After being forced to adopt an online-only format due to the COVID-19 crisis, CES 2021 retained its spot as the world’s premier can’t-miss tech bonanza. Though frustratingly hands-off, the event still managed to dazzle with a diverse roster of speakers, tons of virtual sessions, and hundreds of new product announcements. One speaker in particular, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, stood out to us as a pretty apt representative for what we’ve seen from our customers in the ways they’re tackling not just the technological advancements, but the societal changes happening before our eyes. The world’s most recognizable big-box chain isn’t exactly where you’d expect to go for innovation, but Doug’s live Q&A focused on how the retail giant is updating its tech stack with an emphasis on connectivity and data management to provide better customer experiences. His remark that ‘every company is a tech company’ is a great statement going into 2021.

This was a theme this year’s speakers returned to throughout the event - the convergence of technology and social corporate responsibility – and here are some of the key insights from CES 2021 and where Silicon Labs will be making an impact.

Sustainability Through the Smart Application of Technology

Technology has always been part of farming and improving agriculture outcomes, specifically being able to grow food crops more efficiently and sustainably, and it requires an approach to technology adoption that goes beyond traditional equipment updates. John Deer hired its first chief technology officer, Jahmy Hindman, in 2020 and he’s adjusted the company’s aperture from heavy equipment to include a new Intelligent Solutions Group that will focus on hardware and devices, embedded software, connectivity, data platforms, and applications. Jahmy’s session, Feeding the World with Precision Tech, focused on the ways elevating data insights can make agriculture as predictable as possible. Global demand for food is expected to increase by 50 percent over the next 30 years, which will put enormous pressure on agricultural productivity. Bringing just a little more predictability into a notoriously unpredictable industry through data-driven, precision planting can result in smarter farming decisions that deliver larger crop yields. John Deere’s high-capacity X-Series Combine Harvester won a CES 2021 Best of Innovation Award in the Robotics category.

EVs were also heavily featured this year, including a sneak peek at GM’s Cadillac Celestiq and the further-out 2023 Cadillac Lyric electric SUV. And this was just a taste of what’s to come from automobile manufacturers in pursuit of sustainability. GM alone is planning 30 all-electric vehicles by the end of 2025 on the strength of a nearly $30 billion investment. Sono Motors also made a splash with its introduction of the Sion, a mass market solar electric vehicle (SEV). With roughly 250 solar cells integrated into the body of the Sion, the car can be 80 percent charged in a half-hour – and it can share its power to charge other EVs. Making this technology accessible is the last barrier to mainstream adoption and Sono seized its CES moment to make a compelling case for urgent sustainability from the automotive industry.

AI and Machine Learning will Drive IoT Innovation

We’ve recognized AI and machine learning in IoT edge devices as one of the keys to making IoT devices trainable, actionable, and capable of extracting information and learning from the environment. CES 2021 validated this observation with the sheer volume of contextually aware devices being introduced. At Silicon Labs we have a soft spot for developers and Unity MARS, which was recognized as a CES 2021 Innovation Award Honoree and is helping creators build AR experiences more easily. The accessibility of tools like this empowers people to create VR and AR applications who would never have been able to before, opening up the development of all kinds of new IoT products and use cases.

Moving Healthcare Away from the Doctor’s Office and into the Home

Even before CES was moved online by one of the most significant health crises in generations, health and well-being has been an even staple. But this year high-performance computing, coupled withAI, took on more significance. One of our IoT Heroes, Airthings, introduced a new function of its Wave Plus that can actually analyze rooms and determine virus risks. The sensor doesn’t actually detect the virus itself but uses other information to determine the risk of possible transmission. Variables including temperature, humidity, and the number of people present based on CO2 emissions helps score the likelihood of a virus circulating move around the room. A low score triggers a suggestion like increasing airflow or asking some guests to leave.

This aligns with our observation that COVID-19 has compelled the healthcare industry to shift care away from clinical settings and into the home. Once rarely used remote treatment options like telemedicine are going mainstream and more patients routinely use video conferencing on smartphones and tablets to minimize in-person visits to doctors’ offices, clinics, or hospitals by interacting directly with healthcare workers through their connected screens. Physicians are increasingly prescribing smart medical monitoring equipment like pulse oximeters, heart rate monitors, and blood glucose monitors to patients on a more frequent basis. Smart medical device manufacturers are racing to add new connectivity technology like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth into these devices to connect to them to the internet. Through these new connected smart medical devices, doctors can instantly assess their patients’ status and render treatment remotely, helping to ensure valuable hospital beds remain available for those who truly need inpatient care.

