Building Custom Skills with Alexa, IoT Evolution Expo, and IoT Platform Essentials — The Weekly Roundup

Check out the latest posts from IoT For All plus some of our favorites from around Medium. Click the titles or pictures to read the full stories.

1) “Alexa, What’s for Lunch”

“Amazon Echo was one of the best-selling products and most asked for gifts last holiday season. While these devices are undoubtedly popular, recent reports on AI-powered voice assistants show that once the novelty rubs off, people don’t see much value in them. In fact, more than two-thirds of the Alexa skills have zero or one customer reviews, and just 3% of the users remain active on the app during their second week.

So here at Leverege, we decided to put together a simple tutorial for a custom skill that you may actually find useful.”

Yitaek Hwang teaches you how to build your first custom skill in just 10 minutes (no programming experience required).

2) How to Generate Revenue in IoT, Rapid Development, and Smart Cities

“At CES 2017, we saw too many consumer devices that were made “smart” for absolutely no reason. It’s heartening to see at IoT Evolution Expo that many companies have realized that it’s all about the user experience.

For any IoT application, it’s critical to consider the use case and the end-user. What value is actually being added? Then, there needs to be a means of rapidly prototyping and testing the use case. This allows for feedback from potential users to refine the product or potentially show that the use case isn’t worth pursuing. Rapid prototyping through simulation of devices can also keep costs low and speed up time to market.”

This week, IoT For All headed to the IoT Evolution Expo conference in Fort Lauderdale. Calum McClelland shares summaries of presentations/panels and his overall thoughts on Day One.

3) Mood Predicting Wearables

“The device recognizes speech, transcribes the audio into text, and combines physiological signals to determine the tone in real-time with 83% accuracy. Sentiment analysis is available for five second intervals during a conversation. The algorithm runs locally on purpose, keeping the privacy of users in mind.

A look at a smart watch that could serve as a social coach for people with anxiety or Asperger’s, from Yitaek Hwang.

4) IoT Platform Essentials

“IoT platforms are a critical component of the IoT ecosystem, but I’ve found that for many people, it’s not clear what an IoT platform is exactly or the differences between them.

In this post I’ll provide a simple, non-technical explanation of IoT platforms. What they are, when businesses should use them, and the important considerations when choosing between the multitude of options.”

This week’s #askIoT post from Calum McClelland.

5) Securing Our Medical Devices

“The most deadly threat by hackers is quite literally when they take control over medical devices and cause harm. Increasingly, hospitals sequester critical devices on restricted networks to fend off intrusions.

Thankfully, there hasn’t been a known instance of hackers hijacking medical devices. Hospira’s Symbiq infusion pump and the OneTouch Ping insulin pump mentioned earlier have noted their vulnerabilities, but haven’t received real cases of hacking thus far.”

Yitaek Hwang gives us highlights from Modern Healthcare’s Special Report: “How to harness technology to protect your organization and patients from the latest cyberthreats.”

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