We started the discussion with the announcement of an upcoming deployment of particulate matters sensors in Dallas. Prior presenter David Lary is leading a pilot project called Geolocated Allergen Sensing Platform, or GASP, that will deploy a network of new, advanced sensors to detect asthma-aggravating particulate matter and pollen at ten schools in the Dallas area. The sensors also will gather air-quality data such as location, temperature, pressure, humidity and levels of six other pollutants. He credits the strong involvement of the Applied Research Center as well.

We referenced last month’s discussion of Oral Roberts University’s mandate that incoming freshmen wear and sync FitBit data. Recently, Qualcomm teamed with UnitedHealthcare for reduced insurance premium for employees who wore fitness tracker and had a confirmed level of activity.

The event continued with keynote speaker Adam Prengler of Intel. Adam started with a general outlook of the IoT space: by 2020 the forecasted 50 billion “things” will generate 300% more traffic across “fog” and “cloud”; by 2018 the network will be 50% constrained which will determine data to be stored, processed, analyzed and acted upon at the edge, in what effectively means that “the edge is the gateway”. Adam talked about Intel’s direction in standardizing the IoT Gateway for several goals, like performance benefits with near real-time analysis at the edge; manageability via remote upgrades and faster, more flexible deployment. He then continued with a discussion of the Core/Atom/Quark processor base, delving into details about the Quark 32-bit SoCs family, ex. D1000, D2000, Quark SE. These are small form, low power, integrated security devices that enable customers to create a plethora of solutions, from wearables (with ultra low power D1000, which the Curie uses) to deep learning industrial applications (with Quark SE). Adam closed with information on the IoT Solutions Alliance that has to date resulted in 48 Quark solutions.

The event ended with our host, Aligned Data Centers of Plano, giving members in attendance a quick facility tour.