You may recall a discussion about Golgi’s role in the Internet of Things (IoT) this last summer. In effect, it served to enable device makers to leverage phones as remote controls, providing the cloud-based go-between that completed the connection.
While that might seem like limited functionality, what it reinforced for me is that, despite all the easy drawings about what the IoT should look like, actual implementation was coming rather more slowly – step by step. So getting devices connected by phone was one step.
Well, Golgi is now back with another step. This time it’s for device makers that want to connect to various web services. Examples they list include analytics by Initial State), SMS via Twilio, push notifications through Pusher, a cloud database via Parse, email through SendGrid, and IFTTT for automating activities. That said, they say they provide an extensible API framework, so you’re not limited to this.
The way they do this is by creating device code based on the device API you design. That’s implemented over a complete stack, using MQTT for messaging. That then connects to their cloud-based connection point, which offers two portals.
(Click to enlarge; image courtesy Golgi)
One is an API portal that allows you to get in and control your device; the other is the connections portal through which you can push your device messages to the various cloud-based services. So, in the same way that the earlier offering provided a cloud-based midpoint and device code for connecting to the phone, this announcement has a similar cloud-based midpoint, but for connecting to other web-based services rather than the phone.
You can read more in their announcement.