¶ German Manufacturing Excellence and IoT Challenges
Nothing beats being in the right place at the right time if you're an entrepreneur. And here's a bit of evidence that we are. one of the biggest, most prestigious German automobile manufacturers was looking at an IoT solution that they had just installed and they gave this amazing quote, this is the best thing since the wheel. And if you make cars, then that's pretty high praise. Well, this week we've got a fabulous guest.
Doctor Carsten Konigstein, who is the founder and CEO of Symfocci, who are a really innovative German IoT company that's focused on manufacturing. And they have sprung out of one of the world's centers of excellence for manufacturing with a use case. That is really driving IoT in a big way. Check out this conversation. I think you'll find it really useful.
🎵 Music
Karsten, welcome to the Mr. Beacon Podcast.
Thank you very much for having me, Steve. I'm I'm watching your podcast for a long time and I I really encouraged to to be here. Thank you.
Oh, well, I was excited to have you join for multiple reasons. You know, I I just came back from Nuremberg uh at the Embedded World Conference and I was just struck by It reminded me of Germany's incredible position in terms of engineering and manufacturing excellence. We were kind of driving past the Audi factory and uh seeing all of these beautiful German cars on the roads and uh And manufacturing has become fashionable again. I think since COVID.
since the tariffs that have caused so much turbulence and and also since this uh r recent war it I think everyone has become more conscious that having a effective, vibrant manufacturing sector is super important and
You know, back at Williot when uh we were looking at the emerging Ambia IoT standards, I noticed that the biggest contributor to Ambia IoT standards in uh three G P P was Chinese companies. And obviously Germany has a real rival now in terms of the Chinese and who've gone from like uh sweatshops and uh low tech to you know, they're they're up there competing with you.
And so you are coming to us from the land of manus manufacturing excellence and you decided to focus on industry 4.0. And so I'm fascinated to hear from you. about what you're doing, uh what you're learning, what you're seeing, uh, the technology you've chosen, the business problems that you're fixing. So maybe we should just start off and say what are the the the key problems that you saw when you were starting your company? That you wanted to solve.
¶ The Need for Ground Truth in Logistics
Yeah. In fact it comes from the beginning of my career. I was a consultant in production and logistics. This is a w a go uh more than thirty years ago. And how you do it? Tool number one, tool number two. Yeah, so uh Piece of paper and a and a pen and then you go down and then you make these uh VA or multi moment analysis stuff as a consultant. You stand next to the machine and try to understand what's happening.
Or you're trying to follow the forklift tr uh fleet to see what they are moving from A to B to C. to find potential to optimi for optimization. Because you need all this data. Yeah, it's uh like Ed Villiard. You need all this data in order to Yeah, have a basis a basis to optimize something because if you do it otherwise it's just by your gut feeling and gut feeling is okay to a certain extent. But when it comes to facts
uh gut feeling is not sufficient. Yeah. So it was always the idea what to do. And when I uh have been at Bosch at uh the IoT uh environment We thought a lot about devices that can monitor anything, yeah. And I know the first um The first Industry four dot oh when it was mentioned um we at Bosch we wrote a part of this industry four dot oh stor uh story, we handed out to our Chancellor Merkel. And at the Hanover Fair, what starts next week, by the way, or week after next. Everybody who had
Uh a plug or anything named it industry four dot oh. Yeah everything was industry four dot oh. From from now to to then marketing renamed anything, anything like
Like a AI. We're all AI companies now.
Yeah, yeah, now we have physical AI and um this that time it was industry for that oh. But there was no solution you could that time, uh plug and play install. And it was really, really, really complex uh to do that and very expensive. Bosch, okay, could do that. Yeah, they had a machine they wanted to optimize, they named it Smart Manufacturing Industry for Order. Oh. And they got any budget for that. Yeah. And there always was uh an optimization. But it was just for this one
Machine. Yeah, the sensor solutions came from Pepper and Fuchs and TOC and IFM and SIG and whatever. Siemens. And you had the PLC and some cable and connection and then you had it. What was always missing was the logistics part, yeah. Which part moved from where to where to where, how long it was laying, how long it was processing, or yeah. All this information is very, very important.
For value stream mapping, for example, or even to understand not how the process should have been, but how it really was.
Yeah. So ground truth. You only get ground truth through senses and senses. Correct.
