The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT Podcast

This week we shift our focus from the usual suspects, Bluetooth & beacons, to the application experiences they enable. While Bluetooth, proximity and Real Time Location System technologies can increase efficiency and create new user interactions, among other use cases, it is ‘all useless if it doesn’t result in applications that people can engage with’. Sean Van Tyne, Customer Experience Architect of Van Tyne Group, coaches us on some of the tools they use to help companies ensure the customer journey is a success such as heuristics, personas, and usability testing. Find out more about how user experience and customer experience gained importance and the companies that drove it.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you make the IoT secure? What happens when you don’t? What are some of the most powerful IoT companies doing to address those questions? Full episode here:The ioXt Alliance believes in building a safer IoT world. They believe this world can be made possible through an alliance built on establishing security standards, shaping public policy, and compliance through testing and certification. This week we talk to Brad Ree, the CTO of The ioXt Alliance. This international standard for IoT security was brought to life by some of the tech giants you might be familiar with: Google, Amazon, Comcast, T-Mobile, to name a few. In this episode, we dive into how the ioXt Alliance defines IoT and the vast differences that consequentially create notable variances in security requirements for each. Acknowledging that IoT is scaling and with scale comes increased risk, we continue the discussion about the tradeoffs such as cost, usability, longevity, and more. Turn in this week to learn how The ioXt Alliance is evolving and about how you can become involved in making the ‘Internet of Secure Things’ a priority. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following Mister Beacon's appearance on Coffee with Mr. IoT (Watch Here), we switch roles to host Robert Schmid, Chief Futurist at Deloitte, aka Mr. IoT, on this week’s episode! Robert describes himself has as pragmatically audacious with a ‘deep passion and experience in all things digital – IoT wearables, social, mobile, and cloud computing’. This made him the perfect guest to discuss the current state of the Internet of Things ecosystem in all its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We talk IoT A to Z from sensors, performance, platforms, privacy, security, as well as use cases. Tune in this week to learn what IoT is good for – the use cases where the strengths are manifested and those where it’s not such a good fit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Mr. Beacon we talk with Cognosos, an asset tracking SAS platform using both Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) as well as Bluetooth. Jim Stratigos, Cognosos’s CTO, shares with us why LPWAN is the best choice for his automotive use case and what “drove” him to create a proprietary tech rather than using LoRa. Their solution enables dealers and auctions to have a cost-effective way of tracking vehicles in large outdoors lots by providing an essential piece of the equation, long range. In addition to range, we touch on the benefits and tradeoffs of the software and hardware architecture and business model decisions leading to SAS. We leave a little something extra at the end for those aspiring to be a CTO. Jim gives us the inside scoop from his extensive experience at Cognosos and companies like Cisco, Motorola, and AT&T. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lighting is everywhere and, conveniently, it’s always powered. This gives it the potential to be a network of sensors for a fraction of the hardware, installation, and maintenance cost of the alternatives. This week on the Mr. Beacon Podcast we meet with Bastiaan de Groot, CEO of the smart lighting company, Ingy, to delve into the disruptive power of lighting, both in an environmental and business context. Ingy believes ‘it is time for a new approach to smart buildings’ so they have built software for a mesh sensor network that is licensed to lighting manufacturers, sensor manufactures, and portal providers. This software offers lighting control systems and a wide range of smart building services like sub metering, asset tracking, indoor navigation, occupancy analytics and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Midmark is the 100+ year old company that “we all know, but don’t know”. The last time you were at the doctors or dentist, you were probably sitting on one of their chairs or tables, and most likely surrounded by many of the products they produce like cabinetry, lighting, and diagnostic equipment. HT describes Midmark as the market leader in providing “everything you need to outfit a medical environment”. HT Snowday, VP of Innovation and Technology Development at Midmark, joins us today to talk about how Midmark is also in the business of Real Time Location Systems (RTLS). This week we get a different perspective, a customer-orientated view, of RTLS technology in one of the largest organizations in healthcare. Join in to hear about the different technologies they use in a variety of healthcare use cases, such as asset tracking, device management, patient/caregiver management, and work flow processes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Physical Web: What is it, what happened to it, and what is the Physical Web Association’s response? This week on Mr. Beacon we have two of the Co-Founders of the Physical Web Association, Agustin Musi and James Grant, joining us to give us the scoop on the Physical Web’s past struggles as well as it’s promising future. Listen in to learn how the Physical Web provides a better alternative to developing an app, typing in a URL, or scanning a QR code, and how it provides a level playing field for content delivery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ultra-Wideband (UWB) in the iPhone 11 – What is it and what are the implications? A few months ago a large group of engineers from Apple and Samsung entered the room where a small group of engineers were working on updating a previously obscure radio standard IEEE 802.15.4, mainly used for industrial applications such as luxury car production. Fast forward to a stage in Sunnyvale where Tim Cook unveils his new iPhone 11. The fate of Ultra-Wide Band or UWB was changed forever when Apple added a new it’s U1 UWB/Ultra-Wide Band radio and an elaborate new antenna to its latest iPhone 11.  We talk to Nathan Dunn CEO of Bluecats, one of the pioneers of UWB and Bluetooth solutions about what this means to the industry, the applications it unlocks now and what it could be used for in the future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s been a lot of talk about the new Bluetooth Angle of Arrival (AoA) standard. This week we have a first-hand account of what it took to deploy AoA technology and how well it worked in a large scale manufacturing environment. At the Quuppa Partner Conference in Finland, we had a chance to sit down with Bob Grimm, an IT Enterprise Architect at NGK Automatics Ceramics USA, Inc. Bob had just been on stage talking about NGK’s recent deployment of Quuppa Angle of Arrival technology as part of the architecture for a real time location system (RTLS). NGK Ceramics, creators of an indispensable part for automobile catalytic converters, have massive manufacturing centers which equates to many assets and moving products that need to be accounted for. Bob described the pre-RTLS process as “finding a pallet in a sea of pallets” and the environment as exceeding production capacity that was out growing their rack based inventory control process. With the RTLS system in place, NGK immediately saw value from the increased efficiency in their production lines and now even higher value in the analytics they can derive from all the data. In this episode, we also hear about how the workplace can become more harmonious with clear, instantaneous answers rather than speculation.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘Digital to physical convergence and the Internet of Apparel, with a sustainability twist!’ Dr. Kevin Dooley, a professor specializing in supply chain at Arizona State University, joins in his role as the Chief Scientist of The Sustainability Consortium (TSC). TSC is a 100+ member community of retail giants including Amazon, Walmart, Walgreens, as well as major CPG Brands, non-profits, and academic institutions. They work across all product categories to determine a way to make the things we buy more sustainable. On this episode, we learn about WearEver, a TSC project with goals to embed technology into apparel to measure usage which has the potential to increase demand for ‘clothes that have better emotional and physical utility and durability’ whilst unlocking a treasure trove of information about where / when / what consumers wear. Kevin discusses what drives interest in tracking usage of consumer products, the potential technologies to achieve this, and their current limitations.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.