September In Review: A bit slow but got better!

September was a slow month for me as I was very sick! I had to go to the hospital for an iron infusion as my blood haemoglobin had dropped to dangerous levels. But I did do a few things. Given how this month has gone, I decided to make a list of everything that I did as a general life update!

The first thing I managed to this month was on the 16th. That was to attend another talk organised by the Connect Collaborative. I met a few more people, but it wasn’t a good night. I was still suffering from the after-effects of Gastro. But I am glad I went. I haven't completely decided what to do with “the Hub”. But I understand the importance of networks. So I am likely to visit again. Hopefully, I won’t have Gastro the next time I make it to the Hub!

Later that week was my birthday, on the 19th. I started celebrating on the 18th, going out to dinner with my family. But I continued to celebrate on the 19th with cake while relishing the ability to eat without throwing up.

My iron transfusion took place on the 23rd, which was just-in-time for me to be more myself during the Breakfast with the Angels. It wasn’t a great start as my Uber driver did not know the city area. So blindly followed the Wave navigation app to turn what should have been a 15-minute ride into a 45-minute ordeal! But I got there eventually, had smashed Avacado with feta with Brisbane Angel’s Gianni. Inndox’s Andrew, and Energy Lab’s Camille. The conversation was good. I loved hearing about Andrew’s journey with Inndox. I picked up a few tips from Gianni. I had a good morning. My Elevate+ cohort mate Andrew Chow of Shenovi was also there, but I didn’t get a chance to speak with him.

After breakfast, I walked to QUT Foundry and officially joined a team taking on the Alexa Skills Challenge: In-Skill Purchasing. I don’t have a picture of my team yet. But I’ll make a point of snapping one as we undertake the challenge. 43 days to go!

I met my team again on the last day of September at the Precinct. We are all members of the Brisbane Internet of Things (IoT) Meetup. So after our meeting, we head down to Avestix Lab, which yet another innovation hub and co-working space for a pizza and a talk on industrial IoT. Not a bad way to end a slow September.

ThingSpeak

Woohoo! I managed to attend my second consecutive IoT Brisbane Meetup! It helped that the meetup has moved to University of Queensland's iLabs. So I was able to easily drive there and park for free! I am glad I could make it because this month's talk was an intro to ThingSpeak by Daryl Ning from MathWorks. From there website:

“ThingSpeak™ is an IoT analytics platform service that allows you to aggregate, visualize and analyze live data streams in the cloud. ThingSpeak provides instant visualizations of data posted by your devices to ThingSpeak. With the ability to execute MATLAB® code in ThingSpeak you can perform online analysis and processing of the data as it comes in. ThingSpeak is often used for prototyping and proof of concept IoT systems that require analytics.”

— ThingSpeak

I am excited about this as I think I might finally be able to do something with my CPRO boards from Mbient Labs. I mean, I can't connect the CPRO board directly because the board doesn't have wifi onboard. But I was going to combine with a Raspberry Pi (or Banana or Orange) anyway. But given my recent foray into home automation, I am looking forward to putting ThingSpeak to use!

Home Automation Hubs

Like I mentioned in my previous post, on Monday, I visited the Arc Incubator for the Brisbane IoT Meetup.  The topic up for discussion this month was home automation hubs, and we got a comparison of Google Home Mini, Amazon Alexa and Apple's HomePod. It was an interesting compare and contrast presentation, and we had at least one attendees who asked the questions that I don't think home IoT industry has answered adequately answered. I.e. "How is this for? What are the benefits? Is it worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for mild convenience?" Not to mention, with the all the security and privacy stuff in the news, the question of "Are you worried your gadgets are spying on your or will be made to spy on you?" also came up.

The security and privacy questions are very complicated and, I feel, very personal and cultural. Also, what is private and what is not changes over time. I mean, not too long ago people would visit their corner store and said store would have stable enough staffing that with the regulars, the staff would be able to fill their orders as soon as they came in through the door. We lost this type of personalisation when we became one of the thousands of customers visiting the local supermarket. Now we are getting it back through loyalty programs and the likes. But we are more concerned about Woolworths knowing our preferences than we were Bob from Bob's Corner store knowing our preference. In reality, I don't think there is a big difference.

Indeed, I think we need to decouple Bokksu spamming until I give in and buy their boxes of hopefully delicious Japanese snacks from the more damaging misinformation and echo chamber effects. Of course, I could just be saying that to excuse my purchase of Bokksu!