¶ Smartphones as Ambient IoT Devices
Correct. And from the very beginning I we experimented with Raspberry Pi and Arduino and and all this stuff is not production ready. But we found the production ready device. What is this? Uh it's called smartphone. And uh it has anything, it has sensors, it has uh computation power and this is something that is pretty interesting if you think through it. It's Ip sixty eight, so you can operate it underwater. Yeah so in any
And we have thousands of these devices now outside. This is very interesting.
Well this is the I think part of the essence of ambient IoT is uh we have all of this infrastructure around us and let's take away the cost
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and it can do so many things. When you when you think I need to do to fulfil this use case or this use case. You find always a solution. But there must be a price point someone is a able to pay, yeah. Same like for vision systems. There are so many use cases companies could do, but when the Eurovision system always costs quarter of a million?
Yeah, then you better put a person next to the machine and let them do the quality inspection or move it. Yeah, instead of a robot, whatever, you know.
So
Yeah.
¶ Three-Legged Tracking: Beacons and QR Codes
In fact, we use them as static devices. So not the not the latest ones, but uh the X cover series one from Samsung for example. Why uh this is IP sixty eight, it's rudgedized and uh it has a military grade. And uh we really screw them to the machine and we then read the built in sensors to read uh like like a retrofit, yeah, to read uh machine information. So it's very simple. If you have a coffee machine and you put your hand on the coffee machine
And you don't hear it and you don't see it. You m you feel when a coffee is produced, when when the beans are grinded, when The the the coffee is prepared prepared when the milk foam is prepared and the mobile sees that one thousand times more precise because the sensors are insane that are inside of these uh these mobiles. So for the machine.
Yeah, we we we did do that. And for the logistics, and this is something Williet did similar, we are working with these nine nice little tiny things, what is called a beacon. And we use as uh antennas, we use smartphones. So we really screw them through the walls as uh receivers or anchors or whatever you call it, depends on the technology you're working on.
And we are working with this since twenty nineteen in uh production environments with a precision of one square meter with RSSI since twenty nineteen. This is very good.
Interesting.
Still not enough. Yeah, but it's it's interesting. And uh we have customers they say, no, one square meter and it's still not precise, it's not lying at this one square meter because it's jumping, because it's statistics that is uh calculating uh all this information.
Right.
We need a process secure sil solution. And we were thinking and thinking and thinking and uh We came out with the most precise, most affordable, and yeah, fastest RTLS worldwide now. And it's done with Who knows? Uh oh you don't see it, no? Yeah.
Yeah, it's a little difficult to see because it's not.
Yeah, it's a QR code. So it's a QR code.
Okay. Okay.
QR code. Uh no, it's just no, sorry. It's a Q but you know how a QR code looks like.
Yeah. We do. We do. Yeah.
And we get uh from a video stream of a smart smartphone, it has cameras, yeah, so we can do video stream constantly. We get X, Y, and Z data. Just from the video stream. So we see how this information is flowing through. How these parts and where they are and how long they are and all this information you need for the digital twin for yeah. For for AI to be processed there. We so we deliver this data.
Okay, well that makes sense. I love those so I'm sort of thinking about three legs of the stool. You're you're you're actually taking the smartphones which have these just crazy levels of sensing capabilities because we make them, you know, we make hundreds of millions of them and they really uh the best manufacturing and cost savings.
So you're leveraging that. Yep. You're leveraging Bluetooth beacons for one meter level accuracy. And when people want more accuracy, then you're basically using visual technique. to you know you can get uh down to m millimeter accuracy with uh with
It's definitely millimeters or centimeters in the in the worst case. We can do that if you need it. From one hundred squ one hundred meter diff distance. So we've you really mount them on the ceiling of of the of the uh production halls or the side now also, what was more complex. And then we see uh where these QR codes are and we can then We associate them to any asset we want to track. Yeah, so it's like scan scan. So there is a production order or anything what you want to connect it with.
You you make a scan scan and then it's it's uh connected and then we follow this QR code and where we when we know where this QR code is, we know where this asset is we are following.
¶ Real-World Use Cases: Replacing Search with Find
Okay. So I so I get ground truth and I get the three legs of the stool in terms of the infrastructure, yeah. What are the main use cases that you've focused on? So uh how how how long has your company been uh working for?
The company is around since twenty fifteen. But uh the first solution with Sintra was always the localization synth for the intra logistics. Started with twenty nineteen. From a discussion I ha I was at one of these uh smart manufacturing conferences and uh uh the managing director from Altrat wasn't sitting next to me. Altrat is producing scaffold. So this is metal and it's welding. So this is the worst environment for radio.
