The Landscape of Smart Home Technologies in 2022 | Thread Group's Sujata Neidig | E216

you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcasts the number one resource and publication for the internet of things if you are watching this video on youtube please subscribe and like the video also if you're listening to this on my podcast directory please subscribe to the latest episodes as soon as they are out i'm your host ryan chicon on today's episode we have sujata nydig the director of marketing uh for wireless at thread group she also is the nxp marketing director as well for those of you maybe unfamiliar with thread group they're a non-profit that was formed back in 2013 with a focus on making thread the foundation for the internet of things in homes and commercial buildings so on this episode we talked a lot about that topic we talked about recent trends in smart home space a smart building space what we need to see to have mass adoption kind of start to be reached in the smart home technology space what we expect to be the most popular smart home purchases for the second half of this year into next year and we also talk a lot about matter and thread technologies how they work together and then definitely some challenges that they're seeing from their point of view in this space as well and how to overcome them so all in all fantastic conversation i think we'll get a lot of value out of it but before we get into it any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable iot market but don't know where to start check out our sponsor leverage leverages iot solutions development platform provides everything you need to create turnkey iot products that you can white label and resell under your own brand to learn more go to iot changes everything dot com that's iot changes everything dot com and without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome to john is the iot for all podcast thanks for being here this week thank you for having me nice to be here absolutely i'm very excited about this conversation um i wanted to kick it off by having to give a quick introduction about yourself to our audience sure um so my name is sujatha naidig i work at nxp semiconductors as a marketing director in our wireless connectivity portfolio and within that role i also support industry standards for wireless connectivity so nxp is very invested in driving industry standards and collaborating across the industry so we are a board level participant in thread group and i represent nxp and for that and then i also serve as the vp of marketing for threadgroup can you talk a little bit more about what thread group is and the kind of overall goal admission of the organization sure so thread group was conceived back in 2013 so we're getting close to the 10-year mark here and the idea behind thread was to create a industry standard on connect on how devices can connect to each other wirelessly but doing it in a reliable secure and easy to use way and also it was targeted towards more home smart home devices and home automation so for small devices you know that are in your home doing the home automation whether it's with the temperature security sensors lighting you know they don't need high-end wireless connectivity protocols like wi-fi these are many of them are battery operated so thread was created to provide the solution to connect those devices together like i said simply reliably and securely so how does this compare to other organizations and also the technology side to things like zigbee and z-wave and even matter which is a discussion topic that's been brought up in the past like how does that kind of connect in the space or how do you play with with kind of those organizations or technologies yeah it is all connected it's a small industry and kind of sometimes i refer to it as the quilt of technologies because there are quite a few technologies thread is very similar to zigbee so zigbee was created before thread using a radio from ieee defined by the ieee organization for low power wireless mesh networking it's called the 802.15.4 ieee 802.15.4 standard so zigbee was based on that radio thread takes zigbee and on that same radio but then adds ip to it so it adds an ipv6 layer and the reason for that is that you know the internet is built on ip or internet protocol and you can run lots of applications on the internet and so the idea behind putting ipv6 technology on small devices meant that it can enable product manufacturers to create devices that can communicate directly to each other without having to go through a translator or a hub so every device has its own unique ip address and they can communicate to each other they build a mesh network so i would say they're very zigbee and thread are very similar and thread is the ip version of zigbee you asked about matter so thread is very focused at the how devices connect so the network transport it defines how they connect to each other and form this mesh network and manage the mesh network like self healing you know if one node drops off the mesh then the path will be rerouted through another direction automatically matter is a new protocol from the connectivity standards alliance which is also where zigbee sits under and matter is defined more as the language that the devices speak to each other so that all the devices can talk to each other and give the commands in you know what's a light bulb and how do you what does on mean what does off mean you know what are the different attributes of these different device types so matter is a unified language for devices to speak to each other and it uses existing technologies so for how they connect to each other matter is ip based also so thread and wi-fi are the two network transports that matter supports when matter launches with the first version of matter so thread is really designed for the low power reliable network requirements wi-fi more high bandwidth you know streaming audio streaming video things like that fantastic well that's a great overview thanks for kind of breaking that down a bit further um definitely clears things up so i wanted to talk um to you about a number of different topics and the first one now you've kind of understand a bit more about kind of what you do what thread group does etc can you talk about just how to high level recent trends that you've seen in the smart home and and