Wanted: sub-$10 *networked* boards

USB hardware is very cheap (no magnetics, low power) and usually present all but the cheapest SoCs, so why not do IP over USB directly without messing around with Ethernet?  With 10baseT and higher you need an Ethernet hub or switch anyway, and you could fairly easily make an IPoUSB bridge/router that has a bunch of USB host ports to connect to your devices plus an Ethernet up-link.  The b/router would perform the polling needed to see if devices have upstream IP packets.

I thought something like this might be a nice way to network a classroom filled with RasPi Model A boards.

I've heard lots of talk about the Internet of Digital Things (IDioT), but I haven't seen standards or chips for handling the 'torking (my first neologism for 2014, an abbreviation of "networking" based on its common Internet mis-spelling "newtorking").

Regarding Internet of Things, stripping off all the frills and hype and decoration (we're pretty immune to hype anyway here, fingers crossed), it's just IPv6 on everything at extremely low cost through integration.  Viewed that way, IoT documentation is already 100%.  (IoT organizations typically push IoT middleware, but that's actually just decoration around what is no more than plain IP.)

Note: IoT on IPv4 is just a wave to the past so that the poor old 98% of IP users don't feel too disenfranchised.

Note that my $10 goal doesn't come even close to embracing IoT in a proper way.  The aim should be sub-$1 if networking is to be omnipresent in everything that isn't by design isolated permanently.  (There are many extremely important applications where such isolation by design is important, indeed crucial, particularly in this post-Snowden era).  Sub-$1 IoT devices are perfectly possible even today, given that many microcontroller families have members that cost a fraction of a dollar.  But for 2014, I'm happy to aim towards just the relatively unambitious $10 niche.

So, don't get hung up by IoT vendor machinations and nods to the past.  It's just highly integrated IPv6.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Regarding Internet of Things, stripping off all the frills and hype and decoration (we're pretty immune to hype anyway here, fingers crossed), it's just IPv6 on everything at extremely low cost through integration.

Actually, I was thinking about IDioT layer 1, where there's been talk of ultra-low-power wireless networking, so that you can have IDioT devices that have very long battery lifetimes or preferably do energy harvesting (the 21st Century self-winding watch) so that they don't need batteries at all.

Of course, if we're limiting networking only to devices that I personally want networked, then I'm already done!  I absolutely don't want my TV, my car, my bicycle, my furnace, my cats, my glasses, or my wristwatch networked to anything.

John Beetem wrote:

 

Actually, I was thinking about IDioT layer 1, where there's been talk of ultra-low-power wireless networking, so that you can have IDioT devices that have very long battery lifetimes or preferably do energy harvesting (the 21st Century self-winding watch) so that they don't need batteries at all.

I know what you mean, but it's not "IoT layer 1", it's just layer 1 or the physical layer of networking, no different to Bluetooth or Wifi or, in wired, UTP Ethernet --- they all carry arbitrary higher protocols as payload.  Again, I'll stress that there's a lot of hype around in IoT, but if one rises above it then what's visible in practice is just IP riding on top of low-power physical layers like 6LoWPAN.  Ignore the rest.

I do agree completely that the low-power physical layers are in their early days and require more and better documentation, and most important, community synergy.  Those that don't integrate into IP are doomed to failure, but conversely, those that integrate into IP are "doomed to simplicity" because they're just a layer 1 and hence work trivially or else disappear.  And they're all optional anyway --- if you have power or are wired then power-austerity is not usually essential.

It's odd how supposed promoters sometimes work against their own interests by making things appear more complex than they really are.  IoT is a bit like that, but the decoration is superfluous, and when it comes to application processor boards with full stacks, the complication is not even present because *nix has everything it needs already built in.

Morgaine.

John Beetem wrote:

I absolutely don't want [...] my cats, [...] networked to anything.

If there isn't an XKCD with cats being retro fitted with RJ45 connectors there should be

John Beetem wrote:

 

I absolutely don't want my TV, my car, my bicycle, my furnace, my cats, my glasses, or my wristwatch networked to anything.

Yes you do! 

