions, various databases, and analytics to find an effective set of services for the job. Google has subsequently posted an in-depth discussion of the types of data needed for predictive maintenance and an explanation of how such a service might come together. If you’ve already built a predictive maintenance service, the blog post isn’t going to help, but for the many folks out there trying to make a business case for IoT, predictive maintenance is a great start, and this post could help them see where they stand. (Google)

Could investigators use a journalist’s Apple Watch to explain his death? Fitness tracker data is being used in corporate wellness programs, for setting insurance rates, and for investigating violent crimes. This story suggests that it might also help authorities figure out what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who disappeared inside the Saudi Embassy last week. Without its own form of connectivity the watch won’t help, since his iPhone was with his girlfriend and out of Bluetooth range, but if it is an Apple Watch 3 or later it might have a cellular connection that could transmit details. The story also offers a great overview of the times that fitness tracker data has been used to solve or aid in solving crimes. (Wired)

Influx Data integrates it streaming analytics with Google’s services: Users of Google Cloud IoT Core and the firm’s cloud services will be able to link their Influx DB time series data with Google’s services more easily thanks to two products released this week by Influx Data. I’ve covered Influx in the past, and in this case it’s offering both software in the cloud and software that would run on a server at the edge to pull streaming time series data to Google’s service. Anything to make linking old-school data-gathering functions easier to move to the cloud. (Influx Data)

Here’s a crazy patent for the smart home: Who doesn’t love trawling through patents to figure out which dystopian future we’ll live in? The Telegraph this week discovered a patent application from Amazon that uses the sound of people’s voices to determine how they feel. For example, coughs may indicate sickness, while tears may indicate sadness. This isn’t a new idea. I’ve pitched the idea of a Skill that listens to coughs to tell me if I have something bad or something really bad, but Amazon’s patent admittedly goes a bit further. (The Telegraph)

We’re getting closer to a data privacy law: The passage of a California law to stop companies from selling devices with default passwords created the first major IoT security law in the country. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. And now, we’re seeing smart columnists across the mainstream media calling out the tech industry for failing to let users consent to the use of their data and for not investing in secure products. Meaningful consent for our data usage is a deeper topic and one that I’ll cover in depth soon, but it will have to be a part of any solution, as will some way of easily communicating to consumers how secure their IoT devices are. Let’s get started. (Bloomberg, NYTimes)

Microsoft’s thinking about integrating different types of data so you don’t have to: One of the biggest challenges for an industrial or enterprise IoT project manager is figuring out how to marry different sources of data in ways that can provide real insights. Smarter production lines can run anywhere from dozens to a hundred different protocols, and bringing all that together has been big business for vendors such as OSIsoft. Now, with its Common Data Model, it looks like Microsoft is thinking about this problem as well. Microsoft’s efforts appear to be focused at a higher level, for cloud and API data, as opposed to machine-level data. Check out the article to learn more. (ZDNet)