Real World IOT that happened in 2017 and will grow 2018 - Smart Luggage

This is the second in a series of entries on IOT in the real world that impact people's lives directly, i.e. what is not just a predicability of the future, but things that are going to happen! smart luggage has been a while in the making, with the big brands dabbling for years, however as they have appeared on kickstarter successes already; mainstream will finally dig out their initiatives, dust them down and follow. If they don't, you know where to spend your money doing it yourself or buying from the likes of G-Ro.

OK not a great photo, but here you see the G-Ro, plus tracker, and wi-fi hotspot set-up set-up myself.

Why is this important? Well, we have all heard of smart fridges, etc. however there are two problems with the smart fridge:

1. fridges are large "white goods" that are unlikely to be on kickstarter
2. Fridges fall very, very heavily into the corporate dilemma above, where staff in organisations that make fridges are no longer rewarded for innovation. In fact sometimes quite the opposite, cost reduction, conformity and who is longest in the office sucking up to their boss will never create innovation.

I am sure that after using a smart fridge, for now at least, we kind of are ok or even happier with our “just as we want it” premium fridge, or in fact just a fridge. The difference of real world IoT is when you try something and know you can never go back, no matter how premium your non msart version is. Great examples ate smart watches. I have had versions, and not all of them were quite there, I had various garmin devices: 310xt, 910xt, Fenix 2, however once I put the Fenix 3 on, my premium swiss chronograph never went on again. The same, if not moreso, happened with smartphones.

Why smart luggage?

I travel a lot, both personal and business, and have always spent the extra to have decent luggage. By decent I do not overly expensive… in many places arriving with expensive luggage that is like screaming “follow me from the airport and mug me”, but in that the luggage has decent wheels, zips, compartmentalisation and built to last the rough and tumble of travelling without arriving like some luggage you see with a wheel missing, or a wayward handle or weighs half your weight allowance before you have even packed it. Despite being descent, This has meant sometimes fixing my own luggage, I have preplaced wheels whose bearings have worn out, handle pins that broke and even a handle… but the quality of a good Samsonite or Antler superlight luggage mean its all fixable wherever you may find yourself on this globe.

After peace of mind, the biggest advantage of smart luggage is saving time on arrival

Saving time on arrival

One of the biggest benefits of smart luggage is its saving time on arrival and smart luggage does this in a few ways:

1. If your luggage is lost, by the time you land it will tell you and you do not have to wait until everybody has left the conveyor and there is a 2 hour queue of other people with lost luggage in front of you. It also saves time again, as usually when you report lost luggage it takes them a day or more just to work out where it is: you can tell them its in terminal X y airport y from the off and you get your bags back way earlier
2. Proximity, proximity is amazing as more or less, and with a certain margin of error, its able to sense a) when your luggage has arrived outside the conveyor, and b) by if its close by, again leaving your time to catch-up with all things mobile notifications related before your luggage arrives
3. Other errors. Sometimes your back says its in the right airport but your, or luggage staff can see its gone to the wrong conveyor... this last happened to me arriving back to heathrow at nearly11pm... the staff said you can either wait about an hour or we will send it to you tomorrow... that was an easy choice!
4. Being shipped back: when your luggagesis being shipped back to you, you are not at the mercy of the courieror 3rd party updates that arrive an hour or a few after the event. As your luggage leaves the airport you know it, and if like once they cannot, or pretend they cannot find you to go home early... then you say: I can see you are just around the corner, do me a favour and do your job. Yes that has happened... and not just once!

You can even track your luggage as it makes its way via courier back to you after delivery to the wrong airport!

Battery Life

One of the issues with trackers is that they tend to be built to a price, and that price does not seem to run to batteries... While high end ones I have built myself or been part of specifying for clients have higher end batteries that have higher power, and are consistent (one batch of cheaper trackers that were specified to have 700mah batteries had 200mah, 400 may and 500mah across the first three tested)!

On that note I have taken to using lithium or high end rechargeable batteries on the trackdots, although for some reason they say not to (one assumes that network resources hurt profits, but again we have a solution for that which we worked out for a customer). The best, and most responsible, solution is rechargeable, with 2100mah Panasonics managing up to 10 days across 5 airports recently.

