IoT news of the week for Sept. 23, 2022

Swarm announces new asset tracker: Swarm, the IoT satellite company purchased by SpaceX, has created a satellite-connected asset tracker that costs $99 and requires a $5 a month connectivity subscription. The idea is to make a satellite-powered tracker easier to access for companies that don’t have the technical expertise to build their own. This all fits with Swarm’s mission of making satellite connectivity more accessible, either through cost or ease of implementation. Sarah Spangelo, senior director of satellite engineering at SpaceX and the founder of Swarm, told me that Swarm now has 160 satellites in orbit and is set to launch a few more. In several years she expects the newly announced direct-to-cellphone satellite partnership between SpaceX and T-Mobile to become cheaper and provide connectivity even for IoT devices. However, that’s not happening anytime soon, given the planned launches and the fact that Swarm’s satellites last 4-5 years once in orbit. (Swarm) — Stacey Higginbotham

We should all recognize the power of sensors: My former boss and colleague, Om Malik, penned a quick little blog pointing out what I wish more people would understand. The sensors that we surround ourselves with in our gadgets are powerful surveillance tools that can tell others a lot more than we realize. And we should act accordingly from a policy and rights perspective. (Om Malik) — Stacey Higginbotham

Smarter buildings are more sustainable buildings: A new report and what seems to be a new product offering or partnership between telecom equipment provider Ericsson and Kiona, which provides property management software for commercial real estate, makes the claim that connected office buildings will result in an increase in property value and lead to up to 10% less in annual energy costs. For Europe, which is preparing for an energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, there is ample reason to chase these savings. Kiona wants to help and specifically to do so using connectivity and solutions provided by Ericsson. To announce the deal, the two companies have created a nifty report justifying the need for IoT in buildings. I believe the promise, but I also know that savings also will be the result of employee education and some business process change, so just throwing in some sensors and AI won’t necessarily move the needle much. (Ericsson) — Stacey Higginbotham

Robotic mops need cellular IoT, too: As much as I like my Roomba, there’s no way it could clean between 5,000 and 7,000 square feet. For that, the ICE Cobotics robotic cleaning unit is a better choice. And instead of getting data from the robot to the cloud over Wi-Fi, ICE this week partnered with T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom to use the duo’s T IoT for connectivity. This makes sense, because ICE Cobotics offers cleaning robots to various businesses through “an all-inclusive subscription service for floor cleaning machines, parts and maintenance, and performance and monitoring software.” With set connectivity charges, the company can reduce risk to net revenue brought on by fluctuating data costs. (IoT Business News) — Kevin Tofel

Canonical brings Matter to Ubuntu, joins the CSA: This week, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) gained a new member: Canonical, the company that offers Ubuntu Linux software and services. Canonical will include support for the Matter protocol in Ubuntu Core, a containerized version of the software platform meant for embedded devices. Although Matter is platform-agnostic, it’s quite common for an IoT device to run on some flavor of Linux. As an added benefit for device makers working on Matter products, Canonical’s Ubuntu Core handles two important elements that Matter currently doesn’t: over-the-air updates and security maintenance. With this development, product engineers don’t have to worry about either of those for their Matter devices since Canonical is doing most of that work for them. (Canonical) — Kevin Tofel

The UK to review big tech in the smart home: As the U.S. Federal Trade Commission starts looking into Amazon’s proposed purchase of iRobot, the UK is getting in on the legal action, too. This week, Ofcom, the UK’s wireless regulator, said it will be examining Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in what it says is a £15 billion cloud services market. More specifically, Ofcom will review big tech’s role in smart speakers as well as general cloud services and messaging apps. As information and content consumption have migrated away from old wirelines and television radio waves, Ofcom is trying to better understand smart speakers and other “gateways” to information so it can regulate them appropriately. Better late than never, I guess! (Ofcom) — Kevin Tofel

Why did Google’s Sidewalk Labs project fail in Toronto? I always thought the project to build a smart city on a chunk of Toronto’s waterfront was a techno-utopian pipe dream without a clear understanding of what it means to engage with the public, and that’s the sense that I get in reading this brief interview with Josh O’Kane, a journalist who wrote a book on Sidewalk’s failure. The interview is too pithy to be of much use, especially because most of it feels more like he spent the time shrugging and saying that Sidewalk struggled because it thought it was dealing with a single entity rather than a bureaucracy with multiple interests. However, the real failures of Sidewalk are worth digging into so I hope the book covers that nuance in a way this interview couldn’t. (Emerging Tech Brew) — Stacey Higginbotham

New Nvidia Jetson Orin modules for AI at the edge and robotics: Nvidia’s Jetson line up of chips is a popular option in the industrial IoT and now the chipmaker has said it will release the Jetson Orin Nano line of modules for edge AI and robotics. There are 6 different module options with the beefiest one delivering up to 275 tera operations per second. The launch of the Orin Nano modules comes six months after Nvidia announced the Jetson AGX Orin family of chips which are already used by more than 1000 customers. (Nvidia) — Stacey Higginbotham