Amazon has had its sights set on the smart home ever since Alexa came along — but now the online mega-retailer is thinking bigger, and envisioning entire smart neighborhoods. First announced in 2019, the effort is called Amazon Sidewalk, and it uses a small fraction of your home’s Wi-Fi bandwidth to pass wireless low-energy Bluetooth and 900MHz radio signals between compatible devices across far greater distances than Wi-Fi is capable of on its own — in some cases, as far as half a mile, Amazon says.
You’ll share that bandwidth with your neighbors, creating a sort of network of networks that any Sidewalk-compatible device can take advantage of. Along with making sure things like outdoor smart lights and smart garage door openers stay connected when your Wi-Fi can’t quite reach them, that’ll help things like Tile trackers stay in touch if you drop your wallet while you’re out on a walk, or if your dog hops the fence.
Amazon Sidewalk is coming this year as a free feature for Alexa and Ring users.
Maybe most noteworthy of all is that, for a lot of us, Amazon Sidewalk won’t require any new hardware. Instead, it’ll arrive as a free software update to the Echo speakers and Ring cameras people already have in their homes. That means that the infrastructure is already in place for Sidewalk to be a robust, large-scale network right at launch — and it also means that you’ll soon see it pop up as a new feature in your Alexa app (and yes, you’ll be able to turn it off).
Amazon didn’t have a whole lot to say about Sidewalk at its September products showcase, but it’s likely that we’ll hear a lot more about it in the weeks ahead, as Amazon draws closer to a launch. For now, here’s everything we know about it.
Amazon is designating many of its existing Echo and Ring gadgets (and presumably the majority of its new devices from here on out) as Sidewalk bridges. That means that they’re equipped to siphon off a tiny amount of your home’s Wi-Fi bandwidth and then use it to relay signals to Sidewalk-compatible devices using BLE and 900MHz LoRa signals. Those kinds of low-energy signals can’t carry much data at all, but they can travel great distances.
Amazon claims that the 900MHz band, which is the same band used for amateur UHF radio broadcasts, allows for range of up to half a mile. So, if you have an Echo speaker or a Ring camera in your home that works as a Sidewalk bridge, you’ll be able to send wireless signals to Sidewalk-compatible devices across a huge area. And, if you had a Sidewalk-enabled device like a Tile tracker paired with your Sidewalk bridge, you’d be able to connect with it so long as it was within half a mile of anyone else’s Sidewalk bridge.
With Amazon Sidewalk, data travels from the device to the application server and back by way of the Sidewalk bridge (or gateway) and Amazon’s Sidewalk Network Server.
There’s definitely a lot to think about. By design, smart home tech requires the user to share device and user data with a private company’s servers. By extending the reach of a user’s smart home, Sidewalk expands its scope and introduces new possible uses. That means new features and functionality, yes — but it also means that you’ll be sharing even more with Amazon.
Jeff Pollard, an analyst at Forrester, took the example of a dog with a Tile-type tracking device clipped to its collar when he described his concerns to CNET last year.
“It’s great to get an alert your dog left the yard, but those devices could also send data to Amazon like the frequency, duration, destination and path of your dog walks,” Pollard said. “That seems innocuous enough, but what could that data mean for you when combined with other data? It’s the unintended — and unexpected — consequences of technology and the data it collects that often come back to bite us (pardon the pun).”
In this example, a Ring motion alert passes through three levels of encryption on its way to the Ring server. During the trip, Amazon can’t see the inside of that packet — just the data needed to authenticate the device and route the transmission to the right place.
Now, as Sidewalk prepares to roll out across Amazon’s entire user base, the company is looking to get out ahead of concerns like those. This week, Amazon released a detailed white paper outlining the steps it’s taking to ensure that Sidewalk transmissions stay private and secure.
“As a crowdsourced, community benefit, Amazon Sidewalk is only as powerful as the trust our customers place in us to safeguard customer data,” Amazon writes.
To that end, Amazon compares Sidewalk’s security practices to the postal service. In this analogy, Amazon’s Sidewalk Network Server is the post office, responsible for processing all of the data your devices send back and forth to their application server and making sure everything gets to the right place. But the post office doesn’t get to read your mail — it only gets to read the outside of the envelope. And when it comes to your device data, Amazon says, it uses metadata limitations and three layers of encryption to create the digital version of the envelope.
“Information customers would deem sensitive, like the contents of a packet sent over the Sidewalk network, is not seen by Sidewalk,” Amazon writes. “Only the intended destinations [the endpoint and application server] possess the keys required to access this information. Sidewalk’s design also ensures that owners of Sidewalk gateways do not have access to the contents of the packet from endpoints [they do not own] that use their bandwidth. Similarly, endpoint owners do not have access to gateway information.”
In other words, Amazon’s server will authenticate your data and route it to the right place, but the company says it won’t read or collect it. Amazon also says that it deletes the information used to route each packet of data every 24 hours, and adds that it uses automatically rolling device IDs to ensure that data travelling over the Sidewalk network can’t be tied to specific customers.
Those are good standards that should help Sidewalk steer clear of creating new privacy headaches for consumers — but as Pollard points out, it’ll be important to keep an eye out for any unexpected data consequences of such an expansive and ambitious smart home play.
Not much at all. The maximum bandwidth of each Sidewalk bridge transmission to Amazon’s Sidewalk server is just 80Kbps. Each month, Amazon caps the total data allowance at 500MB, which the company notes is roughly equivalent to the amount of data you’d move to stream 10 minutes of HD video.