Worst. Yeah, it cannot get w get worse because you have any re radio frequency when you when you weld. And you have a metal everywhere. And they said we tried everything. We tried with ultra white band. We tried with R of ID and nothing is working and we have all this Boxes with metal pieces, and we need to know where it is. I just say, Oh, I have this nice little thing in my pocket, it's a beacon, and we do that.
We had nothing that time. No, it was twenty six seventeen. And then we started two years of development and we came out w out with Sintra and uh Yeah, we uh it's still in production since then. Yeah, since twenty nineteen. And it's an interesting solution. Uh we It helps to to optimize stockpiles. Yeah, it shows uh when you have inventor once a year or once every month, depends where you have where w where you will find w what.
All this is uh i well very valuable information. Uh it shows you uh how much parts are in which area of your of your um of your facility, if you if you have one hundred thousand square meters. Yeah, we we it simply repla replace search by find. This is what what it does. Okay. And this is very simple use case for search by find is um yeah, I know where it is before I was looking.
Okay, find find my scaffolding. Uh presumably there's different kinds of scaffolding. People order a batch of uh of of a certain kind. Yeah. And I imagine the facilities are huge, so you're And and and actually when I was uh oh I can't say the name of the company. I was visiting uh Germany and we visit it was the best trip. We got to visit the best motor manufacturers in the world, nearly all of them. And uh
You know, one of the things I found is they lose cars. You know, they have these cars that are worth a hundred thousand euros and they make so many of them and Uh yeah, where are they? And so uh you y y it's amazing this basic problem of losing them and I I see it across so many different industries, whether it's uh I've seen huge pipes, even bigger than scaffolding, people losing them, batches of paper, uh ceramic uh uh parts for exhaust pipes. It's just incredible.
So g a double click and just let me know how you typically if I'm trying to find my scaffolding, how does your solution help?
Yeah, we... Mary A beacon or a QR code, depend, doesn't matter, it's uh for the platform it's the same with something the people know. So it's a production order, it's it's uh a production QR code, barcode, whatever. So there is a match. You can enrich it with more information from the ERP, like for which customer is it, which color it has. Is there some other part that belongs to it? Is there some production date when it has to be finished? Or or or? And then you can search in our system.
I I look for material, five millimeter steel production uh stage two. And then it show it pops up all the locations where it finds this material.
Okay.
Yeah, or you search for uh production order forty seven eleven and then it says it's located there. Yeah, or you say I need everything that I need for production order forty seven eleven, which parts are and w in which boxes are they currently? And it gives you all the locations of these boxes where you where you f where you need it. Uh where you need to go and where do you find yeah.
¶ Practical Implementation: Google Maps & Asset Tracking
And how does your system figure out where it is?
Yeah, it's it's this beacon. So yeah for the all with the beacons or with the with the QR codes since uh QR codes we are uh up now for six months. We have a dozen customers already with that. Uh some uh of the beacons uh migrated to the solution with the QR with the QR codes.
Amazing, interesting.
Yeah, we are tracking finally we are tracking the the um uh the the uh beacons and It's uh not possible why it by me so there's a QR code behind so you can match it with uh with the production order.
Whatever.
And then we just we we put this QR uh this beacon or the QR code um to that box or to that palette or to that whatever, and then we follow the radio signal in this case or the the video signal in the other.
Okay. And you're reading the signals with what? What what is the receiver for the beacon? For the phone. So the phone and ha so the how and and how does the phone know where it is?
Yeah, there is our back end.
The phone knows where it is. How does the phone know where it is?
So how how does it work? Uh the setup? And it's very simple. We have Google Maps and we place a map of the facility inside of Google Maps. Means uh we orient it, um we say it's that size, and then it puts it simply in a in a Google Maps.
Okay.
And we put these devices then inside of that layout. We upload it. So we know by drag and drop yeah you just say okay uh it's at pillar number five, it's at pillar number seven, it's at pillar number nine. And then you uh t take this uh this device. and put it there. As we know where the or how the uh location of the facility is inside of Google Maps, we have a georeference, so long lat, for each of our devices.
And we calculate then or we use uh the um our all also our um GeoFence Engine in order to locate things inside of of this uh either Google Maps or inside of the facility, the the hall, the the production hall or whatever.
So as an end user, I can use Google Maps uh in conjunction with your software to find the thing. So I I'm I'm looking for batch number lot number five thousand and two. I type it in. Your smartphones uh have been deployed and they're fixed to the wall, plugged in presumably to some power, and they're tracking where the beacons are, they're keeping track of
uh the the latest l the last scene location. Correct. And as an end user, I type in the lot number and I basically zoom in on Google Maps and I see where the thing is. Correct.
