Access Granted: Exploring RFID, IoT, and the Future of Connectivity

Transcript

• Steve Statler 00:00

  Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. This week we've got Amir Khoshniyati, who is the Vice President and General Manager of IoT at Identiv. So Amir is someone that actually has been on the show before. And he is a veteran of the RFID business of NFC. So we'll be talking to him about what Identiv are doing as a manufacturer of tags, smart tags in Ambient IoT, but also what they do in other areas and I first came across Identitiv of six years ago was really intrigued because they deal with highly sophisticated customer requirements, as well as producing large numbers of of tags and Wiliot your uses leverages that capacity and as a partnership, so this is going to be Wiliot influenced episode. But I am going to ask him to compare and contrast. The pros and cons of optical of barcodes, QR codes, NFC, RFID, and BLE. So a lot of acronyms, but if you're an architect of solutions, and you want to make sure you're using the right technology for the right task, then this is the episode for you. The list of Beacon Ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by Wiliot, bringing intelligence to every single thing. Amir, welcome back to the Mr. Beacon podcast.

  Amir Khoshniyati 01:49

  Thank you for having me, Steve.

  Steve Statler 01:50

  Well, two years have gone by lots changed, you are heading up and IoT division at Identiv. So maybe we should start off with just explaining a bit about Identiv the company and then that I'll follow up and ask you some questions about what you're doing in in the whole IoT area. So if you are Identiv, I know it's a company that I came across when I first started working at Wiliot. And you were like these gurus of the RFID world, you know, really adapt complex integrations, complex technology. How do you explain who Identiv when, when you're meeting people for the first time?

  Amir Khoshniyati 02:41

  I summarized it very quickly into engineering excellence on specialized IoT solutions. Now, if I go a layer deeper there, the results, obviously much more substance behind that. But what really pulled me over to to Identiv to really come in and then start to project it forward from a traditional transponder business into an IoT business was that level of engineering excellence, and how we separate ourselves as a full end to end provider of specialty solutions. So a lot of the market traditionally with RFID is focused on UHF solution. So one reader to many different tags and an environment vary commoditize usually standard skews that you're running on a very efficient volume basis. Identiv isn't positioned to really operate in that manner. We're positioned to figure out the complex applications in adverse environments, and then put ourselves in a situation to build secret sauce around these applications. So it could be really sticky, long term business. And we don't really worry about the volumes, we worry about the specialized expertise that we put behind each product. So the history has been traditional. HF, NFC has been the foundation of the business. And we've started to really evolve that into true IoT solutions. We work very close obviously, Wiliot with the BLE. And we've gotten into also active technologies. So things with printed electronics, printed batteries, things that go into PCB bores, but name of the game for us is specialized products and level of engineering that goes into them to really work and find those specialized solutions for our customers. So if someone needs a custom tag, they're integrating it into an auto injector or something like that. That's the kind of stuff that you do. Absolutely. We'd like taking it one layer deeper. So it's not just a recognition of the SKU information, we'd like to get into the condition monitoring. We'd like to get into additional capabilities as you work up the ladder set versus just the basic, here's authentication, here's product information, and you're, you're off and running. We want to create those digital triggers that on an ongoing basis feed data and then allow all our customers essentially to do data mining and go go much, much further with what we provide. So you sell off the shelf products, browse through your website, you get a lot of different skews. But you're also up for custom development work.

  Steve Statler 05:18

  Is it? It's beyond just the hardware and the tags. So isn't it? It's what I, what I'm seeing you doing is making moves into the cloud, too. Can you explain all that?

