In Dev Diner’s first ever audio interview, I sat down with Peter Kerney from Intel to chat about developing for the Internet of Things. I spoke with him about Intel’s range of IoT products with the goal of helping developers understand their IoT device range. Hopefully, this interview gives a bit of an insight to help when choosing hardware for your next project!
We spoke about the challenges of developing for the IoT, security concerns, Intel’s range of IoT boards and some cool projects that have been happening using their hardware.
For more info on the Intel range and a few projects he mentioned, head to Intel’s IoT site. The Global Initiative for Honey Bee Health is right here, it’s an absolutely fantastic IoT project!
If you’re more of a reader than a listener, I’ve also got a summary of the questions and answers:
Patrick: I am now here with Peter Kerney from Intel, who’s sitting through the first ever Dev Diner interview, which may or may not get posted in its audio form, depending on how exciting this actually goes.
Peter: Well being that it’s an interview with me, probably not too exciting at all, but let’s see how we go.
So, I’ve got a range of questions for you. The whole idea is we want to look at all of Intel’s range of Internet of Things, style of micro controllers and stuff and help people navigate a bit over what should they use from Intel, what are all these devices, what do they mean…
The man himself, Peter Kerney from Intel
To start with, because you work at Intel, and not everybody works at Intel. In fact, I’d say the majority in the world don’t work at Intel just from statistics. What is it like working at a massive company like Intel?
Well as you say, Intel is a pretty big company. We got more than 100,000 people worldwide. When we actually start to talk about Intel Australia, that’s a very different kettle of fish. We’ve got around 40 people inside Intel Australia. That’s quite a bit smaller than you would imagine.
We’re in channel management, sales and marketing, and I work in a group that talks to enterprise end user accounts like financial services, government, all those kinds of people.
A range of different topics. In terms of Intel, we have to talk about all Intel products, all the way from as you say, embedded microcontrollers, all the way up to scale out cloud infrastructure and everything in between.
So you would know a lot about everything in this –
No, a little bit about everything and a mild amount about a few things.
Oh, hey, that’s how to do it. I know little bits about many things too.
Yeah, my brain’s full. I need to clear out stuff.
That’s okay. Clear it out after the interview, when I’ve already…
Okay.
Whatever we record here, you no longer need. You’ve got a reference to it later.
I can listen to it online. Cool.
Exactly.
Awesome.
That’s fine. That’s what we do here. Okay, well to start with, in terms of the products, you’ve got a range of IT products at Intel, including the Edison board, the Galileo and the Curie. What’s the difference between each of them and when should a developer listening right now, who wants to get involved, use one over the other?
Okay. A key thing about the Intel products themselves, we have a small range of products, as you mentioned Galileo, Edison, and soon to be Curie to be released – they target more general use actually, because as you’ve probably read, Edison and Galileo are basically full Linux systems.
Yeah.
Very capable Linux systems in themselves, with a range of IOs. The point being that it’s just a couple of devices that we’ve chosen to make ourselves to enable the market. In the Internet of Things specifically, a lot of the products actually come from our third party manufacturers, such as Advantech or ADLINK or IEI. Most Intel products as you can possibly imagine come from people who are not Intel.
Yup.
One of the challenges with being Intel is actually not being able to sell anything to anyone. We’re out there talking to customers about Intel technology and then you say, “Oh, and by the way, I can’t sell anything to you. So, you need to go over and speak to such and such.”
That would be annoying, I imagine.
Especially when it comes to IoT solutions. There’s such a wide variety of form factors and capabilities and IOs required. You can’t have a single device that meets everyone’s needs.
No.
We try and make devices to enable the market. Then customers who develop solutions can then go to the various different manufacturers and either have their equipment cost reduced, so we can do a lot of matchmaking with manufacturers to say, “All right, now you’ve developed your IoT solution. What exactly do you need in this device?”
Yeah.
“How can we cost reduce it? How can we make up the appropriate form factor so you can get your product to market?”
Excellent.
So those are the kinds of conversations we have.
Cool. What in particular is the Curie that you said is coming up?
The Curie is we announced at … Not exactly sure where we announced it, but –
Somewhere.
I think it was CES. It’s a microcontroller with a bunch of additional sensors, gyroscopes, magnetometers, that sort of thing.
The fun stuff.
