A serious security issue relating fully automated car washes made the headlines this week: Researches found a way to manipulate internet-connected drive-through car washes that could physically attack vehicles and their passengers. The problem: configuration of the machines could be changed online. A decentralized system could have avoided that.
With new ideas, new technologies and new smart products emerging every year, one big challenge for devices in the Internet of Things remains: How can we make them understand each other? A huge number of manufacturers and products using different protocols plus a wide range of platforms with non-interoperable networking technologies are making the IoT too complicated to handle.
Energy efficiency and optimal production processes are key success factors especially for small and medium-sized companies. However, unlike IT-systems, industrial machines cannot be exchanged every few years to keep up with state of the art production. At many companies, these machines are often decades old. 20 or 30 year equipment is not uncommon. So how can they keep up with today’s need for increased efficiency? What can companies do, to identify and eradicate problems, thus making the output more efficient? “Retrofitting” is the term summing up the answer. Equipping old machines with new sensors. However, that’s easier said than done.
Berlin’s annual conference “re:publica” has finally grown out of its infancy. What started as a blogger-event with a high nerd factor has finally become a serious annual gathering of, let’s say, a variegated tech society. Founders, inventors, politicians, activists and journalists met to present, network and discuss. While this year’s motto “Love out Loud” focused on the rise of internet hate speech, the spreading of fake news and how to deal with it, other tracks like “business & work” and the “global innovation gathering” brought together makers, hub managers and entrepreneurs from around the world.
The focus of this year’s Hannover Messe was on Industrial Internet of Things services and products. With over 6,500 exhibitors and more than 225,000 visitors it is the world’s largest industry fair. And with IoT being a main topic, our appearance was obligatory. Lemonbeat’s technology offers a flexible framework to quickly enable the “IoT-zation” of all kind of things: from sensors and actuators to products and machines for consumer and professional needs. Already in use in the field of Smart Home, Smart Building, Smart Energy and Smart Garden systems, Lemonbeat’s range of use is vast.
Let’s face it: Explaining the Internet of Things and the advantages of direct communication between devices can be a dry and theoretical topic. So we decided to literally spice the whole story up and add a little bit of gamification to the issue: In future events we’re going to demonstrate our technology with a smart game of dice that communicates its result to a vending machine, releasing a pack of Lemonbeat branded snack chips in case players sucessfully rolled the dice.
Phoenix Contact, a leading manufacturer of electrotechnology, and Lemonbeat bundle their strength to lift building automation to the next level. During the “E-world energy & water 2017”, Europe’s most successful specialist energy trade fair, both companies announced their cooperation. It’s goal: making building automation more intelligent and less complex. A first real life project is already underway.
In a recent report, the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) a US-based think tank warns about future threats we face as a result of increasing numbers of being connected online within the Internet of Things. The report “Rise of The Machines” states, that the recent DDoS attacks carried out by a Botnet of thousands of machines infected with the Mirai-Malware was just the beginning of what we’re going to see in the future. Additionally it calls for stricter regulations of IoT-Devic
One big challenge in the world of IoT will be to ensure devices from a range of different vendors to collaborate smoothly. One solution, and one that has proven the most popular up until now, is to connect each single device with a cloud service, collect the data and let a remote computer decide what to do next. But this is not always a very elegant way of doing things. First of all, you may need to tie in a number of gateways to collect data from the different devices which may all use different protocols. Secondly, by sending everything into the cloud first, you run the risk of higher latency. Thirdly, if the cloud server stops working or a glitch with the internet connection, the whole system may grind to a halt.
Whenever you attend IoT events these days, there’s one question that is always debated intensively. Do we really need a common standard for the Internet of Things, or are we fine with what we have? While some say we have already got what we need and the rest can be done with gateways, others passionately advocate for horizontal standardization. At the annual M2M Summit of the German based M2M Alliance in Düsseldorf, the discussion continued.