So simple as that.
Yeah, yeah. And this is uh I uh there's so many people that need that and uh And I've seen other technologies approach this, but I think it's all about how you make it easy and affordable.
¶ System as a Service and Samsung Knox Security
And um one of the things I noticed on your website is you've kind of got a new take on SaaS as a a kind of a a financial model for for this. Can you talk about that?
Yeah, we we call it system as a service. So what we deliver finally is a service. And in the area of IoT, Internet of Things, there are things involved. So we deliver not only The the software, we also deliver the hardware. We take care that the hardware works. For this reason we partner with Samsung. Why? Samsung has something that is called Samsung Lock.
And it's like an MDM or it's even more, it helps you to protect the data from Google. Because it's Android phones and many companies have an issue uh deploying Android. They say every phone is fine as long as it's Apple. But uh Apple is way more expensive, I would say, way more, like because we also have very affordable devices. We use Samsung NOx in order to to get a security layer.
And it's uh it's certified by NSA, by German BSI and and other uh security agencies worldwide and it's really protecting your data from Google. So it it never appears somewhere at Google. It has other advantages. We can kill features like the microphone because sometimes people say, Okay, when you have the mobile phones, you can hear what we say. Yeah. Uh we can kill the camera
So it's not even in use, you cannot hear um it's self protection and other things. So from this perspective, we did not invent The device smartphone again. Why? Because we cannot make it for that price point. No way. Yeah. We have software deployment. We have uh battery, we have uh konnektivity, we have sensors, we have everything every everything we need. And um now we also have security. And the security is highest grade what you can get ever in uh in production.
Yeah. No PLC from no company worldwide has the security level as these uh smartphones when you put uh these Samsung NOx on top of it.
Done. Okay. This is I that's a great um
¶ Hardware Management and Service Benefits
feature and you I I I I see this as we're developing our own solution. Uh we with Ambient Chat we decided to focus on Apple first'cause of the tech early adopters and I'm like Of and then of course all of the people I speak to are like, Oh, shame. I uh I have uh I'm an Android guy and uh
So Yeah, but we also have the a the Apple guys. No no it's yes. It's one third Apple and uh two thirds the rest of the world. But uh it's huge market. But our devices are not smartphones. Our devices is A reading device or a mon a monitoring device or uh an anchor or whatever you can call it. We usually don't call it smartphone, even it's a it's a smartphone. Yeah.
And so going back to system as a service, I love that as a concept. So rather than looking at this thing, it's IoT, we're not sure about it. And and there's some I'm sure you find your inside sales guy, your champion, and they're like, Yeah, I uh I I I've I've gotta make this more digestible by uh Chief Financial Officer. And so I can imagine that this
recurring payment where you amortize you amortize presumably the cost of the hardware. Um but that means you're kind of taking a risk as you sign up customers. Um uh that that's that's uh uh I I guess it's moving the risk on to from their shoulders onto your shoulders.
To to some extent. Uh as as it is not a customized solution um on the hardware. Yeah, the hardware just uh runs an app.
Thank you.
Yeah, the app has a lot of knowledge inside, definitely. Uh but it's still an app. And the app can work for customer A or customer B. So we have this uh multi company backend with in within our computing cluster and w with uh failover
Yeah.
Uh we have these devices and they can work for customer A or customer B or customer C. And as the customer does not need to care uh if this device is one year old or brand new or two years, we take care of it. After three years we usually exchange it. Why? We ca we get out of warranty.
And after three years, um we would need to take care of the warranty ourselves, otherwise uh something is responsible. We don't do that, so we exchange them then. This is also in the plan in s inc included, so we don't have issues with the custom uh with our customers, uh with issues with their devices.
That's really good. Yeah,'cause if I'm buying I want the new phone. If I'm just getting a system, then um, you know, this infrastructure may change, uh, maybe every two years. You wanna you you change it. That's kind of your problem. It's not mine. I don't mind if it's one year old or ten years old as long as the
We need to care, take care that the service runs. Right.
Yes. Yeah, that's very good. Okay. So I I th I th I th it's all coming together now. I I I I love it.
¶ Advanced QR Code Applications and Precision
Can you maybe um talk us through a few examples? Uh you can change the names, but uh uh examples of uh uh of of of where you've deployed this and what the benefits from?
