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Stacey Higginbotham
Fortune.com
Microsoft contributes open source code
to connect older connected building and home products to the Internet of
things.
Microsoft has submitted code to the AllSeen Alliance that will make it easier to connect
devices on older networks to the Internet of things. The code will become part
of the AllSeen Alliances’ efforts to make Qualcomm’s AllJoyn standard the go-to
option for device makers trying to get their connected gadgets to talk to one
another.
As the hype around
the Internet of things continues to build, the major players in the consumer
electronics markets are working hard to build out software that allows devices
to connect to the internet and each other, and then communicate what they can
and cannot do. Apple has HomeKit,
a group of chip firms led by Intel is launching
the Iotivity standard, Google last month announced Weave and Brillo, and
Qualcomm and Microsoft are pushing AllJoyn.
While, standards
fights are about as sexy as your grandmother’s house dress, the companies that
win can generate a huge advantage by controlling how an entire ecosystem of
products develops. With AllJoyn Qualcomm was the first to propose a standard for the Internet of things that would
sit on top of existing wireless technologies. The idea was the developers could
build a device and insert a few lines of code and their products would be able
to communicate with other products sharing the AllJoyn Code.
This would allow an
AllJoyn-compliant washing machine to “tell” an AllJoyn-compliant TV that the
laundry was done. The TV could then show that message to the user. The benefit
of using a standard is that it would tackle the issues of integrating those two
devices, as opposed to a developer having to write individual code for each
product he or she wanted to connect with. Proponents of AllJoyn liken it to
http, the code that underlies every web page.
The challenge has
been that existing products in the smart home already have some standards. Some
communicate via ZigBee, a standard that includes both a radio and a software
layer that governs how a device communicates. Others use Z-Wave, which is just a
radio standard. On the industrial side the standards are many. The code that
Microsoft has released into the open is called the AllJoyn Device Systems Bridge, and it
allows companies to let their existing Internet of things interfaces speak to
AllJoyn. Specially it supports Z-wave and BACnet, which is used in build
automation.
Basically this opens
up a whole world of legacy connected devices and brings them into the AllJoyn
fold if their developers want to enable that functionality. By calling the code
a “superconnector,” it lets developers create a virtual model of their
non-AllJoyn devices that can be seen and communicated with using AllJoyn. This
gives AllJoyn a significant advantage in the standards war.
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