I'm actually being serious, although it requires rising above the details to see the relevance.  Do you ever interact with your TV, your car, your bicycle, your furnace, your cats, your glasses, or your wristwatch?  Yes you do, or they would be useless/irrelevant to you, and in some sense, "not a part of your universe".

Communicating with things is what we do.  IoT just adds more ways in which to communicate with things --- that's all it is, the rest is hype and decoration and superfluous complexity.  If those "more ways" provide you with greater capability than you have currently, then it is very likely that they will be useful to you.  While I admit that some sections of humanity have a conscious and sometimes reasoned ethic that requires them to forgo greater capability in the interest of something that they consider more valuable (from the Amish to profit-enthralled capitalists and obnoxious DRM jail wardens), most people thrive on progress and greater communications capability.

So just for fun let me debunk your examples:

• Your TV and TV usage would benefit enormously from full-capability IP networking.  IR remotes are dreadfully primitive, not only because you have to point them but because they don't have automatic device discovery, control codes are largely proprietary, devices from varied manufacturers rarely interoperate, and the TVs themselves are only just discovering networking.  Of course, if you're suggesting that you would benefit from having no TV at all and therefore your TV wouldn't need networking, I agree entirely.   But that aside, you actually do want greater communication ability in your TV equipment.  This is entirely separate from it being active or even visible online, which you may not want for a variety of reasons.
• Your car is your home on the road.  There's very little to elaborate on this one, as it's obvious.  If you benefit from communication with the world from home, the same applies to your car.  We naturally exclude a few types of in-car communication in 2014 for reasons of commonsense --- for example, watching an online movie while driving is not a particularly clever idea.  Such constraints aside, everything that doesn't divert attention from the road (or even better, that assists with it) is to our benefit as car users.  And even those constraints will disappear soon, since self-driving cars will make watching online movies while on the road completely normal.
• Your central heating furnace can work far more efficiently when networked to sensors throughout the house, and even more efficiently when it can control radiators and hot air ducts to direct heat where needed.  In fact it's always connected to at least one thermostat if it was manufactured in the last millennium, and IP networking just adds greater capability to it, for your benefit.
• As any cat owner knows, we are merely their staff.  All I can say on this is, if networking can help us work more efficiently in our service to them, then all is well.
• Your glasses:  that's a no-brainer.  Given that users of glasses are already wearing an optical device, not using it for presenting information that would benefit us is just plain negligence.  Non-wearers of glasses are going to have to catch up.
• Your wristwatch:  I think that a wrist-mount is just one out of a very large number of attachment points that we will have on our bodies in future, as long as we need bodies at all (likely to be a long time).  As such, I don't put wristwatches into any special category of their own, as "time" is such a trivial datum that dedicating a whole attachment point to it verges on comedy.  Body-mounted appliances will certainly need full networking.

Any more?  I'm enjoying this, and in a strong sense it ties into our December discussions about wearable technology.

Happy New Year to everyone!!!

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

John Beetem wrote:

 

I absolutely don't want my TV, my car, my bicycle, my furnace, my cats, my glasses, or my wristwatch networked to anything.

Yes you do! 

In the spirit of the holiday pantomime, I will reply: Oh no, I don't (with children's chorus).

While I appreciate your reply -- and expected some of the arguments -- my philosophy regarding networking is this:

There are two kinds of devices: isolated devices and hackable devices.

I don't want any of the items in my list to be hackable.  I don't want hackers monitoring what I'm watching on TV, I don't want hackers to steal my car using a smart phone, I don't want hackers to use a defect in my furnace's software to blow up my house, I don't want anyone seeing what I'm seeing through my glasses, and I don't want my wristwatch watching me.  I'm perfectly happy with the function of those items of technology as they are -- except that I'd prefer an electric car, but I'm only 8 years into my current car so I'll have to wait another 7 years or so.  Networking them adds worry and no benefit.

In case you're wondering: no, I don't have a cell phone.  Neither does RMS.  Also, my TV/DVD remotes work fine.  Since I've actually used a "tuning fork" remote (it was pretty cool to an approx-8-year-old) I don't find current ones all that primitive

JMO/YMMV

John Beetem wrote:

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Yes you do! 

Oh no, I don't

Touche'!

