Sensors in the home ... mass market?

My home is instrumented with over 30 sensors. These provide information on temperature, movement, doors & windows, alarms (such as smoke), and visual information through lamps and cameras. Some also measure power consumption and allow control of electrical devices. They all connect to a central hub controller using the ZigBee wireless standard, and are completely user installable by non-technical people very easily. The hub self organises and configures the network as you add more components to the system. Batteries in the smallest sensors generally last about a year. The hub has battery backup from mains and also a GSM data SIM if the ethernet connected broadband should fail. The system is managed / configured through a web browser on any computer operating system or via an iPhone/iPad app. The system can use the same set of sensors and other components to provide a number of services including security, energy monitoring and home automation.

The user installable aspect and ease of retro-fitting are the main reasons why this system (AlertMe) has the potential to be mass-market. However I believe this will only happen when the product is available and showcased in home improvement stores (such as B&Q and HomeBase in the UK, and equivalent others across the globe). The fact that it can be fitted in a matter of minutes by almost anyone, and is as simple as un-boxing it and inserting batteries and then fixing the sensors with sticky pads, means that it needs to be on the shelves of retail stores nationwide in order for this innovation to have a bigger impact on the marketplace.

Kinetic Power Harvesting

I have written about power harvesting before but I noticed this article in the BBC Technology section which shows how a shakable power generating mechanism has been built into a normal AA type battery cell body. The prototype currently generates enough power for about 30 presses of the buttons on a typical TV remote control unit. While not earth-shattering, this could pave the way for not needing to replace batteries in those sorts of devices which we have laying around and rely on but don't require a huge amount of power. This also means many fewer dead traditional batteries going into waste/recycling without the inconvenience of always remembering to have more of the right size battery ready charged.

Design innovation vs Standards

One of the obvious aspects of Apple innovation, which I have tended not to blog much about in the past, is the Design work that applies to their products, led by Jonathan Ive. The attention to detail is not just applied to the products themselves, such as computers, iPods and mobile phones, but also to the accessories that ship with those products such as power adaptors. Compare below the Apple power adaptor for iPhone which is built into a UK 13A mains plug (left) with a normal but fatter and bigger ordinary mains plug (right)!




Last year I recall a campaign followed by a fanfare announcement that mobile phone manufacturers had finally agreed a new standard power adaptor that would be interchangeable for many models and makes, instead of requiring a different one for each. This seemed a bit odd to me, given that most people only have one phone and therefore still only need one charger when they travel around. Taking into account the above Apple example, isn't it better to aim for a well designed pocketable adaptor which provides a standard USB power level output, rather than a new additional standard, which everyone again will implement in horrible ugly ways?

Wearable batteries

One of the ways we will integrate with our computing technology in the future is to wear it, as I have blogged about before. One important component of this is how to power the devices we wear. Scientists have now presented how a coating of carbon nanotube 'ink' on ordinary polyester or cotton fabrics can store electrical energy. The interwoven fibres of such materials are ideal absorbers for for the billionth of a metre across carbon tubes. Once coated, stretching or washing the fabric leaves the electrical characteristics of the material intact. Previously this type of approach has been identified as working on paper, but fabrics open up a whole new world of wearable computing possibilities. Combined with other wearable components such as solar cells means that the wearable batteries could be charged while being worn.

Solar powered indications

As the festive season approaches, i thought I would invest in some new lights for outside in the garden ... just to decorate the monkey puzzle tree out front since I am not one of those who likes to make the house look like Vegas, Tokyo or Blackpool (depending on your locale)! Since there is no easy electric supply near that particular tree, I decided to try some solar powered lights ... a string of 50 blue LED lamps. They do in fact work very well. The front garden is not in the best position in terms of north facing and in the shadow of the house in the low angle winter months of whatever sun we are lucky enough to get. They charge a battery sufficiently during the daytime to provide about 6 hours of night time illumination.

