Clever IoT Devices are Coming!

Paul McLellan and I spent the evening with Samsung at the Bentley Reserve in San Francisco last night. One thing I discussed with them in great detail was IoT devices. Samsung is investing heavily in IoT and the supporting infrastructure. In fact, there is a rumor that Samsung is acquiring home automation company SmartThings for around $200M, to which they would not confirm or deny last night.

One of the IoT devices demonstrated was SkyBell which is a poor man’s video security system. SkyBell is a smart video doorbell that allows you to see, hear and speak to the visitor at your door whether you’re at home, at work, or out running errands. SkyBell also includes a motion sensor, on demand access from your phone, movable camera, and night vision. Most of the home break-ins I read about are crimes of opportunity meaning that they ring the doorbell and see if you are home before they break-in and steal your stuff. So SkyBell is not just a way to detect unwanted relatives at the door, it is a serious security device, absolutely.

This is a good example of existing products we use every day getting smarter which is probably the largest IoT market segment we will experience over the next 10 years. Here are some other IoT products that I found interesting:

Sense is a simple system that tracks your sleep behavior and monitors the environment of your bedroom. I’m thinking you will need to turn this one off during intimate times. With Sense’s Smart Alarm, it can even wake you up in the morning at the right point in your sleep cycle, to avoid that groggy feeling we sometimes get.

Sense Mother is at the head of a family of small connected sensors that blend into your daily life to make it serene, healthy and pleasurable. Translation: Track your children, pets, or spouse like they do caribou on the Animal Planet.

TrackDot tracks your luggage or other personal items while you are on the go. Not that you will ever get them back but it sure would be nice to see how many frequent flier miles they earn.

SmartDiapers. Talk about big data! Here’s a way for new parents to monitor their baby’s health. I recently learned at a wearables conference that in Japan more adult diapers are sold than infant diapers. Learning what is wrong with your child or your parents, before an emergency room trip is required, is probably a good idea. Talking adult diapers? That’s not a conversation I really want to have.

Smart Contact Lenses. Besides health tracking, contact lens technology under development by Google and others could enable better night vision and augmented reality. This might even get me to stick my fingers in my eyes on a daily basis and forgo my signature spectacles but I was really hoping for an Iron Man type helmet.

SmartScales. I already have a smart scale that analyzes my weight, fat measurements, and Body Mass Index. Do I really need IoT here so my scale can talk to my refrigerator? No thank you.

One thing I can tell you is that Samsung really knows how to throw a VIP party. This was a follow-on to the “Samsung Voice of the Body” event held in May that Paul wrote about HERE. As soon as they send the presentation slides we can write in more detail about their Foundry, System LSI, Memory, and Display offerings.