REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft has introduced the Lab of Things (LoT), which provides the infrastructure, software, and services to enable home automation research and development involving both custom-built and off-the-shelf sensors and devices.

LoT is a research device platform based on Microsoft Research’s HomeOS system. The company said the LoT allows virtually any type of device to be interconnected to the infrastructure. It boasts an open-driver model that lets the user write a driver in the event that a device is not supported. The user can also choose to share the new driver with the research community so others can benefit from your work.

The LoT also comes with a set of cloud services that support deployment of experiments at scale. One of the services is the LoT monitoring portal, which provides near real-time status of all the sites in your study. The update service allows you to configure your experiments so that you receive all of your field-study data in one convenient location in the cloud. It also facilitates on-the-fly updates to experiments, drivers, and any other component of the infrastructure, without having to visit the site physically.

Through all these features, Microsoft said the LoT lets the user interconnect devices and scale up field studies in diverse experiment locations, spending more time conducting field experiments, rather than developing infrastructure.

For more information on Microsoft Research, HomeOS, and the Lab of Things, visit http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/homeos/.

Publication date: 8/12/2013

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