For a lot of people 6LoWPAN is just a piece of cake for the Smart Home or Ambient Assisted Living. My wish is a Smart-Home on a reasonable price level. In my opinion we need some kind of web based interface to get the coffee machine live on the display of the smartphone or laptop. Between this human machine interface on the mobile phone and the machine in the kitchen we need middle-ware. The HMI interface has to be open source and the protocol to the middle-ware as well.
I live in Germany and I would not like to bother you with the names of all the buses we have in our houses and smart metering. In TV, multimedia and streaming we get some pseudo standards to make our life easier. All the new TVs offer a triple tuner for cable, terrestrial and satellite TV. They all have a web browser and most of the TVs can be controlled by smartphone. To the digital video recorder I can access remotely even when I am on the road. For movies in 3D I still need some glasses, which are not compatible between the suppliers. I can’t take my 3D glasses with me to have some fun by watching 3D TV at my friends home. Anyhow, this is a rose garden in comparison to have access to the coffee machine, oven or just the jalousie. In kitchen and at the windows, doors or garage gate nearly nothing is compatible. Everybody is creating his own standard. How to find a way out?
Is Google maybe the answer?
They offer software tools free of charge and makes everything worldwide equal.
- Google App Engine with Java and Python (free of charge, only at higher volume they start to charge)
- Android – not only in smartphones and tablets – it is already in our cars
- Google+ – not just a Facebook copy, it is much better
- Google Android@Home to create accessories easy – no license fees to plug a piece of hardware to a phone
- Google Android 4.0 will support Bluetooth 4.0 and not block Bluetooth devices like the other company with the fruit in the logo
Will we get a Google Maps at home? Will this Home Maps linked to Google+ ? Where is the difference to chat with my friend or with my coffee machine? I can put all my machines in a circle and name it “my machines”. Just have a look on http://twitter.com/#!/M2Mapps and scroll some months down. You will find weather data we published each hour. It stopped because Twitter changed the API.
Anyhow, we all maybe would not like to wait for the open source 6LoWPAN stack of Google. Nevertheless, I got my fingers on inexpensive 6LoWPAN modules on 2400 MHz. The way from my kitchen to the router in the cellar is short. My coffee machine will be able to update me. Last but not least, I can create the same application on chip level, without changing the firmware.
My opinion is that we need some more open source and share knowledge. This was one of the reasons to start the Google Technology User Group in Hannover with focus on Wireless M2M some weeks ago athttp://gtugm2m.wordpress.com/. It already has three members. It is me and two more from outside of Germany.
And this is not all. Next week I will talk about Android@Home and Smart-Home at C-Space in Berlin.
http://gtugm2m.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/androidathome-smart-home-6lowpan-gtug-in-berlin/
There will stay at least 30 people with skills in Android, some M2M customers of mine and a new business contact from Poland. Maybe we will stream all or a part of event to Internet. The only bad news is that the stream will be in German language only. This time – later on it in another city it can change.
Everybody who is interested in Wireless M2M is welcome to subscribe to this Blog by RSS or email (left upper corner). Right now I have capacities for studies and development of prototypes and final products and services left. Behind me are a lot of long term business partners with knowledge and experience in wireless M2M.
Everybody can reach me easy by email to harald.naumann (at) gsm-modem.de or by using the form and ask for a concept, studie, development up to mass production. It could be an one stop buying including dedicated support.