COIN: System Architecture for Programmable Connected Devices

Abstract

We present COIN, a system architecture to enable running a slice of a mobile app's logic onto connected devices such as proximity beacons, body-worn sensors, and controllable light bulbs. These are normally shipped as black-boxes: their functionality is fixed by vendors and typically accessed only through low-level APIs. This often limits the flexibility in designing applications and requires intense wireless interactions between mobile and connected devices, which impacts energy consumption particularly on the latter. We overcome the limitations of this design by providing a generic programmable substrate right onto the connected device. Mobile apps can dynamically deploy arbitrary tasks implemented as loosely-coupled actor-like components. The underlying run-time support takes care of the coordination across tasks and of their real-time scheduling.