Silvija Seres: Hello, and welcome to Learn.Tec. I’m Silvija Seres, and our topic today is Internet of Things. My guest is Joakim Lindh. Welcome. 

Joakim Lindh: Thank you. 

Silvija: Joachim actually works for on Internet of Things for Texas Instruments, but today you are representing yourself, because you can talk a little bit more freely. 

Joakim: Yes, that is correct. 

Silvija: Welcome. Joachim, we’ll talk about what is interesting with Internet of Things on quite generic level with a couple of concrete examples that you like from Norway. Before we go there, I would like you to tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Joakim: I have almost ten years of experience in the IOT-market. I started out as a software developer for a company called Texas Instruments, who I am working for today. I supported customers worldwide, helping them solving IOT solutions, making their product connected. So we’re making sure that a product, from a stationary point of view, became connected to some sort of system. Which means that you enable devices to share data. Throughout the software development and throughout helping customers, I realized that this has organizational impact, business impact towards these customer. So I actually spent one year at a consulting company called WebStep where I helped start ups and big corporations, in terms of understanding the business models and how companies need to change in order to support the world of IOT. 

Silvija: So let’s try to understand this world of IOT. Internet of Things. Basically things that talk to each other over internet. What is required to make this work?

Joakim: In essence Internet of Things is just digitalization in the physical world, which means that you have some sort of raw data that you want to represent from the physical world in a digital form. 

Silvija: You read the world. 

Joakim: Yes, you read the world. So you have notes out there in the real world, that could be sensors, they could simply be information curriers, or they could be actuators that affect the world that we live in, and these ones interact with a centralized system. Centralized system in terms of that it could be The Cloud, for example and it’s communicating but it’s using a wireless network of communication. So you have a really simple ecosystem of notes and networks communicating with a Cloud solution. 

Silvija: Why does it have to communicate with the Cloud? 

Joakim: Well, the Cloud is a big abstract. In reality it’s just a centralized processing unit that can, more or less, essentially scale to unlimited processing power. 

Silvija: So it’s a computer somewhere. And you don’t care where it is. It’s the cloud. 

Joakim: It’s someone else’s computer, and ou pay as you go, which means that you can get started simply with IOT by managing devices, performing some simple analytics and extract value out of your IOT-system in a simple manner. 

Silvija: So if you’d give us a couple of examples of IOT systems, what would your favorites be? 

Joakim: There are plenty of those, and to give a concrete example, one that people actually understand, I’d say a smartphone. Every person that I know of carries a smartphone. The smartphone actually has a lot of sensors in it.There is a exclaromitor sensor. 

Silvija: These things sound very technical. 

Joakim: Yes, it’s a bit technical. 

Silvija: What do you do with a exlaromitor? 

Joakim: You detect, for example movement, and you can use it to run algorithmes to count the amounts of steps you make on a daily basis. You probably know that you can observe how many steps you’ve taken on your phone. That does not necessarily have to be tracking outdoors. It could also be indoors while using the exholoromitor. There are multiple sensors in a smartphone that can utilize and extract data. In essence, a smartphone is the most simple way to understand what an endnote really is. It’s a device that collects data and also actuates on other notes. 

Silvija: Let’s connect the three concepts that you talked about to a phone, so people can remember that. It’s a sensor that can measure the world with exholoromitors, with cameras or with temperature measurements. They say that the new iPhone has ten or eleven advanced sensors built in.   

Joakim: Yes, there is a lot of nice technology in the latest iPhone. That’s correct. 

Silvija: And actuator means? 

Joakim: Actuator is the other way around, so a sensor actually translates some sort of energy to a digital signal. It’s the other way around. Sorry for being technical again. It means that you actually have an electrical signal going into some sort of physical energy, so an actuator is a display, it’s a light, it’s a motor. It’s something that does something with the world. 

Silvija: So in simplest of ways, it’s the screen and it’s a flashlight on my camera, or my phone, but it could also be people telling the elevator to come, or my phone talking to other phones. 

Joakim: Yes. Telling the blinds to go down on your window, telling your Sonos system to go on, or telling the Phillips Hue lights to go on. 

Silvija: And a gateway? 

Joakim: Yes, a gateway is an interesting topic when it comes to IOT, because the gateway is sort of the central navigation of an IOT-system. It sits between the sensors, the actuators and the central unit where you actually perform the processing, so the cloud switch.

Silvija: It translates. 

