HitSeed Enables Intelligent Industrial Monitoring

Posted on 22.05.201914.10.2019 Posted in Internet of ThingsTagged DeepTech, Hitseed, Internet of Things, IoT, SeedNode

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the trendy keywords and there is a huge variety of companies claiming to be “IoT-companies”. Maybe so but that fact is that very few really know what it is (what it is not). There are many who should know how *their* company should utilise IoT that are not aware of possibilities exiting already today

Here is a practical, real-life example of Industrial IoT. Since long time already, bigger industrial machines (pumps, valves, generators etc) are equipped with sensors and dashboards to know how the machine is behaving. As the cost has been a prohibitive factor, same sensoring and analytics has not been available for the large majority of the mass-market pumps and valves.

HitSeed, a deep-tech company based in Helsinki, is about to change this. It has created a coin-sized battery-powered device with sensors and computing power enabling it to be really smart. So smart that can be programmed to know how the device (such as the pump it is attached to) should behave. This is possible by analysing for example the vibration, sound, power consumption or other physical behaviours of the device. And if this device (it’s called SeedNode) learns that now something is or could be wrong with the device, it sends a message to the server. Also several SeedNodes can be act together to monitor something bigger.

This concept is called “Digital Twin“. What is so revolutionary with SeedNode is the fact that all this computing is actually done on-site. Unlike previous solutions, no wiring or other expensive solutions are needed. Cost level is just a fraction of the previous solutions yet this is much more powerful.

HitSeed’s SeedNode with the Digital Twin concept enables transformation of many industrial service companies to a new era. SeedNode sensors can be installed at every customer site and monitored with the cloud-based dashboard. This enables new business models based on monthly fees, for example. Early detection of any potential faulty device can be very valuable for many businesses as unnecessary business interruptions can be avoided.

When thinking of a complete solution to monitor, analyse and act based on the status, SeedNode is the critical component to make it actually intelligent. SeedNode can be connected to various existing gateway and data cloud solutions, hence making it ideal also for larger industrial companies.

HitSeed is on a mission to revolutionize the IoT!

Posted on 19.03.201821.01.2019 Posted in Kasvuyritykset, WearablesTagged Internet of Things, IoT, Seedling, SeedNode

HitSeed is on a mission to change how companies, both small and large, develop new innovative products via modern IoT solutions, digitalization and new collaborative ways of working. Seedling and SeedNode are new platforms for building commercial scale connected products for IoT and wearables.

This little thing (pictured) can be completely reprogrammed over the air. For example, with only 30 lines of script code it can be made to behave like sports tracker!

SeedNode and Seedling IoT platforms provide a revolutionary solution for building intelligent, power- and cost-optimized connected products at commercial scale.

Main advantages of the platforms include

Single and complete platform aimed for commercial products. The platforms have been built from the ground-up for building commercial products. The same hardware solutions or software written for prototypes can be used in the mass-scale commercialized products.
State-of-the art architecture in miniature scale. The platforms are based on modern 32-bit ARM microcontrollers running Real-time Operating System (RTOS). They communicate via a local Bluetooth LE (BLE)-radio with mobile devices and gateways that are further connected to cloud. Platforms come with a set of core capabilities (e.g. accelerometer, gyro, programmable beacon). Hardware capabilities can be extended without modifications in the core platform via hardware extension interface.
A new programming paradigm. HitSeed has developed a very powerful, easy-to-learn scripting API and software development kit for programming the platform without the need to use native, low-level coding. A typical product functionality requires only a few lines of code and can be implemented in days. Functionality can be further extended via companion apps running on mobile devices and in the cloud.
Extremely low power consumption. The platforms are designed to be truly wireless, they are powered with batteries or even with energy harvesting. HitSeed’s power-optimized hardware, software and algorithms allow building sensor nodes that operate with a coin cell battery for months, even more than a year. This means that the power requirements for intelligent data sensoring are in the range of 1/100 to 1/1000 of typical embedded Linux-based single-board computer solutions.
Local and swarm intelligence without online connection. The platforms have a full-blown Lua-interpreter bridging access to native functionality and hardware. This means that the platforms are able to make local decisions and sensor, process, predict, and store data without an online connection. By utilizing the local radio, the nodes can talk to each other and e.g. share data for sensor fusion purposes.
Dynamic functionality programmed over-the-air. The script-based programming means that the nodes can be reprogrammed easily just by sending a new script to the node over the radio connection. This means that nodes can be updated or repurposed for other tasks without physical access to to device. During the product development this speeds up the process drastically as it is possible to update and change the program while the sensor is measuring data from the actual target.

