Codenvy on Wednesday announced the beta release of the Samsung ARTIK IDE powered by Eclipse Che.
The release of the professional toolset is part of Samsung's partnership with Codenvy to make it easier to build, deploy and manage applications for the Internet of Things, Codenvy said.The ARTIK IDE is the first open source cloud IDE platform dedicated to IoT application development. It is based on Eclipse Che, a community-driven open source cloud IDE, workspace server and plug-in platform.
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Eclipse Che has had 100,000 downloads. Codenvy contributed to its development, along with SAP, IBM, Microsoft, SmartBear, Red Hat and Samsung, Codenvy CEO Tyler Jewell said.
Samsung's ARTIK is a proprietary hardware module. The software stack that runs on the module is open source.
"This is a unifying movement and a simplifying movement. It is designed to take a professional IDE platform like Eclipse and make it suitable to the targeted development approach in IoT," Jewell told LinuxInsider.
Door-Opening Technology
Samsung announced the ARTIC platform last year. It is a development platform designed to help both makers and professionals build IoT systems.
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Samsung ARTIK opened its doors to the community built around Eclipse IDEs, bringing more users to its growing set of developer tools.
The IDE and the support of Samsung and the Eclipse Foundation open a new world for developers to build products and services that make IoT's potential a reality, said Jewell.
What It Is
The ARTIK hardware has a modular design and a small-form-factor chip with a complete Linux OS based on Fedora 23 as an out-of-the-box product. Samsung also offers an option to use its own Titan Linux alternative OS or Canonical'sSnappy platform.Developers can build out the platform on the chip and then deploy it as part of the ARTIK cloud. Samsung plans to offer its IoT platform for a range of development scenarios.
The ARTIK Eclipse Che release makes workspaces on demand. It can appear anywhere and run in the cloud without any buffer installation, said Jewell. It creates for IoT a Web-style development model for embedded devices.
What It Does
Samsung ARTIK IDE powered by Eclipse Che's features provide device discovery and management. That provides a way to manage the entire application life cycle, from building to editing to debugging, while the application runs on the device.
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Eclipse Che provides developers with multiple programming languages. It has default support for a wide range of languages, including C#, C++, Java, JavaScript and Python. It also provides project structure for easily transitioning applications to production with version control and modules.
ARTIK developers can tap into open source community and get additional support from Samsung, Codenvy and the Eclipse Che community for best practices, ideas and troubleshooting. The product provides portability. A no-installation browser IDE allows development from a desktop, in the cloud or embedded directly within the device.
Significant Step
Open source is becoming more prominent in all things IoT and the cloud.With conventional mobile markets -- including higher-margin luxury handsets -- showing signs of maturity or even stumbling, IoT represents substantial future growth, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
"The association with and leverage of Eclipse Che could be particularly interesting given its association with enterprise-centric vendors. If Samsung's ARTIK IDE establishes significant traction, it should place the company on very good footing to take advantage of IoT market opportunities," he told LinuxInsider.
Embedded Growth
Embedded device development until now has been driven by a small and well-understood community, but the proliferation of IoT devices means the community needs new tools to connect all the dots, according to Jewell."The purpose of this project with Samsung was to create an IDE that was familiar to professionals but could be approachable by Web developers. That means you just opened up your development ranks by 60 million more," he said.
However, competing forces may cause some interference for the Eclipse Che release, Pund-IT's King warned.
"Though Arduino and Raspberry Pi are being positioned for IoT solutions, I believe Samsung faces greater competition from Intel, with its Quarkprocessors, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon IoT solutions," he said.
"Intel seems particularly well-positioned since IoT is as much a data center play as it is about endpoint. That makes Samsung's work with the Eclipse community critical to the company's success," King added.
Cost Factor
The price of an SDK developer's board runs in the range of US$50 to $100, Jewell said. The module itself is a tiny form factor less than an inch square. Then you would pay per unit for commercial production of that. Since the software is all open source, there are no fees for distributing it.It is "an example of developers standing up and saying this is the development platform of the future," said Jewell. "We are pretty excited about what that means for that side of the open source community."
