California cell phone warning

http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article189586129.html

BY BARBARA ANDERSON

banderson@fresnobee.com

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Put your cellphone down – and keep it away from your pillow, the California Department of Public Health is advising.

Smartphone use continues to increase in the U.S., especially among children, and the health department said some people and health professionals have concerns about the radio frequency energy emitted from cell phones. The scientific community has not reached a consensus on the risks of cell phone use, but the health department said research suggests long-term, extensive use may affect health.

“We know that simple steps, such as not keeping your phone in your pocket and moving it away from your bed at night, can help reduce exposure for both children and adults,” said Dr. Karen Smith, state public health officer. Smartphones emit radio frequency energy when they send signals to and receive them from cell towers.

About 95 percent of Americans own a cell phone, and 12 percent rely on their smartphones for everyday Internet access, the health department said. In addition, the average age when children get their first phone is now just 10, and a majority of young people keep their phones on or near them most of the day and while they sleep. “Children’s brains develop through the teenage years and may be more affected by cellphone use,” Smith said. “Parents should consider reducing the time their children use cellphones and encourage them to turn the devices off at night.”

Other tips for reducing exposure to radio frequency energy from cellphones: Keeping the phone away from the body, reducing cellphone use when the signal is weak, reducing the use of cellphones to stream audio or video or to download or upload large files, keeping the phone away from the bed at night, removing headsets when not on a call, and avoiding products that claim to block radio frequency energy because they may actually increase your exposure.

body scanner

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-28/how-body-scanning-became-the-latest-health-club-must-have

How Body Scanning Became the Latest Health Club Must-Have

Finally, a New Year's resolution you can keep.

by 

James Gaddy

December 28, 2016, 5:05 AM EST

Screenshots from the Naked app

 Source: Naked

Walk into David Barton's new gym in Manhattan, TMPL, and you will be greeted by an array of high-tech fitness options—fingerprint scanners, giant screens with lifelike landscapes behind the Spin instructors, and a saltwater pool, all bathed in his trademark recessed LED lighting. But the real game-changing gadget here is not on the weight room floor. It's a Styku 3D body scanner, tucked away in a room near the showers that's next to a minibar serving protein shakes.  

If history is any guide, next week millions of people will make a New Year's resolution to go to one of the 180,000 gyms across the globe in an annual, usually ineffective, effort to lose a few pounds. The primary reason for this failure, according to the experts I spoke to, is that checking your weight is a misguided, demoralizing way to gauge overall health. "Many people are focused on the scale," said Mark de Gorter, chief executive officer of Workout Anytime. "But in doing so, they lose the bigger picture of transforming the body."

This could be you: a screen shot from the Naked app.

Source: Naked

Fitness gurus have long complained that the public's myopic focus on weight is counterproductive. Muscle weighs more than fat, after all, and because fat takes up 22 percent more space than muscle, the real measure should be volume. As you lose fat, you literally shrink, a fact that you can feel in the fit of your clothes. But it's hard to be objective when the scale is still creaking beneath your feet.    

Enter the body scanner, which allows you to visualize your muscle gain and see, in three dimensions, how you are losing fat—and where. Companies such as Stykuand Fit3D, which is available in select Equinox gyms, use a powerful camera, housed in an aluminum base about the size of a kid's tee-ball stand, to extract millions of data points in fewer than 30 seconds. The machine takes the surface measurements of your waist, chest, and arms and then assembles a 3D model that can be rotated, panned, and zoomed from over 600 infrared images. 

A Growing Trend

In the last year, health club execs such as De Gorter have discovered that the technology is one of the most effective ways to attract and retain clients. After testing it out at four of her clubs, Diana Williams, who founded Fernwood Fitness in Melbourne 26 years ago and now has 70 franchises across the continent, was so impressed she is rolling it out to her full network. "We use it as a selling tool but more as a retention tool," she said. "A measurement is just a number. But a visual image of what they look like, rather than their imagination, is much more motivating."

Because it converts these measurements to a metric that people can understand, it also makes for easy before-and-after comparisons, said Raj Sareen, CEO of Los Angeles-based Styku, one of the largest suppliers of body scanning technology to fitness clubs. The company introduced the equipment at trade shows in 2015 after a pilot program with smaller gyms; in the 12 months since, year-over-year growth increased by 550 percent and it is now available in 350 locations in 25 countries around the world. It has been introduced most recently in Korea and the U.K. and will launch at select gyms in Brazil by early 2017. 

