Connected Devices Weekly Update/2016-11-03

• This weeks updates
  • Engineers have received initial HW components (Temperature/Humidity & BLE) and started developing on them.
  • All Engineers are working towards Dec 16 milestones in the area of Cloud, App/Web and Hardware.
  • Will perform preliminary Rapid Risk Analysis with Security team on Friday Nov 5.
  • Created a SensorWeb mood board to define the direction of our project.

• Upcoming Tasks
  • Wk of Nov 7 - Share results from User Study #1 in Taipei
  • Mid/Late Nov - Kick off pricing sensitivity study in Taipei
  • Nov 10 - Brand meeting to review CD brand framework proposal

• Software Schedule - Dec 16 Milestone:
  • Firmware: Collect real data from sensors, transmit to cloud

  • Cloud: SensorThings API, receive and store sensor readings

  • Web: Ability to browse collected sensor readings
• Hardware Schedule
  • Nov 09 First working demo of Hardware embedded software
  • Nov 22 Working demos on demo boards
  • Nov 23 Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) ready for test
  • Dec 01 Sample boards ready for Mozilla

• Our check in with board later today on User Research 9 - prototype study
• Engineering team currently working on proof of concept work showing WebRTC on Beaglebone Black
• Planning in progress to do a voice message validation study

Design Document

• On track for 11/9 release for the first draft of the design document (aka White paper)
• Goal: Describe the high level architecture, requirements for Mozilla’s framework and various integration patterns to connect, secure, manage and use IoT devices. Provide solid technical backbone to claim stated differentiations for our proposed platform. (Open, secure, data ownership etc)
• Draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OrCRDCjIuG8OWMBhds8D5eSqJ1Fhl8yPK7U-oBk6V5I/edit#heading=h.aeqt1bhqabd7

Platform extraction

• Platform team in dialog with track 1 product teams on understanding possible reusable components, as well as abstractions needed.
• Current examples include
  • Communication/Security - (Game ON, Haiku using webRTC)
  • User mgmt - (Sensorweb, potentially some others like project Magnet?)
  • Mash up services (Project Magnet)

• This will help prioritizing the building & abstraction of reusable components to resource and timebox them.

Weekly Notes:

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yo1AtuozukgfkZwzO745LdEsB1fdZrEWoIYr8F9eydo/edit#heading=h.qgtmzupjdx35

• Code review of fisher/switchboard corpus and logging top ten lowest loss samples
• Writing the client portion of Deep Speech into TensorFlow
• Working on loading and parsing code for wiki text in Language Model
• Intro Deep Speech blog post outline completed
  • We want to communicate to the community on what the team has been up to since the transition off of Project Vaani
• Beginning Pre-Pipsqueak Work
  • Looking at ability to compress models
  • Tracking memory usage and GPU
• WER at 50% (http://doyouunderstand.me/)

Concept Validation Testing

• Study was started October 28th to test a couple concepts for the Abigail product: 1) Smart Family Tracker and 2) Smart Reminders for the Whole Family
• A Facebook campaign has been active since October 26th to test consumer interest using different product concepts. Data is coming in on how well this is driving consumers to Abigail product page.

• Revisiting how to produce a video to showcase all the functionality that Abigail can provide.

Engineering

• Spending this week ensuring end-to-end use cases work, testing code, bug fixing. Working on getting voice commands with user names working.
• Working on 5 prototype devices and preparing them for use in the study. Working on a problem identified with flaky accelerometer connections. Fixing a problem with loose jumper wires.

Abigail Study with Prototypes

• Finishing up work on a prototype study guide that will be used during the visits to participant homes.
• Scheduling participant sessions. The first will be held November 11th. Abigail team members will be interviewing the participants and observing their interactions with the Abigail prototypes through the week of November 14th.
• Study will include consumer interaction with the prototypes and collection of feedback regarding usage and responses to questions asked of the consumers.

Schedule

• Value proposition validation - Oct. 24 - early November
• Prototype development: month of October
• Assembly of devices: week of October 31
• Testing in homes: November 7 - 18
• Data synthesis from pilot and video/landing page studies: November 21 - 29
• Gate 1 pitch: November 30

Mozfest

• Project Magnet team
  • London team attended to the Science Fair (Friday), they presented Magnet app with the new Virtual Beacon experience. Warm welcome and really good one to one feedback.
  • Contacted to several storytellers interested in use Magnet as a channel to provide content in the future
• Mozfestation application: Dietrich, Liz and Katie run an experiment based on our app during Mozfest
  • With very small changes in the Magnet app (as adding a counter of the beacons discovered with mozfest URL), 100 beacons were distributed in the venues encouraging people to visit all the ideas and spaces at Mozfest to discover them.
  • With the info provided from Magnet server during the experiment, Mozfest team could track people movements and create a heat map of the spaces.
• The game was a success, and that's the reason we continue exploring the call of adventure (gamification) and completeness as possible features in the UX of Magnet to make it more engaging/compelling for future versions. Storytellers could also provide a reward encouraging people subscribed to their channels to visit more POIs

