Clatter is a suite of extremely lightweight and standalone libraries, which aims to create common protocols and standards for existing projects to add in secure nearby communication without having to sacrifice their unique approach and use-cases.
The Problem: Currently, existing device-to-device technology projects lack interoperability or security. In addition, common cross-platform technologies like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct are implemented in incompatible ways across platforms. For example, an unmodified Android device is unable to transfer a file locally to an unmodified Apple device using Bluetooth, or vice versa. This leads to reliance on third-party internet services to move a single file between two devices limited to close range physical proximity, which adds to a host of security concerns, and makes the services unsuitable for communication without internet access, in a way that be contrary to user expectations.
The Solution: Clatter draws together many threads of work from different development projects to create a toolkit for local, device-to-device communication, consisting of a set of clear, concise, and well-documented software libraries that will allow anyone to add secure device-to-device networking ot their own projects. Specifically, secure and portable reference implementations will be created for four technical components: libcommotion, the Mesh Datagram Protocol (MDP), the Mesh Streaming Protocol (MSP), and Rhizome.