Uh let's go with the latest because uh RTLS is nothing nothing new. You know that from ultra white band and from other Bluetooth solutions with angle of arrival or whatever, doesn't matter technology. Let's go uh to the to the QR codes because this is really something that uh fills my mind because it has so many use cases you couldn't do before. We have customers that have pallets, fifteen centimeters
uh from each other located at machine A and machine B and it must be booked onto this machine because it's processing this. And so they will automatically start the process when the palette is mode were moved to the machine. So they have no no
And and this is work in process.
Correct, they have the unfinished product and The only possibility to do that, it's also a metal environment, is with video and QR codes. It's no way to do that in that precision with RFID, with ultra white band or with Bluetooth. We tried everything because we are very very much exact with our Bluetooth beacons and we can even in the in the laboratory narrow it down to something like twenty, thirty centimeters. But still then you have
Jumping because it's still statistics and it's not lying still at this point. It just should also
Radio waves do that.
It's radio waves, its absorption and reflection and and all the nasty things it does. You know that from where yet? It's like with RFID codes, if you move them in the right direction through the gates at the uh at the shopping centers, no no shopping um wall will will find them. Yeah, it's simply as simple as that. And uh here we don't have this issue because we have a QR code and we find the center of the QR code with a camera from seven, eight, ten meters a distance.
In a live stream, and we know the ground truth. It's really truth. It's really lying there and it's really moving just centimeters if max.
And how do you make sure that the QR code's visible on the power?
Yeah, this is the interesting thing for with the system. We are very fast. We are doing it in the video livestream. So we have up to twenty data points per second with a precision of centimeters or millimeters. Means if you have one code and you cover it and you don't have seen the uh the lower one moving, you know it's still at this position. Okay. So we have stacking pos uh stacking scenarios inside of our software.
That knows if you have ten or twenty or whatever pieces stacked one over the other. We know still at which level you find that production order you have in there. Where we do we need that? We have a customer that has that put produces out of one hundred thousand parts one object. So what one customer object, one hundred thousand parts.
And they have a box in a box in a box in a box and they're searching all the time. It's it's so so embarrassing. And this can be because we are so fast. It's it's a matter of Precision and speed. That helps you even if one once uh a QR code is covered.
Right. So may I don't want to read too much into this, but uh you say you have a palette that has a number of products. Each one has a QR code and you just re uh you only need to read one of the QR codes and because you know which product is on a specific palette. Yeah. Any one of those can be read and and you can basically relate it back to the palette. Is that what you're saying?
Correct. We are currently work uh discussing or not not yet implemented because it's pretty new, with a lot of retail companies worldwide. And they always have the issue, yeah? If you see it in the supermarket, they get a bunch of ten, twenty, uh, whatever. Boxes, pallets, whatever, where is that what I need to fill into this?
Position. When the super uh when we see all the time when they pack this thing, the QR codes, then we know at which point in this palette we find which we uh which good. Okay.
So this presumably implies that they have serialized these QR codes, that they actually, you know, it's not just a uh a product identifier, it's actually a unique identifier for the either the batch or the uh uh the the the product
¶ Seamless Integration with Enterprise Systems
What are the systems that you are typically tapping into? Because I'm assuming that you're not writing the full uh manufacturing software. Is there a certain uh family of products that you've uh plugged into in the past that you're focusing on?
Yeah, we plug into anything you can think of. Uh so we have installations together with SAP, with with Navision, uh with warehouse management systems, with MES systems. We have a rest uh rest service and this can be consumed by anything. Yeah. Because I we know we are not the the centre of the IT universe. We just deliver data for other uh systems to to be enriched with data. And uh we deliver simply the the precise uh as precise as possible location of that.
During the whole time. So uh and it works into both directions. I said you can search in our system, then we need the enrichment from the other system, or we just make a matching um from there. Barcode, whatever, c data matrix. with our QR and then after that they look in their system, find it in our system, we give them the position and uh this way uh it works that they can track all the time everything.
So they have throughput times and uh processing times and all this information what uh what they never had, yeah, to be honest. Yeah, because with to do to have this In that precision you y there is no possibility. Usually you scan that you put something into some bag. But you don't know where in this bag it is. Yeah? So you have the scanning information, but scanning is a manual process and it is not value adding anything to your your product or service. It's just an addition.
¶ Cost, Coverage, and Camera Technology
So yeah, uh so as um given your system as a service model, then I guess Yeah, I I still need to think about cost, don't I? The cost of the precision and coverage and how many of these phones do you need to deploy in you know, what kind of density? 'Cause that's gonna drive the cost of the overall system.
