Change Of Direction

Do you remember the days when we were told the PC would be the center of our communications and control everything? But then came the smartphone, and then everything was going to be run from our smartphone—our communications, music, home automation, automotive navigation and entertainment and more. Yet the technology continues to evolve with the Internet of Things (IoT), or even the Internet of Everything (IoE), where the smartphone may be just one piece of the technology infrastructure driving IoT.

IoT applications and services should be easy to use and easy to manage. That means wireless connectivity, networking, storage and cloud infrastructure to enable what we believe is the goal of IoT—seamless technology that makes our everyday tasks easier.

So what will life look like when the smartphone isn’t the center of everything? Will everything be in the cloud? Perhaps, but with M2M becoming reality and devices talking to devices, the transition to IoT for consumers should be ubiquitous and transparent. With self-provisioned and self-managed devices, devices should automatically connect to and combine objects to serve a specific request.

Here’s an example. A busy homemaker picks up the kids from school and heads to the grocery store. The dashboard console maps her to the closest open parking spot. She then downloads current information from the digital refrigerator pad, which reports that the milk is at 22% and there are only four eggs left, then uploads the rest of her digital grocery list. Coupons download automatically as she enters the store and does the shopping. Once finished, the kids hop back in the car and watch their videos on the digital seat display on the back of driver’s headrest. As the car pulls up to the house, the energy-efficient shades pull up, facial recognition on the security system unlocks the door (conveniently, since her arms are loaded down with groceries) and the kids promptly run in and finish watching the video — right where they left off in the car. The family room shades, of course, adjust for optimal TV viewing. The motion detector in the house alerts the husband that the family is home. He places a video call to say hello to the kids and let her know he’ll be home late. (Wait, did that really happen?) The lawns are only watered as needed, adjusted for rain or drought, and the air temperature and lighting are monitored for optimal energy efficiencies. All without any effort on the user’s part.

We believe in technologies that will help accelerate the development of connected devices for IoT. One such example is our Andromeda Box, designed specifically for the rapid prototyping and development of IoT smart edge device, hubs, and gateways. The Andromeda Box is an IoT platform made for Brillo, Google’s new operating system (OS) for Internet of Things based on Android, with native support for the Weave communications protocol that is used to connect IoT devices to Google cloud services. Brillo brings the simplicity and speed of software development to IoT hardware platforms with an embedded OS and applications through developer kit and developer console. Weave is a communication layer that will enable IoT devices to talk to one another, the cloud, and of course, your smartphone. The Andromeda Box leverages the simplicity of a well-supported developer kit and console with a variety of applications built directly on the top of the OS. Support of the Weave protocol enables smartphones and IoT devices to talk to each other locally and remotely through the Google cloud.

Marvell and Google share the same vision to accelerate the growth of the IoT industry by helping developers create the next wave of connected devices. By creating the Andromeda Box platform, Marvell provides developers, inventors and entrepreneurs a full package so they can bring an end-to-end solution to market easily and quickly. The Andromeda Box platforms from Marvell will help speed the development of smart and connected device applications for homes, cars, cities, factories, retail environments and agriculture and give developers the flexibility to create innovative, cost-effective and secure edge device, hub, and gateway solutions.

With products like the Andromeda Box platform, IoT developers are sure to come up with technology and devices that not only make your life easier, but put you at the center of managing your environment, technology and communications, instead of a PC, smartphone or other single device.

We look forward to seeing what kinds of applications global device makers and curious inventors around the world will create with Andromeda Box using Google Brillo and Weave.