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Hey, we’re at Industry 5.0 now: Maybe I missed the memo, but I was surprised when reading this essay to see that Industry 4.0 is over and now we’re moving onto the next iteration. The primary difference appears to be the addition of AI to the mix of real-time sensing and digitization associated with Industry 4.0. However, in Industry 5.0 this author’s vision includes people acting on the insights derived from complete digitization and AI that can help provide more context to humans on the floor — or up in their offices away from the plant. I’d be curious to hear what y’all think of this thesis. (MachineDesign)
Broadcom buying VMware has only a small bit to do with the IoT: It’s hard to ignore a proposed $61 billion deal, so I’ll just note that Broadcom does make chips used in Wi-Fi and the rest of its silicon sales are mostly to the data center for switches and custom ASICs. And VMware, while the undisputed leader in hypervisors, has a product called Tanzu that competes with Kubernetes to help manage and deploy applications that can run on the cloud and at the edge. This isn’t really an IoT deal. It’s more about giving Broadcom a revenue stream that helps it avoid becoming a commodity silicon player. Broadcom’s CEO has been on an acquisition path for the last five years, buying Symantec and CA, both mature IT businesses with long-tail revenue streams. The VMware deal strikes me as similar. (Reuters)
Check out these solar-powered price tags: We all know I’m obsessed with energy-harvesting chips, and for the most part it’s early days. The most popular application so far for the newer generation of energy-harvesting MCUs has been in remote controls replacing batteries, which is great. But now Nowi, a maker of energy-harvesting chips, has signed a deal with Digety to put its silicon inside a price tag designed for retail shelves. The tag is solar powered (light in general, not necessarily the sun) and can connect to a retail cloud for price changes, inventory management, and more. (Nowi)
Neara gets $14M to create digital twins of utility operations: Neara is a SaaS software platform based in Sydney, Australia that helps utilities create digital twins of their infrastructure. Using the Neara software, power providers can simulate the effects of climate change or other weather shifts on their operations to get ahead of issues or handle the variability of generation from renewables. Neara raised the funding from Skip Capital, Square Peg Capital (which led Neara’s Series A raise), and OIF. It plans to use the funding to expand beyond Australia and into the global market. (Neara)
Over-the-air-power using frickin’ lasers: Y’all know I’m intrigued by the potential of over-the-air wireless power delivery. And it feels like we’re very close, as companies such as Ossia, Wi-Charge, Energous, and others hit crucial benchmarks in bringing their power delivery solutions to market. But we’ve also been hearing about truly wireless power delivery for decades. So I was excited to read this article about using lasers to deliver hundred of watts at a distance, which was written by a researcher working on the technology. He writes that advances in antenna design and the use of microwave frequencies are bringing over-the-air power closer than ever — possibly within the next three generations of mobile phones. Check it out. (IEEE Spectrum)
More on private 5G networks in industrial settings: I’ve been skeptical about wide-scale adoption of 5G for industrial operations for a while now, but it seems that next year I may finally get to lay my skepticism to rest. This week, Nokia released several 5G-capable devices designed for factories and Siemens announced it would support Profinet over 5G and launch its own private 5G network in 2023. Profinet is an industrial communications protocol. The fact that Siemens will provide routers that support the protocol as well as 5G networks means it it ready to meet the perceived demand for 5G in factory settings. We could be close, y’all! (Enterprise IoT Insights)
Here’s some tech that can find those hidden nanny cams: Are you worried about hidden cameras or microphones in your home or places you might stay? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have built a system called Lumos that uses the RF signals coming from a connected device to show the user where those devices might be hidden. They tested the Lumos app with 44 different IoT devices and found that it could identify hidden devices with 95% accuracy and locate them with a median error of about five feet within half an hour in a two-bedroom apartment. (The Hacker News)
Three mayors explain challenges with smart cities: This article exemplifies the common challenge that many enterprises have with their own digital transformations. They start collecting data and realize they don’t know what to do with it. The article cites a panel of three mayor from Indiana discussing their smart city efforts, and it’s pretty awesome to see what happens when human creativity and technology are applied to government services. (RCR Wireless)
NXP has a new platform for industrial developers: The platform stars its i.MX RT1170 family of microcontrollers which has a 1GHz Arm Cortex-M7 core, as well as a Cortex-M4 core and adds on a secure element. (New Electronics)
Man, Sigfox sold for very little: Another update on the Sigfox receivership saga detailing how little the company sold for. When proprietary technology bites the dust, it’s hard to recoup value. (Enterprise IoT Insights)
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