Hello Everyone,
It has been another very busy month at OpenRemote. Here's our update to keep you abreast of recent developments.
iKNX joins OpenRemote
We are pleased to announce that OpenRemote has acquired exclusive rights to iKNX, the iPhone product from Jörg Falkenberg. Jörg will be joining our community as iKNX lead.
iKNX offers an iPhone stack that talks to a KNX install over IP network. We will open source the KNX/IP stack for Apple (for those in the know – like Calimero, but in Objective-C instead of Java) and work to integrate its UI elements with ours. We will invest in its future.
For those that don't know KNX, it is European hardware found in industrial and commercial settings as well as high-end homes. The Chinese also licensed KNX for the Olympics. With iKNX we offer software as well as services to deploy iPhone UIs in the field with existing KNX installations.
The product is currently available at the app-store.
OpenRemote Amsterdam Meetup on Wednesday June 3rd, 2009
Don't miss your chance to meet the team, share experiences and be part of the community! Come to Amsterdam on Wednesday June 3rd 2009 for our first event of 2009.
We will start at 10.00am with opening statements from Marc Fleury.
After that Juha Lindfors will give an overview of the OpenRemote software stack and discuss the roadmap.
After lunch we'll have a presentation about our plans for the "Openremote / KNX roadmap" with Jörg Falkenberg.
Marcus Redeker is scheduled to come and make a presentation on how he integrated his custom hardware into OpenRemote.
Location details to come.
Professional Open Source for Automation
We believe the OSS approach changes certain dynamics of the automation industry. First and foremost, this is an industry made of legacy business models based on closed approaches. With such barriers to entry, the communities remain traditionally small and expensive to expand through distribution, one-to-one partnerships and traditional marketing to distributors. This is one of the reasons standards are so slow to appear.
With an OSS base, we are turning the model on its head. We aim to gain mass traction and become an integration point for vendors small and large by making our run-time cheap, easy to assemble and ubiquitous. We lower barriers to entry for partners by providing a modular base with OSS integration points.
We offer innovative web-based UI assembly tools that are easy to use and powerful. By acquiring iKNX we prove our commitment to growing the professional offering of OpenRemote. By investing in the product, we prove we are committed to delivering powerful online software. Our community, with recent days at 1000 unique visits, is growing healthily and rapidly, proving there is a need for an open source integrated solution in the various automation markets.
Our potential is to build a standard for a modern automation operating system.
OpenRemote M1 Developer Release Available
We've completed and released the source code for OpenRemote Milestone 1 (M1) to developers. This milestone includes all the necessary code to deploy an OpenRemote infrared control end-to-end - sending commands from your iPhone or iPod Touch through the OpenRemote Box (ORB) to the infrared controlled end-device such as your TV, stereo or set-top box. To see OpenRemote in action, check out this video.
Milestones are developer releases intended as stable checkpoints for community developers to test features in our releases, and to provide their own extensions. We've already started receiving contributions built on this milestone. Marcus Redeker has come up with integration to his IRTrans, MythTV and EZcontrol systems at his home. Today, he is controlling his entire A/V setup with OpenRemote.
We are extremely excited with the progress OpenRemote is making. New features are being implemented and community contributions have started.
Please come visit us in Amsterdam for more updates, and look forward to more release news next month!
