What does IoT mean for your consumer business?

Question: To warmup a bit, could you please tell us a bit about your role here in Cozify?

Antti: I am responsible for business development, which in practice means working with our channel partners to introduce smart home solutions to their customers.

Question: Internet of Things (IoT) has been around some time and the hype around it has been huge. Why IoT is relevant to me?

Antti: IoT affects our everyday life already today, even though we don't necessary recognize it. For businesses, IoT is a huge megatrend that is sweeping across industries creating opportunities for increased operational efficiency and data driven business logic.

From the consumers point of view, for example TV's, amplifiers, speakers, game consoles are connected to the internet. It starts to be difficult to buy devices that are not somehow connected. The issue is most of them are point solutions that are good in the one thing they are designed for. This results in a clutter of apps in the smartphone and none of them interact with each other, thus wasting a lot potential benefits.

Question: What kind of benefits do you mean?

Antti: Well, you may already have a wireless multi-room speaker system, such as Sonos. And then you might have a Belkin Wemo motion sensor. Wouldn’t it be nice to make them play together? You would want to turn on the music when you walk into the kitchen at a time when you typically prepare food. Or play a loud dog bark when you are not around and there’s movement on the porch.

Obviously just the imagination is the limit once you start exploring the possibilities. Use cases can range from convenience to security to energy efficiency. For example, motion sensors are very handy in many cases: it is possible to automate lights as you move around the house and have the right kind of light based on the time of day/sunrise/sunset/darkness level. Or movement can trigger video recording if nobody is supposed to be at home.

Question: I’m interested in saving energy. How can I do it without compromising comfort?

Antti: If you have an air-to-air heat pump (like they are called here in Scandinavia) or an air conditioner, you probably don’t want the AC to run when the door has been left open for more than a minute. Or only heat the room or house when somebody is around. When devices are connected, everything happens automatically and best part is, it is remarkably easy to adjust rules and scenes whenever you want.

Question: What about data security?

Antti: That really is a hot topic and it makes sense to have a bit of patience to look at the implementation. Some systems rely entirely on cloud services, i.e. all the data is transferred to a remote server, which then determines what should be done with it. This could be a bit of a risk if you value your privacy or reliability of the system. I would recommend looking at products that are based on a hub that resides in your home. This way it is possible to make it more secure and much more responsive as it doesn’t rely on your internet connection.

To ensure everything is in order from the security point of view, we conduct security audit at least once a year, where third party company completes a full security review of our backend, hub software and mobile application. If issues are found, everything is fixed and audit is done again. This way we can be sure all possible issues are fixed and the security is not compromised.

Question: Can service providers benefit from IoT?

Antti: Yes, definitely. It is possible to start offering smart home as a service to your consumer customers and complement your current offering. Once your customers get used to the perks of the system, it is unlikely that they want to churn to another service provider. This way you can increase customer stickiness and be relevant in their everyday life. There is strong evidence that this increases your Net Promoter Score.

Question: Great! Are there any other benefits?

Antti: There are examples where the core business benefits directly from the smart home. Take e.g. the insurers: they can offer their customers an open smart home system that is making their life more comfortable every day while protecting against water leaks, fires and burglaries. The insurer saves on the number and value of claims and can proactively take care of repairs if the damage happens.

It is also good to remember the IoT derived data is the potential bonanza for the service providers. With careful analysis, it is possible to segment your customers very specifically and offer only relevant services to them. For the insurance industry, this paves the way towards usage based property insurance products. However, one must be extremely conscious about communicating the benefits the consumer can expect in exchange of submitting data generated in his home to a 3rd party. Naturally, we don't share our users' data in any way without asking permission to do so from our users. And all shared data must be anonymized anyways.

Question: Sounds interesting, where can I find out more?

Antti: Cozify is a Finnish consumer IoT startup that has developed a full-stack smart home solution. We sell our solution directly to consumers while building our channel partner network internationally. If you’d like to learn more in your consumer role, feel free to explore our website http://en.cozify.fi/. For your business needs, just head to http://en.cozify.fi/pages/for-partners or request a meeting with me (antti@cozify.fi).

Antti Vihavainen
Business Development & Sales, Cozify Oy

ZigBee devices - Overview

One of the most popular technologies for wireless smart home communication is ZigBee, Z-Wave being its closest competitor. Both are several generations ahead in features compared to the classic radio based wireless remote control devices that operate e.g. on the 433 MHz radio band.