Yeah, Wi-Fi. Then it’s specifically targeted at the wearable segment.
Cool.
It’s designed to operate off of a battery, a very small battery, and targeted very much at that wearables maker market. That said, it’s built out of components and you can take those individual components, and say, “Yup, these are the bits I need for my wearables project.” Then possibly go and find a different supplier.
Yeah.
So Curie’s just a developer kit at this stage and it uses some Intel technologies.
Cool, so people can theoretically piece together their own similar thing.
Yeah, so it’s built on a forthcoming microcontroller that will be available as an individual chip. Then if you want to build your own thing then go for it.
Cool.
Or have something built.
Excellent. I am hoping that at least a few people listening to this right now is that exact person who wants to go out and build something.
Yeah, or as I said, it may be just what you need straight off the shelf. In which case great.
Which would be nice.
That makes life a lot easier when it is, just straight off the shelf and you don’t have to change too much. Okay. Then with all these different boards and such, what’s the benefits of using Intel’s products over the other IoT products like the Arduino and Particle sort of ecosystems out there.
Well specifically with the products we’ve got at the moment, things like the Galileo and the Edison, they are very much fully capable Linux systems, straight up. Specifically with the Edison, it is a dual core atom CPU, with a number of IOs and GPIOs and comparators and all those things. It’s also got Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in.
Which is brilliant.
When you start to look at something like an Arduino, you go, “How do I make this Arduino talk to anything? Oh, I need to go and buy a Wi-Fi interface or I need a Bluetooth interface.” Then by the time you add all those components, they’re all individual components. I’ve got to get a library from over here. I’ve got to try and make that bit of GitHub code work.
Yes. Story of my life.
So with something like an Edison, it’s all there.
Yeah.
Fire it up, it connect to the Wi-Fi. It connects to your Bluetooth. It’s got all the IOs on it and off you go.
Yeah, excellent. That sounds very handy, actually. I can see myself actually going and trying this out soon.
Yeah, and then obviously, we’ve got some Arduino compatibility. You can treat a Galileo or an Edison as an Arduino if you really want to, but then you can SSH into it.
Yes.
Then you can run it with Python and it’s got an MQTT stack on it.
Yeah.
It’s got an Node.js stack on it.
Yes, I love Node.
You can use all of these things simultaneously.
Excellent.
Rather than just, “Here’s how it works.”
Yeah yeah yeah so with the Arduino board being on it … With Arduino compatibility, I mean, on it, does that mean that a lot of the Arduino shields and stuff could potentially work with it as well? Like it’s pretty compatible with all that?
Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got a good list of shields that work and I buy shields and gadgets and things off miscellaneous Chinese electronic sites, and plug them in, and yup off you go.
They tend to be all right?
Yeah.
Okay. That’s quite good, because it means then anybody listening who has already used Arduino before who’s got a tonne of shields can just switch across and not be like, “Oh, I’ve got to buy all this new stuff again. I got this one particular use that I’ve been using for these things…”
Yup.
Yeah, so that’s good. That’s quite good. Cool. Okay. One of my biggest questions, which I’m going to likely ask many people over the next few months, is all to do with security. One of the biggest concerns and criticisms of the Internet of Things for many people, including myself, is the incredible lack of security in devices that are already out there. They get hacked constantly and people throw them out there and they didn’t really test anything or they didn’t have any way to improve it over time, if there’s a security flaw.
The last time we spoke, when I met you at the internet of things meetup in Sydney, which if anybody is in Sydney, they should go to, you mentioned that Intel’s working hard to get the security side of things right. What sort of security issues have you and the guys at Intel recognized that exists within the IoT space? What are your approaches to try and secure all of this stuff so that all the Intel stuff doesn’t become prey to all the previous criticisms?
Yeah, absolutely, security is paramount to this stuff. If you’ve got Internet of Things solutions – specially industrial grade ones – we don’t want our Jeeps driving off the side of the road, which is very topical at the moment.
Yeah, let’s not have that.
So yeah, we treat security very seriously at Intel. A lot of people may or may not know, we’ve bought… Now have an organization called Intel Security, formerly known as McAfee.
Oh, yes. Yup.
We’ve integrated them into the larger Intel. The story that you get with McAfee software on Intel hardware is a very compelling story.
Okay.
