Headworx

There's been this 7 Ps rule I tend to follow. Even when it comes to leisure and hobby. In general terms, I'm not entirely sure whether 7 Ps for leisure is a good thing, but I just find so much fun and satisfaction in the preparation process itself that I just can't help doing it... And also... because " a goal without a plan is just a wish " (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) - efficacy has always been in my blood... I'm planning a vacation trip to Africa next summer, and as it was the case with most of my trips, I'll be taking many pictures. When it comes to photography, I'm a beginner but I love exploring technology and learning. As mentioned in the Photo Musings post, the preparation has already started and it is well on track. As planned, I've acquired two essential pieces of gear: the Nikkor AF-S 80-400mm VR II lens at the Nikon D750 body. It's been a while since I tried a new DSLR - 7 years to be precise , so one can expect a lot of pr...

Last week we got the final certificate for our first OEM consumer product that will be offered by our international distribution partners. The certificate means the assembly lines are clear to start the mass production. The product is a Bluetooth Smart Plug. It is our first complete design of a software - defined physical product. It has everything in it to become a bestseller. And it has been an enormously steep learning curve for us. The reason we've made it to the finish line, was our complete lack of experience at the beginning, coupled with a non-compromise mindset and desire. Otherwise we simply would not start the project, judging it impossible or too difficult at best. So from start to end it took us 10 months (mid February till mid December). Looking at similar Kickstarter projects we see they score a 10 months DELAY on average. Industry veterans say it is impossible to start shipping a hardware product just ten months from the inception. Especially as it requires 3-4...

At Seed we nurture the habit of internal bi-weekly demo days. Teams present their achievements and then we have a happy hour / celebration. And I tell you what: each time I watch the presentations, I am amazed and proud. The things we are doing are extraordinary and they all carry the potential to make an impact. It was no different last Friday, but the event was special. Held at our R&D office in Krakow, it was the first one entirely in English. We have close to 60 people now in the Polish R&D center and we are on a quest to become a truly multi - national organization. The San Francisco office has been active for nine months now and we already have several full time employees in China. Integration of the Team has always been the paramount goal. And neither our US - based nor the Guangzhou - based friends should feel any distance. I know we are setting the bar high, but we want to be a team of A-players. Only this way we will achieve the A-goals. And being an A-player is...

Software alone is no longer hot enough. Hardware is in vogue now. Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowdfunding platforms are full of hardware startup projects. Personally I have back a dozen or two over the past 2-3 years. Their track record is very similar. They either completely fail to deliver or take twice the promised time, on average. My experience with hardware tells me now no hardware startup can really commit to a delivery date. Or a precise budget. No matter how hard they are prepared to work. The reason is simple. You never are able to do the hardware completely in hous. You always have to outsource something. Which means you never have a complete control of the execution. And your subcontractors will have delays, your parts will be not what was expected. Then there is the formal testing and certification. Shipping software is easy. Just upload to the application store. To ship the hardware you have to collect all the physical parts in one place, put them in boxes, th...

We've discussed this subject many times ( here , here , here and here ) and I have to say that FINALLY we start experiencing this approach on every day basis. It starts with simple things like a reminder muted on a watch is muted on the phone. But then it goes much deeper and it becomes such a natural joy to use. I have a dashboard - mounted Android tablet in my car (this BTW is the reason I'm not buying a new one, a new car that is!). It beats any factory option hands down. Of course Google Maps is the most used App there. So today after a go-kart racing event for the kids, we wanted to go for a lunch. I entered an address of a restaurant and the navigation kicked off. While driving there I realized I should call them and book a table. The dashboard tablet does not have a voice SIM, so I picked my phone and after clicking the Maps, the destination was already there - on the second device. A single click on a "call" icon and the connection was transferred to m...

