WindSpring Inc. announced Monday its new SpringBoard suite of Internet of Things (IoT) tools, designed to accelerate development and enable cost-effective solutions for deployments. The SpringBoard tools help IoT platform providers, carriers and device makers overcome the challenges associated with low-power, bandwidth-constrained networks; protocol incompatibility; data latency; and the need to preserve device battery life.
SpringBoard’s Intelligent Compression APIs and A2A (Any-to-Any) Protocol Connector tools are purpose-built to complement existing IoT platforms by optimizing, connecting and extending the next generation of IoT solutions.
WindSpring gives the IoT segment working with low-power, memory-constrained devices and low-power WANs, holding many patents relating to compression and device connectivity. WindSpring’s patented Data Management Technology (DMT) allows users to view, select and decompress any part of a compressed file, without decompressing the entire file. DMT is in use by various automotive brands including Mercedes Benz, Honda, Toyota, Alpine, Pioneer Denso and Aisin.
WindSpring’s IoT optimization addresses four converging challenges of cost, battery life, operational efficiency, and wireless network options. Data networks are expensive, and IoT devices generate frequent, bursty messages that can make data costs spiral quickly out of control. WindSpring’s SpringBoard IoT tools reduce network costs by compressing IoT data by as much as 20 times. Preserving battery life is critical for IoT devices such as sensors, smart meters and location trackers—where batteries might need to stay on for months or years, but space constraints limit the use of bulky batteries. The SpringBoard IoT tools reduce the size and frequency of data transmissions, which means less radio usage, less battery drain and longer battery life.
IoT solutions often communicate over slower wireless networks, forcing the need for more actionable data to be extracted faster. The SpringBoard IoT tools optimize data to overcome bandwidth, latency and power issues. Wireless networks have different data requirements and constraints than in the recent past, which can affect the message size for IoT devices.
In particular, low-power WANs (LPWANs) run at extremely low data rates. The SpringBoard IoT tools compress and optimize data so that devices can efficiently operate, regardless of network constraints, over any existing or new protocol that enters the market.
The SpringBoard Intelligent Compression APIs compact, compress and convert IoT data, going far beyond traditional compression to maximize optimization for the constraints of IoT devices, with their limited compute capabilities, limited storage and limited CPUs.
Based on patented WindSpring compression algorithms, SpringBoard’s Intelligent Compression APIs use a multi-stage approach: compacting, or making the data smaller before compression; compressing, or encoding as little data as possible; and converting data, to maximize optimization. The result is compression rates as high as 20 times, and data that can be sent appropriately over any kind of network.
The SpringBoard A2A (Any-to-Any) Protocol Connector enables seamless real-time, two-way, end-to-end network communications. It seamlessly receives device data in any protocol and translates it on the fly into the required network protocol, then sends it to the server or any client device in real time.
The A2A Protocol Connector works with dozens of protocols—including HTTP, Apple HomeKit, Nest Weave, Google Brillo, MQTT, AllJoyn, ZeroMQ (0MQ) and CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol)—and is continually updated to work with new protocols as they are deployed. In this way, it delivers a future-proof connectivity solution.
“Every company working on an IoT project is going to face the same technical challenges, now or later,” said Tom Hunt, president and CEO of WindSpring. “When engineering organizations encounter these challenges, they will discover that WindSpring—by adapting our proven expertise in other embedded markets—already offers the solutions they need to complete and optimize their IoT solutions.”
