This month we talk about X10, Matter, and Thread.
We also discuss Google Sidewalk, plumbing, and railway standards.
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Transcript
In the early 1970s, engineers at a relatively small company in Scotland called Pico Electronics developed a single-chip calculator, the first of its kind, and the success of which netted them sufficient resources to begin work on an LP turntable—a record player called the ADC Accutrac 4000—which could be programmed and operated using an ultrasound remote control.
In 1975, they started a new project, called X10, which would utilize a similar ultrasound-enabled remote control system, alongside electrical wiring-connected components, for other at-home, consumer products, at first focusing on modules for lamps and appliances and a command console for managing them, before eventually releasing a timer and a module that could be installed as a wall switch.
These products were sold in RadioShack and Sears stores, and Pico partnered with Birmingham Sound Reproducers—which at the time was a pretty big deal in the world of audio equipment—to design and sell the X10 line.
But X10 wasn't just a line of products: it was a standard that could be built into all kinds of things, so the concept allowed them to branch off into computer interfaces, as well, so customers could control their lights from their Commodore 64, or set a timer on their air conditioner from their Apple II.
But the entities behind this standard eventually fell prey to larger market forces headed into the late-1980s, and although some high- and low-end variations of the core X10 theme were attempted by later permutations of the companies that owned the rights to this standard, it never really took off—you can still find X10 equipment running in some homes and other buildings, today, but they're increasingly rare as the protocol wasn't super-reliable even during its heyday, and the equipment it utilizes—power line and radio frequencies, most commonly—is usually phased out in favor of more reliable WiFi, Bluetooth, and other modern, digital infrastructure when the buildings in which X10 equipment was used is refurbished or upgraded.
The concept of home automation, though, never really went away. And the idea of a smart home—a system running throughout one's home that can be tapped into, and which is aware to some degree of the pieces plugged into it, all of which can be controlled to varying degrees by those occupying the home—has become more popular as our technology has evolved, and as more and more of our data is tracked, accessible, and utilizable: we can control so many aspects of our environments using our smartphones, today, so why not our lights, appliances, outlets, and the like?
This line of thinking was the impetus behind a Google spinoff company called Sidewalk Labs.
This company was formed to focus on tech-solutions for urban and infrastructural problems: applying the smart home concept to a city, basically, starting at the neighborhood scale.
The effort was kicked off in late-2017, in a small Toronto neighborhood called Quayside; they called this project Sidewalk Toronto.
They proposed using Quayside as "a testbed for emerging technologies, materials, and processes" related to persistent systemic issues like accessibility, inclusivity, sustainability, and prosperity, and they would attempt to address these issues by implementing what amounted to the smart home model at scale: sensors collecting data and the utilization of that data to improve public spaces and services and create opportunities, while also making tedious or difficult or dangerous things easier and safer through the clever implementation of technologies Google creates and funds.
The Sidewalk Toronto project was abandoned in mid-2020, due in part to all the uncertainty sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they'd already managed to release some sub-products by that point, and just after, like one meant to help commercial buildings use energy more efficiently, another that helped developers, architects, and urban designers come up with optimal designs for the spaces available, and one more than was launched in May of 2021, which is meant to help manage parking in these cities.
In late-2021, though, the CEO of Sidewalk Labs announced that he would be stepping down for medical reasons—he received very worrying diagnosis of what may be ALS which made him want to spend more time with his family—and the company was thus folded back into Google; where its next-steps remain uncertain, because of what will almost certainly be a tough restructuring amidst all those aforementioned variables caused by the pandemic and it's accompanying economic and social reverberations.
It's hard to make long-term plans at the moment, and this sort of project—because of how much planning, investment, research, and back-and-forthing with locals in the areas being developed is required at each step along the way—requires a lot of runway to operate.
What I'd like to talk about today is another recent development in the smart-technology world that is especially focused our homes and how gadgets and systems made for such spaces may soon be changing.
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The article I'd like to start with today comes from The Verge, and it's entitled:
Matter's plan to save the smart home
Matter is the new-ish name, re-dubbed at the end of 2019, for a data-transfer standard previously called Project Connected Home Over IP, or CHIP.
It's a proprietary standard that's been co-created by a consortium of tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which is a jumble of move than 400 companies that oversee a bundle of protocols related to enabling communication between devices, creating what amounts to a personal wireless network—including the one now called Matter.
