BLE beacons give Android applications a proximal context: The user walks into a dark room and immediately receives a buzzing pull-down notification on his phone which contains an embedded on/off button for a nearby light.

To improve user experience even more, we can adapt Google’s latest Proximity and Nearby APIs to configure a generic IoT application on the fly. The first time we encounter IoT hardware, the app can present us with a descriptive label: ‘Turn On Ceiling Fan.’ Guests are implicitly authenticated when we invite them into our home; they should be free to control any IoT device thereafter using generic IoT software installed by visiting a URL sent to their phone when they first entered our home.

About Nick:
Nick Dipatri is a software engineer at FIS/SunGard Consulting Services. He has a degree in electrical engineering from Rutgers and has been doing software development since he got his Commodore 64. Earlier in his career, Nick developed software/firmware/hardware solutions including RF modelling, large-scale traffic sensor arrays, and N-Tier highly available Java enterprise systems. Since this whole mobile thing caught on, however, he’s been in heaven.. mostly because it lets him play with smart phones, solder and 5-minute epoxy.

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