And keep in mind that you aren’t going to use Sidewalk to stream video or anything else that needs a lot of bandwidth. The signals Sidewalk devices pass back and forth are things like authentication requests and quick commands to turn the lights on, things that don’t require very much data at all.
Ring cameras and a wide range of existing Echo devices — including every version of the ultrapopular Echo Dot — will now double as Sidewalk bridges.
A lot of them, as a matter of fact. Here’s the list of the ones that will work once Sidewalk launches later this year:
It’s noteworthy that the list includes so many Echo devices, including some that date back nearly five years, including the very first Echo Dot. That suggests that Sidewalk is something that Amazon’s been planning for quite some time, and it also means that there are already millions and millions of Sidewalk bridges installed and ready to go in people’s homes. That might even be understating it. At the start of last year, Amazon claimed it had sold more than 100 million Alexa devices.
Also noteworthy: There aren’t any Eero devices on the list. Amazon bought the mesh router maker in early 2019 and released a new version of its mesh system later that year. This year, Amazon introduced two new versions of the Eero system, each of which support the new, faster Wi-Fi 6 standard — but none of them will double as Sidewalk bridges.
Nope. It’s a free feature for Amazon device users, with no installation or subscription fees.
Expect to see things that typically push your Wi-Fi range to the limit, like outdoor smart lights, to join Sidewalk’s network in the coming year.
We’ll likely know a lot more about that in the weeks ahead, but judging from Amazon’s imagery, it’s safe to assume that the list will include Ring smart lights and accessories. Tile is also working on a new, Sidewalk-enabled tracker for the platform, and it’s likely that other manufacturers will follow suit with new devices of their own. Things like outdoor lights, connected car tech and smart garage openers that might typically sit on the fringes of your home’s Wi-Fi range seem like especially strong bets, but we’ll update this space as we learn more.
Watch this:
Amazon’s Halo takes fitness tracking to new and uncomfortable…
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Leaving her elderly father on a basement floor for two days in a soiled adult diaper won’t mean jail for a Calgary woman.
Justice Indra Maharaj accepted a joint Crown and defence submission on Wednesday for a two-year-less-a-day conditional sentence order for Tara Picard to be followed by 12 months of probation.
Prosecutor Donna Spaner and defence counsel Shaun Leochko proposed a community-based term which will include eight months of 24-hour house arrest followed by a nightly curfew for the second eight months.
Maharaj also agreed with the lawyers to order Picard to commit 300 hours of community service over the length of the three-year sentence.
The Calgary Court of Justice noted that amount of community-service hours was “a lot” to commit to.
But Maharaj said it showed Picard, 52, was truly remorseful for her conduct towards her father, whom Postmedia is not identifying because of the embarrassing nature of the facts of the case.
“What that shows me is Ms. Picard does sincerely recognize what has happened here,” the judge said of her willingness to complete community service.
“What I interpret from that is Ms. Picard’s willingness to give back to the community.”
Picard pleaded guilty in January to charges of assault and failing to provide the necessaries of life to her 77-year-old father.
Court heard caregivers found the elderly Calgary man on the basement floor of his daughter’s southeast home wearing a soiled adult diaper.
At the time, Picard was responsible for her father’s day-to-day care after he was moved to her residence, Spaner, reading from a statement of agreed facts, told court at the time.
“He had a number of medical ailments, including non-insulin dependent diabetes, coronary artery disease, some early onset dementia-like symptoms and chronic alcoholism,” Spaner said.
“(He) had been living independently in a Calgary apartment building. Family members became concerned that he was not caring for himself safely.”
With the help of Alberta Health Services he was moved to a home where Picard resided.
A registered nurse assigned to his care attended the 38 Street S.E. home on Nov. 15, 2021, to drop off food bank supplies for him and was told he was sleeping downstairs.
When the nurse called about an hour and a half later and spoke to the man on the phone he said he was lying on the floor, had fallen and was unable to get up.
When she returned to the home with a co-worker she found the victim lying on his back on the floor.
“(He) said that he had been lying on the floor for two days,” Spaner said.
Leochko said Picard was overwhelmed by the situation she was thrust into.
“It really was more than she could handle,” he said.
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@juanhall: I gotta say, this was the most interesting bike in this post….love that Intense is experimenting with gearboxes…I can see it have a huge effect on DH bikes….thank god there’s still people pushing things. Now, they need to make an Enduro bike with the Pinion MGU!
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The City of Pointe-Claire would like to inform you that the Bob-Birnie arena will be closed for its annual maintenance as of Monday, April 29. The Annex rink will reopen to the public on Monday, May 13, and the arena’s Main rink will be accessible as of Monday, June 3.
Public skating will resume on May 13, and the summer public activities programming will begin on June 3 when both rinks have reopened to the public.
In addition to the annual maintenance of the facility, two renovation projects are also scheduled to start at the same time:
Installation of new sound systems
The City will be replacing its current sound systems in both the Main rink and Annex rink, to offer arena visitors a better overall experience, whether watching from the stands or participating in on-ice activities. This project is expected to be conducted throughout the month of May.
Renovation of locker rooms in the Main Rink
The City will also be renovating the five locker rooms located in the Main rink, to bring up to date the amenities currently available to participants. These renovations are expected to begin in early May and will be completed by mid-August.
For all information about the Bob-Birnie arena, visit the arena’s page on our website.
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