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Can't agree on the amazing choice part: Most IoT devices will be headless. The will act as sensors, actors or gateways, but information will be displayed on ot
by Matthias247 11y ago
Can't agree on the amazing choice part:
Most IoT devices will be headless. The will act as sensors, actors or gateways, but information will be displayed on other devices (your PC, Tablet, Smartphone, and probably a very limited number of control center things which actually embed a display).
For headless devices I can't yet see the benefit of Firefox OS over the Linux distribution of your choice (or even a custom one, e.g. with Yocto) plus Node.js (if you wan't to program in JS) or any other programming language of your choice. I would for sure prefer to use Node APIs (where the ecosystem is in the meantime really big and development and prototyping can be done on most platforms) against some other FFOS APIs (which I don't know - so it might be not a problem if porting node libraries is easy - but it could also be a big problem if FFOS specific BSPs are needed).
For devices with displays: Well, here comes the question again where the benefit of FFOS is against existing platforms for that solution. Of course, iOS is out there, but you still have the choice between Linux + Browser or a classical GUI toolkit (GTK, QT), an Android based device and now also Windows 10 for IoT.
If portability is a concern then I would create the fronted simply as a web app which can run on any of those OSes with a decent browser. And the actual system runs in $programming_language_of_choice and exposes HTTP/WS APIs.
- hardwaresofton 11y agoAh I definitely should have qualified my statements -- I was thinking more fridges/microwaves/things with screens. Most of the benefit is that they don't have to try and build some frankenstein of a view layer if you go with FFOS. FFOS is definitely just about useless for IoT applications if it doesn't have a screen -- I completely agree with your point, it's just a fork of AOSP at that point.
- chris_wot 11y agoIf you think that Firefox will win by powering fridges, microwaves and toasters, then I'm not entirely sure how to respond.
- elioqoshi 11y agoThat's one way to frame it! :D
- hardwaresofton 11y agoWell define "win"? I'm not suggesting that FFOS will immediately take the IoT world by storm, but I'm saying it's decent option (for reasons that are unique to FFOS). If mozilla can get to manufacturers and IoT companies fast enough, and integration is easy enough, it might catch on.
- chris_wot 11y agoYour second sentence just directly contradicted your first.
- hardwaresofton 11y agoCatching on != taking a sector by storm. Let me make it simpler: While it is unlikely that every vendor will instantly switch to FirefoxOS for IoT devices, it is likely that more than zero will find it useful.