We've just had a very successful launch of the Seed Rapid Prototyping Kit . This is a direct response to the overwhelming success of our Seed Smart Module, unveiled just a few weeks earlier. So what exactly is the essence of Seed? In a nutshell, it is a software stack built on top of Bluetooth Smart (BLE). We have always considered Bluetooth Smart a great candidate for IoT and especially for Home Automation. The reasons I have explained already in a series of posts ( here , here and here ). But when we started the Bluetooth Smart project at Seed, we learned the hard way, this technology was very difficult to use it for what we wanted. Bluetooth Smart has been designed for tiny sensors (peripherals) communicating with smartphones (central devices). So building an activity tracker or a bathroom scale that talks to a smartphone application is easy. The sensor wakes up, calls the phone, exchanges data, goes to sleep. The problem with home automation is that we have the event s...

In my last week's post on Google's Material Design and how it is the jewel crown of the mobile first strategy, I touched on the fact the laptop / desktop PC is becoming less and less productive (relatively to mobile). Looking for flights I first use Experia on my phone and sometimes I even do not bother to go to the desktop version. Same for browsing news, especially after the browser based Google Reader is gone now. Not to mention calendars, maps and navigation and continuously growing number of other mobile services. It seems humanity has only limited resources that can be allocated to driving the innovation and they all have gone to mobile. Here is the story that proves my point. I upgraded my desktop experience to 4k (Ultra-HDMI) displays . In my vacation home, in the office and in my winter apartment. Three 4k monitors from three different vendors (Samsung, Iiyama and Philips). Yes I love to experiment. They are all connected to my Lenovo OneLink docks (the greatest...

I'm calling Google's Material Design the most important development in the IT industry this year. It wasn't noticed when announced a few months ago and only now, when the first Android 5 devices start appearing, as well as the first wave of upgrades of the most popular Android applications is rolling out, the world starts realizing how big this change has been. Forbes has a very good article by Gordon Kelly, comparing iOS8 vs Android 5 . He writes: Comparing the iOS 8 and Android 5.0 Lollipop is a shock, because for the first time in Android history it has become more design focused than iOS. The ugly duckling is finally a swan. Its design is both visual, instructional and altogether more ambitious. Beating iOS was the bar set extremely high. But Google, with its perseverance, jumped it. With a style. Leaving the leader behind. But the two are still charging ahead with unparalleled investments in user experience. Desktops have started becoming less and less use...

The M&A activity in the "Smart" sector has definitely been hot this year. It all started with Google buying Nest for $3B and then we had several smaller acquisitions (Dropcam and Revolv ). There was Samsung buying SmartThings last Summer and recently Qualcomm surprised many paying $2.5B for the Bluetooth Smart pioneer, CSR . Qualcomm's move could have been anticipated by an earlier transaction when it acquired Stonestreet One , a Bluetooth software stack provider. It certainly looks like Qualcomm is moving beyond cellular communications further into the Smart Home area, placing a bet on Bluetooth as the underlying technology (in opposition to Google betting on 802.15.4 ). Now I wonder where this all leaves Intel and Apple? Will Intel buy Nordic Semiconductor ? Will Apple stay remain only the UI / Application layer player or will they bet on a particular IoT networking technology? With the increasing pace of the moves on the Smart arena, I think we will not have to...

The Friday news about Google / Nest acquisition of Revolv spells one word to me: desperation. Nest is of course desperate for talent acquisition. Tim Enwall's team is certainly valuable to Nest. On the other hand Revolv must have been desperately looking for a much needed pivot. The overhyped, overpromised and underdelivered multi - protocol hub probably never recorded significant traction. It had not much to offer. No state machine, just a pass-through command translation between a few radio protocols (but notably no Bluetooth Smart!) has been not enough to generate wide adoption of the system. At Seed we almost tried the same but soon realized the market for smart home hubs has been very limited to date, and competition was mounting. Simply put: not enough smart devices out there yet, to create a significant market for hubs. A problem? Or an opportunity? Not many smart devices on the market is a problem for a hub company indeed. But is an enormous opportunity for those, who...

