by Angela Guess
Jared Newman recently wrote in Fast Company, “In the future that Particle CEO Zach Supalla envisions, you’ll never lose your luggage, or find out too late that your basement is flooded. Production lines will recognize exactly when a single piece of equipment is about to fail, and city workers will automatically get notified when a garbage can needs emptying. That’s because every one of these devices will be connected to the Internet, regardless of whether there’s a functioning Wi-Fi network within range. Particle is in the business of making the tools that enable these ‘Internet of Things’ devices, from circuit boards to software platforms to large-scale manufacturing plans. The company’s latest product, the Electron, is the first to have a cellular radio and data plan built in.”
Newman goes on, “Getting to this point hasn’t been easy, however. For Supalla, the creation of Electron has been a lesson in how wireless carriers work, including both their networks and their internal politics. With the first Electron units shipping this week, I talked to Supalla about what he learned, and what still needs to change before cellular IoT takes off. The Internet of Things isn’t (yet) a big business, and the concept favors lots of small-scale devices, rather than a handful of hits. Certifying, provisioning, and managing data plans for all of these devices is a tall order for wireless carriers, who are used to selling smartphones by the million. ‘There are a lot of really interesting customers out there that they would love to support,’ Supalla says, ‘but they’re just not built to support smaller companies, and interestingly their definition of a smaller company can be quite large’.”
photo credit: Particle