  Amir Khoshniyati 05:30

  Sure. So so the basis of the businesses, we do provide tags. So we have our custom proprietary antennas, we do the manufacturing, the chip attaches complex applications, also capacitor attachments on the same line, we have secondary processes that do the converting as well. So if we want to do any kind of laminates, prints adhesives, we can do that. And we do the encoding, and then how we bring it all home is really the level of encoding a serialization and being able to manage it top down from the cloud, we worked very well with a lot of partners like Wiliot, it's like collect IDs, tap whales of the world, but we recently launched almost about a year ago, are bitsey.io Cloud, which is really three different modules. One it has tag management allows us when we are deploying tags into the market to commission and Decommission tags from the cloud. And when we do typically provide our products in a role or some level of real format, you can take that information directly from the cloud versus Excel documents, that is pretty static. In most cases, we have a second module that's geared for marketing teams to really roll their sleeves up and build consumer experiences behind what they interact with, with these digitized products. And the third module, which is my I guess, the most exciting feature set of this cloud is that we've actually built the foundation on Tableau. So all of the data, they get summoned up to the cloud, you can do data mining, and you can mix and match that data and make more informed decisions based on what the tags are doing in the market. So whether you're working with RFID solutions, or BLE solutions, or a combination of both, the cloud supports that. And it's a very nice plugin for all our partner clouds as well. So are you competing with people in the application space? Or is this more middleware and management? Right now we've built it in a way that it's a it's a middleware, so it acts as a tunnel, and it can pass the information along. There are modules that we could say do overlap with partners in some degree. So it's it's really a right level of an agreement that we get into many different engagements to say that these partners have an expertise, let's say in specialty retail, for the garments, or jerseys, or luxury items. So for them, if that's their niche, we let them play there. And we focus on the tag delivery, we focus on the serialization. And we focus on a level of tag management. And if they'd like us to get into the marketing experiences, we can do that. Or we just relay the information at that point in time to them and let them handle the consumer experience portion. And the data can come from both sets the encoding information, and they can come from us or them afterwards based on the engagements their consumers. So we built it with the flexibility that it can work as a plug and play with partners. But the biggest thing that we wanted to provide our customers with without outside of just the data management was the ability that when we deliver products, you have the power to understand everything we've commissioned to you. And if for some reason, you have to recall something or there's a issue on the on the assembly line, you can go back to the cloud and do your decommissioning. And so you're not at the mercy of going back to the real IDs, figuring out what you've unraveled from that real what has been deployed and manually going through the process. And there's a lot of value in being able to do that from the cloud.

  Steve Statler 09:05

  I think this is really interesting in two respects. One is, it seems to me that the original paradigm with RFID UHF RFID, which was really starting to scale before the cloud was even invented, certainly wasn't in the same place as it is now. And data, you thought of the data being all of it was encoded into the tag and you're worried about what the capacity of the tag was and didn't have enough bytes and and what you're doing with the cloud removes that concern. You're essentially building a digital product passport in the cloud, which can be huge. You can have video and all sorts of culture in history in the cloud. And really the the tag is simplified. It's a sensor and it's an identity. So that's my, that's one of my takes on what you've just said, is that in line with your view? Or do you have a different one different view? Right?

  Amir Khoshniyati 10:11

  That's absolutely it. We want to really ride the tailwind behind a lot of the mandates like the digital passport, that right now is being enforced in in Europe. So this definitely meets that requirement. Because you're at the front of the supply chain, you're providing the digital trigger, they get married into a product, or on top of a product if it's a package. And you're able to get that traceability in the value validity really, from inception all the way to where the product ends up and hopefully goes through the sustainable routes and goes through the circular economy based on what those mandates are. But in the same respect, because we're a specialty provider on the IoT side, there's a lot of value in being able to track that and track that with the capabilities of condition monitoring behind it. So this foundation that we built, and the way that it works with partner platforms allows for all of that, and it's been very exciting. And it's been a very good early stage launch. Now we're looking to get into the additional capabilities and really keep up with the suppliers on their latest and greatest chips.

  Steve Statler 11:19

  So you're running this, this team without Identitv of you know, the second area that I think is kind of an interesting application is the move to SaaS business models. Where used to be people made the tags they sold them, that was it was kind of a one off transaction. And so you had this incentive to essentially try and get people to spend as much on the tag as as possible. Which, you know, from my perspective, always, you know, that represents friction. It's like, if you get all the money up front, whether they use it or not, then, you know, it's great for you as the vendor, but maybe not so much for, for them, who knows if they're going to use it a lot or a little not at all. So it seems like by having a SaaS business model, you have a bit more flexibility, you can get more aggressive on the on the tag price and have more of a success based, recurring business model. You know, how much are you? Is the guy that's running this this group? How much are you looking at building recurring revenue? And well, let's just start off with that question. I have another question. Are you focused on building your SAS revenue stream? Is that part of your strategy?