Raj Sareen, Styku CEO

Source: Styku

The technology is familiar to anyone who's raised their hands overhead inside a scanner at an airport. It's built off the innovations found in the motion-sensing technology of Microsoft's Kinect, part of the Xbox One introduced in 2011. Using it is a straightforward process: Stand on a raised circular platform that makes one 360-degree rotation while an infrared camera in the nearby aluminum stand takes pictures and then relays the information to a connected laptop.

David Barton, the fitness guru who in September opened TMPL(pronounced "temple," as in your body is one), pairs the Styku with an InBody machine, which measures body fat, and an on-site nutritionist to create a diet around the findings. "The most efficient way to change the outside is to know what's inside," he said. 

An Accidental Discovery

The technology was not initially designed for health clubs. Sareen got his start by hacking into webcams and turning them into body scanners, then really got into it when he saw the possibilities inherent in Microsoft's Kinect, which could create lifelike 3D scans of objects with its high-powered camera. In 2012, his proposal was one of only 11 accepted to Tech Stars, the respected accelerator program, and he came out of it with a business plan to market the technology to clothing retailers in order to create clothes that would be the right size every time. (In essence, the perfect virtual fitting room.) 

The Styku body scanner in action.

Source: Styku

Sareen did a pilot program with Nordstrom while one of his competitors, Bodymetrics, partnered with Bloomingdale's in New York and Selfridge's in London. But the clothing industry is famously slow to adapt to technology, and it wasn't the right environment, anyway. Turns out that people were not ready for quite that level of reality while they were shopping. "We tried plastic surgeons, spas, dermatologists," said Sareen, but it wasn't until they went to health clubs that they found a receptive environment.

Even then, though, De Gorter was lukewarm the first time he saw it in action. "I thought seeing someone in 3d might be too revealing and too weird, but that notion was blown out of the water by everyone who tried it," he said. "Some people are a little reluctant to get on it, and some people don't like the results. But it becomes a great validator, a benchmark as they improve. Our early adopters saw the value in that right away."

Until now, the only way to get an accurate measurement of body fat was either through calipers—those small pliers that literally measure the amount of loose skin around your waist and arms—or via MRI, which is not a commercially viable proposition. But the Styku runs about $10,000 for a franchise operator, with no recurring fees at the moment. Fernwood Fitness's Williams says that the cost is a worthwhile investment, given the competitive advantage. "It's an added service," she said. "We do charge for it, but if someone's not motivated, we'll give them another scan at no charge to keep them." She also offers short-term 12-week challenges at her gyms, with Styku scans before and after "so they can see the difference," she said. 

A Styku body scan readout.

Source: Styku

Beyond Fitness

It's not just health clubs. The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess and the Four Seasons Resort & Club Dallas at Las Colinas have introduced the Bod Pod, an egg-like scanning technology that measures muscle-to-fat ratio, so that their nutritionists can give recommendations while clients are traveling for business or just taking a few days off.

It may be available at the consumer level soon, as well. Farhad Farahbakhshian, CEO of Naked, is developing a version of the technology that works with your phone and can be set up at home. His background is in electrical engineering and computer science, but some work as a part-time Spin instructor gave him insight into what keeps people motivated. 

Travel with us, drive with us, eat with us.

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"I saw people going through several New Year's resolutions and it wasn't about motivation," he said. "Everyone is motivated on the 1st of January." The main issue is that the more motivated you are, the more you want to see the changes. But there was no way to quantify that process, other than by weight. "People were making tremendous progress, but their weight wasn't changing," he continued. "They were using the wrong gauge to measure their progress."

He hopes to roll out a retail-friendly version of the product by November, and he is optimistic that people will adopt it. "The biggest challenge is just convincing people that it's real," he said. "They think it's something you see in Star Trek."  

Bose Hearphones: earbud noise filtering

http://hearphones.bose.com/

App description

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/12/9/13900420/bose-hear-earbuds-hearphones-augment-sound-app

Bose made earbuds that act like hearing aids

A hearing aide, if you will

by Sean O'Kane@sokane1  Dec 9, 2016, 2:03pm EST

Bose has quietly launched a new set of around-the-neck earbuds called Hearphones that can apparently augment the sounds of the world around you, something first spotted by a user over at Hacker News. While the company is known for its active noise-cancellation technology, these new earbuds — which look an awful lot like the QuietControl 30s released earlier this year — take the idea to a new level, giving users the power to pick and choose what kinds of outside noises make it into the main audio mix. Hearphones users can also pick which direction those outside noises come from, with what appears to be specific emphasis on helping people hear voices better in crowded places.

