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| Smart stuff that should be on your 2022 holiday gift list |
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| By Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel |
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| Last year, I recommended the then-new Nanoleaf Lines, and I’m building on that recommendation in 2022. While I love the Lines as they are, Nanoleaf now has a way to make patterns over the standard 60- and 120-degree Lines connectors. For $99.99, you can get started using the Nanoleaf Lines Squared product, which uses 90-degree connectors. My wife prefers the angular look of the original Lines, but I’m a straight and right angle kind of guy. As with the original Lines, you can sync your lights to music with the included Rhythm module. I really like these as a gift because they’re not ridiculously expensive and can be that first step into the wide world of connected lights for your friends or family. I should mention that my wife doesn’t like most of our smart home products. However, she’s a fan of the Lines line (ha!), so that’s pretty telling. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Nanoleaf) |
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| If you have a pup who is an escape artist, or simply want to make sure you can keep an eye on your dog even when you're not around, then the Fi Series 3 dog collar is a great gift. For $192 (which includes a one-year subscription for cellular service) and a $20 activation fee, you get a combined activity and location tracker for your pet. I love the security of being able to turn on GPS tracking if my pup gets loose, and especially like the LED that's built into the collar, which I can turn on for evening walks or even remotely as a means to help track my dog if she gets free. The collar is a bit bulky for smaller dogs, but it's worked just fine for my fluffy 20-pound mix. It has a six-day battery life without using the cellular radio and lasts up to two days if you turn on the most active level of tracking. Because it uses GPS, it's not going to work super well in dense, urban areas, but in my tests in the suburbs and rural areas it worked really well. And the peace of mind associated with being able to find your dog when it gets lost is, for many, pretty much priceless. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of S. Higginbotham.) |
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| Need a gift recommendation for someone that spends most of their time cooking, either indoors or outdoors? After Stacey turned me on to the $99.95 Meater Plus smart thermometer, I picked one up for myself. The Meater Plus has a nice bamboo charging station that also acts as a Bluetooth repeater. But the really awesome gift for someone you love is the Meater Block (pictured), for $369.95, which has four thermometers and a block with controls and a repeater. The wireless thermometer itself has a Bluetooth radio inside and two temperature probes, which lets you see both the ambient temperature and the internal temperature of meat, fish, or poultry from a range of 165 feet. The Meater Plus is really meant for outdoor grilling, but I’ve used it in our standard oven as well as my June Oven. The companion app is excellent and has dozens of cooking options so you can fine-tune your meal for rare steak, medium pork, and more. It also estimates when the food will be ready and can notify you when there’s just five minutes left. Well done, I say! The product, that is. Not my food. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Meater.) |
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| After a decade living in a smart home, I've collected quite a few buttons, but these from Shortcut Labs are probably the most versatile. The Flic 2 buttons start at $169.99 for a starter kit, which has three Bluetooth buttons and a hub to ensure that pressing a button anywhere in the home elicits a response. The Flic buttons work with a variety of services, including IFTTT, Hue, Alexa, HomeKit, Nanoleaf, Sonos, Slack, and many more for the home and web. I like using them to consolidate all of my different lighting services, and can use the button press instead of my voice to avoid waking up my husband at night after he falls asleep. I also use them to turn off any music I'm listening to when my phone rings. There are a ton of options, so your gift recipient is bound to find something that works for them. Plus, you can add more Bluetooth buttons as stocking stuffers, for $29.99 each. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of S. Higginbotham.) |
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| In 2021's gift guide, I recommended a low-cost Wi-Fi 6 router system to help boost the signal of your loved ones. This year, I think you can do much better, and at a reasonable cost. You could stay in the budget category with three Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro routers, for $399. But I have found the resulting network performance to be adequate at best, so why do that? Instead, I say you can’t go wrong with an Eero Pro 6E 3-pack, which is on sale for $419. Even if you think a Wi-Fi 6E system isn’t needed because there are so few devices that can support it, this is a future-forward gift for when 6E starts to appear in more hardware. Besides, if you forgo Wi-Fi 6E to save money, you won't save much as the also excellent Eero Pro 6 3-pack is on sale for $389. I say spend the extra $30 and future-proof that networking gift. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Eero.) |
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| Home Automation with Arm, Matter and Raspberry Pi SPONSORED |
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See how to create a lighting automation service for the home using Arm Virtual Hardware, Raspberry Pi, Python, and the Matter Protocol. This tutorial demonstrates how developers can prepare a Matter platform and start creating the application using Python in just a few minutes. Arm has made the starting point of this example even easier by offering the Raspberry Pi 4 on Arm Virtual Hardware so developers can get started before hardware delivery.