  Amir Khoshniyati 12:48

  Absolutely. And we are a public company so that that topic is a very, very sensitive one, because we definitely want that and that part of the business is great builds a lot of stability for for trajectory forward. Now, I don't think it's an immediate model to supersede the hardware side and the tag side, when I'm looking specifically to 2024. But as you're starting to progress forward from, let's say, a projection of five years out. We are a specialty provider. So I think that secret sauce helps us from price erosion when it comes to the hardware side, because we're adding value add services on top of traditional RFID. And we're never going to be in the commodity game, we're never going to be in the retail game when it comes to those levels of billions of tags in the market. But where we do see value is that we will see a time that it might be better to get the complete package as well. And when you do give the complete package, just one, you're able to put the tags blend it into the cloud cost. And many times even for global detect costs. So you're giving essentially the tags away for free. And you're monetizing it based on your results in the cloud, and your engineering excellence to go out to the field and actually deploy a solution. And that's where the trajectory and the excitement for our engineering excellence really is, is that we've mastered it internally and making world class products that our customers really can rely on in all these adverse environments. But then the next step is Okay, now we're getting the data out of it. How do we make it digestible for the customers? And then how do we get closer with the customers and that engineer excellence isn't just within our four walls, it actually lives on site, in their actual manufacturing environment or their distribution environment, and guiding them to the right solutions that when we deploy, it's efficient doesn't become a bottleneck in the process. And they're realizing the real time benefits from from the data set.

  Steve Statler 14:50

  Very good, so can you clarify a bit more what the boundaries are of what your team does versus the rest of Identiv? What's your role? What's your team's role? How does it differ from the rest of Identiv of and you're always the mandate that you were given when you when you joined the company?

  Amir Khoshniyati 15:10

  Sure, yeah, there's really two pillars to Identiv. The first one is the traditional foundation of the business, which is access control company, they work with many high end customers, including government customers, they do everything from the access control devices that go on the doors, the infrastructure with how it works behind the scenes with the video surveillance, all the analytics and data behind it, they have good training programs as well and training teams. And then also the car business as well, they interacts with the axis car axis units to get in and out of the building. So everything end to end, is that pillar of that business unit with Identiv. The other business unit is this historic transponder unit, which I came in and we've been growing the team around, my mandate was really to come in, roll the business, and then also start to build much more of a global footprint. So historically, we had a very good footprint in the US. What we've done, essentially over the last two years is we've diversified our reach really globally. And we have a very good footprint as well, right now, I would say in Europe, in many cases, even growing the business even more compared to the other regions. And then in addition to that we have transformed specifically over the last 12 months from a traditional RFID company being focused on HF and NFC to a true IoT company. And that's the excitement trajectory for our futures. We've went from basic technologies and HF NFC with some level of specialization to a true IoT company, leveraging the same engineering resources, leveraging the same machines that we use to produce the traditional products. And now we're even getting into some value add services. And those value add services are the specializations on the converting some very, very finite specialization on the encoding. So as you get into higher encrypted tax tags and mandates around security, we're able to lock those tags in a way that nobody else is doing. And then now we're getting in the cloud business as well. So building bitsy.io, being able to manage it truly puts us in a position as a Iot end to end provider. And really, those are the two pillars under Identiv. So little bit, I would say it's some small overlaps when you look at NFC technology cards, but really, you draw a fine line between the two. And you say, Okay, this is more of access control business that they call premises. And then you have our group, which is Identiv, and then the IoT business.

  Steve Statler 17:42

  Very good. And maybe let's talk a bit about what you're doing with Wiliot. I always try and I kind of a bit reticent to do that. Because this is I try and take an independent view here, but I can't get over it. Because I think you're doing some interesting stuff with Ambien IoT and Wiliot's known for battery free Bluetooth. And I know, we've been clarity, we've been quite public about the fact that you've been making large numbers of battery free Bluetooth, Bluetooth tags, based on the Wiliot chip. And even though people think of Wiliot as as IoT tag, a Bluetooth tag company, we actually don't meet the tags. And so companies like like yours for that make them that tell us a bit about what you're doing with with batteries and and our product, because that's not something that we even talk about on our website. But it's something that you do talk about on yours. And so people might be a bit confused. And and basically, we decided we didn't want to confuse people with fully committed, we think there's massive the biggest part of the opportunity is battery free. But there are use cases where batteries available, perhaps you can talk about what you're doing in that space.