A “Bose Hear” app was recently added to the App Store, and offers a little more detail about what Hearphones are capable of. You can turn the “world volume” up or down, and change the direction you’re hearing those sounds from. There are preset modes like “television,” “focused conversation,” “airplane,” “doctor’s office,” or “gym,” all of which presumably block out different sounds from different directions while letting in things like speech. A user manual was also recently submitted to the FCC. No pricing or availability can be found anywhere on Bose’s website or in the app.

Here’s some more from that app’s description:

“Innovative technologies amplify softer sounds, let you turn down the distractions in noisy environments and focus on what you want to hear—like a conversation across the table. You can also use them as controllable noise cancelling [sic] wireless headphones for your music or calls or just for quiet. Take control of the noise, and hear the world better.”

Bose is also careful to mention that the app is not compatible with the QC 30 earbuds.

This isn’t all that different from something like the Here One, a set of earbuds from startup Doppler Laps that is capable of streaming music while also modifying the sounds of the outside world. Other companies big and small are also playing with the idea of letting in sound from specific directions, or at the very least allowing outside audio to pass through headphones so that users don’t have to remove them in order to hear someone who’s speaking. But it’s an interesting move for Bose, and even more interesting that they haven’t done any sort of publicity around Hearphones.

Hearphones were first spotted on an event page on Bose’s website. There, Bose describes them as a product that lets users “control the sound around you with conversation-enhancing headphones.” The company is also apparently offering people the chance to try Hearphones for themselves. “You’re one of the select few invited to the Bose Corporate Center facilities to demo Bose Hearphones for yourself,” the site reads. “Join us, and discover how to hear the world better.”

Mood-Altering Wearable Thync Releases First Brain Test Data

from slashdot:


Thync, the world's first wearable that alters a user's mood has released the first set of data that shows its device reduces stress without chemicals. The study found that "the levels of salivary -amylase, an enzyme that increases with stress, as well as noradrenergic and sympathetic activity, significantly dropped for the subjects that received electrical neurosignaling compared to the subjects that received the sham."

User review here:
http://qz.com/325070/this-brain-altering-wearable-could-end-our-dependence-on-drugs/

Compare to the Fisher Wallace Stimulator ($600-700) for pain, anxiety, depression:

http://www.fisherwallace.com

Different device,  ($30), same manufacturer, good reviews:


http://www.amazon.com/Tens-Handheld-Electronic-Pulse-Massager/dp/B007TOJ948/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423831243&sr=8-1&keywords=fisher+wallace+stimulator

Smart Home: Missing OS

http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11294/the-missing-piece-of-the-smart-home-revolution/

Fortunately, it appears the bit-by-bit building of smart home operating systems could help sidestep this issue. “This is not one size fits all,” explained Hawkinson. “It’s up to your preferences. There’s no way to automate when kids go to bed.”
Photo by F Delventhal/Flickr (CC 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman
- See more at: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11294/the-missing-piece-of-the-smart-home-revolution/#sthash.7rFXDUkr.dpuf

The Internet isn’t going anywhere—it’s going everywhere.
Despite the oft-mocked naming scheme, the Internet of Things (IoT) has an incredibly practical goal: connecting classically “dumb” objects—toasters, doorknobs, light switches—to the Internet, thereby unlocking a world of potential. Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website, accessing it without geographic restrictions to lock and unlock your doors, adjust the thermostat, or even identify where people are in your house.
This of course has huge implications for consumers and businesses alike. Entrepreneurs are already cashing in on what will inevitably become a mainstay of the modern home—automated sensory technology that enables you talk to and customize your living space in new and intriguing ways. The Internet of Things, when it delivers to the fullest, finds ways to make you even more comfortable in the space you already call home.

Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website.

As these technologies sense and and react to changes in your environment, there are obvious parallels to computer operating systems, which receive input and return output. What does the “operating system” for the smart home of the future look like?
Think about it this way: When the smartphone revolution began, the underlying platform that made the phone smart, that enabled apps, was the operating system (iOS and Android, primarily). So what will be the system that capitalizes on the smart home in the same way, the enabler of all the applications and actions we want our homes to run and do?
Alex Hawkinson is trying to help answer that very question. The founder and CEO of IoT company SmartThings is not only a leader in the market, he’s a consumer. (Hawkinson is so bursting with Minnesota hometown pride that he’s rigged his kitchen lights to flash purple whenever the Vikings score a touchdown.)
He suggests there won’t be a singular, cohesive operating system for your home, that this stuff isn’t one-size-fits-all. “I think it’s up to everyone to determine their own bits,” Hawkinson said. “Some people love cameras in house, my wife wants none. It’s up to your preferences.”

