Energy Harvesting and Future of Sustainable IoT | IoT For All Podcast E150 | SODAQ's Ollie Smeenk

you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcast i'm your host ryan chacon and today's guest is ali smink the ceo of sodac and ollie has a very unique background he was born in the netherlands raised in tanzania built and installed weather monitoring solutions in sub-saharan africa and now is a ceo of an iot hardware company focused on low-power sensing and tracking so we're going to talk a lot about that low-power sensing and tracking we're talking about battery-less devices we're going to talk about energy harvesting and just sustainability as a whole across iot but before we do that if 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.com that's iot changeseverything.com and without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome ollie to the iot for all show thanks for being here this week thank you so much ryan i'm glad to be here yeah absolutely looking forward to it um so i wanted to kick this off by having you talk a little bit more about your background experience a bit from from everything that i read it's a very unique background you're born in the netherlands raised in tanzania you've done work in sub-saharan africa and now you're the ceo of an iot hardware company and i'd love to just kind of hear more about that background and that journey and kind of what brought you to sodac so my pleasure to uh to give an intro so um i uh was born in the netherlands and uh at three years of age i i was uh i moved basically to tanzania in east africa with my family with my parents and my younger sister and uh spent the majority of my childhood there and uh had an amazing upbringing and got to experience two cultures which really shaped me um spent a lot of time of course in the netherlands as well and and around age 16 moved back to the netherlands and my father is an engineer and and together we always worked on different projects and uh with that also uh started you know playing around with arduino boards uh and and uh and kind of got into to uh developing hardware um when i was i was back here in the netherlands in school we decided to uh look for projects that we could uh make impact with in in east africa and uh we stumbled upon an opportunity to help some farmers with weather monitoring stations and we kind of combined the knowledge on arduino and what we learned about low power embedded hardware with uh with our impact drive and that got us started with with iot actually fantastic so how did you end up um uh with soda then was that a company that i don't know if i have this information but did you were you a founder of soda or was that did you come into sodac later on so my father and i actually started the company together and so the whole project with uh with weather monitoring uh branched off into its own company so initially we started off we we started off building some hardware for monitoring weather conditions rain temperature wind and such and we had to build our own hardware to use solar power to to get enough energy basically to measure these conditions and then to send it to the internet and there was mobile connectivity available very readily available in in most of sub-saharan africa and uh we realized that with that type of hardware that type of low-power hardware there was many other applications so that's why we founded sodac we actually did a kickstarter campaign for a development board that others could start making things and at the same time we we launched another company whereby we actually installed across six countries these weather monitoring stations and helped a lot of farmers and research organizations so so where is um so coming from that story which is fantastic by the way where are sodac now like what has transitioned from or what has i guess grown from from then to now what is the focus how has it changed um just kind of give us the full landscape there so um i think the the term internet of things really started coming up in the early days of sodac around the same period and what we were doing at the time was investigating what type of applications we could use these low power hardware technologies for and the energy harvesting from the sun um we had our own web shop we were really you know interacting with a lot of cool companies and individuals around the world really the early adopters of the internet of things and over time we got requests from bigger and bigger companies to develop and solutions for them so to really design custom hardware and build software and and in an even later stage uh just a few years ago we started adding industrial design so making enclosures and also adding basically the connection to the cloud more as well and we started adding more to our technology stack in that way as we got further and where we are now is that in the past eight years since we founded we've done more than 200 different development projects some of them you can see behind me uh here and we've launched now in the last year four of our own products uh so we've gone from basically providing developers with kits to making solutions for companies to now making solutions for ourselves to bring to market that's fantastic i love that story uh appreciate you walking us through that that's great i wanted to um see if you could expand on a couple of the topics that you talked about you talked about energy energy harvesting we talked about the low power elements to to all this which then also potentially lead into the discussion around like battery-less devices um what have you seen since over the past eight years from an evolution standpoint when it comes to the developments in iot the developments in like sustainable iot what have you kind of seen happen over the course of the last eight years or so to where we are now uh so on the communication side uh many new protocols have been brought into the market so in the low power wide area networking space we've moved from 2g networks for example which are not low power at all two things like ltem and narrowband iot we see that the telco organizations have put in a lot of work to make that possible so have the module manufacturers in the early days we were making sort of components that we could plug onto our development boards for different communication protocols and we're working