One of the big problems with creating a connected house — where thermostats talk to light swtiches which talk to coffee-making robots — is that there’s a lot of communication protocols, and most of them are proprietary. But, never fear, a new standard has been agreed on: um, Faccebook Messenger.
More strictly, it’s the protocol that powers Facebook Messenger’s mobile comms, Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, that’s been chosen by a high-profile band of companies as the future of the Internet of Things. MQTT was originally designed for stuff like sending telemetry data to and from satellites, so the focus on low-bandwidth and low-power was an ideal match for Facebook. The lightweight nature of the protocol should also come in pretty handy when dozens of devices with low-power chipsets (like those light switches) want to communicate.
The group that’s chosen MQTT as the protocol is pretty weighty too — it’s called OASIS (The Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), and has members including Cisco, IBM and the Eclipse Foundation. They’ve got heritage too — they’re the group behind the sorta-popular OpenDocument format. [The Register]