iot space in general great question and i think from my perspective because i work on the component semiconductor side and standards you know there's two aspects to the smart home it's what consumers see and then it's how the industry is driving the smart home innovation products innovation so from a consumer perspective i think we've all seen the smart home grow over the last few years and especially during the pandemic where more people were at home and really being present in their home so much more than they were before and wanting to make it more comfortable more convenient um but even like my parents have started using more smart home devices as and they were not technology people before so i think that smart home products has grown to be more understood like consumers aren't aware of it there are still some challenges in the smart home industry where consumers get frustrated because there are incompatible platforms in compatible devices there's also concerns from consumers around what does this mean about my security and privacy how does it impact that and cost you know of course consumers care about cost from the industry itself um [Music] they are really looking at how do we address these consumer problems because if we don't address that then the industry although it's continuing to grow it won't have the exponential growth and get to that phase where there's mass adoption of smart homes so i think you see what i see in the industry is more collaboration across the industry because wireless connectivity is hard you know it's there's you're connecting devices to each other and so there's a lot of compatibility issues power consumption cost implement implications security implications and i think that's why you've also seen matter receive a lot of support so now you have the major platform providers like apple amazon google smartthings committed to using matter at the application level so that devices will just work with each other because that's what consumers want yeah i think that's um the collaboration element that you mentioned is super important not just in the smart home space but i think across iot in general to bring the best solution to market that fits the use case and delivers the roi that the the end user is actually looking for and the smart home space it's really interesting to see the growth of the number of different devices out there but i also think to your point it brings in a lot of challenges of being able to choose the correct products without running the risk of the security element there's lots of devices that are made and promoted onto on places like amazon and if there's not enough education about the different devices than the technology it's hard for people to pick the right one and leave themselves expo without leaving themselves exposed on the security side especially like devices made in china at times things like that that i know people are worried about and then the other side is the compatibility with existing devices that they already have and i think being able for devices to work more closely together um and not have to worry about okay i bought something made by um you know one company and then but i i all my devices at home made by another company will they work are they compatible i don't really know i don't understand that i think that educational component is super important for because people just want things to work they don't want to have to be you know necessarily only buy from one brand or another they want to know that if i have cameras in my house and i want to buy this other smart device smart lighting that it's going to be able to work and be and be able to easily be interacted with so it's an interesting thing that we've kind of seen grow and have the market to kind of start to understand in order for it to kind of survive and i think that maybe in the beginning there were consumers were willing to buy into a system now because the smartness has spread across so many products and it's not like oh i just want to use smart lighting and then i want a smart door like you want everything to work together so you really have that smart home and in order to do that you need the compatibility and you know having companies commit to using what i would say is a lot of these technologies these are like the plumbing of smart home like how did the devices connect how do you do it securely and then that leaves product manufacturers with more resources to focus on how to innovate on top of that for a very specific user experience you know how does what does the user really get out of all these products and so it's a it's a benefit to the product manufacturers and it's a benefit to consumers absolutely and in addition to things we just mentioned are there any other um i guess elements of this that we really need to see happen in order for mass adoption to be reached in this space uh in the smart home technology space you know i think that um security is something that is being built in now to some of the technologies like thread has security built in so thread devices don't connect to each other unless they're authenticated matter is also implementing secure but around privacy so i think there's there's more work that we can do as an industry to really address concerns around privacy and security or to address a wider range of attack types and working not just as an industry but working with regulators in different countries to make sure there's some consistency and i think standards bodies have a good starting point to be able to do that because they're made up of hundreds of companies that have different experiences and and and expertise as well um and then i think it's like deployment of matter devices i think will drive a lot of the mass adoption but again how do you drive that without obsoleting what's already out there um and so there's going to have to be work done by the product manufacturers and the platform providers to provide those paths of migration and once you start buying new devices that are matter compatible that's that solves the problem easily but you need to integrate that like you said into your own smart home that has other devices right yeah that's going to be the tough part i mean that's just even outside of smart home when you're going into other types of iot solutions especially for businesses the existing infrastructure how does that