Joakim: The gateway can be three things. The gateway could be the simple gateways you have at home, like a wifi router, or things like a croparitory hubs, and it could also be your smartphone, because you might have a fitbit on your arm, you might have connected parts in your home. You connect those through the internet to your smartphone, and then you use wifi or Bluetooth or any other technology such as that. And then you have the third option which I think is going to be become more and more interesting in the future where you actually use these cellular base-stations  You use the existing infrastructure. So in Norway we see that we have NBIOT, a new technology coming up, and in that sense, these no-devices directly to that network which we already have deployed. The word gateway can be a bit confusing. It’s some sort of bridge between a note and the central processing unit, and that’s the Cloud. 

Silvija: So there’s a lot of communication technology here. A lot of waves being sent in between these thingies. 

Joakim: Yes, it’s a battle of standards. 

Silvija: Battle of standards? Basically, what does that mean? 

Joakim: To me it means that there are a lot of technologies, and different ways of solving these infrastructural problems. So there are a lot of technologies for getting data from one point and to another point. Usually, companies tend to figure out a new standard to replace all of these existing standards, but what happens is that it is just another standard amongst other standards. That’s why we see a growing amount of standards. We’re not seeing less solutions. We’re seeing more and more. 

Silvija: I will interrupt. I am sorry. Because I am trying to make my newly refurbished old home smart. And it’s really interesting to see how the light system doesn’t talk to the ventilation system, that doesn’t talk to the heating system, that doesn’t talk to those particular kind of light bulbs that doesn’t  talk to Alexa. Nothing can talk to each other. It’s because they use different standards, right? 

Joakim: Yes, that is correct. There is no IOT-standard as of today. There are many of those. 

Silvija: Because whoever wins the battle will have a huge platform opportunity. 

Joakim: Because there isn’t actually one that wins. And if there is one that wins the battle, it might be with a solution that doesn’t even exist yet. We don’t know. There are many solutions out there, and I think that what we are seeing is a way where we can utilize multiple of these technologies, in for example one gateway or in one solution. 

Silvija: We have to have some sort of open standard. 

Joakim: Yes, and the technology from a hardware perspective. We are enabling that as of today, because if you look at the devices that are part of these products, that enable the wireless communication. These devices used to be hardware devices coded to one standard. Today they are software configurable which means that with a product today, you can make it  support a new type of portable, simply by upgrading the software on it. Going from wifi to support zipi and Bluetooth energy, and maybe in the future it can have the capabilities of running NBIOT. 

Silvija: What is NBIOT?

Joakim: Narrow band Internet of Things. 

Silvija: Why is that interesting? 

Joakim: Well, Narrow Band Internet of Things is interesting, because you can utilize the existing cellular network that we have. So in Norway we do have an existing cellular network that is running 4G, 3G, and might be doing even 2G today. We are close to shutting that one down. So this simple network could support MBIOT with a simple software update. 

Silvija: So then our things  can talk about the same network? 

Joakim: Yes, so you can have a coffee machine, a door, a window, or anything that you’d like to understand the current state of. You can actually access that through the network. 

Silvija: You are saying that Norway is really good at this. So Norway is making chips that you can put into your coffee machine, which then can utilize the existing mobile network? 

Joakim: Yes, that is correct. There are multiple companies in Norway that are working in the semiconductor-industry, truly innovating with new hardware, new small chipsets, wireless microcontroller designs that enable this worldwide. 

Silvija: Can you mention a couple? 

Joakim: Yes, we have Texas Instruments, we have Norway Semiconductor, we have Atmal, so we have multiple of these companies. But that’s from a technology perspective, and then we have the solution perspective where we have companies that actually are developing parts. 

Silvija: I have to smile, because you say Texas Instruments, and we’re talking about Norwegian companies, but this is all Geir Føre inheritance, right? 

Joakim: Yes, that’s right.

Silvija: Coming from his microchip. 

Joakim: Yes, Chipcon, that’s correct. So Chipcon was acquired by Texas Instruments in 2006. 

Silvija: Sometimes I think that he might be the most underappreciated founder that we have in this country. 

Joakim: Yes, he is very influential and if you trace all these IOT-related things that are going on, he has one leg, one arm or one finger it. 

Silvija: Everything. 

Joakim: Somehow. 