  Amir Khoshniyati 19:09

  Definitely. And we're in a very privileged position to be working with Wiliot, it's on both ends. And when we see the future, we see the dream of Ambient IoT picking up I think everybody else does as well. And we're there. The technology is there. It's just a matter of the building notoriety, and even more awareness around. So we have the passive side that we've been building on. But one thing that was really exciting and it was almost maybe even two years ago, if I'm getting my timing right, was the the back product. The battery assisted pixel was first announced from our side, I think we were we may have done it at NRF if I'm not mistaken. And we announced it and everybody was wondering, well, what is this and how did you get to a one to $2 price point on something that traditionally the market had seen, at best case between five to 10 dollars, and that was never a sure thing. And the reality is we're we're there, we have some really nice pilots right now with a lot of prominent names. And what it really is, is our ability to take the same condition monitoring that comes with active loggers set the intervals, and then start to work much closer to an item level type application, which the cold chain market historically has always struggled with. So when you look at a lot of so healthcare, pharmaceuticals, medical devices that need some condition monitoring and ongoing data marks to make sure the compliance aspects are being met, in many cases, are having a budget for something like this and a logger that's much higher, but the ones that really aren't are under the food segment. Going in at an item level on a lead of lead, let us head doesn't always work out all too well. So we've we've had history to work at palette level at crate level, and our ambition is to start to go towards the item levels. And the experience has been a positive, it's been positive to show a lager that is now smaller in dimensions. And I think we had a webinar where we went through the technical specifications behind it. And then in the same respect, being able to produce these on the same lines that we're doing our traditional RFID products also is very exciting. So we're not building new processes. On the manufacturing side, we've just mastered some IP on the process engineering side to build these products and get them to some level of volume at a price point. That's pretty, pretty eye catching to the market.

  Steve Statler 21:40

  So you could have a temperature sensor, it's it's a bit bigger than the postage stamp size, but how big are your, the battery assisted pixels for this printed battery product?

  Amir Khoshniyati 21:55

  We've I don't have the specs exactly in front of me. But we've put a basically a benchmark of the the pixels of the passive tabs, and it's about two and a half of those tags together. So slightly bigger, but not much bigger.

  Steve Statler 22:10

  Roughly the size of a business card so you postage stamp size? If you're battery free and business card credit card size, if you're if you've got a battery on it.

  Amir Khoshniyati 22:20

  Yeah, that's a good benchmark. Traditionally, a lot of these loggers that was size of a credit card business cards, and maybe another two to three centimeters smaller. And we're just just smaller, which is nice.

  Steve Statler 22:33

  So when do you use one versus the other? We will because same chip, same encrypted payload, same temperature sensing, you know, why would I go up to something that's just north of $1 versus something that's, you know, double digit pennies? What's the what's the motivation? What are these?

  Amir Khoshniyati 22:59

  Definitely, I would say starting point is definitely read distance. With the starting point, I think we're in this first phase of the controlled run, we're doing a pretty sterile result of over 20 meters. And I think these are be improving in the next gen.

  Steve Statler 23:14

  So that's because you're not constrained by the harvesting range. You can basically you really so with battery powered, sorry, battery free IoT pixels, then you have at least two constraints. One is the read range. And the other one is the harvesting range. How far is the tag away from the energy source? So when you have printed battery, then you've got rid of 50% of that. And it's just all about the transmit range, not about the harvesting range. So that that that makes sense, what you're saying about the range?

  Amir Khoshniyati 23:51

  Correct, exactly. And the nice thing is we've built it in a way, as you said, because it's printed. When it gets embedded behind the label, you're really not hindering anything from a performance standpoint. And also it doesn't project out from that package. So you're getting the read distance. So you're getting all those capabilities. But on surface level, you're not seeing any difference in what you're embedding, which is the value.