We, also specifically for Internet of Things solutions, we bought another company called Wind River, that has a very long history in embedded real time hardened operating systems. When we start having conversations around industrial grade Internet of Things solutions, the combination of the Wind River real time hardened Linux with edge management software plus the McAfee security technologies on there, makes a very compelling story for the people who are building industrial grade IoT solutions.
It is very much working as security is one of the fundamental tenants of everything we do.
Which is good and it sounds like Intel has slightly more responsible in the thinking of this first which is a relief.
Yeah, and then a lot of the standard bodies we work with are very much looking at security and device management and things. As you said, if you do find the security vulnerability, you need to be able to get the fixes for that out to the devices.
Yes.
A part of these Wind River solutions is that edge management capability where you can securely push firmware updates down onto these devices.
Fantastic. That’s exactly what we need.
Yeah, when you’ve got hundreds of thousands of them in a solution, or they’re up in light poles and things, and you go “Oh no, there’s a security vulnerability” you can’t run around everywhere to patch all these devices manually one at a time.
Or if it’s like in millions of people’s homes. You can’t knock on everybody’s door and be like, “Hey, we just need to change this thing that we sold you as really good.”
Yeah, and ten bucks a go, I’m sure someone’s happy to take that check.
Yup. Cool. That is good and a relief and makes me slightly happier that at least somebody in emerging tech is fixing of this.
Yeah, and a lot of people think of McAfee as, “Oh, that’s anti-virus.” Well, yeah, they do lots of other things as well. When you’re looking at an IoT solution, anti-virus is typically what we call the blacklisting. “That’s a bad guy. That’s a bad guy.”
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
When you’re doing an IoT solution, you know exactly what you want to run on it.
Yes.
So you use a whitelisting technique, where you say, “All right. These are the trusted applications. These are the signatures of those applications. Only let those run.”
If there’s any tampering with those executables or as applications, don’t even let them run. So it’s a very different process for these embedded devices.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Okay. Hopefully very valuable knowledge for anybody listening as well who are worried about security or are trying to find something that is going to be secure for an upcoming project they’ve got.
Everybody should be worried about security.
I completely agree with you. I get very annoyed when people are like, “Why are you so concerned about security in the Internet of Things? These big companies are surely going to be protecting everything.”
Well, what’s this HTTPS thing? Yeah.
So yeah, everybody listening, really, if you haven’t thought about security, please, please start thinking about security now. Okay. Another wonderful thing that Intel is a big part of is the Open Interconnect Consortium, which is an industry group that’s working on standards for the Internet of Things alongside companies like Samsung and Cisco.
Could you explain a little bit more? What’s the aim of the group? For any developers who are listening, what is the relevance to them in this space? Should they look this up? Is it important to them or it something they don’t have to worry about it or think about, it’s just going to happen in the background?
Well one of the issues we’ve seen with adoption of IoT solutions is interoperability.
Yeah.
We wee a lot of organizations bringing out IoT devices, like Wi-Fi enabled light globes –
Oh, yeah, I love those.
And thermostats and Powerpoints, and all these different kind of devices, but none of them work together.
No.
I’ve got an app for that. I’ve got an app for that. Why can’t this talk to that? Things like the usage model would be, you get in your car. You drive out of your house. Open an app and say, “Shut down my house.”
Yep.
All the doors lock. All the windows lock. The lights turn off. All the heaters turn off. That all happens as one interconnected ecosystem.
Yeah.
We get all these different device manufacturers building their entire vertical stacks all the way from cloud services, protocols, apps, all this, it’s just slowing everything down.
Yup. Everybody builds their own thing from scratch and then they wall it off and nobody else can access it.
Nobody else can get in.
Yeah.
If we can increase the amount of re-usability, make it easier for developers to build solutions, and interoperable solutions, then that’s good for everybody.
I completely agree.
It increases the ability to get to market. People buy more stuff!
Yes.
And that’s likely to be Intel stuff.
Which is good for you guys.
We’re happy with that. The OIC is about interoperability standards. Things like device discovery, obviously communications protocols. The OIC as well as being developing these standards also publishes a reference implementation of the standard, which is called IoTivity. IoTivity is up on GitHub. Anyone can go and download it. It will run on a variety of different platforms. It’s a reference implementation of the standard.
Excellent, so anybody can follow that and make sure their stuff’s going to work.
