[p2p-research] Arrayent: Bringing You The Internet Of Things

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Arrayent: Bringing You The
Internet Of Things via Singularity Hub by Aaron Saenz on 5/6/10

Silicon Valley based Arrayent is finding ways to bring even the
simplest of electronic devices onto the web. When you connect your
household devices to the internet you gain a level of control and
monitoring that creates some cool possibilities. Turn your sprinklers
off and on with your smart phone. Track how much power your TV has used
over the last month. Get a text or email alert when a smoke detector
goes off at your house, even if you’re on the other side of the world.
Arrayent builds the wireless boards, the internet gateways, and the
online services that allow other companies to install this kind of
internet connectivity into their products. They’ve already shipped more
than 100,000 units and a new development kit launched on May 5th is
likely to lead to many more applications being available in the near
future. We don’t know if Arrayent is going to be a major player in
building an internet of things, but they’re off to a pretty good start.
See an application of their technology in the video below.

Arrayent sells the devices and web services that allow other companies
to put their products on the Internet of Things.



As we recently discussed, there are many companies looking for ways to
take a wide range of consumer products and give them an online
presence. This would essentially create an Internet of Things (IoT) –
an interconnected web of goods that would do many of the same things
people do: post Tweets, send emails, update their status. Those
messages will make these products more useful by letting you interact
with your products wherever you are via your computer or smart phone.
The IoT is going to give physical objects a digital identity, and that
digital identity will let you track, control, and optimize the real
world object. Eventually, these digital identities may become so
helpful that we think of them as more important than the physical
object they are associated with. Is digital data really that essential?
You bet. Watch this following ad from Arrayent to see how a simple
device, a smoke detector, becomes easier to use and more powerful when
added to the Internet of Things. Fair warning, the video is a little
boring, but the idea is exciting:



So a tricked out smoke alarm is pretty cool, but it’s really the
smallest drop in the bucket of what the Internet of Things could
contain. Arrayent knows this, and rather than dreaming up all the
possible ideas for themselves, they are allowing others to develop
their own applications. The Arrayent development kit (now available for
$1900) gives companies a chance to play with their wireless boards,
ethernet gateways, and internet services and find the best way to
integrate them into products. Essentially Arrayent is providing an easy
way of putting a lot of commercial goods on the IoT.

The Monster won an award for innovation at CES 2010. It uses Arrayent
IoT technology to let you track and control the use of electricity for
your home appliances.

Part of what I find promising about the Arrayent components is that
they are really cheap. They typically cost just $5-7 to build. The
internet services Arrayent provides are included in this setup and
consumers won’t have to pay a monthly fee to use these objects.
Conceivably that means you could incorporate IoT capability into almost
anything electronic without raising its price very much. Consumers are
likely to adopt new IoT enabled products if their expense is
competitive. I mean, wouldn’t you pay $10 more to get a DVR you could
remotely control via your smart phone? Well, I think some people
already have that:


As the commercial demonstrates, some of the applications of the IoT are
already here. Arrayent is just trying to let companies produce more.
They’ll provide the hardware to get your electronic device on the net.
Once there, Arrayent also runs a cloud-based server to manage the
internet traffic that arises when your objects start talking. The
Arrayent internet service isn’t really the same as the web humans surf.
Your household objects won’t be Google searching on Chrome. Instead the
data is handled by the Arrayent software and directly sent where it
needs to go. That doesn’t mean that Arrayent’s IoT enabled products
can’t do very web-like things: they helped build a Mattel device that
lets tweens instant message each other while not be exposed to
strangers on the world wide web.


Arrayent's IoT system let Mattel create an instant message toy that
bypasses the traditional internet. That's a very internet-like
application of the IoT.

Arrayent’s wireless board, ethernet gateway, and cloud-based server
provide all the necessary components to put a product on the Internet
of Things. That makes it very enticing for all kinds of electronics
manufacturers to purchase a development kit and create the next
generation of web-enabled goods. We should remember, however, that
Arrayent has a lot of competition. ioBridge sells IoT enabling
hardware, and the list of companies looking to handle the data flow
from objects is growing every day (Pachube, IBM, WideTag,
SenseNetworks, etc). As we said before, it’s much too early for us to
predict which, if any, of these companies will be a driving force
behind developing the IoT. What is becoming clear, however, is that
businesses are starting to see the advantages of taking their goods
online, and consumers will have many more of these products to choose
from in the near future. The Internet of Things is being built one
small piece at a time, but it is growing.

[image credits: Arrayent]
[video credit: Arrayent, Verizon FIOS]
[source: Arrayent Press Release]
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