smart-everything

Last weeks we have read some news related to new "smart" products and services that, step by step, are making room for themselves in our lives.

One of these news emphasize an innovative initiative that New York City is carrying out and that will transform old payphones in WiFi hotspots that will provide with free coverage to the citizens. Despite this initial installation consists of only 10 points, it is planned to incorporate new locations in coming months. At present, NYC has more than 13,000 payphone and 40-60% of them are out of services. The business model that allows this renovation is also innovative since it will not imply any cost to the city due it will be supported by advertising.

This project provides us an idea of how conventional urban infrastructures can be renovated and transformed but also lays the foundations for subsequent deployment of other advanced systems that, making use of that connectivity, will create smart and connected environments to manage resources in a more efficiently way and improve the quality of living of citizens.

On the other hand, a R&D project proposal in a different aspect, in the social field, "smart-citizen" pretends to convert the citizen in the sensor itself, in such a way that the user provides "the system" with information of interest, and share it with other users.

Although, this is not the first proposal that combines sensor infrastructures with social networks, undoubtedly shows the growing interest in giving a social touch to information of our environment.

And that is, either with social character or not, systems based on sensor networks are becoming more and more prominent in our lives.  As it is correctly argued in this @FastCompany article, sensors will monitor what we say and do, sensors will change every industry, because they will create exciting new business opportunities and disrupt established product lines.

Zigbee, 6LowPAN and smartCities (I)

For the last year, a lot has been discussed about smartCities and the internet of things and the role that protocols will probably play on all this.

At a conceptual and technological level, the future smartCity will rely on two main concepts:

• Fully interoperable devices, with a common and open protocol which guarantees they all can "talk" to each others. 
• Protocol-specific devices, central managed.

The interoperable smartCity

Briefly,at the interoperable smartCity multiple vendors of devices will coexist, and they will all use the same communication protocol. In the same way, it's very important the role of the certification agent, who will certify and guarantee that they will interoperate. 

About devices, there will probably be two main kinds of different devices, and each of them will offer value differently.

First, WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) infraestructure devices. As there will be a common protocol, the most cost-efective and logical solution will create a common infraestructure, on which services can be mounted inside the smartCity. Whis way, we are talkin about devices whose functionality would be close to a Wifi router, they will manage connectivity. Anyway, we are talking about WSN conectivity (Zigbee, 6LowPAN, etc). 

Then, there will be application devices. They will be the ones that will make possible the different services: street lighting, waste management, enviromental monitoring, etc... and all of that over the WSN infraestructure. They are responsible for physical environment interaction: meassurement and actuation, mainly.

The multiprotocol smartCity

In the situation that no protocol is massively adopted, multiple WSN solution vendors will exist, one solution for each problem to solve in the smartCity. The main difference from the interoperable smartCity will be that it does not exist a unique WSN infraestructure in the city and each vendor will provide a complete solution. 

This doesn't exclude that several standarized solutions will appear for each application, i.e. street lighting interoperable systems. However, the main difference will be that there won't be a common infraestructure but individual and specialized systems. 

All these systems will have a common joint point, hopefully the Internet. In this way, despite having different systems, all the information will be available to be centrally managed by the city council or by the local-service management companies and they could even offer almost the same functionalities as the interoperable smartCity. 

As always, there are nuances and it's difficult to classify, but in general terms those will be the big scenarios we could predict in smartCities, about WSNs. In the next posts, we will go into details about technologies, protocols and, above all, viability and bussiness questions in these applications. 

VIDEO: SAYME at the "Challenges in the Internet of Things" conferences

Here we leave the video of our participation in the seminar organized by the COIT on "Challenges in the Internet of Things".

To get access to all presentations you can access the portal that the COIT has provided.

We hope you like our participation.

Conference on "Challenges in the Internet of Things", COIT

Last Thursday, 31th May, the conference on "Challenges in the Internet of things" took place in Madrid. There, SAYME participated in a round table on the "Ecosystem of Sensor Networks" created by the COIT (Telecommunication Engineering Official College).

Other companies such as TST Sistemas, Nebusens and GALTEL also participated in the round table, as they are part of the ecosystem too.

The ecosystem of sensor networks is an initiative of the  Telecommunication Engineering Official College to spread this new professional activity. Within the ecosystem there are three different roles, based on their contribution to the world of Sensor Networks:

• Technology Companies: Companies developing Sensor Networks technology as the basis for this new line of activity. 
• Application Companies. Those whose business is to use that technology to create applications to customers and/or the market. 
• Service Companies. Mainly large communications operators, as catalysts of the ecosystem, especially in M2M applications. 

As a technology company with strong focus on business applications and a product line 100%  developed in-house, SAYME wanted to spread our vision about wireless sensor networks products.

