User-centered design practices are an effective method to design products. But who exactly are the users of your connected product? Usually, there are many more users of your product than what you typically think of in a first pass. This article provides a method to systematically identify all the users you need to think about when planning your product. Let’s suppose you are building a predictive maintenance solution for a commercial refrigerator. The product is for operations managers in restaurant…

The Internet of Things is coming fast (if it hasn't already) and isn't waiting for anyone. The challenge is when it will arrive and when should you release your IoT product. Perfecting Products Faster Traditional (physical) product design needs considerable cycle time to collect customer feedback, implement changes, and relaunch the product. It requires customer visits, taking time and resources. Then figuring out how to address those needs in your product takes even longer. The turn around time to release…

As profit margins shrink and consumer expectations rise, its more important than ever to optimize for quality in your operation, and reduce rejection rates. Fortunately, new smart factory technologies help manufacturers work smarter without increasing labour costs or materials costs. Today manufacturing organizations and their leaders can easily embrace available IoT-enabled smart manufacturing solutions. We share two manufacturer’s experiences on the impact of managing quality, reject rates, and rework; and four specific ways technology can help reduce reject rates. They…

The article will introduce how and why to build IoT solutions in Python using Zerynth and LiveIntersect IoT application enablement platform. Zerynth provides a software development suite that enables programming firmware in Python on 32-bit Microcontrollers and easy connectivity to LiveIntersect IoT Cloud. During this article you will learn: how microcontrollers are used in IoT and Industrial IoT applications (e.g. ESP32) how to use Python to read data from analog and digital sensors attached to a microcontroller powered by Zerynth;…

Zerynth is a suite of professional software tools that supports Python or hybrid C/Python firmware development for 32-bit microcontrollers and the most common prototyping and industrial boards(such as ESP32 and ESP8266, Arduino DUE and MKR1000, ST Nucleo, Particle Photon and Electron, Flip&Click, Quail, and more). Zerynth is designed for rapid integration with sensors, actuators, and cloud services and simplifies the development of embedded and IoT applications, also for non-embedded engineers. LiveIntersect, provides a complete solution to easily and securely connect,…

When writing or planning use cases and requirements for connected products, you have to consider new scenarios that don't apply to traditional products. We find that it's these new scenarios that often get overlooked early on, and cause re-work later on during development. The customer-lifecycle is a systematic approach that describes how customers will use your product from initial purchase to final retirement. This article describes the product lifecycle for IoT products which will make it easier to plan and…

So you have a new Smart Connected Product Idea and are looking to raise venture capital (VCs). This article summarizes some of the basics you should think about.   This article provides a VC's viewpoint, based on an interview with Philippe Cases, who has made over 150 investments. He provides his insights on how he thinks about investing in IoT.   The Team Market Product Risks Unfair advantage Review Meetings Investment Stages and Investment Size: Useful Links:   The Team…

Connected products have been very successful, new products such as freezers, airplane engines, coffee machines, to agriculture sensors are doing well.  Many product managers are figuring out how to capitalize on the opportunity, however, a major challenge is to forecast the revenue potential.  There clearly seems to be a market for internet-connected products, but at what price point? What kind of pricing structure is feasible for my users? This article will help you think through: ‘how much can you charge…

We are all facing competitive pressure. To be good, is not enough- you got to be different! – captivating and compelling to stand out in todays crowded marketplace. The number of competitors and number of products on the market is growing quickly in almost every sector. Well, you are not alone; this article will talk about why differentiation is so difficult for manufacturing and strategies on how to improve. While competition increases, many markets are growing and entirely new markets…