Building the Internet of Things

MICHIGAN, October 29, 2015 – SpinDance, Inc., of Holland, recently hired Kimberly Burmeister as Program Manager.

Burmeister previously served as Senior Manager of Customer Support at LeanLogistics, Inc., where she held overall responsibility for CRM software support across the United States and Europe.

During her time at LeanLogistics, Burmeister took on increasing responsibilities as Product Owner, Client Service Manager, Senior Service Manager, and Operations Manager. Prior to that, she held a number of positions within Daimler Chrysler’s Material and Transportation Group, and was sponsored in the Daimler Chrysler management training program.

Burmeister holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Logistics Management from Central Michigan University, and is certified as a Product Owner for (Scrum) Agile Methodology.

In her new role at SpinDance, Burmeister will manage multiple medium to large-scale projects and project teams; focusing on delivery and customer satisfaction. Her overall leadership and customer-centric background will be valuable to the continual growth and success of SpinDance.

About SpinDance

SpinDance is a systems engineering and software development services firm, headquartered in Holland, Michigan, specializing in connected, smart consumer products and Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Since its founding in 2000, SpinDance has served its customers by creating innovative, elegantly designed, high quality, custom software solutions. SpinDance’s customers range in size from Fortune 100 to funded start-ups in a variety of industries,…

MICHIGAN, October 27, 2015 – SpinDance, Inc. of Holland, Michigan has joined the ARM® mbed™ ecosystem to share its expertise in designing and building end-to-end systems for Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

The IoT is bringing Internet connectivity to billions of devices and creating new ways of seamlessly engaging people with technology to facilitate a more connected and secure world. ARM mbed is committed to building the technology and ecosystem that is the foundation for creating and deploying low-power, connected and secure IoT devices at scale that will fuel the explosive growth anticipated for the IoT.

The mbed partnership brings together chip manufacturers, module makers, cloud software as a service platforms, and system integrators, like SpinDance, to create a complete ecosystem of hardware and services required to deliver connected, smart products to businesses and consumers, all utilizing the mbed IoT Device Platform. Eric Smith, VP of Engineering at SpinDance, said, about joining the partnership, “ARM is an industry leader and an innovator in the world of embedded devices. We believe the mbed platform and associated partnership ARM has formed will be a catalyst for IoT growth and we are excited to be a part of it.”

As an Ecosystem level partner, SpinDance will offer its expertise in designing and building complete end-to-end IoT solutions. With a broad range of services, from user experience design to system design to software development to integration,…

SpinDance is serving as a Mentor for the Seamless Accelerator, a coalition of world class enterprises providing new market opportunities to IoT startups located in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  As a Mentor company to Seamless, SpinDance is providing in kind services to help the IoT startups progress their business to the next level.  This blog first appeared as a guest blog to Seamless.

Back to the beginning.

When I first heard the term “Internet of Things,” it was 2006. I had just joined my friends, Garrick Pohl and Budd Bentley, to help them launch the fledgling Crayon Interface.

We set out to conquer the growing connected world, armed with visuals Garrick would create, showing a variety of environments all connected through a software back-end service (intended to be ours) and available for monitor and control purposes on a mobile phone (using apps we would develop in J2ME).  We targeted companies who had products in these environments and told them about the coming Internet of Things and how they needed to get their products connected. We approached companies with products ranging from lighting to door locks to thermostats to appliances to video cameras to garage doors to vehicle security systems to office furniture to home security solutions to dog collars to bicycle locks to . . . well, you get the picture. We covered a lot of ground,…

In my previous post, The Cloud: What is it?, I discussed what we at SpinDance mean when we talk about the cloud. Now that we have a better definition for the term, I would like to discuss what purpose cloud software components serve.

Under-appreciated?

Many people, when they have an idea for a tech product, envision it in terms of a user interface. They picture a mobile app or a web site, or perhaps the physical hardware with which the end-user interacts. Designing the user interface of a product is a natural and common way to begin a project (although we would argue that user experience design is a better starting place). Good intentions aside, design-by-user-interface can have the unfortunate side-effect of making the cloud an afterthought in the system design.

Overlooking the cloud is perhaps forgiveable. Since it often does not directly provide a user interface (especially with the advent of client-side web applications), you can’t see the cloud. You can’t touch it either – the hardware on which it runs is safe inside data centres many miles away. In short, the cloud doesn’t engage you or your users directly; but to neglect it during system design is a grave mistake. While the cloud isn’t flashy and doesn’t make for great mock-ups or demos, it performs many essential functions in a system….