< Rest of infinite-length cultural exchange elided through Run-Length Encoding. >

There are two kinds of devices: isolated devices and hackable devices.

That's actually very accurate, and insightful.

But wait, what's an "isolated" device?  The NSA is crossing air gaps these days with quite awesome (in the sense of "psychopathic") side-channel attacks.  We're going to have to modify your observation just a little:

There are two kinds of devices: output-only devices and hackable devices.

(Fully isolated devices aren't actually in your universe, so we needed to make the tenet more useful.)

This shackles us a bit, umph!  (And I'm not yet ready to deal with the related reports of SoC hardware containing hacks or deliberate weakening of security at gate level, which may reduce everything to "hackable".  Yes, we have to deal with this issue, but one thing at a time.)

Output-only isn't a complete barrier to powerful networking, it just requires understanding that protocol data received back during a protocol exchange doesn't need to feed back to the source of the payload.  As an example from years gone by, when a DTE receives CTS from a DCE to indicate that it can send the DCE data, the CTS clearly has limited potential to affect the payload because RTS/CTS is side-channel signaling.  This continues to be true when in-channel flow-control is used and a stop byte is sent back from the DCE to hold off DTE transmission -- the start/stop machinery can be completely separate from the source of the data, and hence intrinsically isolated from operation of the DTE equipment.  It's true that the messaging can be subverted by MITM or other means so that the external world sees the wrong information, but at least your networked but output-only furnace won't be told to burn your house to the ground.

Exactly the same is true in an IP instead of RS232 scenario.

Moving to the case of bidirectional monitoring and full control, the situation isn't as bleak as it might seem from the unfortunately true observation that "everything connected is hackable".  There are in the universe these beings called "engineers", and they're not all stupid.  In fact, many of them can focus on issues very clearly and ensure that certain requirements are met, provably so, such as isolation requirements at one level despite equipment being connected at a lower level.  And yeah, that's what we're here for, to safeguard the world from itself.

There's a lot to be said for caution, especially after a very worrying 2013, but I think we're very far away from giving up and admitting defeat just because there are bad people out there wanting to subvert our equipment.  It's an arms race, I agree, but with good design and avoiding development that blindly embraces "cool", we aren't yet bludgeoned into a corner of hopelessness.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

• Your TV and TV usage would benefit enormously from full-capability IP networking.

Actually it would be highly detrimental. As it would require owning a TV to begin with

• Your central heating furnace can work far more efficiently when networked to sensors throughout the house, and even more efficiently when it can control radiators and hot air ducts to direct heat where needed.  In fact it's always connected to at least one thermostat if it was manufactured in the last millennium, and IP networking just adds greater capability to it, for your benefit.

While I might agree in principle that it would be useful to have heating networked to various sensors in order to make things more efficient, I most certainly want that network fully isolated from everything else, especially the internet.  The idea that someone could compromise the system, turn the heating off causing burst pipes and all sorts of damage isn't a good one. Equally someone could turn it on causing large and unwanted energy bills.

There's a range of other similar things where the idea of networking is really good, but the likely abuse of that capability is a problem.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

There are in the universe these beings called "engineers", and they're not all stupid.  In fact, many of them can focus on issues very clearly and ensure that certain requirements are met, provably so, such as isolation requirements at one level despite equipment being connected at a lower level.  And yeah, that's what we're here for, to safeguard the world from itself.

From an engineering perspective I agree. Unfortunately engineers are regularly overruled for 'business' reasons, or simply not given the time/budget to do the right thing, or even forced to implement requirements that are detrimental to the end users security/privacy.

Then there's the problem of governments deliberately subverting things which is difficult to deal with.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

There are in the universe these beings called "engineers", and they're not all stupid.  In fact, many of them can focus on issues very clearly and ensure that certain requirements are met, provably so, such as isolation requirements at one level despite equipment being connected at a lower level.  And yeah, that's what we're here for, to safeguard the world from itself.

From an engineering perspective I agree. Unfortunately engineers are regularly overruled for 'business' reasons, or simply not given the time/budget to do the right thing, or even forced to implement requirements that are detrimental to the end users security/privacy.

Then there's the problem of governments deliberately subverting things which is difficult to deal with.