Simplifying smart home integrations with AWS IoT Managed Integrations
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Smart home control can be simplified
- New software integrations create a unified experience
- Device manufacturers can collaborate securely
The smart home concept is clear: it brings the latest technology into conventional surroundings to deliver greater comfort and ease of use.
Implementing that concept would be simple if there were only one way to do it. But we live in a world that relies on competition to deliver the best solutions. Fortunately, competition in the smart home industry is becoming uniquely collaborative.
Realizing that collaboration was necessary to meet consumer expectations, leading vendors worked with the CSA (Connectivity Standards Alliance) to develop the Matter protocol. Its introduction was a significant moment in that collaboration. The next step requires a simpler way to bring together cloud platforms from multiple vendors.
While Matter reduces the complexity of onboarding smart devices into a home that uses more than one provider, it stops short of simplifying the ongoing management of those devices in the home. We could use the analogy of capital expenditure (capex) versus operational expenditure (opex). Matter reduces the capex by making it simpler to onboard devices from any vendor, designed for any platform, but configuring them to function collaboratively–the opex–remains high.
The challenge lies in the way vendors use proprietary cloud platforms to control their respective devices. Even if those platforms run on the same hyperscale cloud platform, they are still configured specifically for one vendor’s products. Creating a “Matter-like” solution for cloud platforms has yet to be addressed by any industry association. AWS Managed Services brings that scenario within reach.
What is the key to smarter homes?
Smart home vendors understand that the current issue isn’t enabling integration, it is delivering it. In almost every example, vendors provide access to their cloud platforms via APIs, or application programming interfaces. But while an API provides the technical solution to accessing and using a vendor’s cloud platform, the vendor rarely provides that API at a software integration level. That task still falls on the party wanting to gain access, not the device manufacturer.
In a smart home environment, the landscape is hugely fragmented. Virtually every smart home device manufacturer will have a cloud platform designed to control their own devices. With multiple devices comes multiple APIs. There is no requirement for APIs to follow the same format, presenting a significant scalability issue.
Understandably, homeowners would rather use a solution like Matter to create a single interface for controlling all their smart devices. Delivering that user experience would accelerate the adoption of smart home devices, but it requires individual connections for every API and cloud platform used by devices in the smart home network.
In addition to the need for multiple APIs into multiple cloud platforms, the smart home solution would need some way of coordinating all the data flowing through all those APIs and present that data in a user-friendly way to the operator (homeowner).
How can you support smart home scalability?
Managed Integrations for AWS IoT Device Management provides the compatibility and interactivity needed to support scalability at this level as more smart home providers enter the market.
Part of the challenge is addressed through cloud-to-cloud (C2C) connectors. These are small software components that securely link AWS to other cloud systems. C2C connectors, which simply need to comply with Managed Integrations common API protocol, are being developed by companies such as R Systems. The connectors translate user commands into API calls to the device manufacturer’s cloud platform.
For example, a connector developed by R Systems for Philips Hue devices works behind the scenes communicating exclusively between the Philips cloud platform and AWS services and not directly to the smart devices themselves. This maintains security and avoids the need to share any private user information.
Unifying the smart home experience
New AWS services coupled with standardized API interfaces and Avnet’s /IOTCONNECT platform provide the unification needed to remove the fragmentation in the smart home marketplace.
C2C connectors that easily integrate into larger platforms offer a solution to the scalability needed to build demand for smart home devices. However, there is still a risk of fragmentation, as there will be multiple connectors developed by multiple SaaS providers.
For device manufacturers, the challenge comes with presenting a standard interface profile to AWS Managed Services that is also compatible with C2C connectors. This is where /IOTCONNECTTM from Avnet adds critical support. /IOTCONNECT already provides abstraction through APIs into AWS services, accessed graphically through user-configured dashboards. /IOTCONNECT software components are integrated into the smart device and the cloud platform, providing a secure connection. In collaboration with its semiconductor supplier partners, Avnet has developed SDK support in multiple high-level languages, making it easy to use on any microprocessor or microcontroller at the heart of a smart device.
Through its close relationship with AWS, /IOTCONNECT’s SDK now provides native support for AWS Managed Services by including a simplified interface to C2C connectors.
The significance of this development reflects the scalability needed to support wider smart home adoption. The development of the Matter protocol by the CSA reinforces the assumption that the smart home market will remain highly fragmented.
This fragmentation extends beyond the devices, reaching into the cloud. AWS Managed Services, C2C connectors and /IOTCONNECT provide the simplest way of consolidating the compatibility needed to configure multi-vendor, multi-device smart home networks at a cloud platform level.