Skip to main content

What if all the ‘things’ in the Internet of Things spoke the same language?

An Internet of Things simulation.
zzoplanet / 123RF Stock Photo
Imagine if you had to choose banks, grocery stores, and doctors in your city based on the languages they recognized. That restriction would be more than irksome. You might miss out on wonderful new stores or be unable to use a medical specialist who was the only one in town who could help with a specific problem. Avoiding a similar troublesome limitation is the force behind a big push for a standard connectivity language for the Internet of Things.

The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), a new organization formed last year with some, but not all, of the biggest IoT players, is making progress with a standard communications platform, Fast Company reported. With all the connectivity and control devices, hubs, platforms, and interfaces for smart homes alone, never mind industrial, transportation, shipping, and other IoT applications, the need for more open connectivity is increasingly apparent. If you are attracted by the feature set in a specific outdoor security camera, why should you have to make sure it can “talk” to your home thermostat and your new car’s geo-fencing alert system?

During the past year, two large standards groups, the Open Interconnect Consortium that counted Intel and Samsung among its members, and the AllSeen Alliance, which included Qualcomm, Microsoft, LG, and Sony, merged to form the OCF. Throughout 2016 work on a single communications platform proceeded. Fast Company reported that because of the “unity” of the two big groups and the progress that has been made, more than 300 companies have joined the OCF.

The current OCF president, Matt Perry, whose day job is as a Microsoft program manager, said, “I think we’ve eliminated one of the potential hurdles for other companies to consider joining and participating.”

All the big names aren’t on board, however. Apple and Google are both holdouts, as is Zigbee, which just announced a new smart home language. The OCF hopes the others will join, but is also betting that in the long game, open standards will bring everyone into the fold.

Looking outside the smart home to other IoT areas including the automotive industry and other industrial areas, the OCF’s goals for the year include firming up the certification process and getting more certified products on the market. “A standard’s just a standard. When it really gets interesting is when you have real products that are interoperating together, and that makes it more compelling for other companies to join,” said Perry.

Intel marketing manager Kimberly Lewis told Fast Company there’s a lot of interest in moving the certification process and even a certification logo along. “Everyone’s anxious to make money, so it’s like, ‘When are we going to be done?'” said Lewis. “That’s a good problem to have, that people want to start putting this in their products.”

All this talk about a standard communication framework doesn’t mean that Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and Cortana won’t have anything to talk to. On the contrary, those interfaces would be able to access IoT devices by addressing the standard language. What matters is standardization on a device, level. That means, using an example Fast Company cited from Intel Internet of Things product line director Gary Martz, you wouldn’t need to even wonder if a smart door lock could be controlled by Alexa or Siri or Google Home. A “door lock” as a concept would be a common concept for all languages.

“The players that recognize this are going to do very well,” Martz told Fast Company. “[Compatibility] is not the space that we need to differentiate our products on,” he added. “This is the space where we all need to agree on interoperability, so we can all provide features above the standards.”

Updated 1/18/2107 by Bruce Brown to remove a mistaken statement that the AllSeen Alliance had certified 26 products that use the OCF communications framework, which is in fact still in development.

Editors' Recommendations

Bruce Brown
Digital Trends Contributing Editor Bruce Brown is a member of the Smart Homes and Commerce teams. Bruce uses smart devices…
Most promising blood pressure monitoring tech in years isn’t out in the U.S. yet
aktiia blood pressure monitor automatically tracks your bp

Heart disease is one of the most prevalent and deadliest conditions in the world, especially because it can so often go undiagnosed. Many people walk around with severe complications that make them a ticking time bomb. Today, Aktiia announced the availability of the first-ever 24/7 automated blood pressure monitor -- something we got a first look at during CES 2020. Users wear the device and it gathers information about their blood pressure and other health metrics all throughout the day and night.

The device doesn't work like traditional blood pressure monitors. Rather than squeezing your arm each time it needs a measurement, the Aktiia Optical Blood Pressure Monitor monitors your blood pressure by analyzing the diameter of the blood vessels with each heartbeat. This happens automatically, so users are never aware of the test, and therefore do not skew the results by being anxious or behaving differently.

Read more
Household electrical usage increased in 2020. Here’s how a smart home can help
data shows increase in household energy use 2020 sense home monitor feature 625x417 c

A report released by Sense has revealed that home energy usage increased dramatically throughout all of 2020. Of course, this doesn't come as much of a surprise -- with the quarantine and lockdown protocols ensuring most people stayed at home during this time, the average amount of energy used increased by 9.3%. This translated to an overall average increase of $127 by the end of the year, with the highest increase taking place during the spring and summer months.

U.S. customers overall paid an increase of $1.21 billion, but this added cost was not distributed evenly across the country. Five states in particular saw the highest increase in rates, with residents in New York and Massachusetts facing an increase three times that of Florida. As the pandemic spread throughout the country, demand for electricity continued to rise up to 22%.

Read more
Samsung SmartThings integration brings smart home control to Mercedes-Benzes
you can control your home directly from mercedes samsung smartthings benz smart

Everyone knows the feeling: You're halfway to work, stuck in morning traffic, when you realize you can't remember if you turned the oven off or not. Well, if you're a Mercedes-Benz owner, you know longer have that worry.

Today, Samsung announced the integration of its SmartThings platform into Mercedes-Benz vehicles. It will give users the ability to use their car as a control center for their smart home. Thanks to this new feature, users can directly control their home from their vehicle without the need for a phone to act as an intermediary device.

Read more