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LG sensor adds smarts to your 'dumb' home appliances
Sure, it's easy to find connected home appliances, but what if you want to add a dash of intelligence to many of your existing appliances (not just one or two)? LG might come to your rescue before long. It's launching a SmartThinQ Sensor which uses feedback like temperature and vibration to tell you what your devices are doing. It can tell when your washer has finished by waiting for the shaking to stop, for instance, or tell you if someone left the fridge door open while you were out. In some cases, you can even remotely control those older machines. There's no word on when the sensor arrives, but it'll be joined by the smartphone-controlled Smart Lightwave Oven and Smart Air Conditioner at the upcoming IFA trade show.
Qualcomm's universal AllPlay streaming now works with Spotify
Qualcomm's AllPlay is supposed to deliver a world of simple, universal media streaming, and it just came a lot closer to realizing that vision by both landing a raft of new partners and widening its app program. You can now stream to AllPlay devices using several additional music services, including Spotify; if you want to blast that new album on every system in the house, you can. Appropriately, both Fon's Gramofon media hub and Monster's SoundStage speakers will now take your AllPlay tunes.
Qualcomm's AllPlay wireless streaming adds iHeartRadio, Panasonic and Altec Lansing to its list of partners
Though Qualcomm introduced the AllPlay wireless streaming technology at its Uplinq conference in San Diego four months ago, it wasn't ready for OEMs and app developers to start incorporating into their products. That ends today, however, with the official commercial availability of the AllPlay smart media platform. Several companies have already committed themselves to the standard, like Grooveshark, Tune-In, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, Panasonic and Altec Lansing, with more on the way. A key factor in AllPlay's platform is Qualcomm's new smart audio module -- which has an Atheros 2x2 dual-band WiFi SoC -- that manufacturers can simply pop in their existing offerings and have it instantly be AllPlay-friendly. Today's announcement also includes the release of AllPlay's Click SDK so that developers can start integrating AllPlay functionality into their Android and iOS apps. As a brief reminder, AllPlay is an audio-streaming solution based on Qualcomm's AllJoyn connectivity framework. It's thus designed to be open source, promising universal interoperability among software and hardware that adhere to the AllPlay protocol. That means AllPlay devices should play well with compatible apps and vice versa. Thanks to a Party mode feature, you can play different songs on different speakers throughout the house and have separate volume controls for each. Other goodies include support for a variety of different audio codecs (MP3, AAC, AAC+, FLAC and WAV just to name a few) and DLNA support. "We prefer the analog approach of interoperability," says Sy Choudhury, senior director of product management for Qualcomm. Either consumers have to buy into a single company, or they have to settle for something like stereo Bluetooth, which Choudhury says doesn't offer high enough audio quality. "Snapdragon allowed a lot more interoperability and smaller OEMs to join the mobile market ... we're trying to do the same with the home audio industry." As for just when we'll see the first consumer device with AllPlay, that remains to be seen, but it seems like we should expect a few by the end of 2014.
Qualcomm's Raj Talluri: wearable displays should always be on
Qualcomm isn't exactly known for launching its own consumer products, but in the case of its $350 Toq smartwatch, the move makes sense for Raj Talluri, SVP of Product Management. "Sometimes you have to build the whole thing to show what's possible," said the exec. "Qualcomm has a history of doing that." What Talluri's referring to here is how Qualcomm's once-dormant Mirasol technology enables always-on wearable displays, while maintaining a low power consumption. This contrasts with the experience on many other LCD-powered smartwatches, which have their screens turned off while idle to save power. This pain point alone is enough to deter the average consumers.
LG's AllJoyn support will let you control Smart TVs from any device
Many Smart TVs don't really talk to other devices as well as we'd like; integration tends to be basic, proprietary or both. LG may soon have a more elegant solution, as it's promising AllJoyn support in its TV line. The Qualcomm-built framework should let you control on-screen activity from any AllJoyn-capable device, whatever platform it runs -- Android, iOS and Windows users could theoretically play the same TV game. LG hasn't said when AllJoyn will reach its sets, but we wouldn't be surprised if the company has more to say at CES next month.
Qualcomm takes on AirPlay with AllPlay wireless streaming
Looks like the Toq smartwatch isn't Qualcomm's only announcement today. At the chipmaker's Uplinq conference in San Diego, CEO Paul Jacobs also announced AllPlay, a wireless audio streaming tech based on Qualcomm's Alljoyn software framework. Like Apple's AirPlay, the technology lets the user stream music from apps to compatible speakers, receivers or other devices. One of AllPlay's first partners is Rhapsody, and Jon Irwin, president of the music service company, came on stage with Jacobs to demonstrate streaming Rhapsody tunes to several different speakers in the room. Other AllPlay features include the ability to play different songs on different speakers and you can even have separate volume controls for each. According to Jacobs, AllPlay-compatible audio equipment is coming and an AllPlay SDK should be out before the end of the year. There's no word yet on which hardware maker is on board. Nevertheless, it does seem like the media streaming space just got a lot more competitive. [Image source: GigaOm]
The Engadget Interview: Qualcomm's Rob Chandhok on the Internet of things at MWC 2013
Few people understand the Internet of things better than Rob Chandhok -- president of Internet services at Qualcomm -- and we had the chance to sit down with him in Barcelona after our interview with Raj Talluri. We chatted about AllJoyn, a set of open source services which the company just revamped to incorporate a simple notification protocol -- an "SMS for things" -- small and durable enough to be useful for the life on an appliance, like a fridge or a washer. This provides a universal mechanism for notification and control, such as WiFi on-boarding, for example. He also mentioned AllJoyn audio, a streaming protocol that Qualcomm and DoubleTwist collaborated on. We then discussed various approaches and network topologies for building the Internet of things, such as IPv6-connected products with cloud-based logic vs. devices on local area networks that interact with the Internet via gateways (something that's prevalent in modern home automation). Check out the full interview video after the break.