With rechargeable batteries (not recommended by manufacturer) the track dot can manage 10 days tracking, two of those it was awake in a car highlighting all the airports on the way :)

Requirements to DIY smart luggage.

There are basically, from I can work out from my own needs and those of people I travel with, as well as what G-RO are productising:

1. Location
2. Power
3. Hotspot/connectivity

Trackdot, etc was my first port of call for location.

Trackdot and the G-Ro devices which is a rebranded lug track I believe, are very slick at what they do, but I cannot help but see it as a one trick pony with limitations. First the good: its very slick: you turn it on with one button, and track through a simple app, though you do need to read the manual. The apps are simple, though, despite pioneering Bluetooth since its inception, and having one an innovations award in 2001 for stretching its limits, I could not get the trackdot thing to connect via Bluetooth.

My second port of call for location was using certain MiFi devices with GPS in the chipset, which allow you to access the location; however, like the cheap GPS devices from Alibaba, ebay, etc: when you arrive at an airport you want to just open an app and see where your luggage is, not a web page or web pages... this is 2018...

Bad: cannot be waken from sleep remotely (at least not to consumers), does not have GPS for real tracking of needed, AA batteries and no micro-USB mean no way to back-up / extend batteries (yes I am aware AA are readily available, but not always within time restrictions of business / flight schedules). This is how I started using rechargeable batteries despite the warnings not to, as I stole the two batteries from my DSLR camera Flash!

Power The next category is power, which is a bit more difficult.

Whilst there are a plethora of batteries out there, there are a few things to bear in mind. 

1. power; over 27,000mah and its considered a fire risk by most countries, so avoid building a portable generator :)
2. more importantly, how it wakes up: most require you to pres a button or insert the USB cable into the battery to wake up, which means you cannot bury the battery at the bottom of your case behind the lining out of the way. The best for this is the white tp-link 21000 battery usb one from the image above of the suitcase - whenever you plug something into a cable on the end it charges... and will not turn off if the draw is too low on the wifi router.
3. charge and be charged. Many devices can either charge or be charged, which when travelling is not always ideal and means more devices

The one that comes with the G-Ro is quite good, but its heavy, only has two USB ports, a charger you do not normally travel with, but moreover its tablet format means its constantly being stopped in security, which is very not good as it wastes time you will never, ever get back!

The Anker usb-c Battery ones are solid alloy and well built, and some have usb-c, but they cannot charge and be charged.

Rav power make a 26,800mah one, but it needs the button be pressed to activate.

One of the main reasons for having batteries that can be charged while charging, is that you can use them as a charge point in the hotel, and also when out and about in good sunlight, you can solar power your smart luggage, and complete your off the grid, ready for anything collection!

Wifi access point. 

So this is not in the G-Ro but is not difficult to add either with a wifi or a dongle and a router, which has more uses when travelling as you can use it as a bridge for hotel / airport wifi. Since 2014 many Huawei MiFIs also have this built in, as do others. You can always use a second handset, which I often also carry as a back-up anyway, but they can get very, very hot in luggage!

Huawei has two devices, the E576 and the E5772, the former 3G and the latter 4G. There are others, however these devices have both GPS and can handle SIM toolkit, so will work with all types of SIMs, including my own IoT MVNE Company Conecto SIMs with multiple IMSIs.

Best Road bike tire tri bike tyre choice

I have been riding road bikes since, well a long time ago on columbus 531 bikes and sticky vredestein slicks was my choice back then, however in the last 7 years I have been back to the road bike in earnest and thought I would share some insights and feedback on key points I hear on rides, chats, etc, starting with tyre choice, tyre size, pressure and punctures.

Road Tyre choice

The last few years have seen huge advances to some of the top tyres, my 2009 tarmac pro came with dreadful specialized turbos, they were changed for continental gp4000s after the first ride. However I have now been running the new s-works on both my 2016 custom s-works tarmac and my 2011 bog standard Allez and they have been great. Likewise the 2011 tarmac came with tyres that had to be removed after the first ride; they were called "armadillos", presumably because riding them felt like you had strapped some armadillos to your wheel.. however if you have not tried the new 2015+ Specialized Tyres I cannot urge you enough to do so, they do not last long, but while they do they have the most grip and best ride, and have not punctured on me yet. The only people I know who have punctured them were running them very, very worn.