Like most of the industry, CES is an important part of Silicon Labs’ calendar. Learning that it would be remote this year was actually one of the true harbingers of just how serious the global pandemic was being treated. We missed being in Vegas and missed seeing our friends and colleagues, and most of all we missed being up close and personal with all of the ways these companies are bringing the power of connectivity to bear on today’s problems. But over the last four days we’ve been encouraged by the resilience of our industry and inspired by how past innovations in connectivity, networking, and access to development tools are making all of these things possible in pretty trying and unprecedented circumstances.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there in person next year!

Amazon Sidewalk is an exciting long-term effort to create a neighborhood network enabling IoT devices to work together no matter where they are, independent of any particular broadband connection.

Hot on the heels of our successful Works With Virtual Smart Home Developer Conference, we’re excited to announce a collaboration with Amazon on this promising new way for customers to ensure secure connections for smart devices anywhere on their property. 

Amazon Sidewalk is a secure, shared network created by neighbors who share a small portion of their broadband connection, allowing their devices to work better at home and beyond the front door. It is a free software application layer that works on top of any wireless solution, including Sub-GHz FSK, Bluetooth LE, and Wi-Fi, enabling IoT devices to connect to each other and through the cloud network securely.

Designed to provide the best experience for people with connected homes, Amazon Sidewalk creates a broad coverage network, ideal for low-bandwidth, low-cost devices, without requiring complex setup or maintenance. One of the most exciting things about Amazon Sidewalk is the ability for the network to extend beyond individual properties to the global Sidewalk network with a range similar to cellular networks.

Jamie Siminoff, founder & chief inventor of Ring, discussed Sidewalk during his feature keynote during our Works With 2020 virtual smart home developer conference. A replay of Siminoff’s keynote is available here and can be viewed by registering for free on the Works With conference website here. Amazon employees also recently demonstrated the capability of Sidewalk by installing 700 Ring lighting products around their homes; in just a few days, the individual network points combined to support a secure low-bandwidth 900 MHz network covering a large portion of the Los Angeles Basin.

Silicon Labs’ EFR32 Wireless Gecko Series 2 family of products will work seamlessly with Amazon Sidewalk when Sidewalk SDK is launching later this year. This launch will enable developers to create IoT products that can securely communicate to the cloud, regardless of which wireless protocol is used.

We’re looking forward to all of the possibilities Amazon Sidewalk will offer and cannot wait to see what our customers develop with this exciting new technology. For more information on how to get started with Sidewalk, contact your local Silicon Labs Sales Representative.

Wow, what a great event our first-ever Works With smart home developer conference was!  It was simply awesome to see so many companies and industry sectors all coming together under one virtual roof to learn and discuss all things smart home and IoT.

With more than 6,000 registered attendees, seven excellent keynote speakers, and a ton of high quality developer-oriented educational sessions, there was a LOT to take in at Works With.  Fortunately, anything you may have missed is available to see replayed on-demand via the Works With site so long as your register (which is free). In every session I visited, the live Q&A on Slack was very busy - a great sign that Works With attendees were fully engaged with the content.

I was fortunate enough to be able to experience many different aspects of the Works With event, and three big themes stood out:

1. Ease of development
2. Interoperability
3. Security

Ease of Development

Being able to easily and efficiently reuse development effort on one project when starting the next project came up in many places during the conference, not least of which was in the Amazon keynote.  When companies develop scalable, versatile platforms that work on standards and incorporate common API's and/or data flows, this effectively enables developers to focus their valuable time on adding innovation in the areas that are most important to them and their products. That is how truly special products are made!

Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP) generated a lot of interest, as the Zigbee Alliance project is a big deal in making interoperability easier to achieve across smart home devices. The project now has 145 member companies and over 1,300 people around the globe participating and contributing to its mission. The project has an open approach to development - open project and open source (all on GitHub), so it's very easy to access and start to engage with. 

