Your Device Needs an API

Editor's Notes

• #2: Electric Imp just announced that it has raised $15M in Series B funding, which is really exciting. And we’re hiring, so if you’re interested in chatting after the talk, come and find me!
• #3: This is my vision of the future. A world in which we can remotely access just about anything. Some of these things will produce data – temperature sensors, parking and traffic sensors, shipping packages and containers, my car… Some of these things will consume data – my air conditioner, traffic lights, irrigation systems, my car… A lot of these things we won’t even realize are connected – they will just sit around quietly collecting usage data that we don’t particulairly care about, but someone else does – my washing machine, water heater, my car, …
• #4: I have been building ‘connected’ trinkets and gadgets for a number of years now And working at Electric Imp has really given me the opportunity to immerse myself in the Internet of Things world What I have realized, and what I hope most people here have realized, is that we don’t all have the same notions of what “connected” means - BLE, Closed/Local Networks, Internet connected devices with no public interface, Internet connected devices with an API
• #5: And this is the kicker – everyone is talking about the Internet of Things, but not a lot of people are talking about it’s relationship to the Internet So we have these conversations where we talk about the IoT as if it’s this big separate network of devices that lives outside of today’s infrastructure But the reality is that we’re not building something new – we’re extending what already exists.
• #6: So let’s talk about the Internet
• #10: To understand why we should care, we need to understand what APIs are APIs are more than just web endpoints to interact with a service APIs wrap a resource – that is to say, they expose a resource to a developer and allows them to interact with it through code The value of an API is not the end points themselves, it is in the service they represent So we have APIs for things like FourSquare – which is really an API for where I am, and who and what is around me We have APIs for things like Twitter – which is really an API for the conversations I care about
• #16: So if you remember what we said about APIs earlier, that they’re really digital representations of resources or services, It makes a lot of sense to apply it to hardware. Instead of some digital service being the resource, we get this physical avatar that represents the service that we can interact with So when we talk anout APIs for hardware, we’re really talking about APIs for the services behind them - and it’s probably worth noting that if there isn’t a service behind your product, then your product likely doesn’t need to be, or even should be, connected.
• #17: One of the first benefits we see if the shift from focusing on designing hardware that is “connected” - to focusing on designing an end to end product that includes connectivity It forces you step back and think about why your product is connected, and what kind of services you want to expose to your users
• #20: Around API design Around Security Around everything
• #21: This is one of the really critical points - I really dislike the notion that the Internet of Things is going to be this magical system in which every single device can discover and interact with every single other device with little to no interaction - …. Buuuut, this is still an important idea because it’s driving a lot of discussions around discoverability and interoperability that ARE important, and will form the backbone of how a lot of these devices interact. - All of that is moot if devices and their data are closed - The value and power of a connected device lies in the services it wraps
• #22: If we want to live in this magical SkyNet, we need devices that can be repurposed and extended We need hardware and developers who are interested in mashing up services, and products to create something new We need fridges that can automagically call out to shopping providers, but maybe also other services – SMS, email, etc
• #23: And we can’t build all of this functionality into every device, it doesn’t make sense We don’t know how people are going to use services – and no where is this more apparent than the API space People have built companies and products around novel uses of services wrapped in APIs