Openness has always been the primary motto of Mozilla. With world’s largest volunteer community, Mozilla has released numerous projects viz. Firefox, Firefox OS, Thunderbird etc which are all open sourced.
With respect to the recent updates on the new project that Mozilla has initiated, to penetrate in to ‘Internet of Things’ space (Project ‘Connected Devices’), Collab House in association with Mozilla Hyderabad community has held an event focusing on Developer boards like Raspberry Pi and Arduino and also the advantages of using Firefox OS to run these programmable boards.
The event started off with the basics of ‘Internet of Things’ by Prasan Dutt, Training and Curriculum lead and mentor at Maker Club( Maker and IoT community incubated at Collab House). He explained about how the whole world could be connected and accessed via web. The concept of automating every day activities was well delivered to the audience.
The session was then continued by Ram Dayal with all the domains where ‘Internet of Things’ can be applied. Namely:
- Health
- Home
- Travel
- Defence
- Smart cities
- Natural Calamities
- Farming . etc
Having done with the application of IoT, Ram Dayal then explained about the functioning of various programmable boards like Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Beagle bone etc. This track was very much concept oriented with the functionality of various programmable boards and the difference between each of these Programmable electronic boards. The maker moment has started and we are going to be part of it for the generations to come. The QA session for clearing the doubts of the audience was pretty interactive with every one in the hall having a basic idea on these boards. Simplicity being the ultimate sophistication, the crowd was much interested to know how simple the world could become with all the devices around them, connected over a platform.
The introduction of Firefox OS has created more curiosity among the attendees. The audience were then presented with the mission and motto behind the launch of Firefox OS for mobile and how the focus to Connected Devices could make our world simpler than before. Using the HTML5 Technology, Firefox OS is the most simple and powerful OS to work on. Mozilla has standardised all the APIs developed for Firefox OS, creating an opportunity for developers aka makers to come up with path breaking ideas turning into revolutionising products. The advantages of using Firefox OS for developing ‘Connected Devices’ was well delivered to the crowd creating an interest among the audience.
The demonstrations of various makes by Prasan Dutt using Raspberry Pi and Arduino has made the session more interesting and engaging. The demonstrations included projects like:
- Raspberry Pi enabled mobile phone.
- Bluetooth enabled switch to trigger a signal( Using Arduino).
- # tag detection using Twitter API
- Calling Web APIs
- An Arduino Mouse .etc
The hand-on was fun with energetic audience having amazing enthusiasm to learn more about ‘Connected Devices’.