  Steve Statler 24:17

  So it seems to me that this is useful when you're going to the very outer limits of Ambient IoT. I mean, the future of Ambient IoT is we have all radios, whether they're in televisions, smart speakers, phones, or dedicated IoT devices can energize and read these tags, but we're not there yet. And so you're not necessarily going to be near the kind of infrastructure that can power a battery free tags. So you could put these app tags on something that could be read by someone's phone in the middle of nowhere. It could be a convenience store in Guadalajara or Peru or wherever where you know, there's just one or two tags and no one's thought to put the the, the readers and so forth. So I feel like this is like a training run where Ambient IoT is going to be in the future. What are the main use cases that you're seeing drive interest in the battery free and the battery assisted products, what would you see in terms of verticals and use cases?

  Amir Khoshniyati 25:30

  The cold chain definitely is one prominent once the same, same reason we got into the accelerated route with the battery since two pixels, we see much more picking up within healthcare, we want to be writing the mandates around compliance on anything that's being transported. Anything that has requirements around food safety, those are things that we want to ride ride the requirements around. We also want to find a way as the technology evolves, read distances evolve, the hope is that these could start to compete with Ultra wideband type ranges. And if they can, and then you have all these scenarios, and the products can speak to each other, you could potentially get into an environment that even on the retail side, it doesn't just focus on inventory management, but it becomes intelligent for retailers on habits of how products are interacting with each other what shopper habits are. And then when also things get recycled. In between that process, they go to laundromats where they get lost, you can start to detect products. And then you can also get into many use cases based on region your. So we see that this is going to start as a potential cold chain solution just because of the condition monitor. But they can start to then evolve into a lot of intelligence in all the segments when it really starts to pick up and the read distance was really start to improve much further than where we're at with the 20 meetups.

  Steve Statler 27:07

  I think the other area that I would add to what you said is grocery well retail in general, but grocery in particular and quick service restaurants where that ability to measure temperature at case level is going to impact shelf life and food safety, product quality and freshness and all these things and where the staffing is really under pressure. And so having to have people wielding a handheld scatters whether it will be a scanning barcodes and scanning RFID is problematic and you can basically have Bluetooth devices for that happened to be around that can be sensing rather than scanning. I realized I've got a I've projected some of my biases, my opinions on where Bluetooth Ambient IoT fits relative to RFID I don't want to put you on the spot. But I do want to ask you how you would explain to someone coming into this space? What is the sweet spot of NFC? What is the speed sweet spot of rain? RFID? And what is the sweet spot of Ambient IoT? Because, you know, my and even though this is sponsored by Wiliot, my daytime employer, we feature all sorts of products from UHF RFID. So I you know, my personal view is it's right to right job. It's not like the spiders are gonna eliminate the need for screwdrivers and the hammers. You need You need all of these things if you're if you're designing a solution, but I think people really get confused about when to use the airfield communication type stickers, when to use an RFID tag or when to use a Bluetooth tag. And you've spent so much time in this world on all sides of the fence. How do you explain it to people?