play with new technologies in order to make it less of an overhaul for them to adopt iot and i think that's something that's always been a topic of conversation um that's gone on and it's a place that needs to be really focused on and address in order for adoption to kind of reach the scale that we've been you know hoping for for many years and i like seeing that companies and ecosystems that the walled gardens i guess are coming down because that will help drive mass market adoption as well and right that becoming a reality will be critical to that it's that more people can experience the benefits of having smart homes totally agree with you um one of the another question i had it's a little bit disconnected from this but still in the smart home space where do you see um i guess the more popular in purchases coming from is there a certain type of product certain type of area as it connects to the home that you're seeing become more popular or you expect to be more popular kind of as we go through the rest of this year i mean that that's a that's a difficult question i i think i would say that you know the smart the voice assistants and smart speakers have reached a level of maturity i mean or market saturation you know you're not going to see the exponential growth there i think lighting is always an area that people are investing in and as the cost of smart lighting has come down um people use that but the doorbells smart doorbells secure anything related to security i think is a key component and being able to manage your home like the temperature and access to your home and those types of features i think what we'll see maybe not by the end of this year but what we'll see is more of a shift from i want a door or i want a light bulb that i can turn on from my phone to i want an experience you know i want things to happen if i unlock my door i want certain lights to turn on and the temperature to be set to a certain thing so consumers are going to be looking for more of like what drives their desire do they want something more convenient more comfortable more secure in their home and those types of use cases i think we'll see grow in the coming months and years i also think anything that kind of connects to cost savings for for homeowners i think is a big one um let me ask you though so so we're obviously we've talked a lot about the the home and that environment but a comparable market is also office spaces other buildings making them smart not just homes what what do you kind of expect to see in the more commercial application side of the uptech of the iot technologies as people are starting to get back to work are you seeing kind of any trends connected to the smart spaces um kind of industry and of itself i've had a lot of guests on recently that are focused in building applications for buildings workplaces you name it whether it's occupancy tracking amongst of many other different use cases are you seeing any trends in there where do you kind of expect the commercial application side of iot as it connects to um buildings as people are starting to come back to the workplace kind of go so when thread group when thread was first created it was really targeting the smart home environment or industry and what became quickly apparent is that companies started looking into thread and saying well this applies to more than just homes because buildings are just larger homes with more spaces in it and more people using them and and so thread has evolved to also address what we call the smart building or commercial building market segment you know you still have things like safe security systems lighting temperature some of the differences though in the commercial building or building automation is that today many buildings if you're looking especially at work spaces or factories are built with wired um solutions right and that causes that's a challenge for companies because if they want to grow and add more capabilities then they have to dig into the walls to lay new wires so transitioning from wire to wireless is something that is a huge has a huge potential benefit for commercial like building managers facility managers building designers and so we see that these same benefits you're seeing in the smart home about a more secure environment a more safe environment a more convenient environment apply also in the building space you know it's at a larger scale so the technologies have to maybe do some adaptation especially on how do you install you know in a smart home in a home you're gonna install one or two devices at a time you know maybe if you're putting up a security system it might be 10 to 15 sensors but in a in a smart building you could be installing hundreds of light bulbs and fire alarm sensors and so technologies like thread and others look at how how can we help simplify that or how do we help ease that installation but yeah i think that it will happen it's happening in the commercial building the same technologies because wireless like i said has huge benefits especially like if you think in europe they're not doing new building construction in europe for the most part and they have to do a lot of retrofitting and retrofitting would be better done with wireless technology the other difference is that it needs to integrate into the it infrastructure you have to have multiple like access control who gets access how do you determine that so there's a few other factors that have to be implemented for these more work environments and i think that that is already happening and moving in that direction absolutely yeah it's a very exciting space to kind of follow and just track the demand for iot technologies especially as we've come out of pandemic people are getting back to work super interesting i wanted to kind of pivot real quick back to excuse me the smart home space for a lot of our listeners i'd love it if you could kind of give them general advice on how to [Music] start building a smart home from a device standpoint whether it's selecting the right devices what things they need to be thinking about technologies they should be looking at how do they just kind of how would you kind of advise a buyer who's looking into getting smart devices for their home go about that process and make sure that they're looking at certain elements or pieces that are important very interesting question so i guess based