Over the past weekend, the mobile community in Toronto, Canada came together for the 3 day Wearhacks event, where engineers and developers prototyped on futuristic wearable technology applications. Using various technologies ranging from the Intel Edison, Nod Ring, Muse Headband, and along side many more products, the teams created unique user experiences that have yet to be seen on the market. Also various teams used the MYO from Thalmic Labs to capture user gestures as inputs to control IoT devices and further extend mobile experiences.

The ‘DreamGeese’ team created the DriveSafe mobile application that allows you to control your music with simple hand gestures with the Nod Ring. While the ‘Apes in Space’ team used the Xadow wearable Kit for the Intel Edison to create a bracelet that would allow for easier social discovery and engagements amongst people.

While mentoring various teams, I noticed many were trying to setup a server for their projects that took a lot of technical overhead and time. Especially with wearable tech, definitely there are better and alternative solutions like Couchbase for an embedded database that enables P2P and Syncing features, so let us take a look!

With P2P replication between devices, you do not need to be connected to any cloud servers for client devices to have an experience. This means, with Peer-to-Peer you are able to share content data such as songs or its properties such as music titles or even user profile data between devices without needing a server. The Couchbase Lite Listener allows your application on the device to accept HTTP connections to sync data from other applications.

The PhotoDrop application is an example of what is possible with the Listener where after authenticating; two devices are able to exchange images. The peer identity and authentication may be done with NFC or in the case of Photodrop, using QR Code. By having Couchbase Mobile with your wearable tech or IoT projects, you are able to have P2P replication across multiple devices and also sync content to the cloud.

Imagine walking by a department store and your device is in range of location beacons, your wearable device will get a feedback that there are downloadable content. With a flick of your hand, your mobile device will be completely synced with the latest image. Couchbase Mobile allows that to happen and the Office Radar app shows how you can download content and be alerted with Estimote Beacons.  Couchbase Lite is a NoSQL database for mobile and embedded devices, that means can use JSON APIs and store the data in the database locally as well have the data available on every device connected, even the Raspberry Pi.  This is achieved through Sync Gateway which acts as a proxy between client devices and the cloud.

You can get started with Couchbase Mobile by checking out the Mini-Hacks to get an offline-online solution up and running within your mobile app project in no time!

Author

Posted by William Hoang, Mobile Developer Advocate, Couchbase

William was a Developer Advocate on the Mobile Engineering/Developer Experience team at Couchbase. His love for coffee and code has transcended him into the world of mobile while appreciating the offline in-person experiences. Prior, William worked on the Developer Relations team over at Twitter, BlackBerry, and Microsoft while also having been a Software Embedded GPS engineer at Research In Motion. William graduated from McGill University in Electrical Software Engineering

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