What does the “operating system” for the smart home of the future look like?

SmartThings offers a variety of products to build your own intelligent home system from the ground up. The company has Internet-capable security solutions, locks that talk to your phone, and even light bulbs that can receive Internet data and behave in unique ways. They all come from the same company, but that doesn’t mean SmartThings wants to be the one-stop mainframe for your house.
That equal opportunity mindset isn’t how all IoT companies are attacking the market. Loxone, for example, wants to become the cohesive home management system, something straight out of our sci-fi movie future. The company has seen ample success in Europe since its 2008 founding, but it has yet to make the same waves in the U.S. Its primary commercial offering is the Loxone Miniserver, which marries hardware and software in such a way that it becomes a chameleon of home automation, able to function as multiple home devices at once. The Miniserver consists of electronic relays, and the software controlling them can effectively imitate the electronics of various household objects while talking to the Internet.
“If it needs to be a climate controller, we have software that makes those relays perform accordingly,” said CEO Chris Raab. “We completely dispense with the notion of a thermostat. Ours is intelligence-based, and gets its data from sensors in the environment. It considers things like humidity and CO2, and based on that info, it does the decision-making. Most other systems are without logic. This really separates us from other systems. It’s not another remote control; it truly is an intelligent system.”

The contemporary consumer will build their smart home one solution at a time because we don’t yet think that there’s a home automation “problem.”

A company called Arrayent is taking a third, middle-of-the-road approach. Its clients aren’t people looking to build the smart home of their dreams, but instead the companies that manufacture home appliances and gadgets for them. The company isn’t consumer-facing, but its technology is powering devices that consumers will buy.
“We work with a customer that knows all about garage door openers, for example,” Bob Dahlberg, Arrayent’s vice president of business development, explained. “It’s a company called Chamberlain that has some 70 percent of the market share. We are experts in Internet technology, they are experts in garage door openers, so we work with them to install Wi-Fi modules in their devices. This means that even if you’re 10 miles out from home and can’t remember if you shut the garage door or not, it’s easy to check.”
Like Hawkinson, Dahlberg is skeptical that a single OS is going to meet everyone’s IoT needs in the way that iOS and Android have dominated smartphones. The contemporary consumer will build their smart home one solution at a time—a smart lightbulb here, a presence-detector there—because we don’t yet think that there’s a home automation “problem.”
“There won’t be a Microsoft or Intel of IoT,” he said. “There are a lot of applications and moving parts in these things. If you talk to the guys at Whirlpool, and we have, not one of them will tell you that they have a 100 percent Whirlpool-equipped home even though they work there and have ready access to it.”

“We completely dispense with the notion of a thermostat.” —Loxone CEO Chris Raab

The real potential for home automation, Dahlberg says, lies not in local software running on a home device but in the cloud. “In order to get all these things working together, it’s not going to be a hub or Swiss Army Knife of protocols. The cloud is going to be more important over time. By getting your brand into the cloud now, your opportunities magnify.”
The most salient point here is that consumers have yet to identify home automation as a problem. Right now, it’s a feature. Consider Nest, which simply set out to build a better thermostat. It decided to do one thing well, and it did it so well that Google bought the company last year for $3.2 billion. Nest has since released an intelligent CO2 detector, called Nest Protect. The company approached the Internet of Things space the same way that Dahlberg says consumers are: by building a piecemeal system to meet their needs, one unit at a time.
So, yes, right now the Internet of Things is rather disjointed. At least, it is when compared to how we’re traditionally approached Internet and computers systems. Microsoft and Apple dominated desktop and laptop systems; Apple and Android did the same for mobile (of course, with solid competition from market outliers). But while this has brought immediate stability and understanding to those technologies, it’s also created a walled garden—iOS-only apps here, continuity communication issues there—that hurt end-users.
Fortunately, it appears the bit-by-bit building of smart home operating systems could help sidestep this issue. “This is not one size fits all,” explained Hawkinson. “It’s up to your preferences. There’s no way to automate when kids go to bed.”
Photo by F Delventhal/Flickr (CC 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman
- See more at: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11294/the-missing-piece-of-the-smart-home-revolution/#sthash.7rFXDUkr.dpuf