Check out also the Product Briefing and learn more at www.hitseed.com.

The Future of Personal Transportation Will Be Shared (Part 4)

Posted on 17.05.201617.05.2016 Posted in Personal Transportation, Ride-SharingTagged Personal Transportation

In the future, every car is going to be part of the future personal transportation service. If there’s a vehicle with available empty seats going to same direction than you are, the chances are that you’ll get onboard with that car. Things are changing – the younger generation no longer sees owning a BMW as something cool, but however, getting from place A to B with just a few clicks on your iPhone is something they want. There are already several startups offering services to get you from A to B but they are struggling with various problems, and to be honest, the current services are not yet truly disruptive either. Yet based on the initial success of these services one may be assured that there is also a true revolution in the personal transportation coming up. Strong resistance from the traditional taxi companies and taxi associations is only one proof of that.

In the previous three posts the problem, solution and a practical example to future of personal transportation were discussed. In this post it’s discussed whether the currently existing taxi industry is able to respond to the challenge or not.

It’s quite likely that people will even in the future want to get from place A to B. It’s also likely that the most convenient method of transportation is often selected. Some of the trends indicate there might be room what I call Personal Transportation Service as the younger generation may no longer want to own a car, at least in the cities. The revolution starts with one-off rides and currently the taxi industry is perceived to be under attack. Startups are offering taxi-like services with Black Cars and even with people’s own private car (so called community-driver approach). It’s not going to stop there, however. These one-off rides are only small part of the actual traffic volume in commuting, for example. Obviously, if convenient public transportation is available, that’s also high volume service.

Being a pioneer means fighting challenges

The startups offering new solutions are facing numerous challenges related to pressure to decrease the price, supply of drivers and last but not least, the strengthening opposition of the incumbent taxi industry. The service concepts are likely to need ridesharing options in both the Black Car and community-drive approaches in order to offer rides for such a price that would enable mass-adaptation of the services. That will introduce another problem for the new kids on the block. Currently, the startups are using drivers are “contractors” and drivers are not actually employed by the Black Car companies. That was recently ruled to be acceptable as the drivers can choose their own hours, are not restricted by geographical limits and are free to accept/reject any trip offer. The inevitable addition of ridesharing option to the service concept will partially change that. When offering ridesharing trips (actually, taxi-sharing), the business reasons are likely to dictate that the driver mainly must accept any trip offered for him and the driver’s app will tell where to go next to pick up or drop off somebody. So the chances are it’s one step closer to employer-like activity.

Smart taxi companies would be winners, if they’d choose to

All this represents a huge opportunity for the existing taxi companies, if they just choose to be a bit less reluctant against new innovations than they are now. In many countries, the taxi industry is highly unionized, dispatching logics vary and the industry sees the inefficiency as a good thing as more taxis get passengers. That’s unlikely to continue, increasing prices after decreasing demand is not a thing to do in normal market economy.

Any taxi company with reasonable number of vehicles could start their own ridesharing service and start offering innovative services. That would require changes in the attitudes but in the long run might save the industry before the self-driving taxis take over. At least would offer good resistance. There was an interesting concept marketed by a german Taxmobil company last year. The idea was to offer a flat-rate taxi service in Frankfurt for just 48 euros per month. The service is not up and running yet so nobody really knows whether it’s for real or not. But the idea is interesting so it’s likely that one day somebody will actually do it as well.

It’s highly likely that even an innovative incumbent transportation company would (or will) go wrong by figuring out with their management consultants that the primary factor for a user when choosing how to commute/travel would be just the cost of the trip. Couldn’t go more wrong! They might be also be convinced that creating ridesharing software for that service would be relatively easy, just combine some algorithm guys with a coding team. Wrong again! That’s a great formula to lose money, market and the momentum, nothing else.

So it’s that easy. Oh wait, maybe not. There must be a reason why this is not done in massive volumes yet. And what is the right approach then?

The Future of Personal Transportation Will Be Shared (Part 3)

Posted on 10.05.201609.06.2016 Posted in Personal Transportation, Ride-SharingTagged Black Car, Personal Transportation, Ridesharing

In my previous posts, both the key problems and solutions of the existing Black Car and Community Driver services were discussed. Now it’s time to see how they actually would work.

