Episode 341: Smart cities and smart fridges galore

Episode 341: Smart cities and smart fridges galore

Author: Stacey Higginbotham, tech journalist October 7, 2021 Duration: 55:03

Welcome to the weekly podcast! We’re moving Black Friday to October thanks to chip shortages and shipping delays. Meanwhile, Amazon is working on a smart fridge, Google is trying to use a $10 monthly subscription and Nest thermostats to help people go green and also launching new cameras and ways to surf its displays. The Starling Home Hub gets a new feature that lets you watch your Nest cameras on HomeKit gear, and consumers interested in mining Helium Network Tokens or participating in building a LoRaWAN network for IoT have another option thanks to RAK Wireless. Kevin and I also discuss a really cute Kickstarter version of the Boston Robotics Spot robot. When it’s a small, open-source robot for kids, it doesn’t seem so scary. We also discuss some cybersecurity research on industrial controls from Nozomi. We end by answering a listener question about where to sell your old smart home gear and how to prep it for sale.

The Mini Pupper is a small and cute spin on a much larger and scarier robot. Image courtesy of Mini Pupper.

This week’s guest is Sanjeet Pandit, global head of smart cities and digital transformation at Qualcomm. He’s on the show a week after Qualcomm held a smart cities event where it added new SaaS-based smart city services. We talk about how the pandemic has changed what municipalities want from technology firms, and how they are redefining what it takes to make a city smart. Pandit didn’t answer a lot of my questions about how cities are paying for these services or which ones were deploying some of the more futuristic services such as predictive traffic management, telling me that the cities get to decide when they talk about their deployments. But he assures me that many cities are making investments that go well beyond smart lighting, and I suppose for now, I’ll have to believe him and hope to see what municipalities start making announcements.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Sanjeet Pandit, global head of smart cities at Qualcomm
Sponsors: Trek10 and Ayla Networks

  • Why you want to start your holiday shopping now
  • Does anyone think an Amazon fridge could be trusted?
  • Would you trust a tiny open-source version of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot?
  • What smart cities want after the pandemic
  • Several use cases for smart cities that don’t involve lighting!

 

The post Episode 341: Smart cities and smart fridges galore appeared first on IoT Podcast - Internet of Things.


For anyone trying to make sense of a world where everything from your thermostat to a factory floor is getting smarter, The Internet of Things Podcast-Stacey On IoT offers essential context. Veteran tech journalist Stacey Higginbotham, who brings her experience from Fortune, and co-host Kevin Tofel break down the weekly flood of news, separating genuine innovation from mere hype. Their analysis spans the entire connected ecosystem, diving into the gadgets in our homes, the sensors transforming industrial workspaces, and the complex enterprise systems tying it all together. This isn't just theoretical; it's a practical guide to the business and technology decisions shaping our networked future. You'll hear from a range of voices that have built and critiqued this landscape, including pioneers like Vint Cerf, insightful commentators like Om Malik, and practitioners from companies such as Amazon, AT&T, and IBM Watson. Listening to this podcast provides a crucial framework for understanding the real-world implications of connectivity, whether you're an industry professional, a curious developer, or simply someone wondering how all these "smart" things actually work-and what they mean for privacy, security, and daily life. It's the clear-eyed conversation you need to navigate the ever-expanding Internet of Things.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
Podcast Episodes
Episode 377: Why there were 56 OT vulnerabilities this week [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:32
This week we cover the Ericsson mobility report that offers some stats on cellular IoT connections, including the surprising nugget that we won’t see 4G/5G connections surpass 2G/3G connections until some time next year.…
Episode 376: Senator calls out video doorbells … again [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:24
This week’s show kicks off with another look at Ring’s potential to become a surveillance tool, this time prompted by a letter from Senator Ed Markey who wants Amazon to answer some questions. We then talk about a new ca…
Episode 375: Arduino gets $32 million for enterprise IoT [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:42
This week’s show is an exercise in controlled chaos, as I am once again quarantined in a hotel room (this time with my teen). Kevin and I discuss Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and Apple’s claim that HomeKit is…
Episode 374: Peekaboo offers privacy for the smart home [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:52
This week’s show kicks off with our favorite topic: bringing context into the smart home. This time it’s iRobot and its new operating system that aims to bring the smart home together. From there we discuss a merger betw…
Episode 373: Matter’s security details explained [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:39
Our focus is on the Matter smart home interoperability protocol this week, specifically some of the security requirements that will be associated with the standard. I moderated a panel on Tuesday where we learned a lot a…
Episode 372: Ecobee embraces radar sensors! [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:07
Did y’all know that almost a quarter of people who buy a smart home device, hire a professional to install it? That’s just one of the facts I learned at the Parks Associates event happening this week in Dallas. We talk a…
Episode 371: Smart screws and massive IoT [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:32
This week’s show was recorded a few hours before the annual Google I/O event so we didn’t discuss the new Pixel Watch, but we do discuss Google’s thoughts on the Matter smart home standard from an article in The Verge, w…
Episode 370: How to build the infrastructure for public tech [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:47
This week’s show kicks off with research suggesting Amazon uses data from Alexa devices to advertise its own products, and that Amazon is selling some of the insights derived from Alexa requests to third parties. This is…
Episode 369: Amazon’s $1B industrial IoT fund [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:35
We kick off the show this week with Insteon’s comments about its abrupt closure and asset sale before trying to salvage some good news from Arm’s latest chip news. We’re getting a new M-class processor that’s going to be…
Episode 368: So long Insteon [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:24
This week we start the show with the end of Insteon, which is probably the biggest smart home story this week. We talked about what we know (which isn’t much) and why saving cloud-based smart home services is not as easy…