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Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as "internet-of-things"

Machine Learning- Why It Is the Future of Technology

Recently, an article by Forbes enlisted the top 10 technologies set to drive the technology industry in the year to come. “Machine learning” a relatively new concept is based on the theory of pattern recognition and computational learning in artificial intelligence. It is fast catching up and taking the tech industry by storm. Machine learning has been named as “the future” that will be the normal way to function very soon. It’s important to delve into what this technology is and how it can be of use to us. Very simply put, machine learning is nothing but the phenomenon of computers learning from experience; using algorithms that repeatedly absorb from data, machine learning enables computers to discover hidden insights without being clearly programmed to do so. Machine learning is a very practical application that reaps the true business benefits in any given set up which is saving on time and money. Tasks are now being handled by virtual assistant solutions that earlier required a person who managed activities with passwords, etc. This enables human efforts to be diverted to better and critical areas that can raise customer satisfaction and render the organization in a competitive space. Thinking logically, there are certain factors that contribute in the excellent functioning of machine learning – the technology. Massive availability of data and the exceptional power of computation render this technology incomparable. With the availability of humongous data and help of IoT in today’s world, many algorithms with patterns and combinations are devised to throw up intelligent inferences just like the human brain. This is facilitated with the advancement of computer hardware that is now able to perform way more complex computations in a matter of nano seconds with accurate results each time, every time. A human brain is intelligent but sometimes lacks the ability to retain such massive data. That is where machine learning takes over. Machine learning encompasses many complex learning models with zillions of parameters that analyze and interpret data in seconds. We see a plethora of applications bursting from this technology thus giving the world a genius AI and making life easy for the inhabitants of this planet. Machine learning is one technology that has the potential to dim the line between science and dream.

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What are the Challenges of Testing IoT Applications?

What is Internet of Things (IoT)?The internet of things (IoT) is a computing concept that describes the idea of everyday physical objects being connected to the internet and being able to identify themselves to other devices. The term is closely identified with RFID as the method of communication, although it also may include other sensor technologies, wireless technologies or QR codes.The IoT is significant because an object that can represent itself digitally becomes something greater than the object by itself. No longer does the object relate just to its user, but is now connected to surrounding objects and database data. When many objects act in unison, they are known as having “ambient intelligence.IoT ExamplesSome examples of day to day real life implementation are as follows:1) In Wearable technologies:Wearable gadgets such as MI bands and Apple watches synchronize easily with the mobile devices.2) Infrastructure and development:With the use of an application such as Telensa, it is easier to get the real time outdoor lighting data and based on these, the street lights are switched on or off. There are also various applications so as to control traffic signals and parking availability in a sophisticated city layout.Technology used in IoTFollowing are the few of the most used technologies in IoT:WiFi:This is the most commonly used choice for IoT. When on a LAN, this helps in transferring files, data and messages seamlessly.Bluetooth:This is used where short range communications are enough to get away with the problem. This is mostly used in wearable technologies.Z-Wave:is a wireless communications protocol used primarily for home automation. It is oriented to the residential control and automation marketNFC[Near Field Communication] is used to enable two-way interactions between the electronic devices. This