In the future, we will rely much more on so-called renewables ... not just solar but other sources too ... for much more than Christmas lights of course. But the story of my blue LEDs on the monkey puzzle tree is indicative of the challenges that face us for such forms of energy. The efficiency of storage, be it battery technology or otherwise, has to be much improved. For domestic use and substitution of the power from the national grid, the inverters provided to turn the stored DC into the AC that you expect to feed your electric sockets need to provide cleaner alternating current. It's ironic that most of the devices you plug into these domestic sockets internally convert the AC back to direct current before it is used!

These improvements will be made, the costs of the technology will fall, and the future way we power our lives will change.

Energy monitoring...

So on the UK news today there was again a mention of the Government mandating the introduction of smart meters to all 26 million homes in Britain by 2020, costing £8 billion. This seems to crop up in the news every so often. The idea is that if people know more about what energy they are using at the time they may reduce consumption. I have been using the AlertMe Energy system for a few weeks now and it gives a similar type of information about electricity usage. It also interfaces with Google PowerMeter which provides some useful statistics and graphs over time. These allow for comparisons with previous usage.

I have to say that it is interesting to see where the electricity goes and how the consumption varies both with our domestic routine and the outside temperature. We heat the house by gas but the electric pumps seem to make a difference to the consumption. Colder days do result in a higher level of electricity usage. I tend to agree that having more realtime information can impact on behaviour. In the future, more automation in the home and more efficient devices will allow consumption to be optimised according to people's behaviour.

Sony Wireless Power

I blogged before about attempts to power devices wirelessly in the labs at MIT in the USA. Now it seems that Sony has demonstrated the ability to 'transmit' 100 volts over a 50cm range. This was enough to power a small television set wirelessly! Some fairly big (40cm) coils are required to do this using magnetic resonance. There is no indication that this would lead in the short term to applications in commercially available products, indeed it might be prudent to measure and understand what effect the use of magnetic resonance might have on the human body at these field strengths first! However it demonstrates that the last common umbilical cord for consumer electronics is now under threat!

Power from the air

People often ask me about how gadgets will be powered in the future. In the short term, we will see better chemistry allowing batteries to improve, alternatives to batteries such as fuel cells for some applications, and components within devices which consume less power or manage their power consumption more effectively. In the longer term, power harvesting from natural sources, from movement and kinetic energy will be employed too, and we should make progress on bio-organic solutions that work in a similar way to how nature powers itself. Some recent research by Nokia is one of the harvesting solutions.

The Nokia research describes how they can harvest energy from ambient radio waves. This is similar to how some RFID tags are powered, such as those used in anti-theft applications. Currently experiments have been successful in harvesting 3 to 5 milliwatts of power which can charge a device which is in standby mode. The goal of the research is to harvest up to 50mW, and recharge a device which is turned off. Typically, energy harvesting from ambient radio waves has been done with traditional radio receivers and transmitters which have a limited range of usable radio waves. The Nokia example of extracting power from the air uses a very wideband receiver which works between 500MHz and 10GHz.

Solar cell efficiency

The quest to find sustainable ways to power future devices continues. There will be some incremental developments in the photo-voltaic (PV) solar cells but a significant revolutionary step would be ideal. At present many PV cells based on silicon are only 15% efficient at best. A new approach using gallium arsenide (GaAs) cells is claiming over 28% efficiency. Much of the effort at present is going into broadening the absorption spectrum that the cells cope with. The difference in efficiency between Si and GaAs cells means that one square centimetre of GaAs cell should be compared with one thousand square centimetres of Si cell. The current downside is that Si is much cheaper but this may change over time. The use of lenses and mirrors allows light to be concentrated on the cells, typically 500 times. A one centimetre square cell could thus yield around 14 watts of electricity. At a time when the weather has been especially sunny here in the UK, solar energy at an affordable price is something many would look forward to in future.

Phone charger commotion

There seems to be a fuss in the media today about a load of cell phone manufacturers agreeing a standard for mobile phone chargers so that they will share a common power supply and physical plug by 2012!   And they have the gall to make a 'green' issue of this, saying that the standby current will be reduced.  Why not simply integrate an inductive charging chip inside all these phones so that there is no need to plug the device in.  Simply place it on a pad or surface and let it charge like electric toothbrushes have for years.  Chargers will look very old fashioned in decades to come. 

