“Ah, the connected world. You wake up in the morning, and give iPhone’s Siri a pleasant command: ‘Good morning.’ In response, lights turn on, music starts playing and the coffee maker begins brewing just as your day begins,” Patrick Thibodeau writes for Computerworld. “Apple’s just announced approach to home automation and the Internet of Things is via its new Homekit, a framework and network protocol for controlling devices in the home. It promises a seamless user interface for organizing and controlling connected devices.”
“Homekit is part of iOS 8, which Apple unveiled at WWDC on Monday,” Thibodeau writes. “To work in this connected-home environment, product manufacturers will need Apple’s MFi certification (Made for iPod, Made for iPhone, Made for iPad). But the connected world will never belong exclusively to Apple; it’s just too big. So how will Android, Windows and other devices operate in this Apple universe? Will they be able to all work together? Or will the grand idea of a seamlessly connected Internet of Things environment slip away?”
“One answer comes from Marvell, which makes a system on a chip (SoC) that may be used in many of the products that make up Apple’s Internet of Things universe. Marvell recently announced a low-power WiFi, ZigBee and Bluetooth microcontroller SoC. It combines what had been separate components into a fully integrated unit, said Philip Poulidis, vice president and general manager of Marvell’s mobile and Internet of Things business units. It is low power, has the capability for long battery life and is small enough for wearables,” Thibodeau writes. “The Marvell SoC will be used by manufacturers to create connected products, and Marvell has decided to back Apple’s HomeKit by shipping its SoC with Apple’s protocols built-in — including secure pairing. That should help ease MFi certification for product makers, said Poulidis. ‘We felt that Apple really has a knack for building things that are very user friendly,’ said Poulidis. But Marvell’s SoC is agnostic. It supports multiple protocol stacks and different methods for dealing with security, discovery and control across multiple operating systems.”
Read more in the full article here.