This report was first published on our sister Site, Digital World Native.
By: Anand R.
Tech startup Estimote, which launched Beacons a year ago equipped with tiny sensors & bluetooth connectivity to smartphone apps, has now launched Estimote Stickers as a complementary offering.
Estimote Stickers will turn your everyday objects into “Nearables” that are a part of the Internet of Things (IoT), capable of broadcasting data about motion, temperature & location to connected devices. The Estimote Beacons launched last year were a big hit among app developers, & there’s now a global network of 25,000 developers building applications that interact & work with the Estimote SDK, cloud & hardware.
While the Estimote Beacons are capable of adding a layer of contextual intelligence for specific locations such as museums, malls & airports, the newly launched Stickers are designed to be placed on objects within these locations as a complementary addition to the Beacons.
Each Sticker is a tiny & 3mm thin computer armed with an ARM processor, flash memory, battery (1-yr life), accelerometer & temperature sensors, & a bluetooth controller.
You just stick a Sticker to an object, & it becomes a nearable. Nearbles are smart, connected objects that are a part of the Internet of Things, & can send information about the object & its surroundings, & may also receive data & commands to initiate certain actions.
For instance, you could put an Estimote Sticker on a bottle of champagne & stick it in the fridge, & your smartphone would be notified when it gets chilled to the exact temperature you want.
You could pick up a book at the bookstore, & the app would start displaying reviews of the book on your smartphone. You could try on a jacket at the store, & the shelf display would instantly be updated with available styles & colors of the same jacket & other matching items.
Estimote’s new SDK version will give developers the ability to classify objects based on motion, ownership, etc. So if you develop an app that tracks your dog using an Estimote Sticker, it would be classified as a moving object that you own.
So your pet’s location & temperature will tell you where it is & what it’s been doing. If it’s chasing squirrels in the yard & is all tired out, the high temperature will tell you it’s time for Fido to come indoors & drink some water.
For US $99, you can buy the developer kit with three Estimote Beacons or pre-order 10 Estimote Stickers for the same price. The stickers are scheduled to be shipped in October.
The New York, NY & Krakow, Poland-based Estimote, Inc. was founded in April 2012 by Jakub Krzych, Steve Cheney, Nicholas Chirls & Lukasz Kostka. Krzych is the company’s CEO, while Kostka is the CTO & Cheney the SVP for Business & Operations.
Estimote, Inc. has raised $3.4 million in four rounds of funding from nine investors, including a $3.1 million seed funding round in Dec 2013.
Image Credit: Estimote
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