I smiled this week when I learned about Qualcomm paying $2.5B in cash for CSR , the Bluetooth pioneer. As much as the Google/Nest transaction earlier this year, this deal is a profound shift in the wireless landscape, reinforcing the strategic position of Bluetooth as the leading M2M / IoT protocol. Bluetooth Smart has been an absolute winner in personal gadgets and wearables, but it has not gained a similar level of acceptance in Smart Automation. Up till now we, at Seed, were feeling somehow lonely, pioneering the widespread adoption of Bluetooth Smart in various Smart Home / Smart Environment product segments. The most common dilemma our customers have had was "why not WiFi". And we have kept on repeating the same set of advantages: significantly lower power, ease of use, lower cost. Customers have been expressing their doubts "but Bluetooth is short range and it is point-to-point only" while we have kept on evangelizing them proving we are reaching 1000ft ...

Confession: I have finally succumbed to Android Wear enclosed in the Motorola Moto360 watch. There were ups and downs with this decision. First I wanted it badly. Then I learned it was using an old processor and worse, the battery needed a recharge during a day, or it was dead before evening. I could live with a slower CPU, but the battery problem ruled the product completely out! Only two weeks ago I learned Motorola issued a software patch fixing the battery. Geez... how many times this history must repeat itself? I started posting on this back in 2006 and the phenomena is still valid :) But back to the Moto360. It is gorgeous. Even Apple fans admit it beats the looks of the iWatch. Google Now behind it performs great with speech recognition and many fine tuned smart details (like: wearing the watch puts the phone in a silent mode - why get two beeps when you can get just one vibe on a wrist?). And it has Qi wireless charging. No smart watch vendor has solved the charging pr...

Last week Google / Nest unveiled some specs of the Thread IoT protocol announced back in July. My take on this: I am disappointed. First, both Tony Fadell and Chris Boross made several good points about the need for a 2nd network ant home (assuming WiFi is the 1st one). "Wi-Fi is not perfect for all devices in the home and it's not perfect for all use cases," said Boross in front of an audience. "We feel there should be a second network in the home." They were both pitching multi-year lifespan of battery powered devices. We all know this cannot be done with WiFi today. So they propose Thread, which really is a (yet another) 6LoWPAN stack running on top of a single - channel 802.15.4 ZigBee at 250kbps. Being deeply involved in Bluetooth Smart for more than a year now, I opened my eyes wide... WHAT? They are going to push 100+ byte packets over a 250kbps network? This is crazy. Or may be is enough for a couple of thermostats but not for a smart home! They...

ThinkPad Yoga is cool. Probably the first ThinkPad that has nothing ugly (=extended battery) sticking out. As sleek as MacBook, but convertible, with touch screen, 1TB ultra-fast encrypted SSD and a stylus. The convertible mode is especially great in a coach seat (where I spend most of my life nowadays :P). The AC adapter is very small (and has a 2-prong cable!). The only thing missing from my old X220 is a fingerprint reader. Cons? Not too many. Battery life could be better too (it seems to be around 6 hours, but I have not tested it thoroughly yet). Mini HDMI is a strange decision (a standard one would not really add that much to the size...). But the coolest thing about this laptop however is the One Link Pro Dock. This is a breakthrough in docking. One simple flexible plug to the laptop, gives access to power, 6xUSB, Ethernet and DisplayPort that drives my 4k 28" monitor at full resolution (yeah yeah I had to override the graphics chip settings defining so called custo...

At the last week's Bluetooth Europe conference three subjects were dominating the stage: proximity beacons, wearables and smart home. Pretty obvious stuff one might say, but not so evident to many players in the three respective categories was how close and interacting and game changing the trio is. Take wearables. They are the beacons you wear. The relationship is reversed. Stationary beacons have been sitting in shops and restaurants broadcasting their unique IDs. Bluetooth enabled smartphones have been scanning for the beacons, realizing the space around them. Now with wearable beacons the spaces around us may start scanning for the beacons, realizing the visitors passing by. Wearable beacons are also great for smart homes. While the idea of public spaces sniffing the private wearable beacons may sound too invasive, everybody will great a contextual smart home, which is aware of its residents' whereabouts, with a smile. This is what our smart - home oriented Seed Modul...