2016-2017 S-works Turbo is one of the finest, supplest, grippiest tyres I have ridden (while it lasts!)

And here we get to the first point. All road tyres inevitably pick up debris, especially bits of small glass and flint, if you do not remove these they can work their way into the tyre and puncture, similarly, if your tyres are very worn, this debris  will go straight to a puncture rather than being embedded and removed before they puncture.

Picture sent by a riding friend saying "no Gatorskins, no can join ride lol" when the problem is worn out tyres.

Here is a picture a riding friend sent urging us all to use Gatorskins 4 seasons (in the summer?!*) otherwise we were not allowed to join rides with them... when in fact if you are high miler, you can quickly get worn tyres and id does not matter even if they have armadillos strapped to them, YOU WILL PUNCTURE! There are other issues as well further down, like tyre hygiene...

Road tyre Punctures (how to avoid)

So I have some riding colleagues who even puncture Conti all seasons gator skins with frequency, granted, some of them do some high mileage, but even so, I have others and even had my own high mileage seasons without a single puncture on lesser tyres and it all comes down to a few things, assuming a clincher + tube set-up.

1. Only ever use Vectran or equivalent breakers, even light tyres like the Conti TT have a single layer on the main tread and this will stop / thwart glass and other debris causing a puncture. Nylon breakers just do not cut it in the UK, they do in other climates but I just do not see the point with such amazing tyres from Schwalbe, Continental and Specialized that I know of that roll great, grip great and will resist pretty much anything you throw at them and are very light.
2. Install the tyres clean and dry. If you have to change a tyre at the roadside at all, moreso even in foul weather, do a proper job of cleaning bike and tyre, taking tyre off and inspecting inside, talc and preferably a fresh tube (the one you used roadside can go back in saddle bag) and the chances of puncturing will be greatly diminished. To that end I use very thin conti supersonic (install with care as you can snakebite them just installing them) or latex tubes, but I do not carry these as spares. The chances of you a) installing an ultra light butyl tube roadside without snagging it are minimal and b) the chances of keeping a latex tube in good conditions are minimal also, carry a decent semi light or full weight tube in a plastic bag with talc. 
3. inspect tyres regularly and remove debris like glass that will slowly work its way in if you do not and if you see a deep cut take a not, patch it from the inside and don't use that tyre for an epic group ride in the rain...
4. Carry tubes in a dry, talced bag... rubber perishes when wet, wet tubes stick to tyres and increase rolling resistance, installing a perished, wet tube that has come from a soggy saddle bag or equally soggy sweaty jersey pocket without a plastic bag to keep it dry, well, is like asking for a permanent roadside assistance job.
5. keep tyres off the ground if kept outside or preferably keep the bike / saddle bag inside as well as spares. If you leave everything rubber / latex / butyl on a concrete floor in a damp, cold garage / bike store then its life expectancy will be reduced significantly. Yes you can use this as an excuse to your other half / parents / flat mates etc. to bring your bike inside, just refer them to me, it will be fine :)
6. Seal a hole in the tyre from the inside with a patch. If you do get a dirty great hole in a tyre, then leaving it is just a countdown to water ingress / dircet ingress induced puncture. Patch any holes or cuts from the inside when you are doing point 2 above.

Talc and seal tubes: A tube kept in a moist saddlebag or jersey pocket is going to be half done before you even install it!

Aero Tyre width and Aero wheel rim width; low rolling resistance vs. aero

There is a trend to wider tyres (23+) on road, but this has to be matched with wider rims to get the best benefit, even from a comfort point of view let alone an aero point of view. 

Wider tyres can give lower resistance, if supported properly and not outweighing other negatives.

• There is no point putting bigger tyres on a thin rim as to stop the tyre squirming on the rim round corners you will have to have at least the same if not a higher pressure than with a thinner tyre. 