is basically for the smartphones and is mostly used to do the contactless payment transactions.RFID[Radio Frequency Code] tags and EPC [Electronic Product Code]QA Opportunities in IoT TestingNFC Payments: NFC (near field communication) is the technology that allows two devices—like your phone and a payments terminal—to talk to each other when they’re close together. NFC is the technology that enables contact-less paymentsApple Pay/Samsung Pay: Apple Pay empowers users to make use of multiple credit/debit cards to make pay via Apple devices. ‘Samsung Pay’ is linked with major banks which includes JP Morgan and BOA.Telematics: It also helps to keep an eye on the driver behavior for car insurance done by insurance firms.Payments through wearable devices: Payments can also be done through google glass or a wearable device.Challenges of Testing an IoT ApplicationInternet of Things (IoT) and technologies related to it confronted testing terms with many challenges As the IoT devices seamlessly connect and communicate with a wide variety of platforms, devices and operating systems, the main challenge the testing team faces is HUGE. However, such challenges are completely be heavier when it comes to the security challenges imposed by the software architecture of the IoT application. With innumerable devices connected to each other in the IoT, there are numerous potential attacks that can be exploited by the cyber criminals. If cyber criminals were to tamper with the settings of such devices, the consequences could be highly devastating.With the amount of detail that needs to be covered in an IoT testing, having a list of critical QA priorities is very important. Such priorities need to cover the length and breadth of the challenges of IoT testing.The different areas of testing an IoT application are as follows:Functionality: Web/UI, embedded and back-end computing.– Compatibility: Multiple OS flavors support, Protocol and product Versions, Backward Compatibility and Mobile OS.– Connectivity: Communication between the devices, third party applications and the infrastructure.– Performance of the network, communication and internal computation.– Exploratory: Rare scenarios and beyond functional requirements and structured testing.– Security: Privacy, Autonomy and Control.The top challenges and solutions that the QA can enlist are as follows:– The convergence of Hardware and Software: The ecosystem of IoT is made of devices, sensors and applications. When it comes to millions of sensors and devices in conjunction with intelligent software, only functionality validation is not enough.– Additional factors along with a working system: IoT works with sensors and devices communicating with multiple software back-ends with complex algorithms.It is not only enough to ensure a working set of device software. It requires a robust validation process with extremely complex real time scenarios. Obtaining such scenarios is an extreme challenge for the QA team.– Sensor Interactions: The biggest challenge lies in the creation of an environment in order to test the real-time implementation of the IoT application. Setting up such an environment requires numerous analytics engine and a significant experience in technical simulation. Although the hardware and the protocols are well tested beforehand, understanding the application intelligence and the device complexity is an extremely big challenge for the QA experts.– The device interaction layer: Here the software and hardware components interact in a real-time IoT environment. Their conformance to standards, interoperability, backward compatibility and security are the additional challenges in addition to typical software testing.– The user interaction layer: The success of the overall application depends on the user receiving a seamless experience. The main testing challenges include the simulation of network modes along with device level validation, the real time usability along with the back-end IoT environment.Challenges of Testing an IoT ApplicationThe IoT has been around for a years, but is rapidly developing market. Looking at the current trend in next coming years the things are definitely going to change. If you look at the number of devices and software in IoT, then the count is growing rapidly every day by day. As a result there will be more testing and testers are required to find the bugs in the IoT software and release more quality software to end users.Happy Testing!!!