Magnet status

• This week we will finish our second sprint Sprint 7
  • In the client side Channels subscription is almost ready in iOS and Android and the team is working on the buzz notifications
  • Server side: most of the work done, still working on an issue regarding to the 'extra_metadata' returned from the content service.
  • Research product/solution fit: Landing page test for pre-signups and app downloads from Londoners is ready. Doing a small test run on the ads over next 2 day, then will choose and do a longer run.

• Gate 1 scheduled on Dec 21st

• Progress on WiFi camera integration (WPS/ONVIF)
• Progress on sensor integration (ZigBee)
• Identified some backup hardware options in case the current hardware doesn't meet our needs
• Helpful feedback on landing page experiment/survey from User Research (Thanks Rina/Mihaela!)
• Landing page created in Unbounce
• Finishing off creating survey in SurveyGizmo
• Waiting on input from Marketing including a potential Twitter ad campaign

Latest landing page design:

Gate 0 Pitch

• Gate 0 Pitch was presented to the PIB on October 27th.
• Game ON! was approved to proceed through Gate 0.
• Approval was granted to add a UX resource and an electrical engineering resource to the team.
• Gate 1 pitch: Mid January, 2017
• Wiki will be developed and made available
• Check in with the team in the #gameON IRC channel.

Engineering

• Work is now focused on building a PCB and eliminating all the wires currently necessary for connections.

• Looking at 3D printing with conductive ABS filament for possible experimentation with capacitive technologies for some of our accessories such as the spinner or figures.
• Working on dynamics for new games using existing simulator
• Game play is working end to end, and a demo of the game board has been recorded.

Research

• Continuing research into competitor products, possible game ideas.
• Continuing to identify the best use cases.

Consumer Studies

• Planning for prototype testing can proceed now that the project has Gate 0 approval.
• Team is consulting with the research team on development of a study to test consumer response to the product.

Engineering

• Lighthouse prototype was successfully demonstrated to leadership team this week.
• Voice prompts now in place to prompt user as to how to use the camera - photo capture, object description, confirmation
• Re-engineered how most of the background behind an object is removed to make the match easier and quicker.

User Studies

• Team has built prototypes to test over the next couple weeks with study participants who are blind. Finalizing the plan for how to conduct the prototype study and the questions to ask. Working on logistics for the shopping trip, use of the prototype, feedback to collect.
  • Shopping trip - Photos will be taken of items they need to buy while in the store, with the participants' descriptions of the items recorded and stored with the images.
  • Image matching session - Items purchased in the store will be brought to the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center to test the image matching.
• Product study with 25 participants - Session at the SCVBC scheduled for November 18th to gauge reaction to and to gain impressions of various form factors.

Schedule

• Complete development of prototype: October
• Assemble prototypes: Oct 31 - Nov 4
• Prototype pilot: Nov 7 - 18
• Data synthesis from pilot and video/landing page studies: November 21 - 29
• Gate 1 pitch: November 30

• Amazon & Alexa
  • Alexa now works with Logitech's Harmony Hub
  • Alexa will be available on Amazon Fire tablets
  • Amazon expanded the Dash program to include more products and more countries

• Air pollution
  • When pollution levels rise in Manhattan, stocks take a dive, according to a study from researchers at the University of Ottawa and Columbia University. One standard deviation increase in air pollution decreases returns by 11.9%. The research follows on previous findings of a link between the Air Quality Index and stock returns on fours US exchanges.
  • Several government officials in the Shanxi province of China have been arrested in connection with an effort to mislead and falsify air quality data. They are accused of obscuring the filters with cotton to purify the air samples taken by the air quality stations.

• IoT platforms & security
  • Samsung expanded its ARTIK IoT platform with 2 new modules: one for low-power and cost-optimized devices and one for high-end gateways and multimedia applications. The modules are designed to work out of the box with the Samsung ARTIK Cloud, an open data-exchange platform which allows device manufacturers to monitor and manage both end-points and gateways.
  • Microsoft introduced a Security Program for the Azure IoT platform. The program brings together a curated set of security auditors that developers can choose from to perform a security audit on their IoT solutions, find issues and provide recommendations. The Security Program for Azure IoT will work from the ground up, examining everything from a businesses’ devices and assets to gateways and even communication to the cloud.
  • Intel announced its latest generation of Atom processors for IoT applications. The chipsets are optimized to enable some of the processing needs of IoT systems to happen at or near the data sensor to alleviate the need to push all processing to the data center.