LittleBits' new cloudBit device adds your dumb gadgets and household appliances to the Internet of Things
The magnetically connected littleBits electronics library got a new internet-connected addition. The new Internet of Things cloudBit module connects all your projects to internet-scripting service, IFTTT.
Context & Ripple Effects
littleBits is extending its magnetically snapped electronics kit beyond the workbench: the new cloudBit module gives any project — or any dumb appliance wired into one — an internet connection and a direct pipe into IFTTT's recipe automation. It is also IFTTT's latest step out of the browser and into hardware, following its 2012 move into the physical world with Belkin WeMo compatibility.
The launch lands two weeks after Spark Labs raised $4.9M to build an operating system for connected devices, part of a visible funding-and-platform push around the internet of things in mid-2014. The pickup was unusually broad for a module launch — Engadget, Wired, TechCrunch, Gigaom, Gizmodo and the Wall Street Journal all carried it — signaling that the story being read is less about one gadget than about who owns the connective tissue of the smart home.
First-order effects
- littleBits users can now retrofit existing appliances and gadgets into internet-triggered devices without soldering or firmware work, with IFTTT recipes as the control layer.
- IFTTT gains a new hardware channel whose audience is makers and educators rather than smart-home early adopters, widening the base of devices its automation rules can act on.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in the modular-electronics and DIY-hardware space face pressure to ship their own cloud-connectivity modules, since a kit without an IFTTT-style bridge now looks incomplete next to littleBits' offering.
- The launch puts littleBits on a collision path with platform plays like Spark Labs' device OS: both are competing to be the default software layer between cheap hardware and the cloud.
Third-order effects
- If retrofit bridges plus rule-based automation keep winning over purpose-built smart appliances, value in the consumer IoT stack migrates from the devices themselves to the interoperability layer that stitches them together.
- A fragmented field of kits, hubs and scripting services points toward consolidation pressure — the kind that later drew chip vendors and cloud providers into shipping their own IoT platforms and starter kits.
The trend: Consumer IoT adoption in 2014 is running through retrofit bridges and recipe-based automation services rather than purpose-built smart appliances, making the glue layer the contested ground.