  Amir Khoshniyati 29:16

  Yeah, and I think there's also another variable in this and that's the technologies that require line of sight, like barcodes and QR codes. So yes, that's true. So So you kind of have the whole matrix in that environment. So so maybe I'll start with the less complex ones with barcodes and QR codes, the one DS and the two Ds The obvious things are that all our mobile devices are outfitted right now with cameras COVID is helped that so you can read the QR codes in the grocery example. You had many other examples with with items that go through logistics processes. They all have barcodes. Now the upside is it's cheap. It's easy. Downside is you have to have that line of sight. And without always the perfect line of sight and the lighting and the environment, you may miss things. And it's always maybe a little bit of a time lapse to recognize. And many cases, it is the right distance as well with the camera or the reader to make sure you can interact with it. When you get into the UHF environment, you can in sterile environments get to 15 to 20 years plus read ranges with a high end reader. And the perfect environment without metal or water collusion to read one to many, and you read rather quickly. And that's the value behind that you have the time timing of the readability to your advantage. But you have to have that that de facto environment. And a mini shop floor, especially in retail environments, you do have that. And you might have overhead readers or tunnels when products are moving in and out. So you can read them rather quickly. And you don't need that line of sight that you need with 1d or 2d printer technologies. Then, with HF and NFC, it's near field high frequency wavelength. So you have to get very close to the products. Nice thing is most of the modern phones, I would say I think the latest stat is around 98% of the phones have native readers and they've even unlocked right futures. So you can interact with the text so that rather than one too many is one to one. And you have higher end security, being able to get back close to a product and then authenticate it, read it and get some level of consumer experience behind. So one to one, pretty quick readability as well. But not as quick as what you get with UHF or even some of the line of sight technologies that are printed. And then you get into this exciting ambience space with BLE technologies, wishes one to many. And I'm classifying this as now one to many to many, because those objects that are all in the in the field can interact with each other. And because they're harvesting is sending signals, they can in a I guess a non scary way of explaining it, your products are living and breathing, and they're speaking to each other. And when they sign up to a single source, you can get all of that information. Anything that's built in logic wise, can also speak to each other. And many times when I'm speaking through this, I touch on the Internet of Things topic. But really, we were in an era of Internet of devices for the longest time, and people were preaching Internet of Things. But the reality was, the devices weren't mature enough yet to really support the internet of things. So we've went essentially from the launch of a mobile first world to a cloud first world supported by the mobile devices. And now we have all of these intelligent devices. So we are in the era of Internet of Things and to support how these products are speaking to each other. And then we get into then the alternate, which is then hopefully building a level of AI behind it because you have all this data, and you got to do something and automate. And with these BLE technologies, because it's one too many too many, you can now start to have the intelligence behind it. But what you may be sacrificing, you don't need the line of sight. It also is the speed of the REIT behind that. So I'm hoping as we evolve this technology in the space, we could start to read devices as quickly as we read them with Bluetooth low energy as you would read it with a traditional rain RFID UHF product. And if that can happen, you've really changed the game because we're not only just doing reading of products, we're doing the condition monitoring. And if you go back down the matrix, HF NFC, UHF printer technologies, with barcodes and QR codes, none of these gives you the ability to have all of these capabilities in one. And if you want to have these capabilities, you have to upgrade the ship set. The nice thing is with the aamby, at IoT, you're unlocking these feature sets from the cloud, the chip is ready to go and it has the capabilities. So you get enhanced capabilities, you get the condition monitoring, and with where the technology is building and how really collaborating with experts like Wiliot it and others is that we are building the knowledge share that we can start to build the reagents behind it, which is also something that these legacy technologies can't support. So you get the capabilities, you get the long read ranges. And then you you're you're off and running with a world and all these products are digitized and now everything has a living and breathing heartbeat in the market.

  Steve Statler 34:41

  Yeah, I think a lot of words of wisdom there a few things I would add, is it with barcodes and QR codes. The advantage is it's the cost. It's like the cost of ink so it's always free. But the problem means you have to get someone to scan them. And if it's a consumer, They're notorious for not doing that, you have to really give them a very good reason to scan. If it's an employee, then you can tell them to scan, you can pay them to scan. But sometimes they forget, sometimes they make mistakes. And the benefit of the Ambient IoT, and the battery piece is it's streaming data all the time. And you're you're sensing rather than scanning. And so those devices are registering their presence, they're registering their condition, whether you do anything or not. And what I found in life is if you're dependent on someone to do something, be prepared to be disappointed. If you want really high compliance, and you want high conversion rate, then having something that's streaming the data out is, is good. When I I have been a big fan of NFC and it's true that as a in America, we've we've come, you know, more recent converts than in Europe, but now Apple Pay is and Google Bay is ubiquitous, we've kind of learned to tap. And if you want to tap experience, in my opinion, NFC is second to none. And there are, you know, it may sound like I'm going back and contradicting myself, because here I'm saying Oh, you have to do something. But sometimes you do want the consumer to do something, they you want them to take an affirmative action and octillion a registration and indication that they want to pay. And you will get a robust, rapid transaction driven by NFC. And that's not true of BLE BLE is really good at saying, Oh, this thing's nearby. But it's it's it's not a binary thing. It's it's a linear thing. And so, yeah, if you want a map and have people tap on the map to select a location isn't enough seen sticker, if you want someone if you want to know what inventory is nearby, or point of interest that's nearby, then use BLE. That's what I would say, then I think it becomes a little more complex when you're comparing UHF and traditional raid RFID. With with BLE, but in my mind, theoretically, there's not much difference. But practically, there's a huge amount of difference because billing readers in some cases of free or certainly 10s of dollars, rather than hundreds of dollars, 1000s of dollars. And the implication there is, if I'm using BLE, I can afford to have readers everywhere. I think you said that already. But the result is you're streaming the data, and it's no labor, low labor. So Ambient IoT, BLE, no labor, low labor, whereas traditionally, at least with the handheld scanners, with UHF RFID, you're relying on something doing something, someone doing something, and I trivialize it by saying it's like asking your kids to mark their own homework, it, it works, when they're doing it properly, it doesn't work when that one they're not. And because the scatters are expensive, you're effectively getting a snapshot, whereas with Bluetooth, it's streaming the data. And that's kind of I think, a simplistic way maybe of looking at it and then in the future using you look at where things are going so I think it's great, you you guys can provide people with whatever they want whatever they believe then Identiv of has any of those technologies to have that I think you are go i unbiased and experienced in that respect. So any anything else that we should cover? Before we wrap up on your second visit to Mr. Beacon, anything you want to say about what what your team is working on at the moment.