for example with simcom modules over time we saw that many other companies started entering the space and now for example nordic semiconductor or u-blox or quaktile have really low power modules so that's really changed um on another uh in another protocol with laura wan we we we've seen a huge growth in network availability um and also in the quality of the network um so that's that's more on on the technology side and low power side we've we've gotten better and better at using these technologies creating better algorithms for using the device um in a as little active mode as possible so we have kind of this saying that we try to sleep as much as possible working only when necessary and then communicating as little as we can so so being in that sleeping mode basically allows us to consume next to no power and that allows us to actually create products that can harvest energy from the sun or other sources like motion or radio frequencies right and that in turn then allows us to work towards having devices without batteries because batteries are highly polluting and i i think it's nice to to show you that we for example use these uh uh very completely flat uh lithium ion super capacitors okay um and and these are replacements for batteries that we're now implementing in products fantastic i wanted to kind of take a couple of those topics um and dive into them a little bit so on the low power side of things when it comes to tracking and and sensing technologies what does just for the general landscape and maybe those who are a little bit unfamiliar they've heard of you know the low power elements to iot but not really unders not really sure as to the value they provide or what they're kind of driven towards um talk a little bit more about what low power solutions and tracking and the technologies behind them are enabling and what kind of use cases are low power solutions more ideal for very good question um so we have seen that tracking has really been used for example in vehicles that have continuous power available whereby low power is not really necessary so trucks for example have been tracked for many years already and where we see many opportunities and use cases for tracking and and are working in many different uh customer applications is in uh the net the need to track assets or uh whether they're moving or or or not um where there is no power source available so uh i can give you an example uh you can see here on this side there's a larger solar powered tracking unit yeah we use those specifically for truck truck trailers so rather than the truck itself these swap bodies are exchanged between different uh trucks and they want to know how many kilometers those drive but there's no source of power so to uh measure the location as often as possible um with a small solar panel means you really need to use very little energy okay makes a lot of sense so so when would i guess when we're talking about just the full spectrum of different types of use cases that we've seen in iot so ones that are requiring more power are those use cases that are requiring to probably send data more often send bigger kinds of data more often things like that and then on a low power side we're seeing kind of the opposite is that relatively accurate correct so there's work being done on reducing the amount of overhead that needs to go into a payload that's in a message that is sent okay so the less additional information on top of just let's say the gps coordinate uh the more energy you use in waste right um there's uh protocols like power save mode or extended discontinuous receive mode which allow the network and the device to have an agreement on when the communication will happen and therefore you don't need to have a handshake and and uh reconnect every time that you want to send a message um so that those are some ways in which we're saving a lot of uh a lot of power okay fantastic and then let's let's move into kind of where energy harvesting kind of plays into it from from that standpoint where does that really fit in in your mind you know i guess start off let me just explain a little bit more what it is exactly for those of you who may be a little bit unfamiliar and then the value and the benefits that energy harvest energy harvesting is bringing to the iot space and potential use cases so energy harvesting basically means that the device that we're using is fully powered by energy that it gathers from sources outside of the device without having be having to be recharged or connected to a fixed power source so the device itself can be fully autonomous so you have for example a solar panel on a device that gives energy whenever there's sunlight to charge for example a super capacitor or a rechargeable battery which then has enough energy in it to continuously operate the device so to measure its location its temperature and then to send that to the internet and so we for example use an accelerometer inside the device that detects when there is motion and from that knowledge we can assume that it's more important when the device is moving to start tracking it more often because if it's not moving then you can assume that it's in the same place gotcha so so then when we're thinking about the application of the technology and fitting it into potential use cases how do you have that conversation with potential customers around when energy harvesting is a good fit for what they're building or i guess maybe the way to answer this would be to talk about what types of scenarios energy harvesting would not really fit in yeah very clear um what traditionally was was done was a customer would calculate how many messages a device could send over its lifetime and then plan how long the device would last so you would have a device with for example aa batteries in it that can send 10 000 messages which may be spread over three years and then the device is done would have to be open batteries replaced or completely removed and so whenever there's an opportunity to work with sunlight um then we can have a conversation quite easily with our customer so we anytime we open up discussions with any uh interesting company to work with we um communicate from the beginning that the sustainability and impact of our solutions is our primary concern okay so our objective as a company is to use the internet of