The first devices CHIP is focused on include smart lighting, HVAC controls, window covers/shades, gateways, and others to build momentum in both smart home and smart buildings. Sujata Neidig, who represented Project CHIP in a Works With panel discussion hosted by Stacey on IoT's Stacey Higginbotham, announced that we should expect to see the first products built on CHIP appear in the market this time next year. Be sure to check out our EFR Series 2 parts to get your CHIP development going! 

Interoperability

The standardized models in Project CHIP should make it much easier for device manufacturers to build connected products that can fit very well into a wide variety of use cases and ecosystems. This means it becomes so much easier for consumers to choose what to buy and to get their smart home devices up and running instantly. That's a big win-win for everyone! 

Another one of the sessions I joined on interoperability was on the Google technical track, called "Introduction to Google Ecosystem." It was great to see how easy it is now to create a door lock example running on our EFR32MG21 development platform using OpenWeave and seamlessly integrate that into the Google Ecosystem. It truly demonstrates how these initiatives, like Project CHIP, are revolutionary in terms of interoperability.  

We've now established that easy development and reuse of technology combined with interoperability leads to rapid growth in the IoT and to building things we can't even imagine yet. BUT - consumers must be confident IoT devices can be trusted to keep their personal information private and secure, which in turn means that the security embedded in these connected products has to be strong.

Security

Getting IoT security right is a big deal and doing so successfully is not an easy thing to achieve.  At Silicon Labs, we have been investing in IoT security for quite some years as we saw the need for this coming. In a keynote from our head of IoT, Matt Johnson, Works With attendees heard about our EFR32 Series 2 devices earning both Arm's PSA-2 and IoXt Alliance's SmartCert IoT security certifications. For PSA-2, the EFR32MG21 with Secure Vault is the first wireless SoC ever to achieve this level of certification!  We are committed to making security accessible and easy for developers to implement by embracing standards and leading the way for secure IoT connectivity. In doing so, we believe more and more IoT developers will include security by default into their products, thus making it easier for consumers to trust their data is safe in an IoT device.

Another highlight for me was the opening keynote on Works With Day 2 with Ring founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff. It was great listening to his story and the passion he has for advancing IoT and making a positive impact on the way we all live. Jamie shared the latest on Amazon's Sidewalk effort, which stands out as a great example of how IoT can improve the way we live. Jamie described Sidewalk as a 10+ year project for Amazon, which builds on the idea of neighborhood: sharing with neighbors but with an IoT tech twist: the more connected devices your neighbors have in the network, the more everyone benefits. I loved the 'Fetch' example Jamie shared, which is an Amazon ultra-low-power play to be able to track your dog throughout the neighborhood if it escapes! Nodes around the neighborhood track and help pet owners locate their lost dog. To me, this is a simple yet really tangible way of showing how IoT tech, such as 'roaming' within Sidewalk, helps to make the IoT super-valuable to us all.

These past two days have been jam-packed with a ton of great content, and I want to thank all the people and teams involved in preparing and presenting the material. From our internal marketing and apps teams, our design partners, and our customers - all have played a huge role in making this event such a great success! But I'd also be remiss if I didn't give a massive shout out to the Silicon Labs production team who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to evolve what was originally planned as a big 'in-person' event into a huge virtual one! We ended up connecting a much bigger audience than initially planned by going virtual. We did so in a very slick, easy to consume way - bringing together all parts of the IoT industry and fostering great collaboration and innovation in a space that's more relevant now than ever before.

What we are doing at Silicon Labs is striving to make everything work with everything and do so in a way that has a positive impact on everyone's quality of life. We are THE place to go if you want to enable IoT connectivity, and we'd love to talk with you about how we can help bring your next IoT products come to life. If you'd like to start that conversation, we are waiting to hear from you. Simply send us a note here, and we'll be in touch!

Today, Silicon Labs kicked off its first-ever smart home developer event, Works With 2020, featuring industry experts and leading engineers sharing the latest in smart home technology development. Works With is the first of its kind to host developers and ecosystem partners, delivering 40 engineering-led session and 15 workshops to aid developers with designing, prototyping, and getting their products to market. When Silicon Labs imagined Works With, it wasn’t envisioned as a livestreamed event, but shifting to virtual allowed more than 5,000 developers from all over the world to participate.