Definitely. For the beacons depends on the area. We need one phone for every Hundred to four hundred square meter for a precision of one square meter. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So this is not so much I would say. It's it's pretty much okay. For the QR codes, it's more interesting. The interesting thing is with a smartphone we have usually cameras of twelve megapixel, what you usually don't find uh at a reasonable price for industrial cameras.
Also we do the processing on the smartphone. So there is no NVIDIA tower we need. Yeah, we just process everything on the smartphone and just yeah, it's it's GDPR also. No, we don't see people, we just see QR codes and we just uh send attributes. So XYZ a timestamp and and a device ID. And it depends on what the camera sees. So there is a um the normal camera.
And you can say that we can do from three meters ceiling height, but it's not too high, yeah. For a industrial hall it's not too that much. We see about fifteen square to t twenty square meters, that's not that much. But if you go we have customers that have twenty six meter high ceilings. We can cover nine hundred square meter with a smartphone, with one smartphone, nine hundred square meters. So this is not much hardware we need.
And then there is another uh thing we are working currently working on, it's the ultra wide angle uh camera. It covers four times the uh the area with the same hardware. Yeah. The only thing we have to take care of is the uh size of the tracker band. Size of the QR code. Because we need a certain certain size of pixels in order to still understand
And then...
¶ Deployment Logistics and Connectivity Options
Presumably you have like cable drops or rods from the ceiling if you need to suspend a camera in a given place, or how do you actually physically uh put the cameras where they need to be?
Yeah, you have to to mount them somehow. There are uh industrial mounting systems from RAM, for example, from the US. That's uh really cool. It's a partner of ours. It's Rudgetized Things with either induction
Charging?
Or with cables, but you don't need a lot of power. You know y you can get it from any uh lighting. You just need two hundred uh thirty or one hundred and ten volts. And you ni only need five five volts, two two amps. That's that's it fight uh finally on the on the smartphone.
So do you need an electrician to do it or can you just have uh someone uh
It depends. If there is a plug, we don't need an electrician. On the other side you can do Wi Fi or you can do GSM. That's also interesting. If your hall does not have Wi Fi, you'd simply put a very cheap SIM card into it. Yes. Uh we are fine with two gigabytes per month. So this is not a lot of data. It's less something like five bucks or so. It's cheaper to equip some of the smartphones with GSM cards than uh setting up Wi Fi.
Yeah. Very good. Well, uh th this is so cool and
¶ Beacon Protocol Details and RSSI Use
Uh I have to ask the geeky question about the beacons. Uh is the the it's in the name of the podcast, so I've got to ask what are the protocols that you're using on these beacons? Is it iBeacon or
It's an eye beacon. Definitely it's an eye beacon, yes. Yeah. But we are only using the RCI. Uh so the the the field strength. Yeah. So we are just uh reading what it is emitting and we know that this beacon has this ID. It we have our own ID we use.
what is not
very much different from others. But we just have a s a s uh a simplified UUID what we use. Yes. Yes. Where we encode uh the customer and uh and the the the container or the palette or the the aspect.
Okay.
But it's it never changes. It's it's always uh But it's uh it's R S I. What is the what is the interesting thing? So there is nothing special hardware with antenna arrays or anything of these, uh what we use for for the beacons.
Very good.
¶ Affordability, Partnerships, and Industry Impact
Yeah. Well this is amazing, Carsten. I I uh really appreciate it. Is there any last things that you wanna cover b uh before we wrap it up? I think you've given us a great uh picture of uh the problem you're solving and how you're solving it and um
I I'm very optimistic for you'cause, you know, the more you do this then uh you're able to speed things up with more plugins, more uh uh existing integrations so that you can get something working faster and cheaper and uh I'm sure you're getting the benefit of that.
Yeah, what I wanted to say is uh we have one automotive customer that said uh it's the greatest thing thing since uh invention of the wheel. What I really loved for the for the QR codes, yeah.
From an automotive customer, they're th and they know wheels.
Yeah, why I love this? Why uh because they said if finally it's a it's an affordable solution. We have so many use cases we cannot fulfil without our wet band or with Bluetooth. And uh a there ki is nothing more affordable than a printed tricker. Nothing. You ki if you print something on a piece of paper
Costs are close to nothing. Not nothing to And I think the use cases are are broad and we are w really working with partners here because we cannot be specialists in pharmaceuticals, in medical, in whatever. That's not our our task. So we are the ones delivering the technology, but all the use cases we deliver the data and the use cases ca then can be in uh implemented by partners.