So this standard is being developed by, and is owned by, that collection of co-creator entities, but it's also royalty-free: so anyone who wants to use this standard in their own devices—to allow those devices to connect with each other, and to connect with all other devices utilizing the same standard—wouldn't have to pay the folks running this thing for each unit they sell. Which is important, because having to pay per-unit tends to be a significant barrier for the adoption of even really great protocols, whether they're related to ports or wireless transmission or file formats or charging standard or whatever else.
At a foundational level, Matter piggybacks on the IP, or Internet Protocol standard, which is already used in most devices that connect to the internet: each device thus connected its own IP address, which is a unique number, and that helps the software sort out what information should go where, within and between local networks.
The idea is to allow as many smart devices as possible to connect with each other, connect with the internet, and to be controllable by the user.
And if you're thinking, well, I can already do that, I've got an Amazon Echo or a Google Home device that allows me to control my lights with my voice, this is precisely the same concept, but much larger and more inclusive: once Matter is fully baked and rolled out, your Google voice assistant will allow you to control your Amazon devices, and they'll all connect to your IKEA lamps, your Samsung phone, and your Apple computer.
Standardization of anything within any industry can result in quite a few benefits.
The standardization of railroad gauges has allowed numerous companies operating within the same industry to share resources—their tracks, but also bits and bobs they might need to repair components of their cars and engines—and the standardization of plumbing in homes—in the US we use something called the Uniform Plumbing Code, or UPC—ensures that everything built after the codes went into effect (and the first version of this code was used in Los Angeles back in the late-1920s, but the first national version was published in 1945, and the first consensus version of it didn't arrive till 2003) after that point, there's a base-level of interoperability between all components used in plumbing where this standard is upheld, from the pipes to the fittings to the elbow joints to the wrenches and tapes and insulation.
That's why many countries have their own, similar sets of standards across all sorts of fields.
This is great if you're looking to reduce inefficiencies, as you'll be less likely to have gobs of different types of pipes and fitting, few of which function together, and many of which only kind of sort of work in parallel.
It's also wonderful in the sense that you can get everyone on board with one set of codes and standards that are known to work and are well-tested, which then means consumers are less likely to find themselves with a house with pipes that don't work, or a house built to a different code than everyone else uses, which leaves them paying high prices for rare pipes, unable to find a plumber who knows how to work with the weird standard used in their home, or maybe even left holding the bag when the company or other entity that developed their plumbing standard goes out of business.
There are potential downsides here as well, though, including the possibility that you'll have a bunch of entities working on a new standard and by the time they roll it out, technology has already moved forward, and the standard is outdated as soon as it's adopted.
You might also end up with a design-by-committee situation, where you cobble together a cumbersome and useless monstrosity of a standard, because there are so many people with so many priorities adding their two cents and wanting to make sure they're not left out of the deliberation.
The folks behind Matter are hoping to dodge that particular bullet by making a standard that lashes together existing standards, while also building out new protocols that should work better in most cases.
So newer devices might latently use their recommended hardware for picking up wireless signals, but devices that already exist should also be able to plug in to those new devices, and to other, older devices that utilize WiFi, Bluetooth, ethernet, or Thread, the latter of which is a mesh network-focused protocol currently used primarily by internet-of-things devices like smart speakers and lights.
That's the theory, anyway. And the folks running Matter have said the final specification and certification program that'll allow new products into the loop should be ready by mid-2022, and the first Matter-certified devices should begin to show up on shelves by the end of 2022, if all goes as planned—though this launch is a year-late already, so we'll see if they're able to hit this new deadline, and if this standards measures up to the hype surrounding it, relatively soon.
I hinted at what this should all look like in practice a few minutes ago: all your smart devices talking to all your other smart devices.
But the killer app of a standard like this one is that, in theory, it should allow all this smart tech to keep operating even when your WiFi is done, because it will allow your devices to talk to each other without reaching out to the internet: a lot of the processing and sharing of info will stick within your home's local network—your personal cloud, rather than the one located in a big warehouse full of computers somewhere—and that has potentially positive ramifications for privacy and security, and for situations in which your connection to the wider world isn't great; your robot vacuum cleaner won't stop working and your voice assistant won't be left fumbling for words; and those are just two of many "smart" devices that sometimes crash when Amazon experiences issues with their network of data centers, or something else weird happens on the internet or with our personal router setups, today.
This is possible, in part, because of that protocol I mentioned earlier, Thread—the one that was made to allow internet-of-things devices to work together.
Thread is like WiFi or Bluetooth in that it enables data-exchange between devices, but because it's built for this specific purpose, inter-device data-transfer, it's better at it, and far more efficient: WiFi and Bluetooth work just fine for this purpose, but they're optimized for other things, and thus are a bit overpowered and ineffective when it comes to some aspects of building out a smart home setup.