The news from Gartner may be shocking to some of us. How come... 500 smart / connected gadgets at an average home? Well, welcome to the (not so distant) future! At Seed , we are going to be an important contributor to this number (mark my words!). Why am I so sure about this future? Because I already live there. "Live in the future, building what's missing" was my personal call to action back in 2010 when I seriously considered starting a company with a goal to manage 500 smart / connected gadgets at home. We started officially in 2011 as HomerSoft and have morphed finally into what is today Seed Labs. I remember exactly the moment when I realized "the time has come". I was experimenting with a number of connected (Ethernet and WiFi at that time) gadgets: network music players, IP cameras, plug computers. They were all "headless" (no screens / keyboards) and the only way to communicate with them were IP addresses. And the only way to manage the ...

This week is shaping up to be the most important milestone for Seed Labs . The curtain goes up. There has been plenty of sweat and tears (of joy and sorrow), many ups and downs. But we are so happy, we are now ready to start talking about the company, the products, the strategy, the customers, the investors, the events (both past and planned), the roadmap. Flying under radars has had its advantages. Many. The most important have been no public commitments, giving this wonderful swiftness in freestyle pivots that are the core advantage startups have against the established players. But now, more than ever, we feel absolutely sure about both the direction and the approach. In our history we executed several pivots, with the latest two clearly defining now our position and heading. Business - wise we are a b2b software company. We empower manufacturers in making their products intelligent and connected. And technology - wise, we call 2014 the year of Bluetooth Smart in home automatio...

The 2014 Summer holiday season is over. I have not traveled too much this time, but still there were many occasions to play an amateur / enthusiast photographer. I am now entirely on Foveon gear, with three Sigmas ( DP-1M, DP-2M, DP-3M in my arsenal). And after two years the Sigmas continue to surprise me with what they deliver ( download the attached photo to see a full resolution version and zoom in...). My typical setup is the DP-2M, small enough to carry almost every day and I do not hesitate to take it with me on every occasion. This is a big plus of a small camera. If I had a DSLR, it would probably be staying at home. If I need more flexibility, to shot both wide and tele angles, I take the DP-1M and DP-3M. The DP-1M is used rather rarely, mostly in mountains. I was even considering selling it, but eventually decided it would stay. Despite all the progress in digital photography, there still is really no substitute. The Sony A7R may be close , but the body + a decent lens wo...

For Google, Nest is the second YouTube. Many are still raising their eyebrows learning the amount Google paid for Nest. Bit it is not much different to the purchase of YouTube for $1.65B back in 2006 . Today YouTube remains one of the reasons Apple cannot force Google out of their platform. Just think about iPhone or iPad NOT being able to access YouTube. And with the accumulated content and audience it is probably not possible today to launch a service that would take the traffic away from YouTube. And YouTube is far from a funny cat videos site anymore. It is an extremely powerful educational platform. The most popular site from rural Vietnam to Manhattan to learn how to cook pancakes or replace a hard drive or make manicure. And now it is about to introduce a premium subscription service that will probably kill dozen of existing music streaming sites. Back in 2006 Google envisioned the role of Internet video in the next decade. In 2014 they envisioned the role IoT ecosystem will p...

As promised, some more food for thoughts on Bluetooth vs WiFi (as they still seem to be the most discussed IoT protocols today). Today the post is about the first encounters, or the setup process. So you've just bought a new connected device. It is in a so called factory state. You want to connect to it. What does it take with WiFi? The goal is to connect it as a client to your WiFi network. To do this, you have tell the device your WiFi password. Of course this can weaken your WiFi security, but let's skip this issue for a moment. So how do you tell a lamp your WiFi password? You could if you connected, but you cannot connect until you tell the password... Chicken and egg. There are several techniques to do this, all of them problematic. The most common today (used by Belkin WeMo among others) is a device in a factory state creates it's own network. So you navigate to your WiFi settings, search for new networks, select the right one form the usually long list and your ...