ZigBee offers a robust communication channel between the devices so that each message can be either delivered successfully or the failure to do so is detected and reacted upon. Another great advantage is the mesh networking capability where each mains powered device propagates and routes the messages to extend the range of the Zigbee network.

ZigBee radio operates with low power consumption which enables the devices to be running on batteries. The radio communication is encrypted to secure your home from hackers or from unintentional controlling.

Cozify & ZigBee

We at Cozify have had good experiences with ZigBee devices in general. All devices are tested thoroughly before official support is announced. Recommendations are only given to devices that are proven to work reliably.

Here are our top-3 ZigBee device recommendations of March 2017:

Philips Hue Lights

Philips Hue lights are stylish and most reliable wireless lights we’ve met so far. Available as bulbs, table tops, wall/ceiling lamps and led strips.

Philips Hue Motion

Affordable, reliable and stylish motion detector, that also comes with an in-built temperature and daylight sensor.

Osram Lightify Plug

Reliable, simple to use power plug.

Tips'n'Tricks

Before moving into solving problems and issues, it is important to emphasize the easiness of installation and use, and most often design of modern ZigBee devices. In most cases, ZigBee devices are reliable. However, like with everything where software is involved, we sometimes face problems and need a few useful tips to recover.

1. Once taken into use, Zigbee devices are rather reliable. But in case issues are faces, first thing is to check, and if needed, replace the battery. 
2. This is simple and sounds obvious, but bring the device closer to the hub. If this improves the reliability, then either the distance between the device and the hub is too long, or the signal is blocked by for example a wall.
3. Always ensure that all your Zigbee devices are on. Sometimes lamp or bulb is switched off, which means the mesh network might get broken. If the lamp which is switched off is crucial node of your mesh network, other devices connected to the hub through these devices, will be unavailable.
4. Sometimes the Zigbee mesh network needs to be rebuild. Devices don't always route the signal from and to the hub optimal way. To rebuild Zigbee mesh network, turn all your Zigbee devices on, unplug the Cozify Hub, and leave it off 10 to 15 minutes. This is something that might help if newly added devices don't work reliably. Or if issues begin when you change the location of your Zigbee devices.
5. A bit more advanced way to do troubleshooting is to ensure the Zigbee channel the hub uses is as free of wifi networks as possible. Please check out this article for troubleshooting tips. If channels collide, try changing either the hub or wifi router channel as far from each other as possible. The channel Cozify Hub uses can be changed from the Cozify app (settings). Note, that if you change the Cozify Hub Zigbee channel from the app, you must re-pair all your Zigbee devices.

Security of the technology 

Even with encryption all the wireless devices suffer from the fact that the radio signals can be jammed by skillful hackers. Then it is up to the system’s design to decide what happens when a device becomes unreachable; does it make an alarm or just plays “robust” to device failures and ignores them. The security of Zigbee devices in general is good. For the absolute highest level of security (and reliability), we suggest installing wired sensors, for example FutureNow relay units, for places that are prone to attract skilled burglars. For the rest of us, the wireless sensors are great for keeping the home secure from unwanted visitors.

ZigBee vs Z-Wave comparison

Although very similar, there are a few differences between the ZigBee and Z-Wave technologies. The prices have come down a lot over the past few years on both device families, and they will continue to drop, but still the Z-wave devices are a bit more expensive. For the money, the end users have enjoyed a better interoperability between the Z-wave certified devices. ZigBee is an open standard and the increased competition has had an impact on the pricing.

ZigBee uses the same radio channel as WiFi and can therefore potentially cause interference. Z-Wave uses unlicensed radio bands that are different in EU and USA due to their regulations. That’s why the end users' needs to select the correct version of their devices. On paper Z-wave has a slightly longer range and ZigBee has a higher data rate, but in real-life these differences are not noticeable.

Both protocols have evolved during the past years to be closer to each other in feature wise. In the end, it boils down to the support available in the selected smart home system. At this very moment, the Cozify Hub supports ZigBee out of the box and the support for the Z-Wave is coming soon. The hub has already all the needed hardware inside, so only a software update is needed for all the existing Cozify users to begin using Z-Wave devices, once it is available.

Read more about Cozify Hub and supported devices from our home page, www.cozify.fi

Cozify News: Security Challenge 2016 - Summary

Cozify participated the Information Challenge finals hosted by Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority November 2016. Event was part of Junction Hackatlon -2106, where tech enthusiasts meet, design and develop ideas into actual projects with like-minded hackers. Cozify and a few other companies gave their smart home hub and supported devices for the teams to hack. The target for each team was to find as many security vulnerabilities as possible during the given time.