The missing piece of the smart home revolution

By Dylan Love on January 4th, 2015

The Internet isn’t going anywhere—it’s going everywhere.
Despite the oft-mocked naming scheme, the Internet of Things (IoT) has an incredibly practical goal: connecting classically “dumb” objects—toasters, doorknobs, light switches—to the Internet, thereby unlocking a world of potential. Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website, accessing it without geographic restrictions to lock and unlock your doors, adjust the thermostat, or even identify where people are in your house.
This of course has huge implications for consumers and businesses alike. Entrepreneurs are already cashing in on what will inevitably become a mainstay of the modern home—automated sensory technology that enables you talk to and customize your living space in new and intriguing ways. The Internet of Things, when it delivers to the fullest, finds ways to make you even more comfortable in the space you already call home.

Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website.

As these technologies sense and and react to changes in your environment, there are obvious parallels to computer operating systems, which receive input and return output. What does the “operating system” for the smart home of the future look like?
Think about it this way: When the smartphone revolution began, the underlying platform that made the phone smart, that enabled apps, was the operating system (iOS and Android, primarily). So what will be the system that capitalizes on the smart home in the same way, the enabler of all the applications and actions we want our homes to run and do?
Alex Hawkinson is trying to help answer that very question. The founder and CEO of IoT company SmartThings is not only a leader in the market, he’s a consumer. (Hawkinson is so bursting with Minnesota hometown pride that he’s rigged his kitchen lights to flash purple whenever the Vikings score a touchdown.)
He suggests there won’t be a singular, cohesive operating system for your home, that this stuff isn’t one-size-fits-all. “I think it’s up to everyone to determine their own bits,” Hawkinson said. “Some people love cameras in house, my wife wants none. It’s up to your preferences.”

What does the “operating system” for the smart home of the future look like?

SmartThings offers a variety of products to build your own intelligent home system from the ground up. The company has Internet-capable security solutions, locks that talk to your phone, and even light bulbs that can receive Internet data and behave in unique ways. They all come from the same company, but that doesn’t mean SmartThings wants to be the one-stop mainframe for your house.
That equal opportunity mindset isn’t how all IoT companies are attacking the market. Loxone, for example, wants to become the cohesive home management system, something straight out of our sci-fi movie future. The company has seen ample success in Europe since its 2008 founding, but it has yet to make the same waves in the U.S. Its primary commercial offering is the Loxone Miniserver, which marries hardware and software in such a way that it becomes a chameleon of home automation, able to function as multiple home devices at once. The Miniserver consists of electronic relays, and the software controlling them can effectively imitate the electronics of various household objects while talking to the Internet.
“If it needs to be a climate controller, we have software that makes those relays perform accordingly,” said CEO Chris Raab. “We completely dispense with the notion of a thermostat. Ours is intelligence-based, and gets its data from sensors in the environment. It considers things like humidity and CO2, and based on that info, it does the decision-making. Most other systems are without logic. This really separates us from other systems. It’s not another remote control; it truly is an intelligent system.”

The contemporary consumer will build their smart home one solution at a time because we don’t yet think that there’s a home automation “problem.”

A company called Arrayent is taking a third, middle-of-the-road approach. Its clients aren’t people looking to build the smart home of their dreams, but instead the companies that manufacture home appliances and gadgets for them. The company isn’t consumer-facing, but its technology is powering devices that consumers will buy.
“We work with a customer that knows all about garage door openers, for example,” Bob Dahlberg, Arrayent’s vice president of business development, explained. “It’s a company called Chamberlain that has some 70 percent of the market share. We are experts in Internet technology, they are experts in garage door openers, so we work with them to install Wi-Fi modules in their devices. This means that even if you’re 10 miles out from home and can’t remember if you shut the garage door or not, it’s easy to check.”
Like Hawkinson, Dahlberg is skeptical that a single OS is going to meet everyone’s IoT needs in the way that iOS and Android have dominated smartphones. The contemporary consumer will build their smart home one solution at a time—a smart lightbulb here, a presence-detector there—because we don’t yet think that there’s a home automation “problem.”
“There won’t be a Microsoft or Intel of IoT,” he said. “There are a lot of applications and moving parts in these things. If you talk to the guys at Whirlpool, and we have, not one of them will tell you that they have a 100 percent Whirlpool-equipped home even though they work there and have ready access to it.”