• There is no point spending a fortune on aero wheels that have been tested to the nth degree in wind tunnels to then spoil it (litterally) by putting a spoiler on it. This is a point many overlook when looking at data in isolation (rolling resistance for example) but tgere is no point saving 2 watts rolling resistance with wider tyres to then loose huge yaw angle benefits on aero wheels. Both Zipp and Mavic have good articles on this, but for me the easiest and most succinct is this one from Mavic engineers blog point 3.3 half way down.

There is no point having expensive aero wings with a huge tyre messing up their flow: from Mavic 

Conversely however, there is also significant benefit of just wider rims with the same tyres, which gives more volume and if you read the link to the Mavic engineers blog, better aero also. For me, both from MTB and road experience, better handling is the biggest upside as the sidewall is properly supported at wider pressure variations. With the sidewall being more or less the same width or shallower than the rim rather than extending beyond the rim, it is my experience that you seem to have better aero at more angles, this is upheld by the Mavic link above, but also in the real world, the tyre handles better around corners and over poor road surfaces as it tracks surface imperfections better at wider pressures . I have tried varying rim widths and tyres and find, as a lot of the aero and rolling resistance data seems to err on the side of wider rims, tyres that do not buldge out wider than the rim. 

25c Continental GP4000s2 on Zipp 808 obscures the rim every so slightly, so 24mm s-works or 23c Conti likely more aero 

Here you can see a 23c Continental TT tyre being slightly narrower than the rim: great sidewall support and wind flow

Tubeless will get you home

Many Tubeless tyres have an extra layer of rubber / butyl and so are heavier to start and product managers skimp on puncture protection to balance the weight. That is generally not an issue as sealing holes in my experience is more effective than trying to stop them.

My favourite tyre / wheel combos

Standard road wheel tyre choice

My standard wheels are Mavic Kysirium SL (2009) and Mavic CX-22 (2011). The former has what Mavic calls "fore" drilling so has no spoke holes in the rim bed. This has a couple of benefits: 

1. no need for a rim strip (except a light one if running tubeless makes it easier to clean and install fresh tyres) 
2. Latex and thinner tubes last longer as they are exposed to less grime and/or water ingress. 

These wheels are the old school 13mm inner bead width so they generally wear: Continental GP4000s, Specialised Turbo S-works, Specialized / Schwalbe tubeless, all 23/24c. The first tubeless tyres shod on this bike were the hutchison atom / fusion / intensive combos, followed by the Schwalbe ultremos which were discontinued.

Hutchison atom (front only) fusion (front / rear) and intensive (rear only) are a solid road tubeless choice

At some point these will be upgraded with newer Mavics and or Fulcrum or American Classic wider rims, as the benefits of wider are clear to me! See this video if you are on the fence here:

Semi Aero road wheel tyre choice

My semi aero wheelset is the slightly wider Campagnolo Bora Ultra clincher. With 17mm inner bead I can run wider 25c tyres well, however I tend to just enjoy the same tyres as above, just with better grip. 

With tubes I tend to use latex tubes and conti GP4000s / conti TT, Specialized turbo s-works

Tubeless I have been using also the specialized sworks turbo tubeless, roubaix tubeless (training wet) and the discontinued ironman tubeless tyres.

road tubeless and semi aero go well together for a fast puncture proof combo. 

100 psi is the best grip resistance ratio for me on all these, but I weight around 80kg ...

Aero road wheels tyre choice

My aero wheelset is a Zipp 808 wheelset with a zipp 404 front for windier days. These are about as wide a rim brake wheels will go and will quite easily take 25mm tyres, however as you can see above the do stick out and so I only ever have these on the back. With inner tubes, my new favourite is the Continental TT tyre... wow that is a fast tyre. I also use the conti 4000s2, both with 23c front and generally a  23c or 25c on the back.

Continental GP4000s and s2 are possibly the most versatile road tyres out there.

Tubeless Zipp 808 and 404 is very easy as the link shows and tubeless I like the Schwalbe ironman 22c that was for some reason discontinued, the specialized turbo tubeless and about to be replaced with the Schwalbe pro one tubeless, however the schwalbe facebook page shows what looks like a pro one TT tyre coming 

Schwalbe Pro One TT (second in from left) will be the TT tyre to beat in 2017, let's hope there is a tubeless and clincher