As for my own experience with home automation hubs. I bought a Google Home Mini while they were on sale around Christmas. I bought it without thinking and purely because it was on sale. I have since bought a Philips Hue bridge and colour bulb. Also a TP-link smart plug. So my bedroom is now as automated as its going to get without needing to replace my fan and airconditioner. It's fun but mildly convenient, but I wouldn't say it's necessary for me. However, my mom whose having mobility issues due to her joint pain and my grandparents, who have severely limited mobility due to age and arthritis probably would benefit from home automation. That said, for them to get the maximum benefit, almost everything has to be automated. Plus there are more than a few items still missing from the elder care market for IoT to be truly useful.

Like a pill box that automatically sorts pills and ensures they are taken on time and regularly. Heck, my ideal pillbox would refill prescriptions automatically when pills become low and automatically schedule doctors appointments to get new prescriptions. Basically, a 24/7 home nurse! Of course, such a device would need the infrastructure in place. My mom would be able to benefit from such a device more readily than my grandparent. On account of my mom living in Brisbane while my grandparents now live in a regional town in Bangladesh. But infrastructure is always improving, especially in emerging markets. Indeed, IoT may well take off in South Asia well ahead of Europe. Just because of the cheap tech that's available in that region.

Reekoh

I have been a member of IoT Brisbane Meetup for months now but I have not been able to get out of actually attend one of their sessions. This week finally, I dropped into their joint session with Mobile Monday to hear Dale Rankine speak about his experience with Reekoh.

It was interesting and insightful talk. It touched on the fact that some form the "things" that make up the Internet of Things has been around for decades now. However, the industry as a whole is still maturing with integration being an area that's lacking. Reekoh's platform addresses part of the issue, focusing on ingesting, storing and providing some analysis. But there is still room to expand.

It actually got me thinking about a platform for IoT but about you. There are a ton of wearables on a market that are designed to measure things about our body. But after the initial hyped died down, most of the wearable companies are suffering. Even Fitbit isn't doing as well as they maybe should be. So there might be potential to explore the possibility of bringing together a number of wearables to give a more holistic picture of overall health.  Indeed, looking at the whole picture and not just focusing on individual pieces like increasing activity or being more mindful. I think it is a concept worth exploring.

Getting into the Internet of Things

I am a big fan of Kickstarter and crowdfunding in general. Indeed, I am interested in exploring the idea of crowdfunding as a source of research funding. Especially given the rise of research crowdfunding platforms such as Experiment. Although at the moment, Kickstarter is the only crowdsourcing platform I regularly use.

I have backed a diverse range of projects through the site. Even flirted with the idea of launching my own project. The majority of the projects I backed in the technology field have been related to the Pebble Smartwatch, which is something I am obviously interested in given AWEAR.

However, lately, I have become interested in the Internet of Things (IoT). Living in Australia, I know that the IoT future still has a while to go. Internet infrastructure is just not there for many people. Including myself, and I live in a major Australian city, in a well-established suburb. Yet even my internet connectivity can be patchy. There is also the fact that sometimes, IoT solutions seems to be seeking problems to solve.

A good example of this is Knocki. Which at the time of writing is just four days away from being successfully funded on Kickstarter. Knocki is undoubtedly a cool idea. However, the actual practical utility of it I am not entirely sold on. I can see it being of great use to my grandparents, who face great mobility challenges. But they also live in Bangladesh and are at that stage where introducing anything new in their routine is a problem.

My mum is also getting on in years. But she's not yet too old for new tech. So Knocki could be for her. Except that every suggested example of what Knocki can do can also be achieved with a smartwatch. Indeed, the smartwatch has the advantage of being on your wrist already and you don't have to remember how many taps to dim the light. The "remembering" part may not seem like a big deal to someone young and carefree. But older adults or even overworked adults would rather stick to an old-fashioned remote for the simple reason that they can always look down and read what the buttons do. You just hit the dim the light button. But again, I get why Knocki appeals to some people. It is, as I said, undoubtedly cool. If I had more smart gadgets around my house, I too might be keen to get a Knocki.

As it is, I decided to jump into the IoT Kickstarter scene in a more DIY basis by backing MbientLab Inc's Metawear. I got two since they can also work as custom wearables. I am thinking of building something like a baby monitor. I babysit my niece from time to time, and she's becoming more mobile by the day! So, even as my mother and grandparents might benefit from items that do not require them to move much. My niece needs things that help us track her as she begins to explore the world around her. I can also look into using Metawear to device something elder-friendly for my grandparents. But for now, I will focus on my niece and perhaps come up with something cool for myself.

So that's my action plan for July. Build something cool with Metawear. Also, to keep my research credentials up, I will be working on a "State of the art" paper on IoT. I am looking forward to it.