“We completely dispense with the notion of a thermostat.” —Loxone CEO Chris Raab

The real potential for home automation, Dahlberg says, lies not in local software running on a home device but in the cloud. “In order to get all these things working together, it’s not going to be a hub or Swiss Army Knife of protocols. The cloud is going to be more important over time. By getting your brand into the cloud now, your opportunities magnify.”
The most salient point here is that consumers have yet to identify home automation as a problem. Right now, it’s a feature. Consider Nest, which simply set out to build a better thermostat. It decided to do one thing well, and it did it so well that Google bought the company last year for $3.2 billion. Nest has since released an intelligent CO2 detector, called Nest Protect. The company approached the Internet of Things space the same way that Dahlberg says consumers are: by building a piecemeal system to meet their needs, one unit at a time.
So, yes, right now the Internet of Things is rather disjointed. At least, it is when compared to how we’re traditionally approached Internet and computers systems. Microsoft and Apple dominated desktop and laptop systems; Apple and Android did the same for mobile (of course, with solid competition from market outliers). But while this has brought immediate stability and understanding to those technologies, it’s also created a walled garden—iOS-only apps here, continuity communication issues there—that hurt end-users.
Fortunately, it appears the bit-by-bit building of smart home operating systems could help sidestep this issue. “This is not one size fits all,” explained Hawkinson. “It’s up to your preferences. There’s no way to automate when kids go to bed.”
Photo by F Delventhal/Flickr (CC 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman

- See more at: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11294/the-missing-piece-of-the-smart-home-revolution/#sthash.7rFXDUkr.dpuf

The missing piece of the smart home revolution

By Dylan Love on January 4th, 2015

The Internet isn’t going anywhere—it’s going everywhere.
Despite the oft-mocked naming scheme, the Internet of Things (IoT) has an incredibly practical goal: connecting classically “dumb” objects—toasters, doorknobs, light switches—to the Internet, thereby unlocking a world of potential. Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website, accessing it without geographic restrictions to lock and unlock your doors, adjust the thermostat, or even identify where people are in your house.
This of course has huge implications for consumers and businesses alike. Entrepreneurs are already cashing in on what will inevitably become a mainstay of the modern home—automated sensory technology that enables you talk to and customize your living space in new and intriguing ways. The Internet of Things, when it delivers to the fullest, finds ways to make you even more comfortable in the space you already call home.

Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website.

As these technologies sense and and react to changes in your environment, there are obvious parallels to computer operating systems, which receive input and return output. What does the “operating system” for the smart home of the future look like?
Think about it this way: When the smartphone revolution began, the underlying platform that made the phone smart, that enabled apps, was the operating system (iOS and Android, primarily). So what will be the system that capitalizes on the smart home in the same way, the enabler of all the applications and actions we want our homes to run and do?
Alex Hawkinson is trying to help answer that very question. The founder and CEO of IoT company SmartThings is not only a leader in the market, he’s a consumer. (Hawkinson is so bursting with Minnesota hometown pride that he’s rigged his kitchen lights to flash purple whenever the Vikings score a touchdown.)
He suggests there won’t be a singular, cohesive operating system for your home, that this stuff isn’t one-size-fits-all. “I think it’s up to everyone to determine their own bits,” Hawkinson said. “Some people love cameras in house, my wife wants none. It’s up to your preferences.”

What does the “operating system” for the smart home of the future look like?

SmartThings offers a variety of products to build your own intelligent home system from the ground up. The company has Internet-capable security solutions, locks that talk to your phone, and even light bulbs that can receive Internet data and behave in unique ways. They all come from the same company, but that doesn’t mean SmartThings wants to be the one-stop mainframe for your house.
That equal opportunity mindset isn’t how all IoT companies are attacking the market. Loxone, for example, wants to become the cohesive home management system, something straight out of our sci-fi movie future. The company has seen ample success in Europe since its 2008 founding, but it has yet to make the same waves in the U.S. Its primary commercial offering is the Loxone Miniserver, which marries hardware and software in such a way that it becomes a chameleon of home automation, able to function as multiple home devices at once. The Miniserver consists of electronic relays, and the software controlling them can effectively imitate the electronics of various household objects while talking to the Internet.
“If it needs to be a climate controller, we have software that makes those relays perform accordingly,” said CEO Chris Raab. “We completely dispense with the notion of a thermostat. Ours is intelligence-based, and gets its data from sensors in the environment. It considers things like humidity and CO2, and based on that info, it does the decision-making. Most other systems are without logic. This really separates us from other systems. It’s not another remote control; it truly is an intelligent system.”