Let’s get back to the original problem. People want to get from place A to B as easily as possible. Time is money so riding all day is not an option, but still the cost of the trip is one of the key factors to consider in order to expand the utilization of these services. Just lowering the prices is not going to work as soon nobody would be driving these vehicles. Self-driving cars may solve this problem one day but not quite yet. The solution is to utilize better the existing seat capacity in the vehicles by means of the ridesharing. And the same principle will apply even when drivers are no longer needed as there are, after all, too many vehicles in many cities in the world on the roads already and the seat utilization is going to be more and more important part of the solution.

A bit longer ride but a lot more affordable

So how would this work from the end user’s point of view when using a transportation service? The smartphone app would simply have an additional “ridesharing” option which the user (passenger-to-be) can select while ordering the trip. The vehicle chosen by the system could be a car already going into same direction with another passenger. Or, it could be an empty car which will pick up another passenger along the route. Instead of the usual pickup in for example 10 minutes the vehicle may arrive in 20 minutes and the trip may take a bit longer than a direct route would take. For example, if the direct route from A to B would be 20 minutes, the shared ride might take 30 minutes. You could also order a trip based on the latest arrival time in the destination, a handy way to to ensure you don’t get there late even in case of ridesharing.

In exchange for an opportunity of chatting with somebody (who actually might be your Facebook or LinkedIn contact) you’d be saving money. Instead of non-shared price of (for example) $27 you might be paying only $15. And best of all, the driver could be earning more than what he had made otherwise. You might also meet new faces, and experience life in a totally new way. True win-win for all the parties, and a cure for the driver problem as well.

Every car is part of the personal transportation network

Ridesharing as an integrated part of those transportation services where another person is your private driver is just the beginning of the new era in the personal transportation. The next obvious step would be expanding the concept to every other vehicle moving on the road. It’s likely that increasing taxation on the vehicle usage will motivate even those driving with their own car to take passengers along the route – as long as the trip duration of the driver (who owns the car, after all, and can therefore get some benefits…) is not extended too much. Maybe the tax man will get really innovative and taxes will be higher for those not participating these new personal transportation service concepts. You can think about this as a huge system where the destination of every car is known in advance. You’ll be matched to such a vehicle which fits not only your destination but may also matches your social profile (Facebook, for example) – especially in case of carpooling.

Finally, real-time carpooling for commuting and and any other personal transportation need becomes a reality. And you no longer book “a carpool trip” with your mobile phone but you rather indicate with your smartphone a desire to get somewhere. Carpooling with somebody will likely to be the cheapest travel option but in order to ensure you always get to your destination, the other alternate transportation services (taxi-sharing and taxi) will be needed to offer you this guaranteed ride. Otherwise you might still need your own car. But who will own those private cars with whom can you carpool? If driving your own car requires you to be wealthy, will they take you as a passenger? Whether the future is not changing that fast is yet to be found out.

But who’s has a chance to be the Black Swan of the future personal transportation services? Read about that in my next post.

The Future of Personal Transportation Will Be Shared (Part 2)

Posted on 03.05.201617.05.2016 Posted in Personal TransportationTagged Black Car, Personal Transportation, Ridesharing

In my previous post, the key problems of existing Black Car and Community Driver services were discussed. Now it’s time to consider the solutions.

The solution is simple. Let’s integrate a really smart ridesharing backend to these services. This is the answer to the challenges related to demand, supply, pricing and quality. Even though some of these startups already call themselves as “ridesharing services”, they are actually not. In my opinion, ridesharing means a service where the ride is shared by people all traveling from different addresses. So taking two persons from A to B by a community-driver is not ridesharing in that sense, but simply a taxi trip driven by a driver. And whether this driver is a professional driver or community-driver does not really make a difference.

What’s true ridesharing like?

In true ridesharing model the vehicle (car, van, minibus) is picking up and dropping off passengers in such an order that nobody needs to take too long extra ride because of other passengers. But at any time there may be one or more other passengers in the car. In the real-time ridesharing service people wanting to get a ride are matched in real-time to any suitable vehicle already in motion, but carefully avoiding not extending the trip duration of those people in the vehicle already too much.

