Amazon Sidewalk Is a New Long-Range Wireless Network For Your IoT Devices (techcrunch.com) 46
At its annual hardware event in Seattle, Amazon today announced Sidewalk, a new low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless protocol the company is developing to connect all of the IoT devices in and around your house. TechCrunch reports: Amazon argues that Bluetooth and WiFi don't have enough range, while 5G takes too much power and is too complex. "We came up with something that we call Amazon Sidewalk," Amazon's device chief Dave Limp said at the event today. "Amazon Sidewalk is a brand new low bandwidth network that uses the already existing free over the air 900 megahertz spectrum. We think it will be great for keeping track of things, keeping things up to date -- but first and foremost, it will extend in the distance at which you can control these kinds of simple, low-cost, easy-to-use devices.
The details here remain a bit vague, but Amazon says that you may be able to use Sidewalk to connect to devices that can be up to a mile away, depending on how the base station and devices are positioned. Amazon already sent out 700 test devices to households in L.A. to test the access points -- and once you have a lot of access points, you create a network with some pretty broad coverage. Amazon says it'll publish the protocol so that other device makers can also integrate it into their devices.
The details here remain a bit vague, but Amazon says that you may be able to use Sidewalk to connect to devices that can be up to a mile away, depending on how the base station and devices are positioned. Amazon already sent out 700 test devices to households in L.A. to test the access points -- and once you have a lot of access points, you create a network with some pretty broad coverage. Amazon says it'll publish the protocol so that other device makers can also integrate it into their devices.
cat tracker please (Score:1)
omg please make a cat tracker that works. i've tried several and they're all crap. my cat likely stays within a mile of my house, so this would be great!
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I've seen the cat eyeballing me when I perform the weekly dumping of the cat litter ceremony.
I now believe she's thinking "WTF does he do with my shit?"
Handling and disposing of the cat shit is only depressing until you realize that you can't teach the mice you'd have instead to shit in one place.
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Hey, at least it's not a dog and you aren't handling any fresh shit, even with your hand covered by a plastic bag, when taking the dog out for a walk.
I don't understand why we feel that it's acceptable for dogs to be urinating everywhere (assuming that the owners pick up the crap, which they don't always do). People complain when cats do it or other animals make a mess. It's certainly not acceptable for a human to do it. But for some reason a person taking a dog around for a walk and it has become fine for
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I saw a moose once in a city park...
A Møøse once bit my sister . . .
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A MÃÃse once bit my sister . . .
Better than a mÃÃse shitting on your sister.
Unless she's into that, no judgement.
Because they are dogs? (Score:1)
It's not like they can piss in one place.
Also, they don't just piss, but literally mark their territory. Which is a key part of a mentally healthy dog.
If you can't offer a territory, then quite frankly, it should be illegal for you to own a dog. (Owning pets is quite fucked-up on its own already.)
Just like it should be illegal to own a cat that can't go outside and roam some nature. (Including it coming back because it wants to!) Keeping it confined to an apartment definitely is torture, and such cats are a
Re: Because they are dogs? (Score:2)
Agreed. While many pet owners offer an appropriate environment for their pets, I think it would be better all round if Humans were just prohibited from keeping other mammals like property anyway.
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It may not be socially acceptable, but it's usually legal (if someone can avoid indecent exposure)... most "stoop and scoop" laws are written so narrowly as to specifically apply to dog shit, and occasionally horse shit if there's a history of problems.
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"WTF does he do with my shit?"
More likely, "Pitiful."
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Heh heh... nailed it.
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Combine it with a paintball gun and a camera and have some fun.
Zigbee and Zwave (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have 2 low-bandwidth, low-power 900 MHz protocols. Does the world really need another?
Seems like they would be better off working on extending the distance for an existing protocol, while still complying with FCC transmit power caps [afar.net].
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Did someone invent another standard [xkcd.com]?
Re: Zigbee and Zwave (Score:2)
I wanted to buy a Zwave door lock, but while their new crypto was good their old standard was totally broken and they kept extending mandatory upgrade deadlines until I gave up and lost interest.
These are door locks with trivially-hackable crypto, for Pete's sake. The standards org was in it for the vendors, not the consumers, to the point that people like me decided to buy nothing from those vendors.
One would hope Amazon would run a tighter shop and iterate frequently to meet the needs of the market.
IIRC
Two unrelated things. (Score:2)
Those are just networking standards. They are not there to keep things secure (beyond basic network security like WPA*). That is the job of the individual device.
As in: I expect a WiFi door lock to use e.g. HTTPS and a proper login on its web UI on top of WPA2 or better.
