Today, Silicon Labs kicked off its first-ever smart home developer event, Works With 2020, featuring industry experts and leading engineers sharing the latest in smart home technology development. Works With is the first of its kind to host developers and ecosystem partners, delivering 40 engineering-led session and 15 workshops to aid developers with designing, prototyping, and getting their products to market. When Silicon Labs imagined Works With, it wasn’t envisioned as a livestreamed event, but shifting to virtual allowed more than 5,000 developers from all over the world to participate.

Day 1 Recap - It’s All About Connections

Opening Keynote

Silicon Labs CEO, Tyson Tuttle, kicked off the event by diving into Silicon Labs’ vision to build a smarter, more connected world. With the current global pandemic, now more than ever, people are depending on IoT technology to stay connected – to work, to fun, and to each other. The creative ideas of developers are key to the success of the smart home industry.

Tyson went on to speak about Works With being the “Smart Home Hub” – a place where major platform players, protocol experts, and alliance partners unite to help developers navigate smart home technology. The event is designed to bring together all developers, no matter their level of expertise, and provide the know-how and best practices to get certified smart home products to market quicker. Tyson welcomed Silicon Labs IoT SVP and GM Matt Johnson to the keynote stage where he spoke to Grant Erickson, Jim Kitchen, and Joshua Danovitz, who are leading efforts at their respective companies, Google, Comcast, and Amazon, to pioneer a smoother development journey and break through the standards fragmentation in order to bring new and differentiated features to consumers.

Technical Sessions

After the keynote, attendees broke out into a variety of technical sessions, including workshops on designing products that work with Amazon, Google, HomeKit, and Samsung SmartThings ecosystems. During the sessions, developers had the opportunity to hear directly from engineering experts about the latest and greatest in smart home development. The sessions also gave developers the opportunity to learn how to acquire industry-recognized certifications for their products.

Panel – Building an Ecosystem IoT Developers Will Love

During lunch, technology journalist and IoT thought-leader Stacey Higginbotham (of Stacey on IoT) hosted a panel with leaders from NXP, ADT, Philips Hue, Ikea and Assa Abloy where they discussed how the smart home industry is coming together and how it will continue to evolve.

The panel discussed at length the emphasis on matters related to security and user experience, and one of the main points was the focus on leveraging the IP investment companies have already made. Being able to use existing IP bearing networks and shifting development resources to focus on actually innovating on new features that add value and simplify adoption for consumers.

Panelists also touched on some of the biggest obstacles developers face in bringing their products to market, including the effort required to support so many different protocols and delivering consistent user experiences across brands. Answering these challenges will provide developers with the confidence to build new, more sophisticated feature sets that create better experiences and simplify adoption.

Works With 2020 Announcements

In the midst of all of the Works With buzz and excitement, we made two major announcements – the launch of a new Simplicity Studio and BGM220.

Simplicity Studio 5 is a major upgrade to our Integrated Developer Environment (IDE), leveraging our industry leading IoT wireless expertise. Simplicity Studio 5 offers the same access and developer experience across a wide range of wireless protocols, all within a central web-style user interface. The software platform is scalable to multiple protocols including OpenThread, making it simpler to develop IPv6 based mesh applications and paving the way for future development of Project Connected Home over IP-based devices running on our EFR32 Wireless Gecko. Learn more about Simplicity Studio 5.

BGM220, combines our award-winning BG22 Bluetooth system-on-chip (SoC) devices, a pre-certified module and production-ready firmware with an on-board Bluetooth stack, application layer, and secure boot-loading functionality. Bluetooth Xpress BGX220P/S provides complete IoT solutions with framework libraries, making it easier and faster for developers to create new apps, with no Bluetooth expertise necessary. Click here for more information about BGM220.

What’s On Deck for Day 2

After a full day of learning and great conversations, we’re excited to give you a sneak peak of what to expect tomorrow. Join Silicon Labs Senior Vice President and General Manager for IoT, Matt Johnson, as he sits down with Jamie Siminoff, Founder and Chief Inventor of Ring. Jamie will share his story of creating what is now a dominant name in Wi-Fi-enabled video doorbells. His story is one of tenacity and patience, and his vision for Ring’s future after being acquired by Amazon is as ambitious as it is promising. You can catch the Day 2 Keynote on Thursday, September 10, at 9:00 a.m. CDT. Click here to register.

After the keynote, we have a cornucopia of how-to sessions including workshops on LED-bulb , door lock and sensor product development, energy harvesting, home automation, environmental sensing and more. Our From Chip to Cloud: Building the Whole Product session will answer questions about commissioning, security and authentication to front-end and back-end application interfaces. You can also join our sessions on IoT security, covering the need for the development of security requirements tailored to each vertical device type. Build out your Day 2 agenda here. We look forward to seeing you there! If you can’t make the live stream you can watch replays here.