>> IOTIVITY FRAMEWORK - STANDARD FOR OPEN SOURCE IOT

2015 will be the year a number IoT standards will be defined - question is; will they stick?

IoT standards groups are working hard to establish solid foundations to standardize how IoT devices will inter-operate - we have seen a number of groups making efforts; IoTivity, hosted by the Linux Foundation has made available a preview release of its set of standards.

IoTivity version 0.9.0 release notes outlines the following components:

• device discovery and connectivity
• resource management
• virtual sensor management
• protocol plugin management
• things management
• smart home control management
• notification management

With support for devices using Linux, Tizen, Android (SDK API level 19), Yocto and limited Arduino configurations. Communications using CoAP are secured using a modified version of the "tinydtls" library; that provides support for AES encryption with SHA256 - a project that has previously been integrated into the Contiki operating system.

Of course; the project gets a little interesting when it comes to the Arduino support - a challenge for any of these standards efforts to be able to seamlessly support due to limited resources available on the devices; promising to see low powered devices are not forgotten.

The project currently only supports the Arduino ATMega 2560 and Due devices with the Arduino Ethernet Shield (for communications); it will be interesting to see support extended in the future to other low powered micro-controllers - optimized for sensor end-points.

Unfortunately; it is still early days for these standards efforts - there will be more published in the near future from various consortium groups and depending on how well they are defined and maintained, it may be a while - if at all if any of these become true standards.