Christmas lights ...

Ok it's getting near that frustrating time of year again.  You dig out the Christmas decorations and find that the coloured lights for the tree or elsewhere don't work again.  They worked when you put them away last year.   But now ... nothing.  You hunt around the house for a while for the spares but any you find are the size and voltage that suited the set of lights you had before these.  In the end, you decide to go and buy yet another full set.   

In the past, you would have bought normal filament lamps.  Last year, this year or next year you will probably have bought, buy or will buy LED (light emitting diode) type decorative lights.  The low power consumption probably makes you feel good about the effect of so many bulbs on the environment.  In a few years it may be organic LED or OLED lighting that we are buying.  General Electric have talked about the possibility of OLED thin pliable wallpaper which can light up the walls or any other surface we desire.  Apparently we should look for it in home improvement stores by 2010.  

Machines that understand users?

We often hear stories about how users find themselves baffled by machines  ... they don't understand why the computer has done something, or can't work out how something should be configured to achieve the desired outcome.  So users understanding machines is sometimes rather a challenge!   So what about the other way around?

In the future, we will have machines that understand people.  ZDnet reports how Intel has already announced research it is carrying out into sentient machines, which use a whole raft of complex sensors to understand the world of the user and hence awareness of the user's situation.  One Intel project called "everyday sensing and perception" or ESP began during 2007.   Its aim is to achieve 90% accuracy of understanding 90% of an average individual's daily routine.  The sensors involved include very basic measurements as well as higher level interpretations of movement, emotions and words, as well as real time object recognition.  Currently the latter can manage at least 75% accuracy on automatically recognising seven objects, using video capture from a shoulder-worn camera.  The hope is to scale this to hundreds of objects.  This is example of how discretely worn devices in the future will interact with other devices to provide real time inputs - part of a wearable sensor network.

At present, the processing required for this real time event recognition is about 4 TeraFlops and about 10kW of power.  The power consumption aim eventually is less than 1 watt so that portable devices can perform the task.  

And this is only one set of research initiatives in this area.  So in a matter of a decade or two, it may be machines understanding users which is more common a practice than the other way about!

Wireless power again!

So Intel have now announced their latest results relating to increasing the efficiency of wireless induction systems for getting power to devices without cables.  The approach, originally termed WiTricity by MIT who first demonstrated a 45% efficient system, has now been improved by Intel researchers. Since then, MIT have managed 90% efficient systems, which is more like the numbers that would be demanded in today's energy conscious world.  However I tend to agree that it will be 5 years before such an approach could be commercialised for widespread use and probably substantially longer than this in practice. 

Meanwhile, the current crop of lithium-ion batteries that are common in consumer electronics products today are likely to be gradually replaced by the next chemical technology for batteries, based on silver-zinc, from 2009 onwards. 

And devices will continue to be smarter at using less power by selectively turning parts of their functionality off automatically.  

So the power consumption issue won't be addressed by any one silver bullet solution, but rather by developments in all three areas ... New power systems, new battery technology and smarter more intelligent power management in devices. 

Novel power saving in electronics

Much is written about the power consumption of today's consumer electronics.  New battery technology is one approach to reducing the consumption of portable devices.  Alternatives to batteries such as fuel cells are another approach.  But the third way that I normally answer this question for the future with is to use less power by being smart, particularly in software.  

An audio equipment company has now implemented this approach in a headphone amplifier.  First they have used a trick in the hardware to halve the supply voltage used resulting in half the power consumption.  They dynamically alter the supply voltage by tracking the signal output so that efficiency is improved.  The supply is generated by a two level charge pump.  The pump is programmed a few milliseconds ahead of the time that the signal arrives in order to avoid distortion and noise.  A carefully developed algorithm is responsible for programming the correct characteristics.  The algorithm had to be 'trained' by experimenting with a wide range of music genres.  

This approach shows an excellent example of how software can provide the intelligence for something that you might otherwise assume is fixed by the hardware, while addressing the never-ending power problem. 