things to improve efficiencies in different business cases saving resources right and and the objective should also be to then not create a new problem of electronic waste and as soon as you drop that information the customer is much more inclined to investigate the option for energy harvesting right okay and so that then ties into the conversation around devices without without batteries and how that kind of fits into the sustainability of iot the pollution element you mentioned earlier talk a little bit more about that how do how do devices operate without batteries and you know where where does the technology today kind of stand in making that a more regular thing or a regular fit within use cases um when looking at the need for a power storage or power availability we need to look at um what is the total amount of energy that our device needs but also what are for example the peak energy usage moments so we look at peak currents and where you'll see that instead of batteries capacitors are really useful is in handling peak currents however traditional capacitors will not hold energy for power for very long so they have a very fast self-discharge and so um we have this term of battery-less devices as a sort of core element of what we do partly because we want to eliminate the use of batteries completely but also because we want to challenge the notion around batteries so what you'll see is that with 3d printed completely flat batteries we can make these kind of smart labels that are completely thin but are cellular connected okay you'll see here behind me a bit more of the inside so you see the uh uh pcb here yeah you see the antenna you see the battery which is this is a cellular connected device and it's then used for for example parcel tracking you've got all sorts of gadgets here with me and when the parcel is open we actually detect the parcels because the seal breaks wow um so in this case we are using a battery but we're using a battery that's fully recyclable so what we do we have two components we have the top and the bottom part the bottom part is recyclable with materials um like zinc for example uh which are also used in medicines for example and then the top part is the electronics which we can completely reuse fantastic okay so that's one example and then the other is when we have for example a uh tracker like this one just one can power uh instead of a battery a super capacitor okay an indep an indefinite number of charge cycles so rather than like your smartphone you have it for three years and then you really do have to replace it because the battery is functioning anymore right that's because of the limit to the chemistry inside uh okay and large cycles it can handle and these capacitors um can actually handle uh you know thousands of times as many charge cycles therefore never having to be replaced inside of the device so when the when this when the capacitor is being in since charged by the sun um how long does that last you said a lot of them kind of quickly um use up their charge but it's something that it stores and kind of holds on to until it's needed to activate and send data or you know be utilized by the device or how does that work so we have two types of capacitors we have standard capacitors which don't hold charge very well but are very fast at charging and discharging okay those are used on all sorts of electronics you have really small capacitors that are used actually for power regulation on electronics so these capacitors that i'm showing here actually have lithium ions inside so it's a hybrid capacitor so it's kind of in between a battery and a capacitor so it and has the benefits of charging and discharging quickly so you can charge your entire device in under two minutes rather than a few hours and it has uh an almost indefinite number of charge cycles that's awesome that's really cool thanks for showing that that's pretty neat i like that um i i wanted to um transition just slightly to a different area of conversation before we wrap up and it's it's really around in this area of kind of sustainable iot that we've been talking about for a few minutes here where are you seeing the biggest challenges and and maybe kind of tying that into more industry-wide challenges too that you've seen over the last couple years or maybe even currently where we are now um that are innate or i guess prohibiting certain adoption of technologies or some of these technologies scale more quickly than we'd like them to just what are you seeing from your standpoint regarding those challenges right now thank you for that question um one of the things that will be on everyone's mind is the current component shortage we see that uh because of some very weak links in our supply chain we're reliant on certain paths that when there is a let's say a deficiency of components we're unable to get them which causes people to um to over purchase high amounts of stock to reduce their risk and that really that really puts a strain on the whole market that's one of the biggest challenges also to sustainability because what we want to work towards is a model whereby we can innovate as quickly as possible and if we need to buy large quantities of stock to produce to have the safety let's say to be able to provide devices to our clients then it's much more difficult to go through innovation cycles because we need to rather than uh having different types of products and changing them over time instead of that we're having more of the same products that's one big challenge another one is uh the cost of new innovations so the new modules that come out that have lower power functionality or these capacitors that i'm showing you they're produced in lower volumes than that let's say traditional uh less low power and less sustainable solutions also less widely adopted uh something that i really like to uh um and this is maybe something we can share in the uh in the communications around this uh podcast is a an article about flexible pcbs and this inability a comparison of a rigid versus a flexible pcb okay and that there are significant savings to be had but because the whole industry works around rigid pcbs uh the cost is lower the time to market with a product is is quicker even though it's much less sustainable and we're trying to make customers aware of that so that they're willing