The results were as we expected. The feedback we received from the teams was excellent quality and most importantly, the teams could not break the security of our system during the event.

“It was interesting to follow how different teams work. I think it is important to offer challenges like this for talented and extremely professional young hackers to really show what they can do. Good result was not a huge surprise for us. We audit all components of our solutions at least yearly, including Cozify Hub, Cozify application, and our backend systems. Security is top priority for us and have been taken into consideration from the begin.”, says Kimmo Ruotoistenmäki, CEO, Cozify.

This was the first-time Security Challenge event was organized. “We are happy to join security challenge event also in the future, if such events are arranged. To challenge yourself and the way how you work time to time is always useful. And if security issues are found, it is better to find possible those in controlled environment and fix immediately, compared to some vague notifications. This was a great event and we want to thank Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority for taking care of all the arrangements.”, he continues.

The aim for the security challenge was to challenge teams to solve information security related questions and search vulnerabilities from different kind of systems; devices, applications, backend systems, and combinations of these all. “Security challenge was a huge success, not only because teams were talented and highly professional, but also because of great support from companies who joined the challenge. During the event it was obvious, that there are huge differences between companies and products in means of security. Companies coming from Finland tend to take security more seriously compared to other similar companies. Still, there are always something need to be improved, and companies must develop their own security competence all the time.", says Jarkko Saarimäki, director of cyber security centre, Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority.

Espoo, 16. February 2017

Cozify and security - our approach

In the latter half of 2016, the general media started publishing articles about the security level of the IoT devices. There was also a story (case Mirai) about a massive bot attack that used millions of cheap Chinese IP-cameras to block the internet traffic and caused some of the biggest Internet services to go down for a while. Furthermore, a group of hackers used drones to hijack Philips Hue lights in November 2016. In this post we explain our approach regarding the security issues. Keep on sending comments and questions to us, we are more than pleased to help and reply.

Cozify uses the internet connection to enable remote access for the users to control their devices and to update its own hub software from time to time. However, the architecture has been built in a way, that Cozify Hub can control devices at home without an internet connection. This way the home owners don't have to rely on their internet connection.

All the traffic that goes through Cozify to the internet is encrypted. We use JWT-token based technology to identify authorized users' devices from the unauthorized ones.

To ensure that the Cozify security is on the required level, our solution; meaning the application, the hub software and the backend, has been designed in co-operation with industry security experts. To ensure the level of security is at the best possible level - we also conduct a security audit at least once a year. The audit is done by 3rd party independent professionals.

In addition to the audits, we participated in a security challenge arranged by the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority in November 2016. The main idea was to give our hub software, application and backend to teams of security experts all around the country, which then tried to find and break the security measures in all possible ways. The teams did find some minor issues, but no serious vulnerabilities were not found. We consider that as a good result. On a side note, we have already fixed the found issues.

Redundant backend

Like most of the companies today, we don't have our own datacentre to run the servers required by our back-end systems. We are currently using Amazon’s data centres in Ireland for IaaS (Infrastructure-As-A-Service). Amazon guarantees 99.95% availability for the E2 and we’ve had very good experiences with Amazon over the years with only one service outage in five years. It is important to keep in mind though, that it's much more important to have a redundant and scalable setup, than a high SLA for a single server or a single location.

Data privacy of the Cozify users

Our customer data is stored on Amazon's European data centres that have more strict security policies and conditions than for example the servers located in US. All our employees and subcontractors have signed a confidentiality agreement, and our core developers have a Security Clearance with the Finnish government.

We examine anonymous log data to improve our service and to run overall health checks, and to fix bugs. We look into customer data only when its required. We always ask for permission or inform the user if we access hub log files.

We do have plans to utilize data we collect from our users, but that will be strictly anonymised. One possible scenario for user data usage is to compare for example heating stats between different users. Or how certain rules or devices have been used. It is important to note that all such data mining is anonymised when we are looking for trends in these kind of scenarios.

All in all, we will communicate our privacy policies as clearly and transparently as possible, and ask for permission from the user to use of their data.

Conclusion

We follow and measure all the possible latest security aspects you can expect from any service holding some of your personal data. On that regards, your data is in good and safe hands once the data reaches our service.

The question you might have is, that if Cozify ensures the security from Cozify’s end? What about other IoT devices that are connected to Cozify Hub? The base rule is that the more advanced technology the device is built on, the higher standards it also has out of the box, in terms of security.

Out of the devices that Cozify supports, the more affordable 433MHz devices have the lowest security level. The ZigBee, WiFi, Z-Wave and Bluetooth devices are more secure in general. The level of quality and security often goes hand in hand.