This is very important and we filed since November last year when we started it something like twenty partners internationally. with companies that have fifteen thousand people or so in the area of logistics, in the area of healthcare, in the area of retail, in the area So because there is a demand everywhere. And you know that.
¶ Global Reach and Hardware Independence
Yeah. Yeah. And um so in terms of your geographic focus. Uh obviously Germany is the heart of uh engineering excellence. It's actually where the machines are made that make the RFID tags, uh Muhlbauer and so forth. Uh but what what is your geographic focus?
As of today we have about one hundred and eighty customers in fifteen countries from Japan over Singapore, over India, over Europe, over North America and Mexico. Yeah. So there's nothing in South America, there's nothing in Australia. I wanted to go to Australia but uh then someone started a war and uh the airport at Du uh at uh Qatar s um went down. There was no plane going there.
This means uh we have no focus. It's uh it's data. It's it's uh context data, it's uh three D data we deliver and we don't care uh where it is deployed because yeah as long as Samsung is in that country. And we prefer something over the others because we know it it's working, it's not going uh like uh like a ball from the battery standpoint and stuff like this. So it's it's uh high quality hardware. Uh we don't care. So it's it's really available worldwide, yeah.
¶ Entrepreneurial Journey and Bosch Experience
Well, I think like any good buzzword, people will argue over the definition, but you know, I I def I do define ambient, uh, in really broad terms. It's kind of this philosophy, as I mentioned, uh, where you're leveraging this pervasive technology. And yes, you know, ambient can mean energy harvesting from Bluetooth for Bluetooth uh trackers. But I really think the important part of it is
is the pervasiveness, the reducing of cost, and the using of the technology that surrounds us. And I think by that definition, uh even with your QR code, uh solution, the fact that you're using these incredibly powerful cameras that are just ridiculously cheap uh in in these devices that that are also incredibly affordable.
would put you into at least my definition of uh of uh of ambient. So congratulations on pioneering in ambient uh IoT. And uh Carsten, one one of the questions I love asking our guests is how they got their current job or maybe put another way, w what was your Evolution as a entrepreneur. I'm really interested. Uh I've always been a huge fan of Bosch products. So how did that feature in your uh uh um deciding to start your own company?
Yeah, my career started uh I'm by by profession, I'm a chemist. But it was always the question: what do I study? Is it uh Economics is it? IT or is it chemistry? But it was chemistry because we're it was close to my home. It was one of the best chemistries in Germany. Therefore it was chemistry and I loved I love chemistry.
Uh but I was the first one uh putting the chemical institutes to the internet that time. So long, long, long time ago and we yeah, why we did that? Because we uh used the computers in Australia to calculate our our structures w was interesting thing. They had much faster computers than we had and so we used over the internet to s uh Was interesting side. Uh then I started after my chemistry care career um as a consultant production and logistics because it's always about processes.
After that I did I this I did for for ten years. We had one hundred and fifty consultants. Then I built and sold software companies for ten years, one to Palo Alto. to a company called Intalio and one the latest one to Bosch. And with Bosch I was five years vice president for everything that has been to do with IoT, Internet of Things. Bosch called it Internet of Things and Services that time.
And they had a had made their own um you know, Bosch is big in in semiconductors. They do a lot of c um semiconductors, MEMS, uh so the the acceleration th stuff and temperature c uh sensors and other things for automotive. But uh in smartphones um there is a dozen of uh s of sensors, yeah, and so they are also big in in these. So even more sensors go to to smartphones than to cars. Many, many more. Yeah, it's hundreds and hundreds.
Yeah, but uh an entrepreneur like me and um a big conglomerate as Bosch, there is a misfit. Yeah, it's like in a rowboat and trying to to to steer a tanker. It's not really going to work. Yeah, yeah. after four and a half years I I quit Ed Bar and started my next company and this is Synf. In fact I have two in the moment, Synfo Z and Mobile Vision Technology. But uh yeah, this is the the in in a nutshell uh the career I did. It's my sixth startup or so.
Amazing. Yeah, I... Europe isn't... synonymous with startups. It seems like uh, you know, the folks in Tel Aviv and the Bay Area have cornered the the branding, but it's great to hear that uh there's real evidence of a lot of start ups uh there and I I I can I completely understand your I I'm sure there was a lot of pride in becoming part of Bosch. You know, this is an incredible brand. And I felt the same way. I I worked at a company that was bought by IBM and it was like
You know, uh it was a three thousand person company, certainly suddenly part of a three hundred thousand person company. Um You went from saying, Oh, this is my company that I work at and no one's heard of it, and then you say, Oh, I work at IBM and people will tell you a story about their first uh IBM typewriter or whatever, and it was probably similar.
