Ixonos toutseverything connected concept at linuxcon The Inquirer
FINNISH FIRM Ixonos has introduced its Homeecho concept at Linuxcon Europe for connecting a wide range of hardware.
The thought is that you don’t need to worry about compatibility and each device can use the advantages of the others.
Antti Aumo, VP of comprehensive solutions at Ixonos said, “Our vision is a world where hardware and software around you are doing fundamentally new things in an innovative way.”
Homeecho entails all the devices you own connecting collectively via a peer to peer swarm. They can then access all the assets and capabilities of each from any device. For example you will be able to share files, storage space and processing potential.
Once connected you choose which software you want to use and how the devices connect but ultimately it uses the Linux kernel. Linking devices such as your PC, smartphone and tablet you could end up with nearly 10GHz of processing potential.
Aumo said, “The long term vision is that this peer to peer device discovery would go into the kernel.”
Some real life examples of how the Homeecho would work are that a film you are watching moves linking displays as you go around your home, your TV lowers or mutes the signal if your smartphone rings until your call is refined.
It even includes your car and you could configure your Homeecho system to start preparing your house for your arrival when you are some number of miles from persistent.
Overall Aumo believes the possibilities are endless and could help you use devices for more than what they’re designed for. You could, for example, use a multi-room hifi system as a baby monitor, likening it to transformers.
Some benefits of the system include resource allotment, functionality, ease of use, higher level of context awareness, extreme flexibility and low maintenance costs, according to Aumo.
The excellent thing is that most of the technology already exists to make this concept a reality. The huge problem is that operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS X need to be incorporated too. Aumo admitted that it could take 20 years to accomplish so we’ll have to watch this space. µ
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Ixonos toutseverything connected concept at linuxcon The Inquirer





ELCE will start off Oct. 26 with an address from LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin, who will “imagine a world without Linux.” This will be followed by a Kernel Developer Panel that features a star-studded cast including Linux creator Linus Torvalds (pictured at right), real-time Linux pioneer Thomas Gleixner, Intel’s Alan Cox, and IBM’s Paul McKenney.
The Oct. 27 keynotes, meanwhile, include Ixonos President of Comprehensive Solutions Antti Aumo discussing the “Cloud Phone,” which may or may not refer to his company’s announced support for the HTML5-focused Tizen spin-off of MeeGo and LiMo. Aumo’s address will be followed by Intel Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist Dirk Hondel (pictured at left) offering a “Reflection on 20 years of Linux.” Perhaps Dirk, too, can help the somewhat skeptical Linux community know how Tizen will do any better than MeeGo and LiMo.
After lunch on day two, Matt Jones (pictured at right), vice president of the Genivi Alliance open source In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) standards group and technical lead for the Genivi-based IVI system for the Jaguar Land Rover, will speak on “Linux for in-car infotainment.” Finally, Friday morning kicks off with LWN.net Editor Jon Corbet giving his usual Kernel Report.
Day two highlights include Surprise Lab’s Grant Likely giving a device tree status report, as well as ARM’s Lorenzo Pieralisi language on Linux potential management on multiprocessor systems. Texas Instruments’ David Anders and Luca Coelho will offer three different workshops on the PandaBoard open-platform development board (pictured at right), which is based on TI’s Cortex-A9-based, dual-core, 1GHz OMAP4430 system-on-chip (SoC).
The conference will be preceded on Oct. 25 with a choice of two full-day workshops. The first is a generic “Embedded Android workshop,” and the second is “Outside the box: an introduction to embedded Linux and hardware interfacing using the Snowball board.” The latter takes a hands-on look at working with Calao Systems’ open-platform Snowball development board (pictured at left), which showcases ST-Ericsson’s dual-core, 1GHz Cortex-A9 “Nova A9500″ SoC and Linaro’s Linux board support wrap.