to be more patient and potentially in the beginning pay more for solutions to bear that cost rather than that the environment needs to bear that cost gotcha and how um how what have you seen coming to when you talk to customers what are the challenges that they're coming to you with how does that kind of fit into you know the overall view of the the market regarding the challenges that we're kind of facing what are they kind of coming to you and kind of explaining that are big issues for them that they're seeing from their angle before they start working with you um one example that i really like is that we work with a company that's in the agricultural space and what they do is they provide materials to farmers and and for example agrochemicals and they are required to um ship these materials in uh like large containers uh whether it's for liquids or for seeds um and in that process they um don't have full control over the supply chain of where those containers are and that causes them to have to have a really large excess stock of these containers which means that there's a bunch of containers standing around which plastic was needed to create them and they come to us to to on the one hand look at how can we reduce the waste in that way and use tracking to know where everything is and optimize that supply chain and on the other side um we try to add innovative features so what you'll see is that uh for example a container of liquid um may be so cheap that it's not worth adding a tracker so let's say the container cost 200 euros or dollars to make right and the tracker uh costs maybe half or a bit less than half of that then the business case is hard to to improve itself but by for example measuring the quantity of the liquid or the amount of liquid inside the container by using in our case radar to measure the distance to the top of the liquid we can give additional information and then the customer or our customer can go to their customer whenever they know that the liquid has almost completely been used up and provide marketing information and say hey isn't it time to buy new products and then it makes the business case worth it so that then allows us to get more of that sort of circular model of getting those containers back to the customer rather than having to continuously produce new containers for their product shipment that's fantastic i appreciate that that's um really good insights there to kind of get a sense of of what people are seeing as challenges and kind of how this is all fitting together now let me ask as we wrap up what where do you see the um the industry going kind of over the next number of months to a couple years on the sustainability side like what do you see technology wise that's maybe coming down the pipe or most that you're most excited about that's really going to start to enable more adoption on this side of things on the one hand i see a big push on the sustainability side in the sense that uh like uh carbon equivalent uh emissions need to be reduced on all aspects of companies okay so they will also look at using iot to reduce uh their their waste and their emissions uh and i think they're that it would be really beneficial for ourselves but also other companies to focus on that as a leading discussion point with customers um on the innovation side i see a lot happening happening in the machine learning on the device side okay so we can do much more uh with that little bit of energy and that little bit of processing power we have on an embedded device making them smarter and making them by for example updating the firmware remotely on a device and adding more tricks into it for for getting more data out of it we can enable many more use cases so each individual iot device will only become more valuable over time yeah and then maybe lastly where i see a really big rise at the moment is in uh the whole space of satellite iot communication so sure everywhere where there is currently no coverage there's there's going to be cheap so affordable and reliable coverage as well yeah the satellite space is super fascinating for sure we've been speaking with companies uh about the nanosatellites and what they're doing and how they're playing a role in this and also how they're seeing this enable potential solutions and wider adoption because of that more robust coverage so um so totally agree with you there last thing i want to ask you is for the listeners and the watchers out there that are listening to this watching this episode what's the best way for them to follow up with any questions if they want to learn more about soda and kind of all the different things you have going on what's the best way to do that and best way to reach out so the best thing to do is to contact us directly so you can contact me on on linkedin for example you can reach out to our support team we have a forum as well which can all be found through our website um we are going to be at many of the events in the near future uh such as the ces mobile world congress and uh i think more in the the immediate term we have a really cool project running about air quality monitoring where you can find more information on kickstarter as well fantastic well that'd be a lot that's very exciting and in addition to that kickstarter kind of information is there anything else coming out from a news standpoint or announcement standpoint that we should look out for so uh in the coming year uh we are going to be doing more and more with the smart label technology so embedding technology into paper-thin solutions and and that's going to be our big shift uh for uh for 2022. that's very cool i've i've heard about that company's trying it but very excited to actually see it work and i think you guys have some very exciting and interesting things going on so very excited to kind of keep keep an eye here for everything going on at sodac so ali thanks again for your time really appreciate it for being here thank you as well ryan and it was nice to have this chat absolutely all right everyone thanks again for watching that episode of the iot fall podcast if you enjoyed the episode please click the thumbs up button subscribe to our channel and be sure to hit the bell notifications 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

2022-01-13 17:32

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