Silvija: And this is also very interesting as a national industrial development strategy, because if you look at how chips enabled the really big transformational waves in technology - the cilician-based heavy SPU-chips that were required for the first wave of internet spread computation, and then the mobile chips that made mobile computing possible, and now the vidia-chips that make AI possible in face or voice, or whatever it might be. And to think that these chips which we are so good at brewing in Norway, can become an engine of the next wave of technology internationally, and I also think is very related to Internet of Things. We are in the hottest seat in the world. And we are not aware of it. 

Joakim: Yes, and what is interesting to look at when you look at these companies, and the organizations, is that, let’s say a company needs to invest in Internet of Things, then there are a lot of changes required to an organization. Some companies in Norway have actually, truly grasped this. One example is AirThings. If you look at organizational impacts of having a product becoming a connected smart-product. They had an initial product that they sold. If you look from today and into the future, then the requirements for getting that product connected, is that you need a lot more software expertise. Not only in the sensor, or the in the product itself, but you need to develop the software there, and the infrastructure, and having that product connected to a smartphone, to have an app to get the details and the statistics from your product, and that requires software knowledge as well. To create that. And once you have created this product, you have created the solution, so you sell it, right? And if we look back, the way that we sold things was that you sold it and then you’d get revenue. Today that is a different topic. Because today you continuously need to update and maintain this product. It’s more of a capital expense that moves on to being an operational expense. 

Silvija: I think that’s a really important point, and I think many of the people who make budgets today are still thinking the old way, where you make capital expenditures that will have to last you for 30 years, and you budget with them in a particular way. But now everything is moving so fast, and it’s becoming more profitable in different ways. Let’s say that you want flexibility in your infrastructure and you can get that through enablement with Internet of Things. 

Joakim: Yes, you need flexibility. 

Silvija: So Internet of Things gives you flexibility, because it’s easier to replace things, and the system will still work? Or what is it? 

Joakim: You get live feedback from the system. So historically, we have collected big data for a very long time. We have been taking a lot of data and performing analytics on that. We’ve been doing it for many years. Today we can do that with live data, as well, so we are bringing you live data with historical data, and that’s what is generating the true value. 

Silvija: You have to be able to make the system modular, and that’s what Internet of Things enables you to do. 

Joakim: And it’s all software. All software configurable. 

Silvija: Software is eating the world. Once again. So we are about to run out of time, and I’m not even halfway through with you. It’s always a problem with super interesting people. What do you think are the most important controversies, if we’d be really quick? What should we be careful about when we work with Internet of Things?`

Joakim: There are two things. The first one is return of investment. Making sure that what you do is something that can pay off. Because the investors, they have a lot of money, and they are interested in investing in IOT, but they want their money back at some point. 

Silvija: We need to teach them how to think ROI with this. And then there is the security and the privacy. 

Joakim: Yes, obviously. That has been very much discussed, and not too many people do anything about it. Because they expect that somebody else will do it. And that’s the biggest mistake. Everybody needs to understand that everyone is responsible, from a chip provider, to a cloud provider, then to the developer and to the end user. 

Silvija: Now that our medical devices, and even our body parts can become connected, they also become hackable. 

Joakim: Correct. Everything is hackable. Given the right amount of resources and time, anything can be hacked. It’s about making that solution as secure as needed. Who wants to spend 10.000 Norwegian Kroner to hack your coffee machine? Probably nobody. 

Silvija: Depends who you are. 

Joakim: But what about getting into your home, or accessing your bank account? The level of security increases, so it’s about finding that balance, because you still have that ROI-topic. 

Silvija: We need to have a separate session on cyber security and Internet of Things, Joachim. So we will get back to you on that. Can you tell us what you think people should read or look at? 

Joakim: The absolute best way to get the latest news, is to follow a lady over in the US Stacy Higebothom. She has weakly podcasts that she sends out. 

Silvija: She’s an IOT nerd. 

Joakim: Yes, she’s specifically targeting IOT nerds. 

Silvija: I asked you about your quotes, and you gave me one of Thomas Edison. Would you mind repeating that? 

Joakim: It’s “I haven’t failed, I have just found 10.000 ways that don’t work. 

Silvija: I love that. That’s innovation for you.  What do you think that people should remember from our conversation? 

Joakim: We are on the verge of change. The world is changing, the way we interact with the world is changing, and I think it’s important to understand that the change is natural. I want everybody to embrace the disruption that comes, because the technology is advancing faster than our own ability to adapt. Embrace the technology. 

Silvija: Very cool. Joachim Lind, an IOT-enthusiast. Thank you so much for coming here, and inspiring us on the topic. 

Joakim: Thank you.