PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Weaved, Inc. has today launched the public beta version of the first kit that easily allows hobbyists and others to easily add Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to the Raspberry Pi platform. There have been over 3.8 million Raspberry Pi boards sold and now all of them and any new boards can now be transformed to IoT devices.
“The Internet of Things is in its infancy – and until now adding these capabilities to devices has meant having the resources to build out robust back ends and mobile applications,” said Ryo Koyama, founder and CEO of Weaved. “The next critical phase of this new market is for anyone with a good idea to be able to realize their vision without needing to recreate their applications or build out elaborate infrastructure. The Raspberry Pi community has a great history of innovation, and we’re excited to bring drop-in IoT capability to their tool box.”
The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that has been used in a wide array of digital “maker” projects, from music machines and parent detectors to weather stations and tweeting birdhouses with infrared cameras. If any developer has a Raspberry Pi application, it can now be transformed into an IoT device, with the new Weaved IoT Kit.
Available now, the beta version of the Weaved IoT Kit for Raspberry Pi includes: 1) a free software download that installs and runs on a Raspberry Pi; 2) a free iOS app; and 3) a combination of free and paid web connection and notification services for any Pi users. It's the web-based connection and notification services combined with a mobile app that turns a Raspberry Pi into a full-fledged IoT device. Any users who sign up during the beta cycle will also receive a paid level of service at no cost.
Eric Ptak (@eptak), developer of WebIOPi, a popular Raspberry Pi application framework with over 50,000 downloads, said about Weaved: “One of the biggest questions I had over the past few years from my users was, ‘How can I access my Pi over the Internet?’ I’m impressed by the Weaved Kit ease of use and efficiency. It allows accessing your Raspberry Pi over the Internet from any device in a few minutes.” Ptak and his community have been part of the private beta for the past two months.
For more information about the Weaved IoT Kit for Raspberry Pi, see http://www.weaved.com/weaved-iot-kit.
The IoT Market
There have been various efforts to establish what we now call the Internet of Things since the early 1990’s. For many years, networks that linked small sensor-based systems together were proprietary and very hard to design, install, and maintain. Over the past decade with the convergence of mobile devices, widely available broadband connectivity, and low cost sensor technology, the Internet of Things has emerged as a real and massive market. During this time, a variety of “captive,” purpose-built IoT applications, such as NEST, Dropcam, health and fitness applications like Fitbit, and others have emerged to leverage the opportunity with a broad base of users.
According to Forbes in August 2014, “. . . Gartner estimates that IoT product and service suppliers will generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion in 2020. IDC forecasts that the worldwide market for IoT solutions will grow from $1.9 trillion in 2013 to $7.1 trillion in 2020.”
Weaved believes that with open standards and easy to install IoT capability, an entirely new generation of applications will emerge.
“IoT applications shouldn’t only be defined and ultimately controlled in ‘walled gardens’,” said Koyama. “Everyone has ideas for how the Internet of Things could be useful to them. The uses of the IoT should only be limited by the imagination of people thinking of them. The Internet of Things must be the Internet of Things for Everyone.”
The Weaved Fabric and Services
Weaved eliminates the need for in-house expertise in networking, services, mobile, security, and firmware development. At the heart of the Weaved technology is a sophisticated software-defined networking fabric that can be used with any hardware product. This fabric employs two levels of secure IoT cloud networking service to allow users a variety of services and features. Direct network connections are peer-to-peer, encrypted, and each connection session is protected using a unique security key.
The Weaved Fabric is different from all other current IoT connectivity solutions which either rely on security-vulnerable port-forwarding or hub-and-spoke connectivity. The alternatives to Weaved both require an always-on Internet connection and raise the privacy concern of running data through a third party server. Weaved's approach allows developers to choose to use standard TCP/IP connectivity, without concerns typically associated with remote connectivity. The open Weaved technology also allows developers the choice to avoid proprietary closed “walled garden” approaches taken by closed platforms.
About Weaved
Weaved is committed to the vision of making it possible for anyone to create their own Internet of Things applications, to realize the Internet of Things for Everyone. Today, the company offers a fully-capable, software-only, hardware-agnostic platform and drop-in services to easily enable sophisticated users and developers to add Internet of Things capability to any already networked products. Weaved was founded by a team of experienced entrepreneurs; one of their earlier companies, a networking company, was acquired by NVIDIA. Weaved is also a charter member of the All Seen Alliance, a non-profit consortium dedicated to enabling the Internet of Everything through a universal development framework. Weaved is based in Palo Alto, CA and is funded by CrunchFund (San Francisco), Metamorphic Ventures (New York), Core Ventures Group, Haystack, Double M Partners, TMT Investments, Maxfield Capital, Alpine Meridian, Ironfire Capital, Big Basin, HB Rama and others.
For information, see www.weaved.com. Follow Weaved at @weavedinc.
Editors, note: All trademarks and registered trademarks are those of their respective companies.
Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Additional background information is available at www.roeder-johnson.com.