That efficiency is key, both because these sorts of devices tend to work best when turned on and connected at all times, and because some of them will be mobile, which means they'll have batteries that drain far faster using something like WiFi or Bluetooth than they do with Thread; which should make them more efficient and energy-sipping, but also better at their jobs, allowing phones to go longer without being charged and helping robot vacuum cleaners keep puttering along with out periodic visits to their charging station.
One more leg-up this standard has over existing standards is that folks using smart appliances and gadgets won't need central hub or bridge devices through which they access the devices on their network: little hubs can be built in to any gadget on the network that's plugged in to the wall. So these little hubs, tucked inside other sorts of devices, work together to built that at-home mesh of gear, while also granting ever-better connectivity and access to the home-owner.
So your smart fridge, smart lamp, and internet-distributing router can all serve as bridges between the user and the devices on the local network, allowing the connected devices to more smoothly communicate with each other and get data where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, each device operating as a node in the home-network.
Alongside the concerns about potentially locking in a standard that's outdated upon arrival, or making something cumbersome because of all the entities involved with its creation, though, there's also some warranted worry about security in devices using Matter.
More devices using one standard means that standard becomes an increasingly appealing target for hackers, and because so many smart devices utilize an always-on connection to the internet when such a connection is available, that makes these devices—all the devices in this ever-growing, conveniently interconnected network—into tempting and exposed attack surfaces for malignant cyber-entities.
It will quite possibly make users more vulnerable, in other words, and increasingly so, the more we rely upon it.
These companies, of course, which again, include a who's who of powerful and wealthy, but also small and nimble and innovative tech companies of various stripes, have gobs of incentive to make sure such security threats don't become security issues. Not only would that be very bad for this standard they're investing in, but also for the concept of smart homes and their associated technologies, more broadly.
A few big hacks, a few big articles on those hacks, and suddenly people are more skeptical about these technologies than they already are, and that would put a decent-sized dent in the pocketbooks of these companies.
It's tough to get hard numbers on this, because the smart technology industry is so fractured and not perfectly definable right now, but some reports have the smart speaker industry in the US, alone, at around $15.6 billion in 2020, and that's expected to grow to $35.5 billion by 2025.
Smart home appliance numbers, globally are probably more like double that, with some numbers indicating revenue in that segment at more than $39 billion in 2021—something like 20% of that generated in China, alone. And for context, revenues were around $23.5 billion in 2019, and are expected to rise to $57.6 billion by 2025—which is a substantial increase, globally, for a market segment which includes everything from smart washing machines to smart stovetops.
The rollout of Matter also makes other, emerging market segments more feasible and potentially appealing.
Smart toys, for instance—toys that are interconnected with each other, with other, non-toy devices, and with the internet—are growing at a rapid clip, and this segment is expected to reach nearly $70 billion, globally, by 2026; and that expectation of course could be way off, and it could be influenced by all kinds of variables, including the Matter standard sucking and not being adopted or supported, or having major security flaws we can't currently see or predict. But current sales and sales-trajectories have lent this space a fairly favorable outlook, thus far.
One of the major promises of this standard, and it may or may not live up to it, is that it will more or less commodify this technology, which will render a lot of the current distinctions—it works with Amazon's Echo, it works with Apple's HomeKit, and so on—more or less moot.
Some existing differentiations, like what you can do on individual apps and within individual operating systems to engage with individual devices, will be maintained, even as all those things interconnect with everything else better. But beyond those small specifics, everything should work with everything, so a smart toaster will be a smart toaster and connect to all the stuff you'd want a smart toaster to connect to.
That means these brands won't be able to reliably sell mediocre tech that customers have to suffer through because it's the only smart lock that works with their chosen system, or the only set of lights that pairs well with the smartphone in their pocket.
They'll all work with everything, so optimally, this will lead to more innovation and quality, because competition should be restored to a space that has been largely carved up into individual kingdoms, for years now.
We'll see if that promise plays out.
First, we'll have to see if this standard arrives in the next year or so, as promised, or if it will be further delayed, and perhaps leapfrogged by something else that comes along in the meantime.
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Show Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)
https://www.engadget.com/sidewalk-labs-products-google-alphabet-151740698.html
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/16/22840028/sidewalk-labs-google-doctoroff-health-toronto-quayside
https://www.theverge.com/22787729/matter-smart-home-standard-apple-amazon-google
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zigbee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(standard)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Plumbing_Code
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway
https://www.statista.com/topics/4748/smart-speakers/
https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/smart-home/smart-appliances/worldwide
https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/smart-home-appliances-market