  Amir Khoshniyati 39:05

  I'm just really excited to be here to openly speak to you about where the markets going, the excitement around Ambient IoT, so it's privileged Steve and from from our perspective, you know, we're we're happy to just be supporting the wave of these innovations. It's a nice place to be sitting in not to be just one dimensional one technology but to be able to go across the spectrum. And then with suppliers, it's nice because they start to push the boundaries and say, Is this possible and we get our hands on early stage capabilities and say yes, it's possible this is how you need to design it. And then we start to work towards the market. So being on the high end side on the specialty side it's a privilege and then also working with partners like Wiliot it's and others it's also great as well because we're pushing the boundaries.

  Steve Statler 39:54

  Yeah, I again with my Wiliot hats on you and Steven, you're CEO and the whole team Identiv have been really amazing to work with, you've really leaned into it, you get it in, see where it's going, you're making the investment.

  Amir Khoshniyati 40:10

  So, yeah, that sounds good.

  Steve Statler 40:13

  So one of the things that you mentioned when we spoke back in episode 120, gosh, it seems like an eternity ago, I think we were still COVID was still going on. You mentioned gentleman of Orange County, I know you're super busy with what you're doing at Identiv of, are you still doing that? And then maybe you can just update us on what that is, I'm kind of interested in, in that side of things.

  Amir Khoshniyati 40:44

  Yeah, I'm glad glad you brought it up. It's a different story than the IoT world that we're playing in daily, but it's a nice sideline hobby. Yeah, it's a nonprofit that I've started with three of my really good friends. And it's geared towards giving back to the youth in Orange County. So we all kind of took a subject matter that we're passionate about, and started to focus in on it. So whether it's educating and mentoring kids giving them soft skills with a lot of the computer programs, or if it's giving food drives to the community, we do toy drives during the holidays. So we're pretty active about two events per month. And it's nice to be able to do something outside of the IoT world, but also give back and definitely give back to the youth and help them with their trajectory down the line. And is it just an informal Fliegl Do you have a website and so forth? We have a website general no vo C. And it has pictures and different things from our events. So it's very much active and we have a social media sites as well. So I invite you to check it out. I definitely will I encourage all our listeners and viewers to to do the same, let's Great. Appreciate that. Amir, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been it's been a real treat having you on again. Yeah, thank you for having me. Say it's good to reconnect on this topic. After so many years, right. It was during COVID So it's it's nice to be working together and then circle back to it again as well. 

   

  Steve Statler 42:14

  Very good. All the best. So that was my conversation with Amir I do hope your support is is nonprofit I think it's great the invest so much energy into it he's a super busy guy so I'm you know of people that do that. I also in awe of you very grateful for you listening and being a supporter through your presence of this show. Do raters for viewers, tell your friends and come back in a couple of weeks when we have the next episode, Mr. Beacon and thanks very much to Aaron Hammock and Brooke Ellsworth for making the show happen. Be safe. See you next time.