This has surprised me. I thought mobile roaming would not go away before the end of the decade. It did. I am happy to report I changed my mobile service provider to Truphone . It is amazing. Actually it does what a mobile phone service should do in 21st century. Gives freedom. Globally. By - as they claim - redefining local. From technical point of view Truphone is a mobile service provider. You can simply get a Truphone SIM. Here is where the nice things start. The SIM is multi-IMSI, meaning there can be many phone numbers attached to it. Up to eight. And each can be in a different country. I picked three: USA, Poland and Hong Kong. Then it has a smart CLI function, meaning when calling out, it presents itself with the number most appropriate to the called party. When I call a US-based number, my own US number is presented. When I call a number in Poland, my Polish is presented. Same with Hong Kong. So the called person can always call me back locally, while I can be on an entire ...

So what was the rationale behind Google's acquisition of Nest? Getting into the smart home business? Not really. Displaying AdSense ads on thermostats? I don't think so... Google is not really a search company. It’s a machine-learning company. Big data machine-learning company. Actually I posted on this nine years ago . Describing how various services are feeding the monster with information. But all the information Google could get was coming mostly from humans. Google has been hungry for more. With the proliferation of low power networks and tiny inexpensive radios the entire new universe of information has become available: the things. The Internet of Things. But the beast needed to access that universe. So they bought Nest. Now it makes even more sense with the Thread Group : let's interlink all the devices to Nest. And a Nest Thermostat, acting as a gateway, will forward all this data to Google. IoT simply becomes yet another nozzle connected to the big data vac...

I tested the DeLorme inReach Explorer in really extreme conditions: flying over Pacific. To my surprise the communicator maintained consistent connection with the Iridium network and kept on reporting the location at regular intervals. I was able to send / receive messages too. Pretty amazing stuff, considering I was just sitting at a window in a coach class. Looking at the chart, you may see it dropped the communication after we crossed the date line at 180 longitude. I simply fell asleep and the device dropped to the aircraft floor, where it lost the signal. If it just works in a jet plane flying at 650 knots, it should really work anywhere in more realistic conditions. Wow!

Awaiting the Moto360 Android Wear, I bought two Wear watches (the Samsung and the LG) for our application development team. After spending few days with the LG, I have to say this is the first wearable device that is not a gadget, but proves to be well integrated and useful. It still does not address a simple scenario of charging both the phone and the watch via a single cable and charger (well... it seems like even the simplest industrial design ideas require geniuses like Yves Béhar ). But really the hardware is secondary in this experience. What constitutes a smart watch is the software. And Google delivers on the promise. Of course it has a strong foundation of Google Now, which has been developed and polished for years, and is the most important ingredient to the success of the Wear platform. It sounds simply stupid Samsung is playing a game here with Tizen . I had Pebble. I had the beautiful Gear Fit hardware. But the official Wear is a night-and-day difference. Yesterday w...

The world is flat. Finally. DeLorme inReach satellite communicator is a real breakthrough communication device. Not because it works anywhere on the Planet, talking directly to the Iridium satellite network. Not because it is an affordable, rugged, waterproof, GPS+satcom device with good battery life. But because it does not require a monthly fee (well, it does, but the fee is $3...). And because a decent monthly fee ($65) gives UNLIMITED two-way messages and tracking / location pings. It landed in my hands two days ago, so it is hard to fully judge it, but the first impressions are really, really good. The device itself is far from being an iPhone 6 or the next generation Samsung galaxy: it is thick, the screen is small, the GUI is awful, but it seems to be able to deliver in the three key areas: It is satellite based, so works where the cellular services do not. And it knows no borders / roaming. It works very well with a companion smartphone app via Bluetooth. The app most...

At the end of June Apple officially lost the smart watch race. Google is a year late (or my prediction was a year too early), but whatever Apple does later this year, they won't be able to turn back the clock. And anything else, including Pebble , Toq and Galaxy Gear is no longer relevant. Yes Apple will come up with an iWatch. But by the time they do, the Google Play Store will be full of applications supporting Android Wear. Google Now, which is most important, has supported the Wear since the day one, and other important updates are rolling out now. The Wear - enabled Google Maps was released last week. Yes Apple will make a beautiful iWatch hardware. And I know people will be wearing it just because is is so cool and beautiful. But by that time Android will have a decent selection of models that will be very practical (as the Android notification system is compared to the iOS'es) and not bad looking either (my personal favorite is the round Motorola Moto 360 ). I...

