The Super Bowl is next Sunday, February 13, and millions are waiting for the most important event of the year: interesting TV commercials. The game this year is an epic battle of Salesforce versus Expedia, Uber Eats versus Taco Bell, Squarespace trying to box in Meta, and a gang of beer companies fighting amongst themselves. Oh, yeah, the Bengals and Rams are involved somehow, too.

University campuses make for excellent IoT case studies, with thousands of devices spread across a large area. RFID Journal takes a look at IoT operations and device security in that environment.

An Australia smart city project involving Brimbank in Victoria, Swinburne University of Technology, and Optus bolts IoT 3D cameras on garbage trucks connected by 5G to locate and report potholes needing repair. Meanwhile, Telstra will link as many as 4.1 million smart meters with SIM cards to its Intellihub smart utility infrastructure company through an Intelli-ConX communications bridge.

In more city news, Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, will work with National Narrowband Network Company using a LoRaWAN network powered by Actility to provide smart lighting to 70,000 streetlights over 200 square kilometers.

SmartCitiesWorld writes that LoRaWAN has become the dominant technology for low power wide-area networks.

Here’s a good overview of the state of smart home tech by home builders in advance of a big show in Orlando. Interesting tidbit from Parks Associates research? 59% of large scale builders sometimes installed smart home tech without increasing their price, while 49% install the tech to boost home prices.

The property insurance company Chubb has started sending IoT water sensors to customers and offering discounts to customers who tied the hockey puck-sized detector to a water-line shutoff device.

Global Telecom's MERCURY Series of IoT modules connect via satellite, cellular, and private networks. And, oh yea, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Now shipping.

The new Thales Cinterion ELS62 module and services promise enhanced connectivity with security for IoT devices. Especially useful for smart grids, connected home appliances, and healthcare devices, says Thales.

Ubiik, Industrial IoT player in advanced metering infrastructure, just released its Hermes LTE-M/NB-IOT Small Cell. Provides end-to-end connections over multi-carrier standalone NB-IOT, LTE-M, and external Evolved Packet Core (EPC) networks thanks to its LTE Cat-1 and Ethernet backhaul options.

From our friends at Hackster.io:

Build your own TinyAutomator to add a predictive maintenance system to your machinery. Monitor temperature and vibration so you'll know when something's going wrong and fix it before your machine needs major repairs.