Harnessing "hidden" processing

So the big processor chip manufacturers will show us impressive roadmaps for more cycles for less consumed power into the future.  And this together with multiple cores will significantly enhance the experience users get from future devices.  But for those gadgets with high definition displays, there is another strategy which will also add to the processing power equation.

The graphics chip (GPU) in such devices is extremely powerful in terms of processing specific types of data, painting billions of pixels per second on to computer screens.  But there is spare capacity in this task and so providing the data fed to it is suitable and techniques for sharing the processing within the program code are adopted, the GPU could become the accelerator for these devices.  Indeed Apple has announced its "Open-CL" initiative aimed at supporting this type of programming through future versions of its OSX operating system.  Given that GPUs can be ten times more power efficient than general purpose CPU chips, the impact on device performance could be highly significant. 

Plasma, LCD, and ... ?

As a gadget-guy, I'm often asked about which type of screen people should buy for their new HD widescreen TV.  One of the main decisions to make is the basic type of screen, currently usually plasma or liquid crystal displays (LCD).  The best choice depends on many factors and I don't plan to go through all of them in this blog article. One factor however is power consumption.  Although LCD screens may boast lower consumption, their backlight requirements mean that their power consumption figure is usually fairly constant.  Plasma screens by contrast consume power related to the brightness of the picture being displayed - a picture with lots of dark pixels will consume much less power than the same picture on an LCD.  

Soon there may well be another option to consider.  Mitsubishi have announced plans to launch a range of TVs based on laser displays in the third quarter of 2008.  They state that such technology will bring a new level of performance to high definition displays due to its ability to display twice as many colours as the best LCD can manage at a frequency of 120Hz.   Laser screens will be available in large sizes as with current plasmas, and importantly will consume less power than both plasma and LCDs. 

Energy scavenging sensors

As the widespread deployment of wireless sensor nodes continues towards the eventual ubiquitous sensing fabric of the future, there will be an increasing demand for battery-less methods of powering them.  For some technologies, such as traditional passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, there is no need to provide power on-board at all.  However for other technological solutions, using wireless networks such as Zigbee or WiFi, there will be a need for power without recourse to a battery.  

For situations where sensors are located on machinery, there is a more obvious solution.  Microgenerators such as Perpetuum's PMG17 are able to convert mechanical vibration into usable electrical energy.  If this is combined with a suitable storage technology such as a supercapacitor, it is possible to deliver the peak power required for indefinite regular status reports over wireless networks.  For machinery where vibration is a part of normal operation, such power harvesting is an ideal solution.

Nanotube paper to provide power!

Some Chinese physicists have invented some new paper made from carbon nanotubes which is super-thin and super-strong.  It also conducts both heat and electricity extremely well.  One practical use for this 'paper' is to make super-capacitors - devices that store up to a thousand times the electrical energy of normal capacitors.  Such devices are often used in applications where a sudden large surge is required such as when starting a large engine.  But it is not just the starter motors of future traditional cars that might benefit from these developments.  Super-capacitors are also being used in newer hybrid powered cars and in prototype fuel cell based vehicles.  It is also possible that the same nanotube paper could help remove heat generated by computer processor chips.

Sunny days inspire green power!

Today is the warmest and sunniest day in the UK so far this year ... and on such days I wish the technology of photo-voltaic solar cells was already developed to the point of being economic to be widespread.  It needs to be as easy as going to the local DIY store and buying replacement tiles for the roof that can be snapped together and combined to increase the electrical power yield.  I hope on days such as this that this type of technology reaches critical mass very very soon.  As many of us continue to increase the number of devices we have that are consumers of electricity and the time that they are used, there is even more reason to want the electricity they need to come directly from natural so-called green sources.  

Energy future scenarios by Shell

I've been reading the strategy vision document published by Shell which identify two scenarios under the name of Scramble and Blueprints.  These scenarios span from now to 2050 and contrast the Scramble of National Governments to secure their own energy supplies against the formulation of coalitions between all levels of society and Governments to produce a new energy framework.  There is also a video on the Shell website which describes these scenarios.   It will be interesting to see how much actually happens from both scenarios - as I expect there will be a blending effect in due course from each type of approach that society and Governments pursue.