Day 1 Recap - It’s All About Connections

Opening Keynote

Silicon Labs CEO, Tyson Tuttle, kicked off the event by diving into Silicon Labs’ vision to build a smarter, more connected world. With the current global pandemic, now more than ever, people are depending on IoT technology to stay connected – to work, to fun, and to each other. The creative ideas of developers are key to the success of the smart home industry.

Tyson went on to speak about Works With being the “Smart Home Hub” – a place where major platform players, protocol experts, and alliance partners unite to help developers navigate smart home technology. The event is designed to bring together all developers, no matter their level of expertise, and provide the know-how and best practices to get certified smart home products to market quicker. Tyson welcomed Silicon Labs IoT SVP and GM Matt Johnson to the keynote stage where he spoke to Grant Erickson, Jim Kitchen, and Joshua Danovitz, who are leading efforts at their respective companies, Google, Comcast, and Amazon, to pioneer a smoother development journey and break through the standards fragmentation in order to bring new and differentiated features to consumers.

Technical Sessions

After the keynote, attendees broke out into a variety of technical sessions, including workshops on designing products that work with Amazon, Google, HomeKit, and Samsung SmartThings ecosystems. During the sessions, developers had the opportunity to hear directly from engineering experts about the latest and greatest in smart home development. The sessions also gave developers the opportunity to learn how to acquire industry-recognized certifications for their products.

Panel – Building an Ecosystem IoT Developers Will Love

During lunch, technology journalist and IoT thought-leader Stacey Higginbotham (of Stacey on IoT) hosted a panel with leaders from NXP, ADT, Philips Hue, Ikea and Assa Abloy where they discussed how the smart home industry is coming together and how it will continue to evolve.

The panel discussed at length the emphasis on matters related to security and user experience, and one of the main points was the focus on leveraging the IP investment companies have already made. Being able to use existing IP bearing networks and shifting development resources to focus on actually innovating on new features that add value and simplify adoption for consumers.

Panelists also touched on some of the biggest obstacles developers face in bringing their products to market, including the effort required to support so many different protocols and delivering consistent user experiences across brands. Answering these challenges will provide developers with the confidence to build new, more sophisticated feature sets that create better experiences and simplify adoption.

Works With 2020 Announcements

In the midst of all of the Works With buzz and excitement, we made two major announcements – the launch of a new Simplicity Studio and BGM220.

Simplicity Studio 5 is a major upgrade to our Integrated Developer Environment (IDE), leveraging our industry leading IoT wireless expertise. Simplicity Studio 5 offers the same access and developer experience across a wide range of wireless protocols, all within a central web-style user interface. The software platform is scalable to multiple protocols including OpenThread, making it simpler to develop IPv6 based mesh applications and paving the way for future development of Project Connected Home over IP-based devices running on our EFR32 Wireless Gecko. Learn more about Simplicity Studio 5.

BGM220, combines our award-winning BG22 Bluetooth system-on-chip (SoC) devices, a pre-certified module and production-ready firmware with an on-board Bluetooth stack, application layer, and secure boot-loading functionality. Bluetooth Xpress BGX220P/S provides complete IoT solutions with framework libraries, making it easier and faster for developers to create new apps, with no Bluetooth expertise necessary. Click here for more information about BGM220.

What’s On Deck for Day 2

After a full day of learning and great conversations, we’re excited to give you a sneak peak of what to expect tomorrow. Join Silicon Labs Senior Vice President and General Manager for IoT, Matt Johnson, as he sits down with Jamie Siminoff, Founder and Chief Inventor of Ring. Jamie will share his story of creating what is now a dominant name in Wi-Fi-enabled video doorbells. His story is one of tenacity and patience, and his vision for Ring’s future after being acquired by Amazon is as ambitious as it is promising. You can catch the Day 2 Keynote on Thursday, September 10, at 9:00 a.m. CDT. Click here to register.

After the keynote, we have a cornucopia of how-to sessions including workshops on LED-bulb , door lock and sensor product development, energy harvesting, home automation, environmental sensing and more. Our From Chip to Cloud: Building the Whole Product session will answer questions about commissioning, security and authentication to front-end and back-end application interfaces. You can also join our sessions on IoT security, covering the need for the development of security requirements tailored to each vertical device type. Build out your Day 2 agenda here. We look forward to seeing you there! If you can’t make the live stream you can watch replays here.