For additional in-depth interview with Kimmo, our CEO, about the subject, visit the interview conducted by wccftech.com here: http://wccftech.com/review/launch-review-cozify-smart-home/2/

Cozify now and tomorrow

Controlling home appliances and smart devices with smartphones and tablets is finally becoming mainstream. This development has been enabled by the decreasing price of connectivity and widespread utilization of the advanced features of smartphones. 

However, these are usually separate islands of functionality and therefore a link between them is needed.  

In this blog post we are going to take a peek into the great features of Cozify hub.

Cozify home automation is a new way to control the appliances and smart devices at home. You can automate things to happen based on time, movement, start or stop of an appliance or many other triggers.

We have paid special attention to the set-up process. You don’t have to hire an electrician for the installation, since everything is plug and play.

When you start the application for the first time, it searches for smart devices and connects them automatically. It also comes with pre-installed themes and rules that are typical for us all: home, night and away. It is very easy to add rules to the themes, or create new themes according to your preferences. 

BelowI've listed a few examples how you can improve your life using beautiful Cozify home automation.

Pleasant wake-up

Tired of being woken up abruptly with an unfriendly alarm? Just set the Cozify Hub to start gently raising the brightness of your smart lights in the bedroom. After a while the system can start playing your favorite music from Sonos loudspeakers. 

Worried about leaving the iron on?

Never mind, now you can check the status of all electric appliances that are connected to the smart wall plug even if you are not at home. If you want to automate this, you can set the maximum time a smart plug can stay on thus eliminating the danger of overheating of the iron or any other electric appliance. 

Welcome home 

Lights turn on and music start flowing when you come home. Your home welcomes you the way you want. 

Motion guard

You get notification when your child comes home from school. You can also set the system to notify you if it detects any movement when nobody should be at home.

Party or romantic moment?

You can set the color of lights, brightness and music to match your mood.

What next?

All of the above will be available at the time of launch. However, we have no intention to stay put. 

The first new area to be covered later this spring is home security. By adding window and door sensors, cameras and smoke sensors you can increase security significantly. A smart water valve can sense even a small leak and shut down the water supply in order to minimize damage while Cozify Hub sends a notification to you. 

Later on we’ll expand to energy efficiency and heating. Smart thermostats benefit from the information Cozify Hub can provide about the usage of the house and external conditions. 

All of this will be added to the existing system thus creating a truly silo-breaking solution. 

Supported devices 

Cozify has no intention to re-invent the wheel when it comes to smart devices. Quite the contrary – we support the best-of-breed products that you would be buying anyway. For the moment we have chosen to start with Sonos wireless speakers, Osram Lightify lights and bulbs, Belkin Wemo smart electricity plugs and Philips Hue lights. 

We have not limited the number of devices that can be connected to the system. If you already have connected devices, chances are they are already supported. 

In fact, the Cozify web shop is open, so hurry up and get a sample of our earlybird edition. 

Are we crazy enough to change the world?

We are implementing a new, revolutionary home automation service. Our product will wirelessly connect and control the technology and devices in your home.

To create it requires design, software, hardware, communication, customer support, and logistics.  This all inspires us but on the other hand, requires a tremendous amount of work. How is a new product or service born and how does it develop further? How do we build our product?

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Steve Jobs

Many practices and methodologies have been proposed especially for start-up companies: Agile methods, Lean Startup, etc. These trendy approaches have a couple of common factors that, together with our own experience, form the basis of our philosophy at Cozify

 Do, learn, and re-do

The worst pitfalls can be avoided through the application of professional skills and reliance on experience. Even so, mistakes happen and we should not be afraid of them. The most important part is to learn and do things better the next time. For example, the first printed 3D model of our hub’s plastic case couldn’t be considered as a sales version. But we improved the process and the next versions came out much better.

The only thing that persists is change

So we don’t get too attached to the things we’ve made. Instead, our tools and practices have been selected to allow for change. For example, our hub that will sit in user’s home will be able to automatically download the latest features and bug fixes over the network, so that functioning can be improved as rapidly as possible.

Get your hands dirty

We don’t have managers. We are all experts in our own areas, and we do a lot together as well. The CEO works on the technical design, developers participate in discussions about the business model, and everyone takes part in analyzing marketing statistics. Close co-operation requires some effort to mesh different personalities and professional viewpoints. But at its best, successful work done in such a team provides well-balanced results and satisfaction for all participants.