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Much of the consumer market doesn't have a compelling reason to add security, they think that pre shared keys, ala WiFi, is good enough. Security is hard and therefore it delays time to market.
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Right, because a reasonable threat model for your house is being burgled by the hackers from 90s movies. I mean c'mon, what are the chances that someone who has sufficient skill and time to break your weak crypto (yes, even downloading and compiling existing exploits takes skill) is going to use it to break into your house and steal your TV?
Even if burglary offered a better risk/reward ratio than credit card fraud or the like it's a hell of a lot easier to just open the totally unencrypted garage doors use
Re: Worried about Wrong Part of Security (Score:2)
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That was largely my reaction, too. I read the summary and though: "oh, they've reinvented LoRa [wikipedia.org]. Isn't that just dandy?"
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The point of this standard is surreptitious surveillance. Buy a product with this radio inside, and the range is far enough to peer-to-peer to nearby devices and form a mesh network. Only one device on the mesh needs to be internet connected for all devices to phone home.
No!!! (Score:2)
JFC, stay away from my GPS flight tracking beacons, please!
What am I gonna do, file FCC interference complaints against thousands of people on the 900MHz band?
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1090mhz is the ADS-B "flight tracking band". You should be fine.
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No, I'm not using ADS-B.
I use GPS beacons to find high-power rockets. Others use them to find drones and R/C aircraft.
I can't pretend I don't do biz with Amazon, or won't if this comes to pass, but Jeebus what a sh*thead move.
"Amazon Sidewalk taps the 900MHz band of the radio spectrum -- typically used for amateur radio"
"The Eggfinder uses RF modules in the 902-928 MHz ISM band"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Ahh, I see. I got confused with the "flight tracker" bit.
You are probably going to be shit out of luck then, as you mention 900mhz is ISM. That is why you can use it, and it is also why they can use it.
You won't even be able to file with the FCC, as far as I know, there is not even an EIRP limit in most places (excepting you will be wearing it and you don't want to burst into flames).
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Well, they should probably be a little bit more flexible with frequencies they use: 900MHz is LTE band 9 and used for mobiles in many countries around the world. Actually 900MHz was the initial GSM frequency, and it's still used in parts of Europe for exactly that purpose ;)
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900MHz is code for a wide range of frequencies. It's split up into a small bit for ISM use - stuff like cordless phones, long range IoT (smart meters, etc), garage door openers, etc. There's also space for cellular telephony, a tiny bit
Re: No!!! (Score:2)
I have a HAM license for exactly that purpose, and the 70cm band trackers are significantly more expensive.
This is not the first day I've thought about the many constraints on price, size, weight, erp, directionality of antenna, RF transparency of airframe materials, accessibility of transmitted data, etc.
900MHz trackers turned out to be the best fit for me, not least of which because they're at risk every flight, and these work well and are inexpensive to replace.
'Why don't I just' spend hundreds of dolla
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Absolutely there are regulations in just about every country for these bands. You must have FCC approval in the US and there are very clear power and EIRP limits. Other countries are similar.
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900MHz band is *widely* used these days for many things, with amateur radio being the last of them. The bands are already glutted here in many places. The long range is typically a lower bandwidth modulation that probably is easy enough to avoid interference from, but even then there are many applications already using very low bandwidth modulations (10 to 100 Kbps).
900MHz is not free spectrum (Score:1)
The 900MHz range has been getting sliced and sold off. I don't know what crack Amazon is smoking, but a quick look at the FCC's site shows the 900MHz spectrum to be heavily-licensed, and has been since at LEAST 2004.
Re:900MHz is free spectrum (Score:3)
No need to worry, it's still an unlicensed ISM band. There are licensed services in the band, sure, like amateur radio, but for low-power, frequency-agile IoT systems meeting part 15 of the FCC regulations the ban is still unlicensed.
(This is why there is the 47 CFR 15.19(a)(3) disclaimer [cornell.edu] in the back of most IoT devices sold in the US: "This device complies with part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) This device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this
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"No need to worry, it's still an unlicensed ISM band"
I'm still worried because I don't trust Amazon to stay inside their allocation because we know that IoT is a horribly-managed POS across any company.
X10 still exists in places (Score:3)
Can't lose any of that illicit data now can we? (Score:2)
LoRa (Score:2)
Standby while I look for other existing standards that could have been used before some engineer found he needed some innovation points to round out his review.
Wait, dont we already have... (Score:2)
Dont we already have:
- LPWAN
- Sigfox
- DASH7
and about 6 others. What's another one in the mix between friends?
I'm assuming their eventual plan is to then monetise it.
What is Amazon going to add? (Score:1)
Hackers (Score:1)
It's all fun and games until hackers start shitting on the Sidewalks