Apps for Environments: Running Interoperable Apps in Smart Environments with the meSchup IoT Platform

With Apps a popular concept was introduced allowing end-users to easily extend their devices such as smartphones or computers with specific functionality. Two million Apps have ever since found their way into each of the popular App-stores Google Play and Apple Store. We argue that the App-concept is not only well applicable to single devices but also to complete environments equipped with smart networked things. In the moment when Apps can be easily downloaded and executed in home, office and industry environments a wide new applications space will be opened up. In this work we introduce the concept of Smart Space Apps that can be downloaded from a cloud-based App-store into a smart environment where they dynamically utilize the capabilities of available smart things to optimally achieve the purpose they were installed for. We introduce a unified schema for the access of sensors and actuators of heterogeneous devices from within Smart Space Apps and describe the middleware and runtime that implements this approach. We explain how Apps are packaged into an exchangeable format and published within a cloud-based App-store. Multiple application use cases are shown and challenges of this novel approach are discussed.