Headworx

Smarthome platforms (both the real ones and the fundraising mockups) keep springing like mushrooms and still (!) most of them are focused on using a phone or a similar touchscreen device to control the "smart" environment. Sorry, fancy remote control is not smart at all. It is just this: remote control. Smart is something more. Something much more. Much more difficult. Scott Jenson argues home automation is an EasyHard problem and I do agree. Even the simplest rules, like operating a water valve , are not that straightforward. Rules handling lights in a bedroom are much more complicated and require more sensors and also much more sophisticated engine processing them. I've been playing with this very issue for three years now in my home and the result is almost acceptable now. But before we get to the rules engines, we need to arrange the inputs signals for them. This means sensors, many of them. Motion, presence, gesture, temperature, humidity, air quality, ambie...

Something's been wrong with my credit card balance. I keep track of all my transactions and so does my Bank. But my balance was not matching the balance presented by the Bank. I took the effort to dig down to the details. Counting the beans carefully, I realized the Bank's system was making errors when adding up numbers. I nailed the problem down to a single screenshot and forwarded it to the Bank, together with all my account details. They emailed me back asking to contact their call center and promised to solve MY problem. My problem is I am overcharged 10 cents. Which I don't care about. Nobody would. But. Dear Mr. Bank. If somebody presents you a proof your system makes errors while adding numbers, well, then YOU have a problem. And don't try to help me. Help yourself! Run to nail the problem down and solve it.

I've been having many emotional ups and downs related to smart watches. I was pitching them just to realize they do not really bring any real value while adding the bulk of yet another charger to my travel gear. For the last 6 months or so I have been wearing the Moto360 which is by far the nicest smart watch ever (Apple included). But it has two serious drawbacks: has to be recharged everyday and the charging cradle is bulky. Yes the cradle is nice as a desk stand but I am spending more than half of my life now on a plane and carrying the bulky charging cradle has not been what I really want. I have also been carrying a Bluetooth headset in my carry on backpack. Namely the Plantronics Legend. Very nice headset in a clever recharging box. But when I saw the Huawei Talkband B2 I gladly traded in the Moto360 and the Plantronics for this simple Smart Watch. The Talkband is ingenious. It is a simple stylish smart watch with a touch screen. It also doubles as a Bluetooth headset...

What do you do with a broken light bulb? Throw it to a trash can of course. Yes this may include segregation and recycling. But generally it is a common procedure to replace a broken bulb. We've been doing this for 150 years. So what do you do with a broken smart light bulb? Are you aware it contains your network credentials? It can be removed from the trash can and passwords can be extracted from its memory. Then the passwords can be used to access your network. Of course there are many methods to protect against such attack but most of the IoT vendors today do not care. If your smart device happens to be a WiFi device, it can reveal your WiFi password too, as was the case with LifX . LifX uses integrated SoCs (System-om-Chips), which are processors with RAM and Flash memory together, but keeps the JTAG interface open. Which means it is possible to dump the memory and extract the keys. Other vendors offer wireless chips that do not have integrated storage. The Flash memo...

Latency in the smart / connected world is what frustrates us the most. You click and nothing happens... for a while... The phone is coming out of the dormant state of the data connection... The occupancy sensor is trying to reach for the Cloud to determine whether it should turn on the lights... Or simply the uplink of the ADSL connection is saturated and the requests are buffered waiting for the green light. I visited this subject some time ago ... Lag can simply make it impossible to stabilize the circuit. If the reaction is too slow it may simply be wrong. Because when delayed, is is no longer the proper reaction to fast changing conditions. Exactly this was causing the robotic arms linked to the brain's motor cortex were failing. They reactions were too late. Re-linking the arms to the posterior parietal cortex allowed them to reduce the overall latency of the system to the level that guarantees timely reactions. We live in a software defined world. Which means it is fu...

The best User Interface is one that does not exist. Imagine not having to tell a software application what to do. Imagine not having to tell your hand to move a mouse to click a button that tells the software application what to do. Imagine the software captures your intentions. Directly. When computers are able to couple directly with our brains, capturing the intentions, we will enter the new era. Screenless, touchless , direct, men and machines, together. We are entering this era now: a new device was implanted in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), a part of the brain that controls the intent to move, not the movement directly . The latency introduced by our muscles, finger movements, touch clicks and misses and the 150-years old QWERTY UI (specifically designed to throttle the speed of data entry) is several orders of magnitude higher than the latency of the global communication network. Imagine being able to exchange 10x, 100x or 1000x more information with other p...

We keep telling the World the Silvair products are software defined. What does this mean? Well, it means the products, without the software running inside of them, do not exist. This by the way has become the reality we live in. A car is a software product. Surprised? Try to remove the computer inside and you will end up with a dead pile of metal, glass, leather and plastics, you will even have have difficulty opening. Not to mention starting the engine. Software gives these products all the smart details we love and expect. Software defined products become simply smarter. We like them more. Staying with cars, Saab has always been my favorite example. Back in 1990s there were some lovely features in Saabs, among them the rear view mirrors that were lowering themselves when reverse was engaged. And the engine giving you extra thrust (exceeding the rated bhp) for 30 seconds, just enough to safely overtake. The same concept applies today to objects as simple as lights. Lights can tune ...