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Internet of Things: What the Future Has in Store!

Imagine your washing machine calling on your smartphone and telling you in a Siri-like voice that it’s time to wash your socks. Imagine you receiving texts on your phone about your garage door being left open, your car out of fuel, or your toaster finishing its work. In the near future, this may no longer be science fiction; it is very much possible that any object you have in your home will start talking to you–in fact, not only to you but to any other objects around. What enables this is a technology known as Internet of Things (IoT).What is this revolutionary new technology? What is Internet of Things? This term has existed and been hackneyed since the early ’90s so as to breach the boarders of cliché. People have come forward with certain other terms to substitute “Internet of Things,” but most of them turned out to be just bush-league. Internet of Things refers to a future in which your commonplace objects—things that you normally do not associate with technology—start to communicate as part of a network. This concept radically augments our idea of the smart planet, because you can communicate to not just computers but every object in your home over the Internet.IoT and the Fascinating FutureIf you are a fan of popular sitcom Big Bang Theory, it has an interesting episode in which the characters light lamps and turn down stereos using their laptops by sending signals across the Internet. After a while, by giving open access, unknown people start playing around with the lamps in their apartment. This kind of development is highly invigorating as well as slightly intimidating for many people.While on one side people are talking about the advantages of IoT, a discussion is looming large on the horizon about the security concerns surrounding the concept. For instance, what if the bad guys hack into your smartphone to disable your home’s security system and open the doors of your house while you are away in Hawaii on a vacation?One area IoT is going to transmogrify is the automotive industry. Already, the cars are as smart as you want them to be. A few days ago, I was watching the Audi keynote in the International CES (watch it below), and wow! The cars can not only park themselves but drive you through busy streets. The technology is that sophisticated now. Last week, Fox News published a piece on V2V (Vehicle to Vehicle) communication system that helps cars communicate with other cars in the vicinity to convey important information, such as whether or not the driver is applying breaks properly to avoid a possible collision.The US department of transportation is considering a regulatory proposal for vehicle to vehicle communication. You can go to BBC Top Gear and be literally flabbergasted at the automotive technology that is emerging. In essence, cars have advanced through technology in the last decade more than they ever did in a century led by mechanical engineering. Embedded computing technology is at the helm of all these developments.When IoT comes to our world, these cars will be well connected, through 4G technology. They will communicate fluently to bring assistance to you wherever you are.Cisco has done quite a bit of research on Internet of Things (which they call Internet of Everything in their vernacular). Check out that site; it’s a goldmine of information on IoT. According to Cisco’s findings, released in Feb 2013, IoT globally will be worth 14.4 trillion dollars in the next decade. I happened to look at the data concerning our country too, and the value at stake seems to hover around 35 billion USD. When it comes to the zenith of information technology, the United States, the total value at stake seems to be 473 billion dollars.IoT: How It Changes Your World?I have given you a slight idea of how IoT is going to change your future in the beginning of the article. While some of the ideas may be a bit out there, there is virtually no bounds to the way applications can be developed to incorporate things. Embedded systems will be subsumed into almost every object to make it more intelligent. That’s where the washing machine that talks and texts comes in. These developments can significantly improve your lifestyle.Just as the lot of geeks in the Big Bang Theory, IoT will exhilarate the techies amongst us. They will come up with specialized applications that do everything from garage-door-opening to toilet-seat-lifting. The way IoT can uplift the services in certain industries today is bound only by your imagination. Surveillance, security, healthcare, education, retail, etc., are some of the industries that will taste the massive benefits of Internet of Things.There is a minor problem. And that concerns software development. For an analogy, consider today’s mobile app development. While a developer needs to concentrate on only one device (or two) in case of iOS development, he has to consider a plethora of hardware configurations, resolutions, processors, and OS versions when it comes to Android. Imagine if a developer needs to create an app that controls refrigerators or washing machines? There is more diversity there than the number of verses in the King James Bible, figuratively speaking.This development intricacy has also been discussed by a recent podcast in GigaOM. They also discuss the rampant privacy concerns surrounding the subject. Play the podcast to listen:How IoT redefines our world is well illustrated in this image:As a first step of inventorying everything to be managed better, you can use technologies such as RFID (Radio-frequency ID) and NFC to tag each object. Then, they can be managed through a network, and locating and securing the inventoried objects become a piece of cake.There is, however, one little issue concerning IoT: the standardization. We should come up with a way to standardize the tagging technologies that we use—RFID, NFC, barcodes, or QR codes. It should not be as wayward as in the case of 4K resolutions (wherein there are six different resolutions and no fixed standard).In essence, for coherence and congruence, everything from development to nomenclature should follow a standard.How far are we in realizing IoT in our cities? Well, when it comes to Ubiquitous Cities (aka smart city, wherein everything is connected with computers), Songdo IBD of South Korea is probably the first. It is a smart city where everything is connected, not just computers.ConclusionI could go rambling on and on about IoT as it is quite an interesting topic. Aziro (formerly MSys Technologies)’s development teams have expertise in embedded computing technologies, which is right there at the brink of IoT. It is inspiring to know that we are part of a global team working toward the future of technology.