just off of my experience with my own smart home and working in the industry i would say that the first step is to really understand what it is you want to what is your priority for wanting to have smart products in your home like what do you want to get out of that um and then the next step for me is really because i'm huge about standards you know look at what are the options out there that are compatible with other with multiple ecosystems or platforms because most people will probably start their smart home journey with a smart speaker and so maybe you pick you know i don't know echo or homepod mini and then after you've picked that then you need to look at what smart devices you want what experience you want and which ones are available within that ecosystem um [Music] but with matter when matter comes out like part of me says wait till matter devices come out because things will just work with each other right but i think it's a very private it's a very personal decision like where do you want to spend money to improve your life and look for products that use standards and that work with multiple platforms and work with other devices instead of having a closed ecosystem on the other hand i would say also with some people you know they're naturally you know techies and like gadgets and like working on installing installing them but like when my parents wanted to install a security system i'm like you know i could come down and help you but it's just you know look at reviews of people in local companies that do installations and talk to them and let them guide you on what product types to pick and what brands that they support so i think it depends on the person is very personal description yeah i just think having a process and having some level of due diligence into understanding what you're buying why you're buying it how it works um and just keeping those considerations in mind as as opposed to just making a rash purchase because you see something cool and just buying it and then realizing it's their security risk or there's it's not it's incompatible you know kind of all things we've kind of been mentioning here i'm very big on looking for reviews you know what i'm the same exactly um reporters write about these reviews about these different products and then i like to talk either talk to friends co-workers family and then look online for reviews because then you'll get a better insight into does that match what you're looking for you know not that it's a bad product but it might be not the right product for you and how you want to use it yeah i've also found that there's you gotta take this with a grain of salt but there's value in looking at the negative reviews too because there's oftentimes um very interesting perspectives from people that you can kind of see a trend of whether this is working well or not um or the the positive reviews are just potentially all telling you the same thing but there's definitely two sides to it and i think you can start to get a good feeling about certain devices once you kind of read read both of those um so i'm in the same boat as the reviews i think are crucial to it for sure um so for our audience out there who's listening to this and wants to follow up questions learn more about what's going on at thread group nxp like what's the best way that they can do that and maybe stay or get in touch and kind of ask any questions and learn more so thread group is an industry organization so you can go to threadgroup.org and get information

about what thread is you also talked earlier you know thread works very closely with the connectivity standards alliance which has the matter protocol so you can go to connectivity think it's csa-iot.org they have a lot of information there about matter nxp we provide solutions so that product manufacturers can build smart devices for their homes and you can go to nxp.com and get information about um all of our wireless connectivity solutions and really it's very use case dependent you know what type of device are you trying to build and then we have the solution there but yeah thread all the websites threadgroup.org csa.iot.org are great places to start to get more information fantastic well this has been a very good conversation i've actually really enjoyed talking about um kind of more the smart home consumer type stuff from here from time time since a lot of what we talk about is very often based around the um business commercial enterprise side of things so it's nice to kind of have something a little bit that i i would do more on an even more daily basis than just this iot for all which is again like the business commercial side but at home smart devices and things like that so it's kind of it's a very fun conversation to have so i really appreciate your time your insights were incredible and i think our audience is going to get a ton of value out of this thank you ryan and i'll just you know when i said thread group's website we have a section there for videos and we track videos that um a lot of tech techie bloggers do videos explaining the technology and they do great jobs of explaining it for consumers so i would say definitely check out some of those videos to get an explanation in a real life situation of how these products are working and why why do you would you want a product with thread well it's faster it's more reliable and you can get some evidence of that and yeah thank you for inviting me to to chat with you it's been really fun yeah i'm passionate about smart home devices yeah you can definitely tell no and i mean not just the passion but the deep knowledge of kind of what you know you have exposure to with thread group and nxp and um i think our audience can is gonna like i said get a ton of value out of out of hearing your opinion and um kind of expertise on this subject i think it's really important and a lot of people are gonna relate to it so so i do truly appreciate your time thank you all right everyone thanks again for watching that episode of the iot for all podcast if you enjoyed the episode please click the thumbs up button subscribe to our channel and be sure to hit the bell notification so you get the latest episodes as soon as they become available other than that thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time

2022-09-05 15:51

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