The 10 Coolest IoT Products Of 2017

The Best Connected Products In 2017

As companies deepened their investments around the Internet of Things, an array of new IoT products emerged in 2017.

This includes new smart products for the home – including Apple's HomePod smart speaker – but it also extends into vertical markets with gateways for factory floors, such as HPE's EdgeLine converged gateways.

Here are 10 of the coolest IoT products in 2017.

Get more of CRN's 2017 tech year in review.

Apple HomePod

Apple in June lifted the curtain on its new voice-controlled smart speaker, HomePod. HomePod, which will be released in December for $349, will feature a 4-inch woofer and seven tweeters, as well as Apple's A8 processor. The smart speaker, which will come in white and space gray, will also include built-in spatial awareness to automatically detect the spaces in a room and adjust its audio accordingly.

Buddy Ohm

The Buddy Ohm platform helps customers monitor the consumption of essential building resources in smart buildings. The device helps operators and building tenants who may just be starting out with IoT track data and drive down monthly resource spending. Buddy Ohm contains industry-standard sensors that track electricity, gas, water and steam consumption – and then presents the information through a simple visualization tool.

Buddy Ohm has built-in connectivity so that installers don't need to worry about network interruptions, a spokesperson told CRN. The platform costs $1,500 per month, which includes installation, portal management and ongoing updates of the device, according to Buddy.

Dell Gateway 3000

Dell's Gateway 3000, which is targeted at fixed and mobile use cases requiring smaller sensor networks, tight spaces and simpler analytics, is a "balance between the maker spectrum and industrial grade folks," according to the company.

Starting at $399, the Gateway 3000 is the less expensive companion to Dell's 5000 series, which is designed for fixed use cases requiring modular expansion, large sensor networks and more advanced edge analytics.

HPE Edgeline EL1000 and EL4000 Gateways

HPE increased its efforts around industrial IoT with Intel Xeon-based converged IoT systems – the Edgeline EL1000 and Edgeline EL4000 – designed for the network edge.

The Edgeline systems support up to 64 Intel Xeon core processors for IoT data capture and analytics in an environmentally hardened chassis that is shock- and vibration-proof with a temperature range of zero to 55 Celsius.

Intel Compute Card

Intel in January lifted the curtain on its Compute Card, a small form factor the size of a credit card that the chip giant says will bring the power of connectivity to any product.

Intel hopes this 5mm-thick device, which comes packed with memory, storage, wireless connectivity and flexible I/O options, will help power the next generation of Intel-based IoT devices, encouraging businesses to more quickly embrace IoT applications. The Compute Card comes packed with either a seventh-gen Core i5 vPro, Core i3, Pentium or Celeron processor.

June Smart Oven

With the June smart oven, which CRN saw at the Digital Experience showcase, consumers can now use IoT to make their dinner.

The countertop smart oven can be controlled with a complementary June app, enabling users to control the oven with their iPhone or iPad and monitor their cooking with a live video stream. The oven monitors the food's weight and temperature as it cooks with precision-weight sensors and uses Wi-Fi connectivity to send notifications to the user's mobile device. June costs $1,495 and is on the market now.

Lenovo Smart Assistant

Lenovo took the wraps off a new smart home assistant, the Smart Assistant, during this year's CES. The Chinese company worked with Amazon for the speaker, which uses Alexa for its voice command and response skills. Similar to Google Home and Amazon Alexa speakers, users can give commands or ask questions to Lenovo's speaker. The cylinder speaker, which contains a volume on top and comes in an array of colors, is priced at $129 and is currently available.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835

Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor, unveiled in early January, is targeted at virtual reality and IoT experiences, and runs on the next-generation 10-nanometer technology. Qualcomm says that its newest chip, which succeeds the Snapdragon 820, launched at last year's CES, has made vast improvements, most notably in battery life, virtual reality, machine-learning capabilities and IoT capabilities.

Stringify

Consumers are increasingly putting IoT services throughout their homes – like Nest or Phillips Hue Lights – and Stringify wants to automate these different services. Stringify's automation service, which at CES unveiled support for Android devices, connects connected homes devices, wearables and more to create seamless automated experiences.

For instance, users can connect their smart thermostat to their smart lights so that the lights dim automatically when the thermostat reaches a certain temperature. So far, Stringify supports more than 500 smart products, including Nest, SmartThings and digital services like DropBox. The iOS and newly launched Android app are currently available.

Twyst Connected Retail Bags

Twyst created a connected shopping bag that helps customers have an easier shopping experience and skip long lines in grocery shops.

The smart bag's base contains a lightweight Bluetooth device that recognizes when items with radio frequency ID tags are placed inside the bag. When the bag leaves the grocery store, it sends a signal to the user's smartphone that triggers a mobile purchase – and the customer then pays digitally and gets a digital receipt. Avnet worked with Twyst to create a proof of concept for the smart shopping bags and helped the company bring its product to market. The product is currently being tested in several stores, although Twyst would not name any of the stores to CRN at this time.