Internet of Things (IoT) and SAFE net

How will the IoT and SAFE work or is there no compatibility?

The companies building these things are also building their own clouds. Which means it’s not secure. What solutions can SAFE offer this space? Say for example someone from one of these large companies was reading this forum, what would you say to them about this topic?

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IoT is a pretty good fit I’d say. There is no blockchain to store, so good in that regard for embedded devices with limited storage. By having a SAFE account’s credentials stored on the device, it can login and save data to the network, send micro transactions, etc.

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When we get a nice fix for divisibility then I’d say SAFE becomes the perfect fit for IoT - feeless, endlessly scalable, instant txs, secure etc. Even purpose built crypto like IOTA (that doesn’t use blockchain and does scale) has to use PoW and could never be instant (even though it has no fees and suits nano-txs). It’s also not as secure because it’s more centralised than SAFE.

There’s nothing I’ve ever heard of that would be a better fit for IoT really - assuming divisibility doesn’t move any goal posts.

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What do you mean by divisibility?

SAFEcoins need to be divided. Unlike simple entries on a ledger (which can be divided very easily) SAFEcoin is a more complicated challenge because it’s an actual piece of data.

The problem isn’t that big and some of the brighter sparks on this forum have already suggested pretty cool solutions. We don’t know how MAIDSAFE will play it yet though. Hopefully we’ll find out in a few months :wink:

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IoT has a few options and some depends on the application. Many see IoT as the fridge/aircon/etc talking to your web browser, but it is so much more than this and the applications are so varied that really to answer your question fully it would need to be qualified with the application. Here is a overview though.

IoT devices like the fridge/aircon/similar

With the proliferation of small cheap ARM systems that are really small computers (phone/tablet/CHIP/RPi/etc) these devices will be able to run the full node/vault and thus interface fully with SAFE and even could earn coin if the developers were to include the vault s/w, or if the IoT is running say Android/linux you could do it yourself.

IoT devices like house alarm/sensors/billions of other small devices

NOTE: I included house alarms because these are usually the cheap and nasty IoT devices that send their info to a central server to do the real work.

These devices are more likely to small processors and the $5 cost of an ARM and memory is too much, so in these cases to interface with SAFE they will most likely be only sending/receiving messages and/or storing data in files/MDs. At this time the processors in these devices will not be compatible with SAFE official code but hopefully the more powerful devices could perhaps cross compile the code required for messaging and perhaps storing data. If not then there is likely to be a “gateway” device because these devices are unlikely to talk to the internet by themselves anyhow. In that case the “gateway” device can hold the code for the other devices. The “smart” home security system will be similar to this.

Thus the capable device in the local IoT device network will/should be able to integrate with SAFE if the developer designs it in.

There are many other types of IoT devices but this should give you an idea of one way how IoT devices can use SAFE.

The obvious advantages of using SAFE are preserved and is a major improvement over the current security IoT devices use. Things like being certain of the source of a message to essentially being dark devices that cannot be simply discovered by port scanning.

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I’d like to automate my home at some point with ESP-8266 chips (cheap microcontroller with WiFi built in). Traditionally people use MQTT or maybe a cloud service to send the status of the sensor tied to that chip to a central monitor. It would be cool to get a SAFE client running on those chips to send out the data…maybe I’ll give it a try sometime. SAFE could also be used in the monitor app to send out notifications. Who needs IFTTT!?

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I doubt they have enough program storage. Maybe get a small SBC (single board computer) with WiFi and ethernet. Make the WiFi into an access point and load up SAFE code onto the SBC (maybe add some hard drive space for a vault) to process the info to/from the 8266 chips and act as an intelligent controller with maybe a touch screen.

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You said cheap devices without memory could run no vault and only interact with safe to store data.
I can follow to the point where there are preconfigured credentials for each device but how would you pay for the storage? People need to upload safecoin ?
Ki
Personally I believe big corps will fork safenet and strip the coin part totally.
Maybe I’m totally wrong we’ll see…

Edit: Wich brings me to the point that stripping the coin means a vulnerable network :slightly_smiling_face: haha forgot too

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Hmm ya, you’re probably right. I remember that was one of people’s main complaints with that chip. I think there was another model that has more space…Will have to investigate. Your solution would be easiest

Someone needs to keep the credit on the account used by the client topped up, so it would be fine.

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Ya, you’d need to send the devices a bit of SAFEcoin once in awhile. All the devices could share the same account for a given project probably. Or not. Up to you

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There is talk (many months ago) that it might be possible to specify some coins that the network can automatically use to pay for PUTs when a coin is needed to be spent to get balance.

Also there is no reason that if you have a number of IoT devices that you would not also have a computer or more capable device do the tasks required to get coins to pay for storage. Same as the person who has a home security system pays the company to receive and act on the sensors in your home. So the person would transfer coins to the IoT account and the less capable device just keep sending messages.

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So many manufacturers and service providers are developing or have developed their own clouds which they are connecting to these devices and similar technologies.

How is SAFE better than the security and privacy offered by say for example: GE’s Predix, Miele’s Grandcentrix, Mercedes & Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Amazons AWS cloud services etc.

True but for mass uptake as in the IoT markets pretty much owned by the worlds biggest manufacturers you need ease of use, plug and play. When Mrs Jones pay hard earned $$$ for a microwave oven and she wants to benefit from say voice and speech recognition to tell it to cook her popcorn she doesnt want to have to connect it to her computer if it takes more that 3 seconds or is more that one step such as pressing a button.

For existing mass markets (not just IoT) to come to SAFEnetwork requires those manufacturers and other large businesses to see SAFEnetwork as a superior solution to their needs, or a threat that if they don’t use someone else will.

In reality, incumbents often fail to see this before it’s too late, so perhaps more likely are smaller businesses that innovate by building on SAFEnetwork, which then grow and eventually compete with the incumbents.

This is the long game though. And first we need a network! :slight_smile:

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Very much what @happybeing said is what would happen

If Mrs Jones doesn’t pay her bills then even the big companies would stop working.

Mrs Jones has to pay the Electricity & Water & Internet Utility Bills, Plus a number of other bills (Rego, Petrol, Food, Etc) So when SAFE is at that stage it will be recognised as another BIll to pay (likely automatically with some APP the same as people can bPay schedule other bills)

So really the worse is an additional utility bill that has to be paid and most likely an automatic bill.

BTW a microwave with that smarts would be running a vault and quite likely paying for itself. The work of IoT devices is very small compared what a typical household would be uploading each week (photos, mailings, documents, etc) So paying for the households SAFE bill would involve much more than just the IoT devices and become part of the bill paying.

In isolation yes it might become a burden to pay an extra bill just to run one IoT device, but in the context of a household and its bills and SAFE usage the IoT devices are just a blip in the overall SAFE “Bill”

Well yeah but it all comes down to security and until these companies start to get hacked, law suites happen and they lose money like Chrysler https://www.wired.com/2015/07/jeep-hack-chrysler-recalls-1-4m-vehicles-bug-fix/ . We can build apps and add connectivity on our network and they can do the same on their clouds. The point is security and privacy. That is the key.

There are so many intrusion points in most cloud systems. CloudFoundry > Oracle > Messaging > Data exfiltration etc… and most rely solely on separation encryption + separation GE's New Cloud May Be the Most Tempting Hacker Bait Ever | WIRED