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One of the tricky aspects of deploying connected products or IoT devices is how to enroll these devices into the system once in the field and provision the necessary connectivity and authentication parameters in a reliable and secure way.
Traditional methods (such as WPS, pre-embedding identity in the device, barcode stickers, or manual entry) are either incomplete, expose attack surface, or failure-prone.
Electric Imp uses a clever optical transmission method called BlinkUp(™). BlinkUp is a small app (available for iOS and Android) which allows the user to enter connectivity information (e.g. WiFi SSID and password), and then the app provisions these parameters (together with an enrollment nonce) to the Electric Imp device optically via the phone screen, and completes a secure and replay-proof device enrollment process within a couple of seconds.
While, at first, it may seem a bit usual to hold your phone up against a device, BlinkUp is actually one of the easiest, fastest, and most secure way to bring devices online and a key feature of the Electric Imp platform.
We just released a major update to the BlinkUp app, making it more user friendly and streamlined. Check out the full blog post with more information.
Cheers,
— Terrence
Using a proven IoT platform instead of building your own can be critical (“Why ‘buy’ is better than ‘build’”), especially for startups where time-to-market and rapid scale-up are essential to success.
TechCrunch just posted “An insider’s handbook for IoT startups” and recommends using platforms like Electric Imp to save you time and money to connect your product. Well said!
Cheers,
— Terrence
This just in:
Electric Imp announces closing of $21M Series C financing, led by Rampart Capital, company insiders, and returning Redpoint Ventures. The new funding brings the total raised to date by the company to $43 million.
“Our flexible solution, coupled with rapidly expanding commercial and industrial demand, were key factors in raising a solid C round in the face of a challenging funding environment,” said Oliver Hutaff, Electric Imp’s CFO/COO.
Hugo Fiennes, CEO and co-founder of Electric Imp: “The new funding will enable us to accelerate our growth and development as we continue to aggressively expand our platform globally to enterprises in commercial and industrial markets.”
For the full announcement, see BusinessWire.
Cheers,
— Terrence
When creating an IoT solution today one of the most important decisions is to ‘build vs. buy’.
This is critical because deciding to ‘build it yourself’ is tempting, but fraught with complexity. Doing IoT right is hard, and experience indicates that in most cases it is much better to leverage an existing and proven IoT platform such as Electric Imp rather than embarking on the risky, time-consuming, and costly effort to build your own.
My colleague Pete Tarbox assembled the ‘Top 6 reasons Manufacturers should leverage existing platforms for IoT’:
- Security, Security, Security
- Connectivity is harder than you think
- It’s not what you do
- The cost of getting it wrong is immense
- Developing a Platform won’t differentiate you
- You haven’t got the time
An excellent blog post, worth reading.
Cheers,
— Terrence
We recently did a Q&A session with one of our IoT analytics partners mnubo, asking the following questions:
- What are the main obstacles that have stopped companies from entering the IoT?
- What are the top compelling use cases of IoT-driven data?
- What is something that you have learned from IoT data that was unexpected?
- What is the best IoT product that you have seen and why do you think it tops the list?
It’s a quick read and very much reflects our experiences in the market and with customers and explains the Electric Imp focus on providing worry-free connectivity and security that enables customers to focus on extracting business value.
Full Q&A post here.
Cheers,
— Terrence
A lot of vendors have IoT-related technologies, but when it comes to actually delivering connected products on a large scale you need a solution that can handle the real-world complexities inherent in security, connectivity, manufacturing, deployment, management, and support.
Electric Imp has a track record of enabling customers to deliver successful connected products quickly and at scale. One of the many unique capabilities that differentiate Electric Imp is the ability to support our customers in producing connected devices all the way down to the factory line.
Today, we are launching another tool that helps customers significantly enhance the production process for connected devices: Factory Agents (Beta). You can find more information at this blog post: Electric Imp Launches Factory Agents Beta.
Cheers,
— Terrence
Quick announcement:
We just released the first version of our Microsoft Azure IoT Hub library, which provides drop-in integration between customer’s imp-enabled devices in the field and the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform via the Azure IoT Hub. Read all about it in this blog post or go directly to the Electric Imp Dev Center to check out the code.
Cheers,
— Terrence
After what seems like an eternity at Sun and Oracle I have decided to pursue a new opportunity … I recently joined Electric Imp.
Electric Imp solves the challenges of the last mile of IoT solutions by providing a secure, connected, and programmable edge device platform, industrial-grade connectivity, and ease of integration into enterprise applications. Electric Imp is already deployed across a wide range of customers and industries.
In fact, just today Electric Imp announced a private cloud offering for commercial and industrial markets as well as being a strategic IoT connectivity partner for Pitney Bowes.
So I’ll definitely be staying in the embedded/IoT space – exciting times ahead. More to come … stay tuned.
Cheers,
— Terrence
The slides of my two JavaOne talks should show up in the JavaOne 2015 Session Catalog soon, in the meantime you can access them via SlideShare:
- CON3434: Bringing IoT Cloud Services to Edge Devices with Java ME Embedded 8
- CON3437: Smart devices for the Internet of Things: Java ME Embedded 8.2 and Beyond
Cheers,
— Terrence
Following up on his keynote at JavaOne 2015, Michael Greene (VP of Software and Services Group and General Manager of System Technologies and Optimization at Intel Corporation) posted a piece on the announcement to support Java ME running on Intel architectures and why Java is important in a connected world.
Cheers,
— Terrence
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