Aren't WiFi routers too dumb for today's digital ecosystem? Smart this and smart that but the router that is at the center of this smart universe is just DUMB!
To begin with, they are disregarded as frivolous appliances connecting everything to the Internet. And we only look at them when our internet connections are upgraded or a new WiFi standard such as N, AC, etc. is announced. We often forget that they also connect everything together and can really spruce up the ecosystem.
On the other hand, even though these devices are always on and available, we hardly exploit them for anything beyond connecting to the internet. Yes, there have been many attempts at making these dumb routers a little smart but no one has really looked into making them really smart and extensible with installable apps and services.
Imagine an app-store for your router with installable apps and services such as parental filters, personal cloud storage, media servers, torrent clients, intrusion detectors, data aggregators, smart appliance controllers, etc.
This will mark the beginning of a really smart home ecosystem. And all this can be accomplished with just a simple single board computer such as Raspberry Pi with WiFi, Ethernet and an attached hard drive (optional) on the hardware end and OpenWRT with Node.js based application stack on the software end.
To begin with, they are disregarded as frivolous appliances connecting everything to the Internet. And we only look at them when our internet connections are upgraded or a new WiFi standard such as N, AC, etc. is announced. We often forget that they also connect everything together and can really spruce up the ecosystem.
On the other hand, even though these devices are always on and available, we hardly exploit them for anything beyond connecting to the internet. Yes, there have been many attempts at making these dumb routers a little smart but no one has really looked into making them really smart and extensible with installable apps and services.
Imagine an app-store for your router with installable apps and services such as parental filters, personal cloud storage, media servers, torrent clients, intrusion detectors, data aggregators, smart appliance controllers, etc.
This will mark the beginning of a really smart home ecosystem. And all this can be accomplished with just a simple single board computer such as Raspberry Pi with WiFi, Ethernet and an attached hard drive (optional) on the hardware end and OpenWRT with Node.js based application stack on the software end.
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