AT&T Hackathon to Inspire New M2M Application Development

The Internet of Things (IoT) and the next generation of machine to machine (M2M) is all about connecting assets and smart devices to provide value, improve productivity and transmit data in real-time. AT&T (News - Alert) is one of the industry players working to enable innovative M2M applications, offering machine to machine solutions and resources for developers to bring their app ideas to life.

The upcoming AT&T Hackathon, happening Jan. 4-5, 2014 at the AT&T Developer Summit, brings together developers to put their coding skills to the test. Developers and industry professionals will work to build an app from scratch using AT&T’s suite of APIs, which include voice, messaging, monetization, information and others, such as mHealth, U-verse and M2M. Apps will be judged on their originality, difficulty to implement, use of AT&T APIs and developers’ ability to clearly articulate what the app does.

Awards will be given for the best public safety app, best use of AT&T M2M app platform, best use of AT&T M2X API, best IoT app, best use of Nokia’s (News - Alert) WP8 APIs, best use of Plantronics Voyager Legend headset, best use of Gimbal Proximity beacon, best use of Inteli Galileo, best use of Esri Technology, best startup potential app and other accelerator prizes.

Image via Wired

The AT&T M2X Developer Kit will debut at the hackathon, which combines two AT&T services for developers, AT&T M2X and AT&T Control Center, for developers to use to manage connected devices and data from device prototype to product launch.

AT&T M2X is a cloud-based managed data storage service for M2M devices, enabling businesses to manage the data they collect from connected devices. M2X enables developers to build, deliver and scale machine to machine solutions. The developer tools and RESTful API enable users to quickly develop connected products and extract real-time data, and manage all data sources and notifications from a central location: The M2X Developer Portal.

Jasper Wireless (News - Alert) powers the AT&T Control Center, which allows M2M developers to sign up, receive and activate SIMs and then transmit and collect the data from these SIMs on any connected machine. It’s a one-stop solution for network provisioning, device activation, customer support, billing options, performance audits and more for connected devices.

A major focus of the Hackathon this year is wearable technology, which is set to be one of the biggest IoT trends of 2014.  Machine to machine solutions and embedded sensors enable users to focus on improved health, sophisticated medical use cases and enhanced performance via wearable devices, and serve to make communication easier and more accessible, like checking text messages without having to hold a smartphone.