Council Interview with Claudio Carnevali (OpenPicus core team)

Council Interview with Claudio Carnevali (OpenPicus core team): On the limits of OpenPicus: "We don't use low power wireless technologies such as Zigbee. We prefer much standardized ones (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth). The power issue is under control since the MCU can control the Wireless transceiver keeeping it in sleep state when there's no need for communication. For example in a wireless temperature sensor that sends email to your phone in case of alarm, the Wi-Fi is keeped off until the alarm is necessary.
"Actually we think that it can become a standard for home automation and control, to let people control their house from a PC or a smartphone simply connected to the internet. The FlyPort module can be connected to your Wi-Fi home network and control your door, windows or even your energy directly interfaced to a Google Power meter for example."

Council: How did the project start?

We were talking around a table drinking a good wine, as quote often happens, here in Rome. We were talking about the lack of an easy to program, economic and powerful embedded wireless module. We decided to make it and to share the information with an online community. We created a Blog in March 2010 and we started to brainstorm and to create. In June we had our first sample FlyPort and in September the first production batch. The real challenge was later. We needed to give users a simple way to create their wireless Apps. We invested a lot of time porting FreeRTOS onboard and make the App independent from the complex communication stack. This is our Framework and it's really revolutionary since people can focus on their App code without any experience with embedded OS and Stack (for example a Wi-Fi Robot where FlyPort manages the communication and the PWM signals for the DC motors).

Council: What about money, is there Venture Capital?

This project needs ideas, not money. Actually we invested personally - more time than money - and we also created our space, the picusLAB. We don't need investments since the community is helping a lot on developments. It is like having an open door R&D department without limits of time and space. We have support from the community that's really growing. We prefer to keep cost of the products very low and to give the opportunity to Universities to use FlyPort for their applications. We created the Campus program in order to give one FREE kit to them.

Check out the video.