Mozilla’s Things Gateway 0.5 Brings New Features and a Smart Assistant

Mozilla recently released a significant update for their Things Gateway IoT platform, giving it a slew of new features, such as support for customized devices, interactive floor plans, a strengthened rules engine, and an experimental smart assistant.

The Things Gateway is a component of Mozilla’s Project Things ecosystem, which allows you to build a decentralized IoT network using the company’s software and services — including a collection of IoT Cloud systems and reusable software components. Gateway is the third component of the platform and acts as the web interface that enables you to control and monitor your connected devices.

As mentioned earlier, the update contains a host of new features, like a new “capabilities” system that lets you build whatever IoT device you want using Mozilla’s assembly language schema-repository no matter the device type or pre-defined Web Thing Types.

They’ve also included a custom web interface (to complement the built-in UI) that allows you link a separate interface for any given gadget. For example, you can assign a different interface for robots or pixel wall lighting without needing to implement them in the general UI.

Mozilla even revamped their rules engine, which now supports multiple inputs and outputs, and lets you use more advanced rules (if, and, while, equals, etc.) operators for automation with an easy to use drag-and-drop interface.

One of the more unusual additions found in the new update is Mozilla’s Smart Assistant that can be utilized to command your networked devices either through a chat-style interface or through verbal commands. The company states that it can only handle basic instructions at this point (turn on/off, set levels, colors, etc.), and it’s unclear if they will develop its capabilities at any point down the line.

To read the full list of additions and improvements as well as to download the new Things Gateway 0.5 update, you can head over to Mozilla’s site here.