IoT Standards

General
1

Perhaps a question for Hugo.

What are ElectricImp’s thoughts on IoT standard bodies?

OICG / HYPERCAT / Allseen / etc

We are getting an increasing amount of in-bound questions on the topic and would love to know your thoughts.

Best

2

Lots of thoughts, but a very short summary:

  • Local network standards are generally not so useful yet, and may never be. Most are trying to be everything to everyone, with a heavy lean towards consumer. That’d include Allseen, Weave (probably, specs not out) and OIC (though OIC is pretty complex). HomeKit is very simplistic (no peer to peer options) but still manages to be very complex. People who think one thing is going to “win” are likely mistaken.

  • HyperCat is very simple, and appears to work from the basis that if it’s easy to use, people might just use it as it’s easier than rolling anything yourself. It’s not a device communication protocol though, it’s a way of publishing data in a standardized way. Lots of projects in the UK are using this to ease data flows between different IoT systems.

  • We still firmly believe the place for data interchange is in the cloud, with RESTful APIs. HyperCat fits in that model.