2014 is yet another Google I/O I missed. You simply cannot be everywhere. And I barely have time to catch up. Feedly more or less keeps me informed every morning when I browse through around 100 news items that keep flowing my way every day via subscribed RSS feeds. Yes I still use RSS, not Twitter, as my main information source. BTW: an idea for an app: offline reader for the most popular articles and news items referenced by given Twitter hashtags: subscribe to several #, hit refresh when online and it all gets sucked into the local cache (like in the Pocket). I'd pay $10 for an app like this one. So would probably a million other people. Does $10M budget seem interesting? But back to Google and the Subject Line. I am absolutely amazed with the Material Design presented by Google. When this is implemented in Android itself and in the most popular apps (of course it will be!), Android is going to be the most beautiful and desired OS on the planet. Material affects not only ...

The moment I plugged the new Samsung 4k monitor (the U28D590D - what a name!) to my 3-year old Lenovo X220 laptop and it booted with less-than-optimal 2560x1600 resolution I thought "I knew - it won't be capable of running this thing". But a short search brought me the Intel knowledge base article about setting custom resolutions with graphic adapters. My X220 runs the old (by today's standard) Intel HD 3000 graphics card. To my surprise I was able to enter 3840x2160@30p and it all clicked! My tiny old laptop is now running this 4k monster at full resolution. 30 frames a second is not bad, as long as it is progressive (can only do this via DisplayPort or HDMI 1.4, which the machine does not have). The experience of having more than 8 million pixels or screen real estate is awesome. I'm upgrading from Apple 27-inch cinema display and it feels like I have twice the space (which I have!). It also seems 4K resolution at 28 inch is maximum that makes sense. Anythin...

A water valve seems easy. Close when a flood is sensed. But that is reactive. I wanted it more proactive. Why not shut down water pipes BEFORE there is a leak? Of course I installed sensors (wireless) that detect leakage and close the main valve. This is easy in most home automation systems. But then I thought water should be shut down whenever the house is not occupied. Meaning when the burglar alarm is armed or there is no motion / presence detected for a certain time. It was almost that easy until I realized the washing machine is often programmed to wash when we are away. So the valve should open when a washing cycle is active. This has no longer been so easy, how do you detect a washing cycle? I never wanted to introduce a special extra user interface. The washing machine has a simple dial to delay the cycle by up to 8 hours. The UI is super intuitive and we use it almost every day, leaving for work in the morning, we set it to +7 hours, so the cycle starts just in time to fin...

As we started meeting potential customers (and investors), one of the most commonly repeated question has been: "Why Bluetooth Smart?". Or more precisely, "In a residential environment, what would be the problem it can solve, while WiFi/Zigbee/Zwave can’t?". The answer is: there are several use cases where Bluetooth Smart helps. A lot! Let me talk about some of them. The key difference between Bluetooth Smart and all other wireless protocols is it is the only one communicating directly with a smart phone (or a tablet or a smart watch...). Even WiFi is not direct, as it goes through an access point. Being direct peer-to-peer the devices know if they are close to each other. We call this proximity. Scenarios? Indoor location is #1. You enter a room (well.. your phone enters a room - but we start considering this equal :) and the lights come up. You leave the room (your phone or a smart watch does) and the iron goes off. This is simple. But can be more sophisticate...

My first post on WiFi vs Bluetooth ignited a fierce discussion. So let's continue this interesting debate. Today about power consumption: this one is rather obvious. Bluetooth Smart has been designed to run connected sensors on coin batteries for years. And it delivers on that promise. Even with the current generation of Bluetooth Smart chipsets, it is possible to bring the average current draw below 20uA with 1Hz reporting frequency. This means more than 4 years lifetime on a single CR2477 coin battery (assuming 800mAh battery capacity, 800/0.02/24/365=4.56). This is roughly speaking 10x-20x better than the same application on WiFi. Today it is simply not possible to build a battery - powered WiFi device that will last at least one year with decent responsiveness. Wanna proof? Look at what Lockitron is saying about the Electric Imp WiFi module: A little back story on WiFi - when we originally announced WiFi, the power consumption estimates presented to us by potential WiF...