Omniplug is a family owned startup based near Cambridge, UK. Omniplug is a member of ARM's Connected Community, Cambridge Wireless and has received Proof of Market Grant funding from EEDA.

Omniplug was founded by Jeremy Penston in 2008 to make it cheaper and easier to regularly transfer data between portable devices and the internet. We wanted to automate the repetitive steps that we go through to transfer data by hand. Why was it necessary to spend so much time shuffling data around before it could be useful? We just wanted our data to be ready when we were.

We realised that the same tedious tasks were performed each time we did a transfer so we set out to automate them. First, we needed to figure out which files to transfer and how to format the data without asking the user every time. We patented the system we invented to solve that problem.

Instead of using a PC or an app, we developed our own hardware for some very important reasons.

Minimise Power Consumption and Maximise Battery Life of Your Devices

To run the software on a PC, running 24 x 7 to do the job, would cost ~ £19 per month in electricity. We built a plug computer that uses 95% less power than a PC to save money for our users.

Studies show that on mobile devices, wifi is the largest drain on the battery, making a device app unsuitable for bulk uploads. You would have a fully updated device but a dead battery! Using a mains powered plug to do the transfer while charging the battery of mobile phones over USB is a neat solution that is highly efficient.

Maximise The Number of Compatible Devices

Recent years have seen rapid growth in smartphone apps. Some of these apps make data transfer easy - eg. Facebook apps that allow you to upload a picture or two on the go. While these apps are obviously popular, on top of the battery life issues, they only work on high end devices. We wanted to make it possible for a much broader range of cameraphone and digital compact devices to use our solution.

The aim was to address normal devices like featurephones, cameras and memory cards as well as top of the range smartphones and wifi digital SLRs. With USB and SD card reader interfaces in our design, the vast majority of devices can connect (including many smartphones) and update. We wanted to make it possible for all of your devices to share one plug with each device having its own specific profile.

Minimise the Network Impact - Make Data Transfer Cheap and Efficient

It is much cheaper to transfer data over fixed broadband (DSL, Cable, Fibre) than it is to use mobile (3G or LTE). Our unit uses fixed broadband, which it accesses through a wifi network so it uses capacity that is 3% the cost of the mobile broadband equivalent.

Focus on the Photo Market

The focus on the photo market is the result of an independent Proof of Market Study by Technologia (part-funded by EEDA). They concluded that there is an opportunity for Omniplug to enable a new generation of photo services by automating the delivery of the raw materials to the service provider.

Automating the upload eliminates the major factor limiting people's desire to buy photo products. We make it possible to deliver a full printing and backup service that protects your data, with the user in complete control.