Product creation is complex and requires many and varied involving agents and a clear vision and direction to the business and the market, providing solutions very cost-benefit. Therefore, we wanted to emphasize the importance of full product development, as we indicated in a previous post.

Thanks to COIT for the invitation and the excellent organization of the event.

Meeting Point Barcelona 2012

Last Thursday we had the chance to introduce  SAYME  at the Meeting Point Barcelona Forum focused on smartCities, organized by ONO and Pyme Crunch.

A whole morning full of good experiences and talented people who took place at the Silken Diagonal Hotel, in Barcelona.

The day started with a talk on "Analytics at smartCities" by Alfredo Romeo (@aromeo) -Intelify-. A very interesting thinking around taking Information Management Systems to the next level by enabling knowledge creation, where the information and bussiness processes merge to facilitate decision making inside the smartCity. Meanwhile, Toni Mascaró conducted th workshop around "Smart Destinations: Turism at smartCities".

After that, a roundtable took place, with Javier Martin (@loogic) as presenter. Various topics around future cities and business models were discussed. Different experts participated around this table: José Picó (@picoj) -D3 Arquitectura y Redex-, Jordi Echevarría -Everis- y Alvaro Nicolás -Anteverti-. Interesting ideas and concepts arised. As a result, the discussion exceeded the available time.

Finally, the time for company presentations arrived. With SAYME, other projects were presented: TicTow and the awarded MashMeTv. Both of them with remarkable presentations and internet application projects. The day ended with two internet portals dedicated to investing and venture capital: Foudum y TheCrowdAngel.

An excellent day. Thank you very much Carmen and Javier for the excellent organization and to everyone for a superb environment.

Comillas' Major Seminary Collapses

Last week we met with the sad news of the collapse in the major seminary at Comillas. A building of historical and cultural value and a symbol of Cantabria.

Under rehabilitation works for several years, we had the opportunity to work on a joint project in 2007, leaded by the  Grupo de Tecnología de la Edificación ,University of Cantabria, to monitor different structural points sensitive to the rehabilitation work.


In its initial phase, different structural monitoring solutions  coexisted  for a period of one month to study the feasibility of the project. Taking different variables such as windstrength and direction, temperature / humidity, inclinations in pillars or openings of cracks. Unfortunately the project did not proceed.


We take this opportunity to highlight the benefits of structural monitoring systems, especially in cases like this one.


With a much lower economic impact  than the budget of some works of this magnitude, there are monitoring solutions that reduce the risks associated with the works. Having the real-time/stored information to take preventive actions or to establish causality to certain accidents.


Seize the opportunity created by new technologies.


"What is not defined, cannot be measured. What is not measured cannot be improved.What is not improving, always breaks down."

Lord Kelvin

Product Development Strategies: WSN

In this post we talk about the main issue we face when developing a new product: integrating technologies or develop your own product.

Both options have their advantages and disadvantages, but have important implications for the strategy in the medium/long term product life and must be taken into account. In this post we will address the specific case of the wireless sensor network products.

Lets first talk about the option of integration.

This option is characterized by OEM solutions that facilitate and accelerate our product development. Modules are usually used to give us an almost complete functionality through a programming API. The prime example in the case of wireless sensor networks would XBee modules from Digi. These modules provide almost complete functionality in terms of wireless communications, we get solved complicated issues such as programming of standard communication protocols (Zigbee in this case) and the always sensitive RF electronic development.

The advantages of the integrated option are obvious. This option allows us to significantly reduce the Time-To-Market of the product, while moved much of the communication problems to a specialized manufacturer. The disadvantages are the benefits of development option which we shall detail.

The development option changes the approach in comparisson to the intregration option, mainly in the scale at which we bring to design. This option will attempt to address the product development using elements of the lowest technological possible level . Obviously there is a financial limit under which technological development investments soar, which is the manufacture of integrated circuits. From here, the product developer will create its own electronic product itself and will face a long list of development stages, including radio communication designing and communication protocol implementation.

In general it is a long and complicated way, as greatter challenges are assumed than during integration of third party technologies. With the same effort expended, the Time-To-Market will be greater than in the case of the integration option but has a great advantage in the medium/long term: flexibility. This flexibility is found in two fields:

• Technological flexibility: The resulting product may be quickly adapted to market changes/demands. Needs response is faster, which is especially important in a growing market.

• Flexibility in costs: The fact of working at a lower level allows, having done the development, to offer a product whose manufacturing cost is significantly lower than the integration option. Furthermore, dependence on suppliers is smaller by having more supply and cost of product can be maintained and even improved by making a good supplier management.

At SAYME we have opted to develop our own product. It was a way not always easy, but both the team and the company have acquired a deep knowledge in product development whose result is the product SENSbee.

In any case, we work hard every day to make our product a better system that meets the needs of our customers and provide them a user experience as satisfying as the one we have had during product development.