Aziro Marketing

embedded-systems internet-of-things iot storage technology

How to build a smart home using Raspberry Pi device

AbstractThis article describes a case study on building a smart home using Raspberry Pi device. We have used AndroidThings as the OS on the Raspberry device, and Firebase as backend service for storing the data (which is synced real time with all devices authenticated). The article gives a brief description on the current trend on Internet of Things (IoT) devices (popular IoT platforms like Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc.). In addition, the article mentions a brief on AndroidThings OS (provided by Google), which was developed for IoT devices and support Java framework for application developers to develop IoT applications using Java. We also talk about Firebase, which was used as a backend to store data.Possibilities of controlling several devices from a single panel in Aziro (formerly MSys Technologies) office. (Creative visualization)AndroidThingsAndroidThings brings the entire Android platform now to devices on which you can build Java based IoT applications. It has the potential to change the game for IoT, like Android did for devices.The thing that we have found most IoT developers struggle with, is collecting sensor data, transport and save that data to the backend. And the real value lies in analyzing that data for alerts, visualization, etc. And that is where we believe we will see a lot of people understand the values of Firebase, Google Cloud Services more. AndroidThings, developed by Google fits all these pieces together to create a compelling IoT platform.One of the interesting things that is being mentioned as a strength of Android Things is that OS updates will be distributed by Google themselves.FirebaseFirebase provides a quick way to persist sensory data collected at the device level, and it works great with the Android APIs, which is supported by AndroidThings. A lot of mobile and device programmers that I have come across struggle with server side programming. Firebase can really help bridge that gap and make it easier.It will be interesting to see developers use its offline features. If you are new to IoT or in general any device that collects data and needs to transmit it over networks, the golden rule to be assumed is that network connectivity cannot be assumed. As a result, you will need to collect the data offline and when network is available, transmit this over to your server. Firebase with its offline feature can really make this simple for a lot of developers.Firebase has a ton of features including Real-time Database, Authentication, Cloud Messaging, Storage, Hosting, Test Lab and Analytics but I’m only going to use Authentication, Real-time Database.AuthenticationAny proper app has some form of security. Firebase Authentication provides this form of security by flawlessly providing an OAuth platform that integrates popular OAuth providers such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.Real-time DatabaseThis is a NoSQL cloud database. Okay, this means that all data in your application is stored online in the cloud and an added advantage is that it syncs across all connected clients in real time (as it changes).Implementation: Smart Home using RaspberryPi.This implementation requires the following:Software:1.Java.2.Android Application Development.Hardware:1.RaspberryPi 32.Ethernet Cable3.LED Bulb4.1KΩ resistor5.Female to Male jumper wires6.Breadboard7.Power Supply for Raspberry Pi8.SD Card (8GB or higher)Demo: LED bulb controlled through internet (using Android device) Software implementation1.Android Client app – talks to firebase, updates value in firebase.2.Android Things App – reads value from firebase and sends instructions to the Led bulb (through Raspberry Pi device)WorkflowAny Internet enabled android mobile that has android app, connects with Firebase using OAuth authentication.After successful authentication, it updates/reads value from Firebase.Firebase updates the values to IoT device that has AndroidThings OS and Android IoT app.IoT device controls all the connected electronic devices.Connecting IoT device in Cloud.Connecting IoT device in Cloud.1. Download the Developer preview from Android Things web site.https://developer.android.com/things/preview/download.html2. Download Android Thing OS for Raspberry Pi3. After formatting your SD Card we have to install the OS.4. After boot up RaspberryPi will connect to your network through Ethernet.5. Once it is successfully connected you will see the following messageconnected to :55556. LED positive pin to 7 (BCM4) and Negative to 9 (Ground)7. Create a Firebase Project in https://firebase.google.com/.8. Go to rules section and change the rules as follows{ "rules": { ".read": "true", ".write": "true" } }9. Download this Android-Things-Aziro (formerly MSys Technologies) project from the Github.https://github.com/Chokkar-G/Android-Things-MSys.git10. Get the google-services.json file from the Firebase project and copy it to your app folder.11. After successful compilation, run your first Android Things project which is configured with Firebase.12. Click on ‘Run’ button in Android studio and select your device.13. Now your application will run on your device and you will see the bulb is blinking.If you use a platform other than RaspberryPi, change pin value as shown below:I have used BCM4 GPIO pin for RaspberryPi device.(BoardDefaults.java) public static String getGPIOForLED() { switch (getBoardVariant()) { case DEVICE_EDISON_ARDUINO: return "IO13"; case DEVICE_EDISON: return "GP45"; case DEVICE_RPI3: return "BCM4"; case DEVICE_NXP: return "GPIO4_IO20"; default: throw new IllegalStateException("Unknown Build.DEVICE " + Build.DEVICE); } }Building Android Client App1. Download AndroidThingClientApp from this github link, import it into android studio.https://github.com/Chokkar-G/AndroidThingClientApp.git2. Get the google-services.json file from the Firebase project and copy it to your app folder.3.Enable Email, google, Facebook login in Authentication section. Source Codehttps://github.com/Chokkar-G/Android-Things-MSyshttps://github.com/Chokkar-G/AndroidThingClientApp Client app Login and Menu ItemsConclusionThe Internet of Things is easier to implement than the average person would think. We have great potential in IoT. This was just a simple demonstration for IoT. From security systems to healthcare; from transport companies to warehouse management, the possibilities in IoT are simply endless. Further, with the advent of mobile apps like IFTTT, communication has gone to the next level. We can confidently say that the future does belong to IoT.References:https://developer.android.com/things/index.htmlhttps://developer.android.com/things/hardware/raspberrypi.htmlhttp://fritzing.org/ (Electrical layout diagram tool)https://www.aziro.com/internet-of-things/https://github.com/amitshekhariitbhu/awesome-android-things

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