Just as wireless devices are connecting millions all over the world to work, do home tasks, and play through smart home electronics, today is Silicon Labs' first day to connect the IoT developer community with the smart home platform and protocol leaders moving this exciting space forward.  

Silicon Labs Works With virtual smart home developer conference starts today, and we welcome the thousands of developers and smart home IoT fans who have registered to immerse themselves in our keynotes, workshops, and technical tracks - most likely from the comfort of your own smart home.  

"It's exciting to see our vision of building a smarter, more connected world come alive at the industry's first Works With smart home developer conference," said Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle. "With our decades of wireless experience, a solid investment in IoT, and proven leadership in the smart home component market, Silicon Labs is uniquely positioned to educate developers and accelerate industry collaboration across protocols, smart home ecosystems, design houses, distributors and developers." 

Silicon Labs plays a key connector role in IoT through our broad portfolio of wireless multiprotocol hardware and software solutions. We are proud to connect you to smart home industry leaders, technical training sessions, one-on-one developer meetings, and more. Speakers from companies like Amazon, Comcast, Google, Tuya, Silicon Labs, and others will train attendees to design and deliver certified IoT solutions that "work with" any smart home ecosystem or wireless protocol. 

Here's what to expect from Works With 2020, kicking off today at 10:00 AM EDT|7:00 AM PDT and running through tomorrow, September 10. 

Hear from Smart Home Leaders 

Be the first to hear the latest announcements and innovations from industry leaders shaping the future of IoT development. Our president and CEO, Tyson Tuttle, and our SVP of IoT, Matt Johnson, get things started today with a welcome keynote and panel session featuring some of the world's most influential smart home leaders, including Grant Erickson, Principal Software Engineer at Google; Jim Kitchen, Vice President of Connected Home Devices and Platforms at Comcast; and Joshua Danovitz, General Manager of Amazon Common Software (ACS). Each representative will share their company's vision for the smart home and discuss how IoT developers can better design new products for each of their established and growing ecosystems. 

IoT devotees and developers will also want to tune-in today at 2:00 PM EDT|11:00 AM PDT for a panel discussion led by Stacey Higginbotham, veteran technology journalist and host of the popular Stacey on IoT podcast. Stacey will be joined by Mark Reimer, Vice President of Product Engineering at ADT; Martin Huddart, Head of Smart Residential Solutions at ASSA ABLOY; Per Sigurdson, Development Leader - Home Smart at IKEA; Sujata Neidig, Marketing Director at NXP; and George Yianni, Head of Technology at Philips Hue. The group will discuss topics such as the highly anticipated Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP), as well as the smart home industry's overall efforts to give developers the hardware and software interoperability they need to meet consumers' expectations. The opportunities to grow the smart home market are great, but so are some of the challenges. This group will cover that ground.  

Tomorrow, our flagship keynote features none other than Jamie Siminoff, Founder and Chief Inventor of Ring. Matt Johnson will join Jamie, and the two will discuss Jamie's experience inventing Ring, what's happening across the growing Ring ecosystem, and Amazon's promising Sidewalk effort. 

You can see the full list of today's and tomorrow's speakers here: workswith.silabs.com/agenda. 

Expand Your Technical Skills 

Join developers from around the world at more than 40 industry breakout sessions over the next two days. Experienced designers will lead you through technical deep dives and advanced training on topics like security, energy harvesting, battery life, cloud computing, and environmental sensing. Smart home engineers are teaching hands-on workshop sessions using the latest technologies to build real-world devices, including smart locks, sensors, lightbulbs, and switches. To really hone in on your specific product goals, Amazon, Google, Apple HomeKit, Samsung, and Z-Wave are all leading specialized technology tracks and hosting one-on-one developer meetings to share best practices on building certified products. 

Meet with Experts All in One Place  

Works With is a hub for all parts of the smart home ecosystem to connect. 