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| ... and even more gift ideas |
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| With the Matter smart home interoperability protocol live and soon to appear in devices, it's a good time to gift some generic smart home gear knowing it will work with much of the mainstream gear people already have in their homes. I think a smart lock is a pretty handy device, especially one with a keypad so your friends and family can forgo keys. One of the most flexible locks on the market is the new Yale Assure Gen 2, which comes in versions that have touchscreens or flat, black buttons as well as those that are either keyed or keyless. Because I often unlock my door after taking my dog for a walk in the cold while wearing gloves, I own the keyless version with buttons. But I've tested the touchscreen version, and it's very responsive as well. The lock also has a lot of flexibility around radios with its Bluetooth-only option, Wi-Fi and soon, a Matter-compatible module. The lock starts at $159.99 for a button-based keyless version that supports Bluetooth and runs as high as $259.99 for a keyed, touchscreen version with Wi-Fi. You'll give your loved ones the gift of never needing house keys ever again. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of Assa Abloy.) |
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| Everyone loves buttons! Well, I actually didn’t until Stacey wore me down by talking about the usability and simplicity of them. So the $49.95 Philips Hue Tap Dial Switch is my pick for a useful, inexpensive, and powerful button set. Yes, this is only for folks that have a Philips Hue bridge and lights, so you’ll want to make sure your recipient is part of that club. If they are, you’re gifting them a four-button switch that includes a rotary dial to dim lights. Each button has multiple press options so you can control up to 12 scenes across several bulbs. Ideally, I’d like to see the Philips Hue Bridge update to Matter so as to allow these buttons to work with non-Philips devices. But even if that doesn’t happen, this will still be one of my favorite products. I have one on my office desk, but you can mount the Tap Dial Switch anywhere with the included wallplate. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Kevin C. Tofel.) |
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| Do you have a developer friend or DIYer who is keen to connect weird devices in the middle of nowhere? Or a friend who spends time in a remote mountain cabin but wants to send a few emails each day? This is a highly specific use case, but the Swarm Eval Kit makes for a pricey yet useful gift for anyone who wants to send a few bits of satellite data a few times a day. The kit costs $499 ($449 through the end of this month) and provides a Swarm module for satellite connectivity, a solar panel, and a tripod to set the whole kit up wherever they might choose to put it. The kit requires a $5/month Swarm satellite subscription, which honestly is pocket change these days. So if you want to monitor the temperature of a remote locale, an open-close sensor in a field, or the location of a few cows, this is an option. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of S. Higginbotham.) |
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| After years of being asked how to remotely reboot a router, I’ve given in and taken the $54.95 Rebooter for a spin. It both monitors your home internet connection and reboots your router after an outage, automatically — which is rather ingenious since you can’t remotely access your router if the internet is down. The Rebooter is a smart extension cord that is always checking to see if your home internet service is available. Simply plug your router into the Rebooter and if it detects a connection outage, it will cut the power to your home router for a few minutes. It will then return the power — effectively rebooting your router — once the ISP connection comes back. You can also schedule reboots or use voice commands with Amazon or Google to initiate one. This is a perfect gift for anyone (like me) tired of running down to the basement for router resets. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Kevin C. Tofel.) |
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| Most years we throw a smart plug on the list because they make for such useful items to have in the home. Maybe you plug your holiday lights into the smart plug so you can use voice control to turn them on or off. Maybe you use it to plug in a curling iron so you can make sure that's turned off after you leave the house. People love these things! And with the Matter smart home interoperability standard, it's now easier to buy smart plugs that will work with a variety of other devices — a Nest thermostat can now more easily signal the smart plug to turn on a fan, for example, and a motion sensor could trigger the plug to turn on a light. Many plugs are likely to support Matter next year, but so far the Eve Energy smart plug for $39.95 is the only one that will work with Matter as of Dec. 12, which means when your recipient plugs it in on Christmas, they can have Matter support right away. Yes, it's pricier than the $10 TP-Link outlets, but this one has the Thread support that Matter needs, and it will act as a Thread border router to make their Matter smart home more reliable over time. It also tracks home energy usage, which is always nice to see. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of Kevin C. Tofel) |
