We’re excited about this week’s news from OKdo, highlighting a new kit built around Mozilla’s WebThings Gateway. OKdo is a UK-based global technology company focused on IoT offerings for hobbyists, educators, and entrepreneurs. Their idea is to make it easy to get a private and secure “web of things” environment up and running in either home or classroom. OKdo chose to build this kit around the Mozilla WebThings Gateway, and we’ve been delighted to work with them on it.

The WebThings Gateway is an open source software distribution focused on privacy, security, and interoperability. It provides a web-based user interface to monitor and control smart home devices, along with a rules engine to automate them. In addition, a data logging subsystem monitors device changes over time. Thanks to extensive contributions from our open source community, you’ll find an add-on system to extend the gateway with support for a wide range of existing smart home products.

With the WebThings Gateway, users always have complete control. You can directly monitor and control your home and devices over the web. In fact, you’ll never have to share data with a cloud service or vendor. This diagram of our architecture shows how it works:

Mozilla WebThings Gateway Kit details

The Mozilla WebThings Gateway Kit, available now from OKdo, includes:

• Raspberry Pi 4 and case
• MicroSD card pre-flashed with Mozilla WebThings Gateway software
• Power supply
• “Getting Started Guide” to help you easily get your project up and running

You can find out more about the OKdo kit and how to purchase it for either home or classroom from their website.

To learn more about WebThings, visit Mozilla’s IoT website or join in the discussion on Discourse. WebThings is completely open source. All of our code is freely available on GitHub. We would love to have you join the community by filing issues, fixing bugs, implementing new features, or adding support for new devices. Also, you can help spread the word about WebThings by giving talks at conferences or local maker groups.