• Platform Partners: Amazon, Apple HomeKit, Google, Tuya 

• Protocol Experts: Bluetooth, ioXt, Project CHIP, Thread, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave 

• Enablement Partners: Darwin Tech, Connected Development, eInfochips, JASCO and Paragon Innovations 

• Global Channel Partners: Arrow, Mouser Electronics, Symmetry Electronics, TTI 

• Device Developers: thousands of engineers from leading companies across the IoT ecosystem, 

including Qolsys – a Johnson Controls company 

See the Industry Come Together 

The comprehensive IoT hardware, software and development tools, and platforms we are demonstrating at Works With simplify connected product design and enable IoT device makers to get their products to market quickly. These products are competitively advantaged with cutting-edge wireless features that consume minimal energy, include state-of-the-art security, and easily scale across any smart home ecosystem, including Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and Tuya Smart, as well as across multiple wireless protocols such as Bluetooth, Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP), Thread, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and proprietary. 

Access Industry News 

Be sure to check the Works With Newsroom to stay on top of breaking IoT smart home news from Silicon Labs and the company's sponsors, partners, and customers.  

Log On To access the Works With sessions live or on-demand, register here.  

If already registered, simply login to Works With and navigate to the agenda. Locate the desired sessions and click "Join Broadcast."  

For consumers, commercial and automotive engineers, and their peers on Internet of Things (IoT) design teams, developing IoT applications is exciting, hard work. Challenges and opportunities abound, from sourcing, connecting, and cleaning data; prioritizing applications for exploration; to building new solutions to solve critical pain points; and scaling efforts using industry platforms. Consumer IoT has obviously set the pace with connected home applications, with commercial and automotive IoT following the lead. Now, the rollout of 5G will make these sacrifices worthwhile. By offering high-speed connectivity, 5G will allow IoT to achieve lift-off, opening the door to decades of dazzling innovation to come.

To understand cross-industry plans for IoT, TE Connectivity (TE) conducted an IoT market survey, receiving 180 responses from primarily senior engineers. Here’s what they said:

5G solves critical challenges, enabling companies to capture diverse types of data and move data faster. These advances, paired with lower consumption IoT devices and miniaturized components, will open the door to more applications over time.

More innovation is needed, with 57% of engineers seeking greater hardware endurance advances, 52% wanting to tie measurement accuracy with measurement stability, 46% needing better sensor intelligence, 31% looking to boost processing speeds, and 16% hoping to leverage cloud analytics.

Three issues predominate with solution design, with 49% citing finding the right hardware and connectivity as challenges to address, while 44% cited ensuring effective security as a leading requirement.

Solution design begins with hardware, with 78% of engineers specifying hardware first, and only 22% beginning with software.

TE Connectivity stands ready to help you with your IoT application. We provide a wide array of sensor solutions and data connectivity products to help you capture and transmit data at high speeds to unlock the power of the connected world.

To help you with your IoT journey and solution consideration, we have created the following resources:

• IoT sensor market survey video: Get insights into what your peers think and prioritize with IoT development. Watch the video.
• What’s the Protocol? This easy-to-use infographic helps you explore the five wireless protocols you could use for your next IoT application – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Lower Energy (LE), Zigbee, LoRaWAN (LPWAN), and Narrowband IoT – NB-IoT (LPWAN). With one glance, you can assess the ideal applications, data rate, security, cost, standards, range, and power consumption associated with each protocol. Download the infographic now.
• Predictive Maintenance with Vibration Sensors: Automation is driving demand for accelerometers in high-volume, smaller systems. While most industrial devices are engineered to operate smoothly, vibration can often be a leading indicator of deterioration in heavy equipment. In this article, get technical guidance on vibration specification parameters to ensure accurate, reliable performance for your industrial condition monitoring and preventive maintenance applications. Read the white paper.
• Analog and Digital Transducers – the Advantages of Both: Sensors and transducers have evolved from purely analog operations to digital protocols, signal processing, and interfaces. However, design engineers need both. Learn how TE’s M3200 expands choices for you. Get the white paper.

The rapid development of technologies such as 5G and the IoT offer greater openness and the need for businesses to expand their capabilities. Collaboration is often a path forward to gaining the speed, and scale companies seek.

TE is ready to support you with insight, IoT experience, and a broad sensor portfolio to power your IoT applications. Contact us today to get started.

Works With, Silicon Labs’ smart home developer event, is just around the corner. We’ve carefully engineered the agenda to bring you the latest techniques, trends, and teachings from our ecosystem of smart home players, including Amazon, Google, Z-Wave, and more. 

Our keynote programming will bring together Silicon Labs leadership and experts to discuss the future of our industry, including the challenges and opportunities we face as an industry. We are incredibly excited about the keynote programming, which will feature some of the most influential perspectives on the future of the smart home.