The contemporary consumer will build their smart home one solution at a time because we don’t yet think that there’s a home automation “problem.”

A company called Arrayent is taking a third, middle-of-the-road approach. Its clients aren’t people looking to build the smart home of their dreams, but instead the companies that manufacture home appliances and gadgets for them. The company isn’t consumer-facing, but its technology is powering devices that consumers will buy.
“We work with a customer that knows all about garage door openers, for example,” Bob Dahlberg, Arrayent’s vice president of business development, explained. “It’s a company called Chamberlain that has some 70 percent of the market share. We are experts in Internet technology, they are experts in garage door openers, so we work with them to install Wi-Fi modules in their devices. This means that even if you’re 10 miles out from home and can’t remember if you shut the garage door or not, it’s easy to check.”
Like Hawkinson, Dahlberg is skeptical that a single OS is going to meet everyone’s IoT needs in the way that iOS and Android have dominated smartphones. The contemporary consumer will build their smart home one solution at a time—a smart lightbulb here, a presence-detector there—because we don’t yet think that there’s a home automation “problem.”
“There won’t be a Microsoft or Intel of IoT,” he said. “There are a lot of applications and moving parts in these things. If you talk to the guys at Whirlpool, and we have, not one of them will tell you that they have a 100 percent Whirlpool-equipped home even though they work there and have ready access to it.”

“We completely dispense with the notion of a thermostat.” —Loxone CEO Chris Raab

The real potential for home automation, Dahlberg says, lies not in local software running on a home device but in the cloud. “In order to get all these things working together, it’s not going to be a hub or Swiss Army Knife of protocols. The cloud is going to be more important over time. By getting your brand into the cloud now, your opportunities magnify.”
The most salient point here is that consumers have yet to identify home automation as a problem. Right now, it’s a feature. Consider Nest, which simply set out to build a better thermostat. It decided to do one thing well, and it did it so well that Google bought the company last year for $3.2 billion. Nest has since released an intelligent CO2 detector, called Nest Protect. The company approached the Internet of Things space the same way that Dahlberg says consumers are: by building a piecemeal system to meet their needs, one unit at a time.
So, yes, right now the Internet of Things is rather disjointed. At least, it is when compared to how we’re traditionally approached Internet and computers systems. Microsoft and Apple dominated desktop and laptop systems; Apple and Android did the same for mobile (of course, with solid competition from market outliers). But while this has brought immediate stability and understanding to those technologies, it’s also created a walled garden—iOS-only apps here, continuity communication issues there—that hurt end-users.
Fortunately, it appears the bit-by-bit building of smart home operating systems could help sidestep this issue. “This is not one size fits all,” explained Hawkinson. “It’s up to your preferences. There’s no way to automate when kids go to bed.”
Photo by F Delventhal/Flickr (CC 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman

- See more at: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11294/the-missing-piece-of-the-smart-home-revolution/#sthash.7rFXDUkr.dpuf

The missing piece of the smart home revolution

By Dylan Love on January 4th, 2015

The Internet isn’t going anywhere—it’s going everywhere.
Despite the oft-mocked naming scheme, the Internet of Things (IoT) has an incredibly practical goal: connecting classically “dumb” objects—toasters, doorknobs, light switches—to the Internet, thereby unlocking a world of potential. Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website, accessing it without geographic restrictions to lock and unlock your doors, adjust the thermostat, or even identify where people are in your house.
This of course has huge implications for consumers and businesses alike. Entrepreneurs are already cashing in on what will inevitably become a mainstay of the modern home—automated sensory technology that enables you talk to and customize your living space in new and intriguing ways. The Internet of Things, when it delivers to the fullest, finds ways to make you even more comfortable in the space you already call home.

Imagine what it means to interact with your home the same way you would a website.

As these technologies sense and and react to changes in your environment, there are obvious parallels to computer operating systems, which receive input and return output. What does the “operating system” for the smart home of the future look like?
Think about it this way: When the smartphone revolution began, the underlying platform that made the phone smart, that enabled apps, was the operating system (iOS and Android, primarily). So what will be the system that capitalizes on the smart home in the same way, the enabler of all the applications and actions we want our homes to run and do?
Alex Hawkinson is trying to help answer that very question. The founder and CEO of IoT company SmartThings is not only a leader in the market, he’s a consumer. (Hawkinson is so bursting with Minnesota hometown pride that he’s rigged his kitchen lights to flash purple whenever the Vikings score a touchdown.)
He suggests there won’t be a singular, cohesive operating system for your home, that this stuff isn’t one-size-fits-all. “I think it’s up to everyone to determine their own bits,” Hawkinson said. “Some people love cameras in house, my wife wants none. It’s up to your preferences.”

