WiFi to Switch on IoT Appliances
The long-held vision of connected home appliances is becoming a reality. White goods makers such as Electrolux, Haier, and their competitors in the AllSeen Alliance are gearing up refrigerators, ovens, washing machines, and more that ride WiFi networks and run Linux.
The group will stage a demo of connected appliances at the Consumer Electronics Show in January showing products on the market or on the way. Most are based on a new generation of low-cost 802.11n WiFi chips.
They will communicate with each other as well as cars, smartphones, and cloud services via open source software originally developed by Qualcomm under the name AllJoyn. Qualcomm gave the code a year ago to the Linux Foundation to maintain under the name AllSeen.