On the Day 1 Keynote, Tyson Tuttle, CEO of Silicon Labs, and Matt Johnson, Senior Vice President and General Manager for IoT, Silicon Labs, will be joined by other executives from Amazon, Comcast, and Google for a discussion. This keynote will highlight the growing prevalence of IoT devices within smart homes and how ecosystem partners are coming together. Featured ecosystem partners participating in the Day 1 Keynote include:

• Grant Erickson, Google’s Principal Software Engineer, will speak on September 9 (10:00 AM EDT|7:00 AM PDT). Erickson oversees Google’s technical development of software designed to support Bluetooth Low Energy, Thread, Wi-Fi, and Nest Weave. 
• Jim Kitchen, Comcast ‘ Vice President of Product for Connected Home Devices, will also speak on September 9 (10:00 AM EDT|7:00 AM PDT). Kitchen is responsible for all IoT/automation devices on Comcast’s national Xfinity Home & Xfinity Automation deployments.
• Joshua Danovitz, Director at Amazon Lab126, will speak on September 9 (10:00 AM EDT|7:00 AM PDT). He leads the development of devices for the smart home future, including Alexa voice commands across a wide variety of home consumer implementations.

What time is the Works With 2020 Keynote?

Silicon Labs confirmed the date and time of its opening keynote at Works With 2020. The company will officially kick things off on September 9 at 9:00 AM CDT, all-online.

Here are the different time zones around the globe:

Also, on Day 1, veteran Tech Journalist and IoT thought-leader Stacey Higginbotham will moderate a panel discussion on wireless protocols. Topics will include the highly anticipated Project Connected over IP (CHIP), and the industry’s overall efforts to give developers the hardware and software interoperability they need to meet consumer’s expectations for the smart devices around their homes.

On Day 2, Matt Johnson will be joined by Jamie Siminoff, the CEO, Founder, and Chief Inventor at Ring. Over the last half-decade, Jamie has redefined smart home security with the first Wi-Fi-enabled video doorbell, and he’ll be joining us on the Works With stage. Our keynote speakers will play a significant role in providing the insights developers and leaders need to stay ahead. Jamie’s story is one of tenacity and patience, and his vision for Ring’s future will no doubt resonate with the smart home community.

Join us as these highly sought-after experts provide the insights you need to stay ahead in your smart home development. If you haven’t signed up for Works With, it’s not too late, and you can do that here.

Aside from personal electronic devices (PEDs), smart doorbells are a logical entry point for consumers into the world of IoT devices. In particular, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many of us to shift our shopping online, knowing who might be lingering on your front porch is suddenly a pretty important feature. What started as an idea to reduce crime in neighborhoods soon became the vision of making people’s lives better by bringing security to their doorstep. As highlighted in his 2019 TEDx event, Jamie Siminoff – CEO, Founder, and Chief Inventor of Ring – shared best practices around building technology around communities. His keynote at Works With 2020 will inspire developers to create and build products that revolutionize smart homes around the world.

Ring has become a dominant name in Wi-Fi-enabled video doorbells, and Jamie has one of the most engaging entrepreneur stories in technology. Developed in Jamie’s garage in 2011 and acquired by Amazon in 2018, Ring has become one of the most sought-after products in the Amazon ecosystem. Jamie continues to lead Ring as it innovates and leads the way in home security. His story is one of tenacity and patience, and his vision for Ring’s future with Amazon is as ambitious as it is promising.

Prior to Ring, Jamie founded several successful ventures, including PhoneTag, the world’s first voicemail-to-text company, and Unsubscribe.com, a service that helped email users remove commercial email from their inboxes. He successfully sold both companies in 2009 and 2011 respectively.

In 2013, Jamie pitched Ring – then known as DoorBot, on Shark Tank, where the investors liked the idea, but not enough for any of them to invest in the start-up. At the time, Mark Cuban said of Ring, “I think it’s a great business. I think you’ll be successful. It will be worth $20 million. I just can’t invest in something that’s not going to be $70 million someday.” During that presentation, Jamie was offering a 10 percent stake in the company for $700,000. Four years after his appearance, the Sharks were asked on an ABC News special about some of the ideas they regret letting slip away, and Ring was at the top of their list. Less than a year later, Amazon acquired Ring – its second-largest purchase behind Whole Foods.  