Yup. Absolutely. Then we’ve got a bunch of other IoT development kits and tools. We’ve got an IoT dev kit and a cloud service that goes along with that. We’ve published a whole bunch of different tools to help people accelerate their time to market.
Yup.
We’ve got IoT system studios. We’ve got HTML5 developer tools. Then a lot of the tools for very serious, industrial grade IoT solutions as well.
Excellent. Got all bases covered now.
Yeah, so that was a long answer to a short question about what’s OIC.
Now, that’s good because it gives people enough knowledge that they now know exactly what it is and where to go.
Yeah. It’s about interoperability and making all this stuff work together.
Yeah, which is another important thing in the Internet of Things. Otherwise, this whole Internet of Things is not going to be that much of an Internet of Things. It’s going to be individual things that happen to use the Internet.
An Internet of vertical pillars that don’t talk to each other.
Exactly. Cool.
Also, it means if you’re a small developer, who’s got an idea, if you can interoperate with some of these big guys, then you don’t need to write an app.
That’s true.
You just use something that’s already written and then just integrate it.
Yeah, join in the current ecosystem and it works.
Then, fine I can sell my thing.
Yeah.
Or maybe your the app writer who wants to control the things. Go for it.
Yeah. That sounds like an ideal world, which I hope will exist soon. For sure. Okay. Then on the same topic of the open Internet, Open Interconnect Consortium, there’s another one out there called the AllSeen Alliance, which I know Microsoft is a big part of. I just wanted to ask what are the differences between them or what makes one different to the other or what’s one strength of the other? Why are they there?
We’ve obviously formed part of the OIC, the Open Internet Consortium. We’ve also a big member of the Industrial Internet Consortium, which is more vertically aligned around industrial solutions, like manufacturing and control systems, that kind of things.
Yeah.
The AllSeen Alliance is another standard, or trying to become a standard, mainly backed by Qualcomm, so we believe we’ve got the right number of partners signed up in the OIC. There’s a lot and we believe we’ve got a better set of standards, certainly around security, because we’ve designed OIC very much with those tenants of security that we’ve talked about.
Very important for sure.
Specifically around device to infrastructure security protocols, but also device to device solutions. If you’re building things like mesh networks or peer to peer sensor solutions, then we believe OIC is a better solution for that.
Okay. That’s good to know, so if any developers are looking to do that sort of more complicated mesh network stuff, then chances are this might be a solution.
Yeah, and obviously as these standards are ratified through that OIC, then we release new versions of the reference implementation and off you go.
Cool. Okay. That makes it a little bit clearer, I guess, to know what the two are. If there are other developers out there kind of comparing them, they know a little bit of a difference. Okay. What’s one key thing above all else that every developer looking to get into the Internet of Things should keep in mind as they start their IoT journey? What should they be thinking about most?
I think we’ve covered it at length. It’s security.
Yes, I was assuming you were going to say that. I think I read your mind!
Strangely enough, yeah. I guess one of the key things is obviously understanding what you’re building.
Yup.
So, what are you trying to build, and then looking at who’s going to use it. Obviously, if you’re trying to make a business out of it, hopefully, you’ve put some sort of business plan around there.
Yeah, that would be good.
Unless you try to get yourself on to Kickstarter and work out who your customers are going to be. Then, obviously, security.
Yup.
If you’re just building something to make LEDs flash, then okay, probably not too big a build.
Yup.
One of the reasons we teach people to make an LED flash is if you can turn an LED on and off, you can turn anything on and off.
You sure can.
What is the thing you’re turning on and off.
Then make sure you secure that thing.
If it is your front door lock, then conceivably you might care about security.
A little bit more than the LED. Yeah. I can see that.
If it’s your sprinkler system, okay, yeah, big deal. Someone can turn the water on and so what.
Yup.
Certainly, understand the device you’re building, what are the implications of hackability, and then at least make some intelligent decisions around how to address those concerns.
Yup, excellent, very valuable advice there from Peter. The last question which is more of just a relaxed fun one rather than putting you under pressure to explain how you’re going to combat all of the perils of the Internet of Things.
World’s problems, yeah.
Yeah, a more relaxed and fun topic is just what’s the coolest thing that you’ve seen people build with any of the Intel IoT products so far?
Ah well when you asked me first, you actually said you’ve, as in, ah… you’ve seen. Okay. Right. I thought you were putting me on the spot and kind of what am I … Do I have any maker cred.
