I was waiting for it since a long time, now it is ready ! The down-link code is available on the Telecom Design SDK version 5.0.0.
Thank to this upgrade we are now ready to receive 4 messages a day on a device and ready for device actions !
I recommend to reinstall the SDK or at least to clean all the previous build as in my case, updating from github created a lot of build issues.
Stay tuned, I’ll try and give some feedback soon !
Since this morning, myTeepi project has been launched on the Ulule crowdfounding platform. This solution is a smart way to care of your distant house, it works in a context with NO internet, NO phone … No power supply ! Yes it is !
Take a look here : http://fr.ulule.com/myteepi-connecte/
There was something I missed on the IBM strategy when they sold x86 branch to Lenovo. Since I read some articles about OpenPower and Google home made first power8 server, this strategy is making more sense.
Actually on the server arena, we have the big one : Intel and front of it we had ARM, but if ARM is a good low consumption solution, working really well on mobiles/tablet and objects, it is far away to support heavy I/O workload and is not in a direct competition with Intel until couple of years. On the other corner we had the Unix proprietary systems and one of the last of them, IBM is considering by Gartner as a technology to be replaced after the next 2-5 years. Solution that you never see in any cloud. The future was clear : x86 has to dominate the next decade.
In this context, understanding the IBM strategy to sell x86 servers to Lenovo was not really clear and looked like a kind of hara-kiri of the IBM hardware branch. From this last announced of Power8 and OpenPower, allowing other vendor to use Power IP to design its own hardware, the understanding of the strategy sounds differently. By selling x86 to Lenovo, IBM becomes a real competitor of Intel instead of being a large client of Intel expecting good chip price for its servers. Now IBM can (and have to) look for Intel market share in the datacenter and can (have to) enter in a direct fight.
This announce, only coming from IBM, would have been heard as the last tentative from a dieing entity trying to open its technology to make it survive. But coupled with the presentation by Google of its first prototype of Power8 server, it gives a real credibility of this direction in a period where large Internet companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon….) are looking to build their own hardware supporting openHardware initiatives.
In my point of view this announce is a really good thing, mostly if you consider (like me), that Intel based server are good and not expensive but not reliable enough and not really vertically scalable. Reliability is thing OP guy’s and business are really considering as important. The first coming question is about the software platform on top of it ? I do not consider AIX to be an answer, but Linux is. In this direction all the existing Linux ecosystem has to be recompiled / adapted for this new platform to take most advantage of it ; seeing Google going that way is a good news as they are an important actor of the datacenter Linux ecosystem.
Let’s wait, now, month pass to confirm if this was a bankable strategy for IBM or not.
SigFox is a French radio frequency technology allowing a really low cost data transfer from Machine to Machine. Compared to GSM, this solution have some great advantages : it costs only 10-16€ per year and the energy consumption is about 1000 time less. For sure there is some constraint and the main one is the quantity of information you can transmit. In fact you have a limit of 150 sent messages / days with a length of 12Bytes. It’s not big but is it enough for a lot of IoT and M2M applications.
This technology works as a modem you can connect to any platform like Arduino, RaspberryPi. The chips are provided by TelecomDesign from a cost about 15€. The starter kit is about 150€ here.
The great advantage of this technology, in a operator point of view is the low density of the architecture where you need only 1000 antennas to cover a territory like France. As a consequence, at this time, already 90% of the country is covered by this technology.
Yesterday, I was in Grenoble for the Eclipse IoT days. It was a great opportunity to listen and learn from some actors of the IoT movement. The day was on the campus where we have been invited to see some student work on home automation and robotic for telepresence (see my twitter photo feed). The day was intensive on conferences with the really good quality and interest.
Most of the discussions / demonstrations were based on Home Automation, Smart house and globally telemetry. Not many industrial applications has been shown but some of the companies are working on industrial domain. Most of what has been shown is applicable on industry.
All the project are separating sensors, based on low cost / low energy devices associated to a local management/administration platform connected to Internet. The technology in use are mostly :
– RF and ZigBee for sensor to management platform
– Java for the management platform running the OSGi platform (Java) (this is also due to the fact Eclipse were organizing the conference and OSGi is Eclipse framework) This OSGi framework integrates management tools to connect / upgrade the platform remotely.
– Mqtt to communicate on Internet
– A custom MDM solution is deployed to manage the platforms (generally based on server management solution instead of MDM solutions) like roboconf.
Regarding the different architectures, some maintain the data on site with a in-house user interface, some export data outside on “cloud” with an on-Internet user interface. As much as I’ve seen the in-house strategy is largely loosing on performance and interface quality due to the limited power of the management platform to perform advanced HTML experience. I assume this is also related to the Java choice to run these applications.
The other interesting learning is that most of the companies are using Raspberry Pi and Arduino to prototype solutions before, I assume, building a more robust platforms. Opensource is also mainly used and presented as the only solution to make the IoT market based on standard to be integrated all-together.
Recently I made a presentation on Internet of Things for ClermontTech ApiHour show ; normally video should be published soon. For those who are interesting in this topic, here are the slides with the associated comments.
http://slid.es/disk91/internetofthings
Have fun !
I recently created a printed circuit board for a raspberry PI design i’m working on. By the past, when I did such things, the cost to make it was not accessible for a home made design. In 10 years things have change a lot and now, you can do it for less than 100€ for a 10×10 two layer board. 4 layer is also something accessible.
I want to share with you this experience, because, I had a good and an bad experience to share.
You can imagine a lot of use cases for a such thing : a pen able to create electrical conductivity over ink. The one I found really interesting this morning is to make electronic a fun activity for my daughter. That’s the reason why I backed on this product.
This is a kickstarter project accessible for a couple of euros. I let you have a look to the project itself here .