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| Episode 399: Alexa's drama and our holiday gift guide |
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| The biggest news in the internet of things this week was the staggering story about Amazon's Alexa business being responsible for the majority of an estimated $10 billion loss in the year ahead. So Kevin and I discuss what Amazon pulling back on Alexa might look like and what it means for voice and the smart home. Then we talk about how a newly available Amazon device signals Amazon's problem and the potential solutions to that problem. After talking about voice, we take a look at a new controller from Aqara that uses gestures and share our thoughts about the form factor. After all our user interaction talk, we then cover some news, such as the FIDO Alliance planning to work on security and authentication issues for the IoT, Google's plans for aggregating fitness data, and a new dev kit from T-Mobile. We also talk about new devices from Wyze and Firewalla. Then it's time to talk about the holidays. |
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| — The Aqara Cube T1 Pro costs $22.99, and is a fancy button that you can press, roll, and shake. Image courtesy of Aqara. |
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| Every year we choose 10 devices that we think make good holiday gifts for our audience and their loved ones. This year we suggest a few in the first part of the show, such as the JaxJox kettlebell and my perennial favorite, the Ember mug. (I gave this to my mom in 2019, and she still uses it every day.) This year's gifts include a smart plug designed for Matter, a device to reboot your router, and multiple options for smart buttons from Philips Hue and Shortcut Labs. We also include a Nanoleaf option because we're such fans of the devices as gifts for teens. We also include some fancier gifts for chefs and dog owners. There are more options in this week's newsletter, but before we sign off we also want to thank our listeners for the gift of their time this year, and the nine years that Kevin and I have been producing this show. Y'all are awesome. |
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This week on the IoT Podcast Hotline, we answer a listener question about connecting LED fairy lights.
The IoT Podcast Hotline is brought to you by Silicon Labs. Silicon Labs is a leader in secure, intelligent wireless technology for a more connected world. Learn more about their integrated hardware, software and development tools at silabs.com. |
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| Alexa isn't the success Amazon hoped it would be. Now what? |
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| — Amazon is laying off up to 10,000 people and a lot of them are going to come from its Alexa divisioin. After a story reported on huge losses in the Amazon Alexa division, I took a look at what the news means for voice and for smart homes. Read it here. |
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| News of the Week |
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Sony Semiconductor offers a new, power-efficient cellular modem for the IoT: Sony has a new modem that lets IoT devices connect via cellular, Low-Power Wide-Area Networks such as LoRa, satellite or hybrid communication channels. The chip, called the ALT1350, is optimized to reduce power consumption by 80% in standby mode when compared to the current generation and by 85% when using it to send short messages. The chip also supports both sub-gigahertz (GHz) and 2.4 GHz bands for a variety of connectivity protocols and has a secure element, a sensor hub, and local machine learning. Currently, the device is sampling to lead customers; it will become commercially available during 2023. (Sony)
Did a software update brick your Cync by GE lights? If so, you're not alone. Savant, the company that owns the GE Cync brand of lights, sent a software update to more than 6,000 consumers and an unlucky few apparently saw the update brick their switches and lights. I reached out to Savant to discover what happened, and a spokesman acknowledged the problem and said the issue affected a few owners of the first generation Cync No Neutral Wire Smart Switch Dimmers. He added that the company has identified the bug and tried to limit its impact. the GE Cync service team is already shipping the newest version of the product out to users who have reported an issue(s) and is proactively reaching out to users who could potentially have been affected. And in a extremely friendly gesture, the spokesman emailed that, "We’ll also be following that up with a package of complimentary Cync products to express our gratitude to our users who have been impacted for their patience and understanding." Other brands, take notes. — Reporting by S. Higginbotham
