Automate your life with the Signul
Local developer’s app and beacons allow you to program routine tasks
The same technology that lets stores send special offers to your smartphone as you walk their aisles will let you automate daily digital tasks — whether it’s a text saying the kids are home safe from school, starting up your favourite music streaming service when you get in your car, or flicking on Netflix when you collapse on the couch.
That’s thanks to the IoT Design Shop. As its name suggests, it focuses on the Internet of Things, a growing trend in which devices from phones to fridges, to major infrastructure and medical devices, are connected to the Internet.
Billed as the world’s “first personal beacon system,” the IoT Design Shop’s Signul includes small battery- powered beacons, about the size of a hockey puck, along with a smartphone app.
“Signul is basically an app that makes it really, really simple to set up reactions when you enter or leave beacon zones,” said Trent Shumay, chief technology officer of IoT Design and president and chief technology officer at Port Coquitlam’s Finger Food Studios, the mobile application development company that owns IoT Design Shop.
“A beacon is basically a small Bluetooth transmitter that spits out a radio signal so that your cellphone can see it as you walk towards it or away from it.
“So you can do things like launch apps or open websites or send messages to friends and family just by moving within proximity of a beacon.”
IBeacon is Apple- trademarked technology for proximity sensing using low- powered, low- cost transmitters and the company has been working on the business side of the technology.
“IBeacons are something that have been around for just over a year now and we’re seeing them deployed in a lot of shopping centres and large retail outlets and really the message that people are hearing around them is
Basically everybody can set up their own reactions and tailor their own experience to the Signul. TRENT SHUMAY CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER OF I0T DESIGN
that they’re going to be sent advertising and marketing content from retailers,” said Graham Cunliffe, director of business development for the IoT Design Shop.
“We had tons of use cases that we thought of personally that we wanted to implement in our own lives and that’s how Signul came about.”
The company has launched an Indiegogo campaign, which has already raised more than $ 34,000, surpassing its $ 25,000 goal, with the money to fund a professionally- produced case for the beacons to replace the beta 3D- printed versions. With the campaign running until the end of this month, IoT Design hopes to reach $ 50,000, which will enable it to release a software development kit so developers can make their apps and devices work seamlessly with Signul.
While it’s early days for the technology, the IoT Design Shop’s personal beacon is an indicator of what’s to come, particularly in the connected home. Lockitron, a device that fits over a lock to unlock the door automatically, already works with Signul.
“The big one we see is around home automation, so the lock is one thing,” said Cunliffe. “There are also a lot of other companies producing smart outlets and lighting in the house.
“You can imagine walking around your house from room to room at night being cognizant of the amount of energy you’re using and wanting to save wherever you can and only having the lights turn on in the rooms where you are.”
It also bodes well for Greater Vancouver’s tech sector as the Design Shop not only plans to hire additional employees, but also to manufacture Signul devices here rather than overseas.
“There’s a lot of work to be done just with these smaller, more unique, niche- type devices and if we can find a way to manufacture those in a competitive way right here, we think that’s a huge advantage as well,” said Shumay.
The Signul’s list of potential uses, said Shumay, are growing as early testers personalize their Signuls to automate their digital day.
• You could carry a beacon in your purse, and instruct the app to have your phone sound an alarm if you leave your purse hanging on a chair when you leave a coffee shop.
• You could have Signul send a text message home as you leave the office to say you’re en route — thus avoiding B. C.’ s newly announced stiffer fines for talking or texting while you’re driving.
• You could instruct it to open your news app when you sit down with your morning coffee.
• You could use it to automatically post to your Facebook or Twitter accounts.
• Or maybe you want to keep tabs on your aging parents — you could have your Signul start a phone call when you walk into the living room at a specified time.
While there are other digital tools that work with location services, they don’t offer the micro- location control of a personal beacon. The range for the Signul beacon can be as small as one metre in diameter or as large as 30 metres. It can be set to know when you’ve walked in your front door, or more finely tuned to know when you left the bedroom in the morning and walked into the kitchen so it can start the coffee brewing.
Shumay and Cunliffe brought two Signul beacons that they 3D printed that morning for me to try out. While it sounds like a technology for early adopters, set up was as simple as downloading the app. It works with both Android and iOS phones and when I opened the app, it immediately found the two beacons — one red, one blue, and popped up a menu asking what action I wanted to do.
A single Signul, which broadcasts out a signal that anyone with a smartphone and the app can connect to, can be used by any number of people.
“Basically everybody can set up their own reactions and tailor their own experience to the Signul,” said Shumay. “It could be anything and we expect that it would be really personal for people who have a thing they do every day when they get to work or leave work or get home. … It’s definitely designed to be tailored.”
Asked about privacy and security, Shumay said no information about people’s use of their Signuls beacons is sent back to the company; it only gets notified when beacons are activated.
“It doesn’t ask you to log in,” he said. “We know which device ( Signul) may send a push notification to but we still don’t know whose device it is.”