Qualcomm's AllJoyn P2P software framework adds audio streaming and notifications, we go eyes-on
Qualcomm revealed that it was expanding its AllJoyn software platform today with some new services designed to help create a network of connected devices. Essentially, these services take the AllJoyn P2P software framework and package it in a way that makes it easier for hardware makers to implement. Qualcomm sees these new services enabling a kind of hub and spoke organization where myriad devices -- from coffee makers to stereos -- connect to a single internet gateway. With such a framework in place, users can control those devices and receive notifications from them on a smartphone or tablet. To get an idea of what AllJoyn can do, imagine a world where your washing machine sends you a text when the laundry's done and you can tell your coffee maker to start brewing using your smartphone. In addition to an appliance and gadget connectivity network, AllJoyn's also rolling out a open source, wireless audio streaming protocol. Like AirPlay or Sonos' wireless technology, it allows users to stream music from mobile devices to any set of AllJoyn-enabled speakers. But, unlike those closed competitors, AllJoyn's solution is open source and freely available to speaker and stereo manufacturers. Intrigued? You can see an AllJoyn-enabled coffee maker and the AllJoyn-compatible DoubleTwist app do some music streaming in our video after the break.
Qualcomm bolsters AllJoyn functionality, demos LTE carrier aggregation with 150Mbps peak transfers
Peak transfers of 150Mbps, you say? We're listening. Here at Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm's newest Gobi chipsets (the MDM9225 and MDM9625) are the first to support LTE carrier aggregation and LTE Category 4 with peak data rates of up to 150Mbps. The reveal marks the introduction of the outfit's third-generation 4G LTE embedded chip, and if all goes well, we should see the hardware slipping into phones, tablets and potentially laptops in the second half of 2013. To make it all seem more realistic, it partnered with Sierra Wireless and Ericsson here in Barcelona in order to prove the figures. For those unaware, LTE carrier aggregation combines radio channels within and across bands to increase user data rates and reduce latency -- in other words, it allows LTE to be even faster. In related news, Qually also announced that it'll be extending the AllJoyn software development project with "new core interoperable services." As of now, we're simply told that the new services will be available on devices with different operating systems and from different vendors, theoretically enabling an "Internet of Everything" by the time they're upstreamed into the AllJoyn open source project by May 2013. We'll be swinging by the company's booth to see what exactly there is to visualize -- for now, feel free to pursue the press releases linked below.
Defcon 20 visitors get their own 'pirate' cellular network in Ninja Tel, exclusive One V to match
The annual Defcon hacking meetup produces its share of unique creations. You know you're in for something special when even your entrance badge is an adventure. Defcon 20 might be winding to a close, but about 650 guests may just have the fondest memory of all: access to a private, ad hoc GSM carrier from Ninja Networks. While the collective's Ninja Tel is really an invitation to a party at the Rio Hotel, where the lone cell site operates out of a van, it lets the privileged few call and text each other to their hearts' content over cellular and WiFi. The network operators can unsurprisingly eavesdrop on any of the completely unencrypted calls -- this is a hacker's convention, after all -- but we don't think guests mind after getting an equally rare, customized HTC One V for free to make the calls in question. The Android 4.0 phone gets unique perks like triggering a nearby vending machine with Qualcomm's AllJoyn or making apps on the spot through Google's Integrated Development Environment. Owners can even reflash the One V to hop on AT&T or T-Mobile afterwards. Just don't expect to see Ninja Tel popping up in your hometown anytime soon; when Defcon shuts its doors, the cellular network shuts down.
Qualcomm demos AllJoyn peer-to-peer sharing / gaming technology (video)
It's simple, but highly complex. You dig? Qualcomm's AllJoyn demonstration here at MWC was quite the eye-opener, but it's hard to say how much traction it'll gain in a world already inundated with short-range transfer protocols. Bluetooth, Infrared, Wi-Fi Direct... the list goes on and on (and on). Essentially, AllJoyn is an open-source software system that doesn't actually have to run atop Qualcomm hardware; if implemented in a particular app, it can enable peer-to-peer sharing with others based on location. If you're standing near someone who also has an AllJoyn-enabled application, you two (or more) can interact -- if you're both using Bluetooth, the range will be around 30 feet, but if you're both using Wi-Fi, it'll obviously be greater. Qualcomm's hoping to entwine its homegrown FlashLinq (more on that in a separate article) in order to let people use this while being up to 1km away from one another. The company describes AllJoyn as a software framework for developers that enables easy P2P access; rather than an app developer having to write this functionality in from scratch, they can simply grab Qualcomm's code and integrate it. Currently, the spec only supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but Wi-Fi Direct and FlashLinq support it in the works, and those will hopefully be added by the end of the year. We're told that the company's also working to create a constant link between devices, which could one day (soon) enable streaming support. There's C++, Java and Javascript models available, with Qualcomm's goal being to have developers port this all over the place. The demo (embedded after the break) involved a foursome of phones sharing photographs with one another, while a nearby laptop was shown engaging in a multiplayer game with two smartphones. We were told that the company's currently in talks with a number of large gaming firms to get this ingrained in future titles, but no specifics were available. Another application would be within a social network, enabling AllJoyn apps to alert users when a friend is nearby. A huge boon there is that this doesn't require data, so international groups who'd like to keep tabs on one another's location will be able to do so without roaming on a foreign network. So, any app developers considering bundling this in with your next update? %Gallery-116868%