You can buy Amazon's sleep tracking lamp now: In September, Amazon announced a connected light that tracks a user's sleep and wakes them up using a gradually brightening light. The device also connects to Amazon's Halo fitness service and Alexa. If this seems like an awesome device for you, you can now shell out $139.99 for the light and six months of the Amazon Halo fitness service. I've tried sunrise lamps before, and they can be lovely for people who like to wake up that way. I've also tried bedside sleep trackers. I prefer my Fitbit, but people who snore and anyone who doesn't want to sleep with a watch may find bedside trackers to be more user-friendly. That said, this product seems like it was built to convince people that Amazon has a complete wellness portfolio and so they should use the Halo subscription service. But the price is somewhat high for what you get, and the fact that the wake-up alarm based on your sleep tracking requires an ongoing subscription seems like something few people would want. (Amazon)
Microsoft discovers vulnerability in ancient software that affects IoT: This week Microsoft said it had identified critical vulnerabilities in the Boa Web server, which has been discontinued since 2005. Despite this software being older than my child (who can legally drive a car), older than the iPhone, and older than cloud computing (AWS launched EC2 in 2006), it is still used in industrial control systems. Microsoft says Chinese hackers used this vulnerability as recently as October to attack an Indian power plant. As for mitigation, since this software is so out-of-date, there are few patches available, but Microsoft also recommends identifying whether or not it's in use, and then being very diligent about monitoring for malicious code. Basically, keep an eye on it. Ugh. (Dark Reading)
Soracom applies to go public: Soracom, an IoT connectivity provider owned by Japanese telco KDDI, has applied to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. As part of its sales pitch it said it has 5 million IoT connections. This is good, but honestly, I really hoped there would be more. If we're going to have billions of connected devices globally anytime soon, we need to get more stuff online. (Enterprise IoT Insights)
Company using AI and sensors in hospitals gets $27M: Care.ai, a startup that is deploying sensors and artificial intelligence in hospitals to monitor patients, has received $27 million led by Crescent Cove Advisors. While companies ranging from ADT to Amazon are trying to deploy AI and sensors in homes for monitoring seniors, Care.ai has set its sights on hospitals and assisted living facilities. The company provides an array of sensors, including those designed for fall detection and to monitor a patient's position in bed so as to prevent bed sores. It also tracks how patients and staff move throughout a facility. I think these sorts of solutions are probably necessary given the burden of care that's falling on understaffed hospitals, but I am leery of having a system like this deployed without regulations governing its security and privacy. (MobiHealthNews)
Pretty much everything you need to know about Matter: Look, we have exhaustively covered the Matter smart home interoperability protocol since the idea was announced three years ago, but for those who haven't been following along, The Verge has pulled together a giant list of FAQs and device makers' plans for the standard. So if you are just now paying attention or don't want to look all over the web, it's a great place to start. (The Verge)
This is the quote of the year: "We don’t claim that we know what the metaverse is, but we have an idea of what it could be and we want to shape it,” said Peter Korte, chief technology and strategy officer at Siemens, at the company’s Siemensstadt industrial complex in Berlin. Same, Peter. Same. (Computer Weekly)
Oh look, the Goodnight Lamp is back! The Goodnight Lamp, an internet-connected lamp that came in pairs, was a design that Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino came up with almost 20 years ago and was produced back in 2012. When one person in the pair turned their lamp on, the other lamp in the pair would turn on. The idea was that in an unobtrusive way you could share your life with another person who was far away simply by seeing when they turned their lamp on and off. This refresh of the idea involves the pairing of a connected outlet and a small replica of an electric kettle that lights up. When the person turns on the electric kettle that's plugged into the connected outlet, the replica kettle located elsewhere lights up in a specific color. The idea here is that you can track if a person is up and about simply by checking to see what color the paired kettle light is. (Russell Davies)
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