Jamie will be joining the Works With keynote stage where he’ll accompany Silicon Labs IoT SVP and GM Matt Johnson to kick off the second day of the event. You can catch the Day 2 Keynote on Thursday, September 10, at 9:00 a.m. CDT. Click here to register.

As organizations seek strategies to keep people safe while balancing the need to operate their businesses, wireless temperature sensors are seen as a way to make processes as contactless as possible. As the world moves into month five of the COVID-19 pandemic and the practicalities of emerging from various stages of safe isolation are being addressed. From essential businesses that have remained operational to schools and universities facing the prospect of returning to classes in the Fall, mitigating the risks that come with large gatherings is at the top of everyone’s list of priorities. Administrators and managers can take appropriate measures, starting with an economical, easy-to-use, and ultra-fast method for detecting potential health risks, to balance the anxiety that comes with possible exposure with the pressures of keeping businesses, schools, cities, and economies up and running.

One way this challenge is being met is through technology. Silicon Labs is excited to be part of a coordinated effort to develop a low-cost, contactless wrist temperature sensor that can be used to determine whether or not an individual is within the acceptable temperature range. Screening individuals for fever is a strategy that’s been deployed by organizations when isolation or social distancing simply isn’t an option. And while there’s so much we don’t know about COVID-19, temperature checks may be an effective way to identify a symptom even before the individual experiences any symptoms.

The TTI Family of Companies (FOC), which includes Connected Development, Symmetry, and Mouser, together with TE Connectivity, have joined forces to develop an open-source, contactless wrist temperature sensor. Cost-effective and easy to use, the temperature sensor is based on the Silicon Labs EFM32 Tiny Gecko TG11 Starter Kit, which is used to collect temperature sensor information from the thermopile and to notify the end-user of results.

The contact sensor is already being used by TTI employees at its warehouse locations where employees entering the facility simply hold their wrist near the sensor. They receive an instant reading of their temperature, which is accompanied by beep noise and a red or green light indicating if they are at or above the acceptable temperature range. Connected Development (CD) designed and prototyped the sensor; they specialize in hardware and software design services. CD tapped into TTI FOC’s extensive network of component distributors and services, with contributions from TTI, Symmetry Electronics, and Mouser Electronics, to develop this open-source design.

In addition to the Silicon Labs Tiny Gecko Starter Kit, the sensor design features a TE TSD305 Digital Thermopile Sensor for temperature measurements, a TDK Piezoelectric Buzzer for audio feedback, and Cree PLCC6 3 in 1 SMD LEDs provide the visual cues. Aside from body temperature, the thermopile sensor can also detect when a person is within range to take a measurement. The Tiny Gecko constantly regulates the thermopile for temperature fluctuations, and if the temperature rises above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, it is assumed that a human body is close by, prompting a measurement cycle to begin. The microcontroller then awaits a consistent measurement, which is achieved by capturing three readings in a row that are within one degree of each other. Once a stable measurement is captured, the temperature is displayed on the starter kit’s LCD. The TDK Piezoelectric Buzzer then sounds, which is accompanied by a green light from the Cree LEDs if the temperature is below 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, or a long beep with a red LED light if the temperature is higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you’re considering developing a contact sensor to help bring clarity to the health of your workforce, there are a couple of different ways we can help you realize that goal. The first is during the first-ever Silicon Labs Works With Smart Home Developer Event. David Hoover, VP of Advanced Development at Connected Development, will be presenting a tutorial showing how to interface a TE thermopile sensor with the EFR32xG22 Wireless Gecko Starter Kit, which includes all you need to create a Bluetooth connected device. David will also demonstrate how to use Silicon Labs’ Simplicity Studio to send the resulting temperature to an IOS device using Bluetooth services and characteristics. The first Works With virtual event, taking place on September 9-10, will bring together our ecosystem of partners from Amazon, Google, Samsung, Z-Wave, and more for keynotes, panels, and hands-on workshops.

If you can’t attend the workshop, our friends at Mouser Electronics have developed a detailed, step-by-step technical article on how to develop the contact sensor, calibrate it, and start using it. You can also explore open-source contactless sensor documentation on GitHub.