The WunderBar, which allows developers to retro-fit sensors to items and so create an Internet of Things (IoT) from existing objects, has won the CODE_n Award presented to the most promising start-up showcasing its technology at last week’s CeBIT show in Hanover.
The product was developed by Berlin-based relayr, which impressed the judges with its business model that paves the way into the Internet of Things for app developers.
The WunderBar looks like a bar of chocolate but is packed with cutting-edge sensor technology. The various sensors measure such things as temperature, humidity or movement and can be broken off like chunks of chocolate and attached to physical objects.
This enables software developers – without any knowledge of electrical engineering – to design applications for smartphones which can access and analyse the measured data; such as an app that controls the temperature of the wine cellar or the humidity level of the domestic greenhouse.
Hardware and software communicate via relayr’s open sensor cloud platform and allow developers to make a fast and easy project start for wireless applications and prototypes – turning smartphones into smart devices.
“With relayr, the jury has chosen a company that perfectly embodies the theme of CODE_n15, ‘Into the Internet of Things’,” says Ulrich Dietz, CEO of the GFT Group and initiator of CODE_n.
“Wunderbar makes it very easy for programmers to grasp and apply the Internet of Things (IoT). And this is also important, for although everyone is talking about IoT – especially at CeBIT – the perceived hurdles for developers are still very high. relayr removes these hurdles. A lack of hardware knowledge is now no longer an excuse. The simplicity of the solution and the implications for IoT left the jury in no doubt.”