Each and every day, objects, devices and people are communicating more with other everyday things and we are continuously coordinating our efforts to help build better business and consequently improve our lifestyle. By developing new and innovative ideas, we can enable ourselves to deploy, manage and control products and services in the emerging IoT market.
Glue & Blue (GnB) was created as the vision of HOP Ubiquitous to build “Human Orientated Products” in order to feed the growing IoT market. The product provides a mobile orientated marketplace to address the opportunities of 3D printing in IoT. The name Glue & Blue has been derived from the core objectives of the product. The term “glue” insinuates the merging of multiple 3D prints and “glue” to demonstrate the use of a Bluetooth Smart chipset. Together, these aspects provide the perfect balance between design and technology as the ingredients to create personal electronic devices.
For the team, it was important to create a full ecosystem where users could configure and interact with their devices and so it was crucial to provide integration with cloud computing platforms to interrelate machines, systems and people. This ecosystem is composed of the HOP Ubiquitous Bluetooth modules with a range of sensors (HOPs) which allow the connectivity to the internet. The other most important aspect of this network, the Cloud Computing platform offers the marketplace of 3D models, alongside a personal space where it is possible to manage the functionality of the individual products. To bring all of this together, a mobile App is offered to configure, program, test and interact with the HOPs.
Where the use of technology is very important in creating such an ecosystem, GnB chose FIWARE as the free Open Source and Cloud Computing platform which presented the ability to build their solution. By integrating sensors and technologies and taking advantage of the coaching, funding and technical support, the business was able to continue developing. The team is integrating IoT sensors and 3D models in order to provide the basis for the development of personalized products. FIWARE is used here as it provides the necessary enablers to create their product. These enablers include a) 3D visualization, b) Marketplace, c) Orion Context Broker, d) Security and Identity Management and finally e) PROTON and COSMOS which are essentially the analytics.
In particular, the FABULOUS accelerator has assisted GnB is many ways, by presenting opportunities to discover and build partnerships, enter into the manufacturing market and ultimately learn more about how to develop their ideas within a profitable business. At this point in the process, GnB is able to provide a collection of pre-designed models for home automation, wearables and personal devices. However they also offer models which can be customized to the individual´s style, making it extremely adaptable for companies and individuals who want to design their own product and subsequently their own IoT ecosystem.
As a company, GnB wants to define themselves with the next generation of customizable products to satisfy the everyday growing IoT market. Up to now, they have already succeeded in developing smart, innovative products and enabled companies in retail to satisfy their monitoring needs without changing their qualities and characteristics of their stores. They have also developed innovative and personalized automation kits in collaboration with big financial services and companies and currently they are innovating with the integration of protocols and technologies in collaboration with worldwide companies in order to IoT a more mobile orientated technology.
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