Lack of interoperability is a major obstacle to adopting IoT. Can OCF solve this and connect billions of devices with their new standardization of protocols?

With the holidays fast approaching, you’ve probably been bombarded with ads for smart home devices, right?

Smart TVs, self-automated vacuums, or even smart plates that can help you manage your diet, are filling shelves at malls and big box stores. While a lot of people welcome these new technological advances, many are still not totally on board with smart technology and the Internet of Things (IoT).

One reason people aren’t adopting these devices is because of how difficult it is to get different devices to communicate with each other, making their IoT dreams fall short of reality. In an ideal world, your IoT life would look something like this:

You head out to work for the day. Your smart home knows nobody is in the house, so your smart thermostat turns down the heat to save energy.

Your iRobot gets to work so you come home to a nice, tidy house, and minutes before you pull into the driveway, your smartphone alerts your home that you’re near. Your smart lighting turns on to welcome you, and your smart pet feeder gets Max’s dinner all served up!

For such a story to become real, devices must be able to work together, and there must be common connectivity between the individual devices. Luckily, there is a movement happening right now to accomplish just that. A group of 170 companies (including many tech giants) are working together to enable standardization, certification, easy discovery and easy connectivity between IoT devices, which will radically change how we use smart devices and home appliances in the future.