No you can rely on other people’s entertaining concepts.
No, the reason I mentioned sprinklers is because I did my own sprinkler system and you know what? I saw the big security hole. Okay, I’ll obfuscate it as much as I can and not worry too much about it. Anyway.
Excellent.
No, we’re seeing lots of IoT solutions. Obviously, working at Intel, we look at things as well as the maker movement. We’ve got some things to address that. We also treat IoT very much as a serious business opportunity.
Which it surely is.
Yup. When you look at solutions like smart parking and these other solutions, they’re all based around business problems.
Yeah.
When you’re looking at it, you should start with the business opportunity.
Yeah.
Understand what you’re trying to achieve. Work out a business plan around it. When we look at things like smart parking, it’s all about booking me and making sure government revenues and all of that.
Damn government revenues.
Well what about if you can send a car directly to a car parking spot? How does that reduce traffic congestion in the city?
Yup.
If you can go to a parking spot and someone sends you a voucher for 10% off on an extra hour of free parking if you come and have lunch in their café.
Pretty good.
Being able to monetize those solutions. Look at other business opportunities. To answer your question, what are some of the interesting things, it is stuff like that.
Yeah.
It’s around looking at solving a problem, based on an IoT solution.
Yup.
But then what else? What else can you do with it? What else, if I expose this data, or expose this system through APIs to other services and apps and things, how else can I make money out of this? Smart parking’s a great one. We’ve seen lots of stuff in smart buildings. An interesting one was where we saw some organization called Rudin, in the US, has a number of big buildings. They just went, “Okay, let’s see how many people are in the building at any moment in time.” So just like monitoring people coming in and out. That’s an IoT solution.
It is indeed.
I go, “Oh, look. You can see patterns of how many people are in the building at any one time. Guess what? People generate heat.”
Yes, they do.
If there’s lots of people in, then that’s going to put stress on the aircon system. If there’s less people in, at lunch time, maybe we can wind the aircon down a little bit.
Brilliant.
That’s going to save money.
Yup.
Just looking at how these different solutions, you may just think, “Oh my gadget that I’m building does this and that’s about all it does.” Look for other opportunities.
Yeah, connect it to everything else. Yeah.
Because they’re out there. It’s just finding them and monetizing them. Make money out of it, yeah.
Which is important for sure.
Obviously one that’s close to Intel’s heart at the moment is the Global Initiative for Honey Bee Health.
Yeah, I have a picture of that.
Which I’ve just been talking to Patrick about. This is a CSIRO led initiative. They’re using the Intel Edison as a gateway in the beehives, monitoring coming and going of honey bees.
One of the aforementioned pictures of the Global Initiative for Honey Bee Health!
Which is really, really cool.
Yeah.
And the photography that CSIRO and you guys have put in it is pretty cool with super close up on bees.
Yeah, with little backpacks, RFID backpacks on them. Go and check it out.
Yeah.
Global initiative for honey bee health.
Yeah, it’s actually one of the coolest things I would say that exist out there so far for IoT for sure.
Yeah.
Cool. Well thank you so much for your time.
Yup.
It’s been fun to come and visit Intel and find out more about all the Internet of Things stuff you guys are doing.
Yup.
Is there anything that you would like to get out there, people listening, where should they go if they want to find out more about Intel stuff?
Well, obviously, the first place you go is the Internet.
What is that?
I’ve heard of it. Someone mentioned it the other day.
What do we need to connect to this Internet?
Intel.com/IoT I believe is the URL.
Excellent.
We’ve got links to all our IOT developer kits. We have lots of resources for developers and people building things. Obviously, a lot of our partner ecosystems as well.
Yup, brilliant. I’ll have links to all of that stuff too where they can be easily found, so if people don’t remember or are busy doing something at the time and didn’t write that down, don’t worry.
Intel.com/IoT. Tough one to remember.
Yeah, you’ll find it or you’ll use one of your preferred search engines to find it. It will be pretty simple. Cool. Well. Thanks Peter, and congratulations for getting through the first interview for Dev Diner that’s been recorded.
Awesome. Thanks for coming in. Great to be a part of it.
Cool. We’ll catch everybody next time in the audio world of Dev Diner!
The post How to take the IoT plunge with Intel expert Peter Kerney appeared first on Dev Diner.