Yeah, it was even worse because we have been one hundred and twenty five people and then we have been five hundred thousand people. So this was uh an another scale. Even worse, even worse. Yeah. So Yeah and and the CEO, Mr. Denner that time time said, Oh and you are our roboat and you now help us uh get faster and more agile and I said, Mm, maybe
Yeah. I mean there are limits to what you can do with a company that large and if you're used to being your own boss and making the decisions it's it's very difficult.
Yeah, we had two stages of uh decision making in the small uh in the startup or in the yeah, it was ten years old. And then uh we all of a sudden had like fifteen. Yeah. For decision making for to getting out an offer. This this is simply yeah. But you have to do it in such a low big conglomerate, due to compliance you have to do it and uh there is no way not to do it.
¶ Motivational Songs and Life Philosophy
Simple. Absolutely. Well that's great. Well, I appreciate you sharing that, Carsten. And now on to the most personal part of the show, which is your choice of three songs. What was your first uh song that you chose that has meaning for you?
Yeah, there's a lot of songs, uh and I love music. Uh I'm not good in playing music but uh I'm singing when I'm alone in the car so not to hurt anybody.
Yeah.
But I think uh Eye of the Tiger uh really hits uh the spot, yeah, from uh Survivor. Why? Because it it shows what you do in in inside of a startup. Yeah. It's it's really about fire it. It's about uh changing directions, to be agile and all this stuff, uh what you um see in connection with the w when you hear the song you see Rocky, right? And you see him dancing uh in the ring and uh this is something uh that really fits to to what you do in a startup.
Wonderful choice. Wonderful choice. Very good. And number two?
And number two, even it uh did not uh work in all of my companies well, so two did not make it, but four were are doing well, we are the champions. So I think this is a very
Yeah.
That this really fits them because if you have and you know that from William, if you have these the success, yeah, it really blows your mind. It's it's simply cool. Yeah. If you have something uh a cool technology, if you have something that can change things in reality is simply outstanding. And I think this is a really good choice from Queen.
Yeah, I I love that choice. Um, we're actually going to see a Queen Tribute band uh next week, uh, here in California and uh I sort of put your two choices as sort of entrepreneurial uh motivation songs. And uh when you made your first choice, I'm like just thinking which one uh would be mine and and it was actually that one. We are the champions. It's the one that you play on the way to a challenging meeting or where you're gonna do a big
Yeah, there's it's perfect for that. Yeah, it's it's really engaging and uh yeah, really puts you in the right mood. I mood I think. Yeah, that's something.
Very good. And what's number three?
Yeah, it's even from ch from Queens uh from Queen who wants to live forever. Yeah, it's uh when you reach it you you are thinking What is it for? Yeah, did I really change something? Is it really something the world will use? You it will remember you? Most likely not, but uh so it's um It says uh yeah, who wants but to live forever. I l I also love this uh Highlander
Uh, movies, yeah. I watched all of them, I think. Also the series that is what was running up and round down in Germany, so I love that. Yeah.
Oh really? Yeah, that's great. Uh well I love those movies too and uh My getting to sleep. uh listening is the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, you know, the Roman Emperor. I I I think, you know, what you describe sort of fits into that kind of stoic uh philosophy which uh I uh I'm an admirer of very good. Well thanks so much, Carsten. It's been a real pleasure having you on the show and I'm so glad we got a chance to talk.
Steve, thank you very much for having me here. It was really engaging and really interesting uh discussion. I love it uh to to be on podcasts and to bring out the the the story. Um there is so much things you can learn from Experienced people. I love to hear s such stories and it really inspires me every day and I learn everything uh as something.
Okay.
It's cool.
¶ Podcast Wrap-up and Listener Engagement
I I I I I love listening and I love um uh making as well. So uh thanks for joining us.
Steve, thank you very much for having me. It was a great, good discussion. Love that. Thank you.
as you may have picked up a regular listener to this podcast. He contacted me at the beginning of the week. Uh. And so it's Friday. And uh we recorded the episode. So
You know if someone or awesome
you think has a story that people that are focused
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Well one is
to miss two and everyone that's uh got them to where they are. Uh it's Friday afternoon here. 10th uh of April. Um Tammy, my wife and I were gonna go and drive to the coast, about 20 minutes away. uh here in San Diego and hopefully we'll see that capsule entering into the atmosphere and landing safely. I really think we are in many ways in the best
And the worst of the yeah.
There's some really terrible things.
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