At Heaven Fresh, we have been designing and marketing household appliances to achieve healthy indoor air for over a decade. As a small company, we are continuously striving for innovation to stay ahead of the competition. We’ve received numerous requests from our customers to add internet connectivity to our products so that they can monitor and control indoor environments remotely.
While working on the connectivity project, I visited CES in January 2014 to find out what other companies were doing for product connectivity. While at CES, I had the opportunity to experience Qualcomm Smart Home demo and that’s where I found out about the AllJoyn framework for the Internet of Things (IoT).
Being a software and research engineer, I am an avid proponent of open source and was very intrigued by AllJoyn. The more I found out about AllJoyn, the more I was convinced that it was the right choice to IoT enables Heaven Fresh products for the following reasons:
- It allowed interoperability among the products and services of various vendors.
- It could run on wifi which was most likely already available in the homes and offices of our target customers.
- We did not have to reinvent the wheel as most of the common engineering problems were being addressed and solved by the vast pool of smart engineers and developers.
- It had some big names like Qualcomm, Microsoft, Sony, Share, and LG behind it, so I figured that AllJoyn is more likely to become a winner or at least one of the winners because of these heavyweights.
- Since the project was open source, we could improve and enhance the framework based on our products’ specific needs.
- And finally, I chose it because we had the opportunity to be one of the pioneers to market AllJoyn enabled products that could potentially give us significant visibility-especially if it became mainstream!
After I returned from Vegas to our head office in Toronto, I immediately directed the engineering team to start exploring AllJoyn. Within a few months, we had the first two AllJoyn based Heaven Fresh prototypes up and running, our best-selling air purifier and humidifier.
Heaven Fresh did not become a member of the AllSeen Alliance until 2015 when I visited the CES again. There I met the director AllSeen Alliance, Dr. Philip DesAutels. Philip encouraged us to join the Alliance to help improve the framework as it was a collaborative community effort where every member’s knowledge and experience could be used to make it better for the rest of the world.
The Alliance has gone from 50 members to over 200 members since Heaven Fresh joined. There have been several major releases of the codebase with some astronomical enhancements. There is no way that Heaven Fresh, alone and with its limited engineering resources, could have achieved the technological advancements that were realized by working in collaboration with the Alliance community in just a few months. The beauty here is that this marvelous engineering effort contributed by the member companies is available for anyone to use and build upon. Particularly smaller companies and startups can benefit tremendously from all the development that has already been done and will be done in future releases.
Open IoT collaboration like the AllSeen Alliance not only helps achieve interoperability but speeds up new development and helps spur innovation. It is through the dedication of countless people who are part of the alliance that Heaven Fresh’s engineering effort was and continually is, directed towards product enhancement and innovation as opposed to struggling with the fundamental tech challenges.
Although achieving interoperability among products and services is one of the key objectives of AllJoyn, it is still fascinating to see the Heaven Fresh products communicate and connect with other products right out of the box just like magic. Thanks to AllJoyn humanity is about to embrace the magical interconnected world where “things” seamlessly interact with each other to achieve happy and healthy living. Heaven Fresh air purifier HF480 and humidifier HF810 are AllJoyn Certified now and will be available for sale in Q2 of 2016. They will be available through Best Buy, Walmart, Lowes, Costco and several other retailers.
AllJoyn Certified HF 810 Smart WiFi Digital UltraSonic Cool & Warm Mist Humidifier
We will be showcasing our technology at CES 2016 in Sands Expo 71836 Las Vegas from Jan. 6 to 9. Visit the AllSeen Alliance booth to see Heaven Fresh products interoperating with other AllJoyn products. Feel free to reach out to me at imran@heavenfresh.ca.