The technological solution to the ridesharing may come from a rather surprising direction. There are thousands of vehicles in the US alone being part of real-time ridesharing services right now, taking huge number of people from place A to B every day. Some of these systems are quite advanced: trips can be ordered at the last minute, passenger is promised rather small pickup window (15 minutes) and the promised trip travel time is kept as good as possible. As the passengers may sometimes be late, or not show up at all, and the traffic may cause extra delays, the system is continuously optimizing everything in order to enable the service operator to make the maximum profit while keeping the trip “quality” promise given to every customer. Where are these services and who are using these services? These services are actually those operated under the ADA regulation (Americans with Disabilities Act) in the US. It says that transit authorities must provide comparable paratransit or other special transportation services to individuals with disabilities who cannot use fixed route bus services, unless an undue burden would result. In many cases the most cost-efficient means of arranging this is with demand-responsive transportation (DRT) service. Some of these services are really advanced. You can book a ride with relatively short notice if you like, the promised pick-up window is only 15 minutes and your trip is not extended more than certain extra duration. Most of the orders are made with a telephone call, but there are really no reasons why the booking could not be done with a smart phone or a web service. The magic behind the curtains is the full-automatic real-time matching and an optimization software that requires no human intervention. Not all the paratransit services are this good yet, but number of those is increasing every month. The state of Pennsylvania is showing good example and has successfully implemented large number of advanced DRT systems already.

Introducing Economy Class of personal transportation

So what happens when the companies in this field will implement true ridesharing? People will use their iPhone just like now to order a trip. But instead of having only one option available (the current “ride alone” option) there will be another option available, “ridesharing”. Another way to call these two travel classes would be to call them “Business Class” and “Economy Class”. In the business class you travel with more comfort while in the economy class you give up some comfort for substantial savings in the ticket cost. The difference being of course that unlike in the air travel, in ridesharing the trip duration for economy class may be a bit longer than in the business class.

So how would it actually work? Read more about that in my next blog post.

The Future of Personal Transportation Will Be Shared (Part 1)

Posted on 26.04.201617.05.2016 Posted in Personal TransportationTagged Black Car, Personal Transportation, Ridesharing

This currently ongoing change in the mind setting of people no longer valuing owning a car so much means there is a huge opportunity fulfilling the need to get around. And where there is an opportunity, there are startups aiming to give the best solution for the problem. Currently there are two principal ideas on the market to solve this problem: using professional drivers with a nice black cars or not using professional drivers but letting anybody in your neighborhood take you there with his own car.

Drivers want to earn more, not less

In some of the black car services the pricing depends on supply and demand of trips that particular moment (i.e. “Surge Pricing”). It’s a good model in the sense that it enables the drivers to earn more, even after possibly a heavy middle-man commission. An opportunity to earn more is a good reason for many drivers to join the service. However, the increasing competition means increased pressure to lower prices in the hope that the additional trip volume will cover the difference. Just lowering the prices is not a cure, however, and it inevitably means that the profit of both the driver and the middle-man alike are going to be far from what they are now. Nobody wins in the price war.

Startups solving the problem with community-driver approach are betting on the fact that people want to freelance to drive people around in their own car. This peer-to-peer transportation is now legal in California, and more than a million rides have been taken with these services. Some of these services are operating in a way in the gray area in regard to the business model as the passenger is expected to “donate” money in the end of the ride, not to “pay”. Also these companies with community-driver approach are testing the peak-pricing to offer drivers an opportunity to earn more. But if prices go up, the demand goes down.

Given the price pressure caused by the community-driver approach to the black car services, one of the companies in this business has expanded into this community-driver model as well. The rumors whisper that there may be some aggressive recruiting going on from the competing services. Lack of enough drivers seems to be one of the bottlenecks for the expansion.

The current “new” taxi services are not that disruptive yet

Right now these services are a replacement for a regular taxi rides, but not yet a replacement for high-volume personal transportation services such as commuting. So it’s no surprise that the taxi associations are fighting heavily against all of these new models of the personal transportation. But the real volume (and needs of this younger generation) also calls for modern, new kind of solutions for commuting. Let’s admit it, ordering your own black car for your daily commuting is never going to be a mainstream means of transportation. It’s simply just too expensive. Nor relying on community-drivers as that may not be reliable enough, you should always be sure you get a ride to work (and back). And proper public transportation is not everywhere so this is still maybe one of the directions to go.

Let’s get back to my initial point on every vehicle becoming part of the personal transportation service. If we take a step back and take a look of these services from a bit further away, all we see is cars with one driver and one or more passenger traveling from place A to B. It’s not that disruptive yet, actually. And in order to increase the usage, the price should go down but that would mean there would be even less drivers (and that’s a bottleneck already now) as drivers want to earn more money rather than less money (ugh, not surprising). Using community drivers is currently not a solution either as that to a certain degree decreases the degree of certainty actually getting a car at all.

So what’s the solution? Read more about that in my next post.