Samsung has acquired the home automation company SmartThings, which allows you to sync your gadgets with a Smartphone app and a hardware hub, and there is talk that the upcoming version of the SmartThings hub will be Linux based, and surely that will mean Tizen based !!! The price tag is thought to be around the $200 million. SmartThings will operate as an independent company under CEO Alex Hawkinson, within Samsung’s Open Innovation Center group, says Samsung.
The present SmartThings hub costs $99 and has Ethernet support and plugs directly into your Internet router and supports ZigBee, Z-Wave as well as other IP-accessible devices, meaning it can “talk” to other devices that are connected to the same network, which includes the companies SmartSense branded sensor devices. It seems that SmartThings is bigger than we anticipated, with Samsung stating that the open platform supports “more than 1,000 devices and 8,000 apps created by its community of device makers, inventors, and developers.”
Will the next version be Tizen?
The current SmartThings hub runs a proprietary OS, but according to a discussion between a SmartThings rep and Linux Gizmos, it looks like they will be making the move to Linux. As we know Samsung is looking to push Tizen onto as many as their devices as possible, it would make sense that its Tizen, which can also be stripped down to a mere 64Mb OS, and there is work going on to take this down to minuscule 4Mb.
Links
Samsung’s announcement about its SmartThings
SmartThings website.
Thanks for the Tip Olivier 😉
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