This week’s Smart DevOps roundup features a new and open smart home SDK from a tech giant, more fresh developer kits for app makers in the Internet of Things (IoT) market, and round of funding to accelerate development for IoT products and services.

Samsung’s Smart Home SDK

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. unveiled new products and improvements to its smart home line at the Internationale Funkausstellung or IFA 2914 in Berlin, Germany. Perhaps the most notable announcement is the Smart Home software developer kit (SDK), set to arrive later this year.

The Smart Home SDK will allow third-party developers to create products that are compatible with Samsung’s own smart home offerings.

“We plan to build a truly open smart home ecosystem by actively incorporating a variety of services and platforms into the cloud, as well as by opening up Samsung’s platform to developers,” said Robert King, VP of consumer electronics at Samsung UK and Ireland in a released statement.

Dev kits to accelerate IoT

Silicon Laboratories, Inc. introduced two new economical and easy-to-use development kits aimed at accelerating the design of environmental and biometric sensing applications for a wide range of IoT products.

The  SLSTK3201A environmental sensing development kit streamlines the process of developing IoT products that sense relative humidity (RH), temperature, ultraviolet (UV) light, ambient light, proximity and human gestures. As for the new biometric sensing development platform, it makes it easier to measure heart rates and blood oxygen levels (Sp02), as well as UV index, relative humidity and temperature.

“Highly accurate, ultra-low-power environmental and biometric sensing capabilities are as critical to today’s IoT and wearable applications as energy-friendly MCUs and standards-based wireless connectivity,” said Ross Sabolcik, vice president and general manager of Silicon Labs’ Analog, Power and Sensor products in a released statement. “We enable developers to simplify their designs and speed time to market with an array of plug-and-play development kits coupled with our Simplicity Studio software tools.”

IFTTT raises $30M in funding

Automation startup IFTTT Inc. has raised $30 million in a round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. IFTTT, which stands for “if this then that”, is a nifty service that allows everyday consumers to automate tasks such as “if I get tagged in a photo on Facebook, then save that photo to my Dropbox.” That’s just one example of the countless recipes users can create with the various channels on the service.

This is the largest round of funding IFTTT has raised to date, and will be used to expand its engineering team as well as officially launch its platform channel, which has been in beta since earlier this year. By opening its platform to more developers, more recipes for a wider range of services and connected devices can be created, especially now that IFTTT is playing a huge role in the operations and consumerization of IoT.

The new round of funding also includes Josh Goldman, a partner at Norwest Venture, joining IFTTT’s board of directors.

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