Everyone from Facebook to Google to Salesforce is trying to make it easier to build software for the Internet of Things, the catch-all term that’s come to embrace a wide variety of connected devices in our homes, on our bodies, and around the towns and cities where we live.
Into this scrum came MyDevices, a Los Angeles-based company, which unveiled Cayenne, a set of software tools for IoT developers and makers.
Kevin Bromber, the CEO of MyDevices, claims Cayenne will make IoT project development fast and accessible—so that a simple project can be created in as little as 15 minutes.
Bromber acknowledged the competition for developers’ attentions, telling me:
“There are a lot of IoT platforms on the market, yet there are few IoT platforms that actually let the developer build a project without having to dig deep into SDKs and APIs just to get a simple proof of concept created.”
Where Cayenne hopes to speed things up is through automatic device and sensor discovery. It provides drag-and-drop widgets that let the developer easily visualize real-time and historical data and triggers that allow a sensor, motor, or actuator to invoke an action on another device. There are also threshold alerts that send emails or SMS messages based on customizable criteria, and provisions for scheduling specific days and times when lights, motors, valves, and actuators turn on and off.
“It is like an easy-to-use website builder but for IoT projects,” Bromber said.
Cayenne’s support for Raspberry Pi could make it popular with tinkerers who like that cheap hardware platform for simple projects and prototypes. Here’s a video of how to set your first Cayenne project up:
Screenshots via Cayenne; lead image via Parse
