Home automation update

Last year I wrote about my first entry into the field of home automation and the Internet of Things. My first purchase was a combined motion sensor, video camera and Z-Wave hub that can control switches or lights remotely. The device, called Piper, also has sensors for temperature, light, and sound and contains a security siren. I then added some Belkin Wemo LED lights, that required a separate controller and then some OSRAM Lightify LED bulbs and light strips that required their own controller. Ok so now things were getting rather complex with three separate controllers controlling different things. This really reflects the state of the home automation market with many competing standards fighting for dominance; such as: Z-Wave, ZigBee, Hue, Wemo, and even Google and Apple now entering the fray.
   I then came across something called Smartthings that can talk to most of the different automation standards allowing a single controller to automate a wide variety of devices. Of particular interest to me also was that it supports open-source code allowing developers to make their own "SmartApps" for their own needs. which then they can share with the Smartthings community. For example, somebody might make a SmartApp to always ensure that the garage door is closed at sunset. Somebody else might make a SmartApp to turn on the irrigation system at Sunset for one hour, but only if it hasnt rained in the previous day. I now have a Smartthings hub controlling a variety of lights, a motion sensor, garage door opener, and video door bell. My favourite functionality is being told if the garage door is open if Ive left home and being able to remotely close it. The Ring video doorbell that lets me see whos at the front door and talk to them, even when Im not at home, is pretty cool as well.

from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

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ICSE 2015 and Software Engineering Research at Google

Posted by Mohsen Vakilian, Software Engineer

The large scale of our software engineering efforts at Google often pushes us to develop cutting-edge infrastructure. In May 2015, at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2015), we shared some of our software engineering tools and practices and collaborated with the research community through a combination of publications, committee memberships, and workshops. Learn more about some of our research below (Googlers highlighted in blue).

Google was a Gold supporter of ICSE 2015.

Technical Research Papers:
A Flexible and Non-intrusive Approach for Computing Complex Structural Coverage Metrics
Michael W. Whalen, Suzette Person, Neha Rungta, Matt Staats, Daniela Grijincu

Automated Decomposition of Build Targets
Mohsen Vakilian, Raluca Sauciuc, David Morgenthaler, Vahab Mirrokni

Tricorder: Building a Program Analysis Ecosystem
Caitlin Sadowski, Jeffrey van Gogh, Ciera Jaspan, Emma Soederberg, Collin Winter

Software Engineering in Practice (SEIP) Papers:
Comparing Software Architecture Recovery Techniques Using Accurate Dependencies
Thibaud Lutellier, Devin Chollak, Joshua Garcia, Lin Tan, Derek Rayside, Nenad Medvidovic, Robert Kroeger

Technical Briefings:
Software Engineering for Privacy in-the-Large
Pauline Anthonysamy, Awais Rashid

Workshop Organizers:
2nd International Workshop on Requirements Engineering and Testing (RET 2015)
Elizabeth Bjarnason, Mirko Morandini, Markus Borg, Michael Unterkalmsteiner, Michael Felderer, Matthew Staats

Committee Members:
Caitlin Sadowski - Program Committee Member and Distinguished Reviewer Award Winner
James Andrews - Review Committee Member
Ray Buse - Software Engineering in Practice (SEIP) Committee Member and Demonstrations Committee Member
John Penix - Software Engineering in Practice (SEIP) Committee Member
Marija Mikic - Poster Co-chair
Daniel Popescu and Ivo Krka - Poster Committee Members

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