Flake unites the demands of industry and consumer applications.

Consumer applications mainly serve to increase convenience while industry or agriculture aims for increased efficiency. Technically, however, the requirements are largely the same and this applies as well across projects.

The infrastructures for IoT or smart home projects technically differ only slightly. For example, due to the slightly higher susceptibility to interference in industry applications, Ethernet is more widely used than WiFi. But that's about it regarding the differences. In the end, it is the specific user interfaces and software applications that differentiate one IoT project from another or a smart home application.

And that's where Flake comes in.

Device-to-App communications on the local (W)LAN

On ARM Cortex-M MCUs, the footprint for the Flake Server is only about 100kB. This allows an app (iOS or Android) that links the corresponding Flake SDK to interact directly with the connected device without going through a cloud service. The application is independent of internet availability and has the lowest latency. Of course, a TLS-secured connection to the cloud is possible at any time (during runtime!) With a simple configuration option, if required.

Device-Discovery

Flake is self-describing unlike most other available solutions. This enables applications to be created that query devices in your environment and, based on this, offer appropriate user interfaces. A provider's app can thus also be used for upcoming products in the simplest way. Comprehensive apps that enable compatibility between devices from different providers are also no problem.

Device-Provisioning

To e.g. add a new device to the smart home, the device has to be authorized and optionally connected to the Internet. The Flake SDKs for iOS and Android already have this functionality built in. Setting up new devices via Bluetooth LE or NFC is a no-brainer, and not just for end customers. In the case of NFC, the device to be set up only has to be touched with the smartphone - as is known from contactless payment processes - in order to add it to the WiFi network.

Mesh-Networking

Devices using flake can forward messages to each other and thus serve as repeaters or relays. This increases the range of a system without additional external components. Especially in deployments based on broadcast typologies, such as the ISM and SRD bands in the 433, 868 and 910 MHz range, considerably greater ranges can be achieved than the radio technology alone, limited only by the free space loss (FSL).

Encryption out of the Box

While narrowband connections usually employ AES with fixed keys, because TLS would be too "bloated" here, Flake relies on dynamic key exchange using the Diffie-Hellman method. There is no risk of a "master" key being leaked, which would make numerous deployments unsafe. In addition, the Flake encryption is based on the ECC Curve 25519, which can be regarded as particularly secure because it is immune to timing side channel attacks.

What is your application?

Despite the same basic technology, the customizing options differ depending on the end application. We will show you how the platform works for concrete application scenarios.

Data Acquisition & Analytics

Predictive Analytics & Maintenance and Precision Farming

Automation & Control

Smart Home, Smart Building & Smart City Infrastructure

The flake stack in detail

Flake is available for

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