Mar 17 2010
People Power Company has recently announced SuRF Developer’s Kit (SDK) for Open Source Home Area Network (OSHAN) to empower developers in the creation of environmental friendly and smart monitoring applications for use in residential electronics and devices.
People Power SuRF Developer’s Kit
The SDK, known as Sensor Ultra Radio Frequency (SuRF), enables developers to develop applications on the OSHAN platform easily. The OSHAN platform is the final open source platform for use in wireless sensor networks.
People Power Company, which provides monitoring and control systems for homes, is an energy-efficient organization. The company makes devices that communicate wirelessly using OSHAN and connects up fixtures and appliances to a powerful web-based portal to help consumers track the utilization of every appliance in real time. People Power forecasts that by making a mere 20 percent savings in the U.S. households, the overall savings by the U.S. consumers would exceed $32 billion in a year, besides reduction in carbon emissions by 187 mega tons, which amounts to taking off 40 million cars from the roads in a year.
Gene Wang, CEO and founder at People Power Company, said that the recent release will open up many opportunities for consumers and developers. Wang added that users will be able to implement any environmental or monitoring idea conceived in their homes.
SuRF, an open source hardware and software developer’s kit is used in wireless sensor networking, along with a network stack based on TinyOS and an open source operating system. The TinyOS offers developers access to a low-power, long-range technology platform. TinyOS also empowers developers to interact with the OSHAN developing community. TinyOS was initiated as a UC Berkeley project that formed a component of the DARPA NEST program. Ever since TinyOS has grown and is involving many commercial and academic developers and users round the globe. Since TinyOS technology is open source-based, any developer will be able to view how particular applications will work before completion, rather than having to interact with vendors just to see how applications are likely to work. These differentiators will result in lowering development expenses, and at the same time enable developers to surmount most entry barriers and challenges normally associated with various vendor solutions
According to Wang, the smart grid is introducing a wide range of opportunities for developers to develop the Internet of Smart Devices. Wang added that the SuRF offers an ideal platform for making these novel communication devices that provide double the range but use half the power.
Important benefits and features of the SuRF Developers Kit are lowest range at the minimum cost, very low power consumption, open source-based, and embedded unit testing. People Power is conducting a competition for developers to develop the best SuRF device. The competition is open till September 15, 2010. The winner, chosen by the People Power Technical Advisory Board, will be awarded 5,000 People Power shares, besides a free SuRF board.