What does the “operating system” for the smart home of the future look like?

SmartThings offers a variety of products to build your own intelligent home system from the ground up. The company has Internet-capable security solutions, locks that talk to your phone, and even light bulbs that can receive Internet data and behave in unique ways. They all come from the same company, but that doesn’t mean SmartThings wants to be the one-stop mainframe for your house.
That equal opportunity mindset isn’t how all IoT companies are attacking the market. Loxone, for example, wants to become the cohesive home management system, something straight out of our sci-fi movie future. The company has seen ample success in Europe since its 2008 founding, but it has yet to make the same waves in the U.S. Its primary commercial offering is the Loxone Miniserver, which marries hardware and software in such a way that it becomes a chameleon of home automation, able to function as multiple home devices at once. The Miniserver consists of electronic relays, and the software controlling them can effectively imitate the electronics of various household objects while talking to the Internet.
“If it needs to be a climate controller, we have software that makes those relays perform accordingly,” said CEO Chris Raab. “We completely dispense with the notion of a thermostat. Ours is intelligence-based, and gets its data from sensors in the environment. It considers things like humidity and CO2, and based on that info, it does the decision-making. Most other systems are without logic. This really separates us from other systems. It’s not another remote control; it truly is an intelligent system.”

The contemporary consumer will build their smart home one solution at a time because we don’t yet think that there’s a home automation “problem.”

A company called Arrayent is taking a third, middle-of-the-road approach. Its clients aren’t people looking to build the smart home of their dreams, but instead the companies that manufacture home appliances and gadgets for them. The company isn’t consumer-facing, but its technology is powering devices that consumers will buy.
“We work with a customer that knows all about garage door openers, for example,” Bob Dahlberg, Arrayent’s vice president of business development, explained. “It’s a company called Chamberlain that has some 70 percent of the market share. We are experts in Internet technology, they are experts in garage door openers, so we work with them to install Wi-Fi modules in their devices. This means that even if you’re 10 miles out from home and can’t remember if you shut the garage door or not, it’s easy to check.”
Like Hawkinson, Dahlberg is skeptical that a single OS is going to meet everyone’s IoT needs in the way that iOS and Android have dominated smartphones. The contemporary consumer will build their smart home one solution at a time—a smart lightbulb here, a presence-detector there—because we don’t yet think that there’s a home automation “problem.”
“There won’t be a Microsoft or Intel of IoT,” he said. “There are a lot of applications and moving parts in these things. If you talk to the guys at Whirlpool, and we have, not one of them will tell you that they have a 100 percent Whirlpool-equipped home even though they work there and have ready access to it.”

“We completely dispense with the notion of a thermostat.” —Loxone CEO Chris Raab

The real potential for home automation, Dahlberg says, lies not in local software running on a home device but in the cloud. “In order to get all these things working together, it’s not going to be a hub or Swiss Army Knife of protocols. The cloud is going to be more important over time. By getting your brand into the cloud now, your opportunities magnify.”
The most salient point here is that consumers have yet to identify home automation as a problem. Right now, it’s a feature. Consider Nest, which simply set out to build a better thermostat. It decided to do one thing well, and it did it so well that Google bought the company last year for $3.2 billion. Nest has since released an intelligent CO2 detector, called Nest Protect. The company approached the Internet of Things space the same way that Dahlberg says consumers are: by building a piecemeal system to meet their needs, one unit at a time.
So, yes, right now the Internet of Things is rather disjointed. At least, it is when compared to how we’re traditionally approached Internet and computers systems. Microsoft and Apple dominated desktop and laptop systems; Apple and Android did the same for mobile (of course, with solid competition from market outliers). But while this has brought immediate stability and understanding to those technologies, it’s also created a walled garden—iOS-only apps here, continuity communication issues there—that hurt end-users.
Fortunately, it appears the bit-by-bit building of smart home operating systems could help sidestep this issue. “This is not one size fits all,” explained Hawkinson. “It’s up to your preferences. There’s no way to automate when kids go to bed.”
Photo by F Delventhal/Flickr (CC 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman

- See more at: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11294/the-missing-piece-of-the-smart-home-revolution/#sthash.7rFXDUkr.dpuf