Smart-home products encompass a variety of devices that includes smart lighting, connected appliances, security systems, and health-care monitoring. A 2020 Jabil Smart Home Technology Trends survey of IoT manufacturing stakeholders, conducted by Dimensional Research, found that the market has more than doubled in two years, according to nearly 60% of respondents. Forty percent of stakeholders experienced 2× to 5× growth.
While demand and adoption of these devices continue to grow, product development teams face increasing challenges around security, privacy, and connectivity. One of the biggest design challenges is connectivity, according to the Jabil survey, with human-machine interface and device-to-internet connectivity (Wi-Fi, 5G, etc.) leading the trouble spots.
Other product development challenges, cited by survey takers, include a lack of reference architectures that address both hardware and software (30%), increasingly complicated specs for hardware creation (23%), and a lack of technical expertise and capabilities to build connected solutions (22%).
This month’s issue on smart homes takes a look at some of the devices and systems that can help product developers ease some of these challenges around security, connectivity, and technical expertise, as well as time-to-market concerns.
One of the biggest problem solvers for helping designers reduce hardware development work and simplify connectivity are wireless microcontroller (MCU) modules. These highly integrated modules provide matching circuits, security, connectivity, pre-certifications, and, in some cases, pre-provisioning for the cloud. They also come with hardware reference designs that offer benefits in several areas, including lower design risk and faster time to market. In some cases, designing with these modules requires little to no RF design expertise.
Today’s developers face more challenges than ever when making their design decisions, including longer development times and higher security threats, said Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio, editor-in-chief of Power Electronics News. Development kits and other prototyping platforms are vital to accelerate innovation and are one of the best ways to get started on any IoT project, he said. Maurizio discusses a few development kit and platform examples that can help developers get started on their projects.
A big part of IoT challenges is security, agreed industry players. Nitin Dahad, editor-in-chief of Embedded.com, reports that security for smart homes is all about identity and trust. Protecting smart-home devices from security risks requires a suite of protection, he said, which includes secure identity, secure authorization/attestation, secure provisioning, and secure over-the-air updates for when the device is in the field.
One component area that is being significantly impacted by the “smart” trend, whether it is homes, buildings, vehicles, industrial equipment, or medical devices, is MCUs. In most IoT applications, power consumption and enhanced security have become the biggest pain points for designers. Over the past six months alone, many chipmakers have developed new product offerings that address these issues.
But it’s more than just low standby current and advanced security features like symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, advanced key management, and tamper detection. These chipmakers are also providing a range of development boards, tools, and kits, including IDEs, software suites, and application examples, all designed to ease product development.
There are still several challenges that impede IoT growth, said Jake Alamat, vice president and general manager of IoT Home & Consumer at Silicon Labs, and it will require intuitive user experiences, increased security, and greater interoperability for the transformation into intelligent IoT smart homes. He said: “There are still too many incompatible protocols; numerous smart-home devices don’t work effectively across multiple ecosystems; and there is an increased need for device security. So what needs to be done to enable the future smart home?”
While more work still needs to be done, said Alamat, “new industry collaboration is opening doors for greater interoperability and developing new standards that will extend the intelligent, secure boundaries of the home beyond what we can imagine today.”
(Cover image: Shutterstock)
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