Listen

We are not building this product for ourselves. We are building the best possible home automation service for our customers. So we need to know what they want. During the earliest planning days, we collected feedback by showing our user interface sketches to total strangers in downtown Helsinki. As might be expected, it took some effort to capture the interest of busy passers-by, but we eventually received valuable and encouraging comments and feedback.

More recently we have begun collecting feedback through our discussion forum.  This is a new channel to publish topics and information about home automation and our services. We invite you to contribute and make an impact. Share your thoughts, let us know how you’d like home automation to work. Pilot users will have their own section as well.

And of course, please don’t hesitate to contact us directly if you happen to be interested in commercial co-operation, working for us, or becoming a pilot customer.

-Kimmo-
Kimmo Ruotoistenmäki is the CEO and one the founders of Cozify Oy

Mood, Security and Efficiency with Smart Homes

Everyone wants their home to be cozy and secure, and only a few are willing to pay more than absolutely necessary. Wireless control of the devices and technology in our homes will soon be an ordinary part of our everyday lives. However, preferences vary from one family to another, and the home is a personal place that we want to reflect our needs and interests.

Cozify aims to bring wireless automation and “smartness” to homes in a way that is sensitive to these more personal aspects. We’re focusing on three main areas: Mood, Security, and Efficiency.

Mood

So what makes a cozy home atmosphere? It grows from what we see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. We perceive it with all of our instincts. The Cozify team will not focus on kitchen cabinetry or upholstery fabrics - there are other experts in those areas. Instead, our product will, for example, tune the lights including color, temperature, or brightness. Easily. Through use of motion detection and clock- and calendar-awareness, lighting and also sound can be provided when needed to suit the situation. To see how it can work, let’s take a tour through an example scene.

Mikko gets off his bus after work and heads home. Walking up the stairs to his door, the kitchen and hallway lighten up to welcome him home. A selection from his music collection starts to play in the background at a moderate volume. Now it is good time to prepare a sandwich. Susanna arrives a bit later with a new ball of wool and sits down in her favorite spot for needlework. With all the gear already on her lap, she needs more light for her activity. She picks up her smart phone and chooses the “Needlework” theme. This immediately brightens up living room, but only the surroundings of her working spot. Soon the couple sits down on couch, one with her needles, the other enjoying his sandwich.

Security

Our service secures the home as well as its inhabitants. Security can be enhanced, for example, by monitoring the house in real time and sending alarms when measures exceed their normal limits. There are lots of applications in the field of security. Let’s see how Helena is doing with her service:

It is very early morning, and a taxi is waiting. Helena hurriedly finishes packing her carry-on for a four day work trip as a air hostess to Asia. Then she closes the door and rushes to the parking lot. Stepping into the cab, she catches a glimpse of all the lights in her house turning down, and her smart phone notifies that remote monitoring is turned on. During the evenings while she is away, some of the lights will turn on for a couple of hours, and she’ll be able to check the situation inside the house through a camera. With her mind at peace, Helena turns her thoughts to the flying job ahead.

Efficiency

The home works efficiently when the costs for reaching the desired level of comfort are minimal.  Our product will be able to monitor and control heating and cooling via smart interfaces as well as provide historical statistics on usage and cost.  Eventually, the service itself will be able to use this data to provide concrete advice on how to save energy and optimize settings. One more example:

Jonna and Petri have just arrived home with their kids, Julia and Joona. Petri stays outside talking with their neighbor for a while.  The conversation turns to heating bills, since it has been a cold winter and they both have electric heating, which tends not to be as efficient when called upon for heavy use. Petri has had some success in controlling costs however, by using his smart home system to define separate temperature levels for each room based on needs at different times of the day.  And of course in addition the entire house gets turned down during the longer times while the family is away and the Cozify “Away from home”-theme is active.  No one needs to come home to a cold house because of this though, because the “Arriving home” -theme automatically activates on a schedule to prepare to welcome the family with warm rooms.  Petri tells his neighbor that so far it looks like they might save up to 15-20% over their costs from the previous winter without the Cozify system installed.

In sum, Cozify wants to nurture the Mood, Safety, and the Efficiency of every home. We are aiming high, so that the threshold for adoption will be low.

That is why we’d like to hear from you:
• What does Mood, Security and Efficiency mean for you?
• How would you like your home to work?
• Any other ideas or comments on this blog or on home automation in general.

Please visit our Facebook pages to comment.

We are enthusiastically waiting for your thoughts.

-Sanna Mari-
Sanna Mari Alppivuori from Cozify-team focuses on marketing and customers