
Amazon Common Software for Devices - foobar9001
https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/blogs/alexa/device-makers/2020/02/introducing-amazon-common-software-for-devices-preview
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mflamespin
One of the things I am most skeptical about for the future of IoT is that it's
just REALLY hard to get the basics of networking, meshing, security, and
updates down without an experienced and dedicated engineering team.

Realistically, Whirlpool just isn't going to be able to field that team to
make their laundry machine resilient to malware attacks or a bricking update.

I always thought the only way forward with IoT was if it a big tech player
offered an SDK / IoT platform that allowed developers to focus on the widgety
part of their widget without having to think about the complexities of running
an internet connected device. This seems like a big jump towards that.

(I worked at a wifi router company.)

~~~
zxcmx
There's the worry that your platform vendor is going to squeeze you for all
your profit, harvest "your" data, use your data to bootstrap competitors
(seems like X is profitable!), "cancel" your platform or all the other things
they will definitely make sure they retain the ability to do.

"Pray we do not alter the Terms and Conditions further". Walled gardens, app
stores and closed ecosystems are FAANG staples at this point.

I think in many cases the technical delivery risks (say, having crappy
updates, janky apps and the odd CVE) seem more survivable than taking on those
kinds of business risks.

~~~
onefuncman
Can't you mitigate this completely by working towards being acquired by your
platform vendor?

~~~
d0100
So everyone becomes FANG free R&D?

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dsalzman
The bundling of their Frustration-Free-Setup (FFS) SDK will be a big driver
for IoT developers. Device onboarding/commissioning are a huge pain point.

+1 to AMZ for their investment in FreeRTOS.

[https://developer.amazon.com/frustration-free-
setup](https://developer.amazon.com/frustration-free-setup) [1]

~~~
CiPHPerCoder
I love the acronym.

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=FFS](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=FFS)

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edderly
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_softwar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_software_engineering)

"We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection."

I'm extremely skeptical that this solves any particular problem other than for
Amazon building devices, silicon vendors who want to be in Amazon devices.
Which is fine, but the scope of this seems to be broader. It just doesn't
sound like the right idea to me.

The biggest issue is the "common" part. You want to produce an api or abi
common across OSs? How many chances do you have to get it right and not run
into a web of api version bugs & issues? Who has made this successful in the
past? UDI? (nope) And then you want a common api across an RTOS and Linux?
Good luck.

Oh and by the way, where's the source code for this middleware?

I don't know why you wouldn't take the approach of making the underlying OS's
easier to work with. If FreeRTOS is missing something, enhance it. If embedded
Linux(s) are hard to integrate with, start an open source project to work on
that problem.

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juliansimioni
There are only 676 3 letter acronyms starting with 'A'. We've got to be
getting close to that at this point, right?

~~~
black_puppydog
They're gonna have to simply out-grow the alphabet then. Which, incidentally,
is their main game anyhow. :)

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loa_in_
I like the clear statement that the components are memory optimized (as
opposed to execution-time optimized). Their target audience are device
developers (and of course users of those devices), they're making good steps
towards that, but of course both should be wary of how auditable the toolkit
is, and most importantly can it be abused by Amazon

~~~
privateSFacct
You do realize this toolkit is designed to deeply embed Alexa and other Amazon
products into the device. So people WANT amazon to have a microphone and maybe
a speaker and I'm sure lots of other metrics feeding back into an Amazon
datacenter.

"Can" amazon, if they wanted, abuse this? It seems likely all the technical
items are in place that they could. I don't see why they would, you are
voluntarily putting everything they want into the device for them.

~~~
loa_in_
You can design a device that uses Amazon software for microphone audio
"processing" AND have a hardware (or semiconductor based) switch at the
microphone wire that you (or user) controls.

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speedgoose
These IoT stacks like AWS greengrass (yes the marketing department smoked that
day) or Azure IoT hub are missing something fundamental in my opinion : device
management.

It would be nice if they could do stuff such as updating the Linux
distribution.

~~~
AceJohnny2
Does ARM's Pelion for Mbed fit the bill?

[https://www.mbed.com/en/platform/](https://www.mbed.com/en/platform/)

~~~
speedgoose
Actually it sounds like it does.

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wiremine
We need something like this, but in a vendor neutral, open source package.
Device makers are wary of vendor lock-in.

That said, this is solving a lot of real-world problems, and I'm glad to see
them moving this forward.

~~~
m463
Customers are wary of device maker lockin (and data harvesting).

~~~
wiremine
It's a good point for sure. That said, I don't think there are enough
compelling IoT products on the market that have vendor lock-in potential.
Hopefully that changes.

Edit: To be clearer: I hope the products get better and more compelling. I
don't look forward to the attempts at vendor lock-in :-)

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drenginian
Can someone please help me understand what exactly this is?

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DannyB2
"Alexa", "please set the instant pot to cook for 15 minutes starting at 5:40
PM"

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donmcronald
OMG. Non-tech people are going to rely on that trash and burn down their
houses.

~~~
vb6sp6
the devices themselves have safety features that are still active

~~~
beenBoutIT
Verbally setting alarms/timers/reminders or anything based on numbers without
receiving visual feedback is bad design. The safety features aren't going to
ensure that the food is cooked properly and not burnt to an inedible char just
shy of combustion.

~~~
bspammer
I use an Echo for timing stuff in the kitchen all the time. It repeats the
number you said back at you, I've never had a 15 -> 50 minutes type mistake.

~~~
wojciii
Perhaps you need to be a non-native English speaker before this is a problem.

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andrewxdiamond
How does this compare to Azure Sphere?

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-
sphere/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-sphere/)

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pjmlp
Just marketing speak without any clue of what programming languages or what
kind of stacks it that supposed to be.

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soonnow
Please keep in mind that IoT is not just home device, but also machines in
factories, utilities and so on. Amazon already has an offering for those
devices at [https://aws.amazon.com/iot-core](https://aws.amazon.com/iot-core)
and the machine learning and AI support to back it up. This allows them to
better compete with players such as Siemens and GE in that area.

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zoom6628
Betting that Amazon is using this big-time to provision devices in their own
facilities. Provisioning is major issue not just in devices, but also in cloud
software - its one thing to sign up for a service, its another thing to to get
to 'doing useful things'. Most enterprise apps struggle with this.

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dpeck
so this seems to be something like Amazon's version of HomeKit.

They may have more success than Apple has had, but I'm not so sure the
incentives are in place to make general IoT devices less terrible.

~~~
outworlder
Most hardware companies suck at making software. If AWS can get a decent
traction, maybe they will replace their custom crap with better engineering
software, which would be a win.

Also a win for AWS, of course, as this would make it easier to use their
services.

~~~
dpeck
100% agreement on that. The number of companies that can competently make good
hardware and software is vanishingly small.

But the problem is that most hardware makers either refuse to realize that
they're bad at making software.

I'm a "fan" of what Apple tried to do with HomeKit ecosystem, but vendors hate
it because it removes some of their control, and also is a pain to get right,
so the whole thing ends up looking terrible even though the ideas and
implementation are solid.

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ageofwant
I've had some good experiences with [http://balena.io](http://balena.io)
managing devices.

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solarkraft
I find it pretty amazing that this doesn't already exist as free software ...
or does it?

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mnemonicsloth
Note the spyOnUsers() method

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odiroot
Could it be used to hack Echo Dot and decouple it from Amazon servers? Would
be nice.

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paxys
At that point why not just buy any other cheap bluetooth speaker?

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deadbunny
Because they don't come with great multi array mics?

