Introduction
Welcome to Mason's developer documentation! This space is dedicated to helping you bring your vision to life with Mason’s platform.
What is Mason?
Mason is the only end-to-end solution for developing and delivering your app via a smart device product line, covering every aspect you need to successfully launch and ship your application to customers. Our offering consists of device hardware (wearables, handhelds, and tablets), a customizable operating system, device fleet management software, and even ops and logistics services. We refer to our holistic solution as “the Mason platform.”
The Mason Platform is your trusted partner for handling the complexities of managing your smart device infrastructure:
- Our hardware is consistent, scalable, long-lasting, and customizable, using the power of MasonOS — a custom Android-based operating system — to deliver your ideal user experience.
- Our Android-based OS provides a highly configurable operating system free of the typical software bloat that plagues consumer devices.
- Our device fleet management software offers predictability, remote access & control, and over-the-air updates, all backed by powerful APIs.
- Our operations and logistics services increase operational efficiency and offload risk by bundling warehousing, kitting, shipping, white labeling, and more into a single vendor.
Mason’s end-to-end solution is designed to quickly stand up and manage device fleets of thousands over their entire lifecycle.
You can create customized mobile hardware and highly configured operating systems without the burden of managing a hardware team. Scaling and monitoring your mobile infrastructure becomes as easy as scaling and monitoring your application and service infrastructure.
How can I access and leverage the Mason platform?
There are three ways to leverage the Mason platform, depending on your level of preference and technical ability:
- If you prefer a modern browser-based experience and would rather use a less technical dashboard, access Mason’s platform via the Controller interface.
- For those who like to be more hands-on and love working in a console, we offer our Mason Command-Line Interface (CLI) tool.
- If you would prefer to integrate Mason features into your own software workflows, check out our RESTful Web APIs.
What can I achieve with the Mason platform?
Mason’s platform allows you to control the aspects of your hardware that are traditionally determined by manufacturers or OS providers.
When you use our platform, you control everything about the hardware that's traditionally controlled by the manufacturer or OS provider:
- OS updates are predictable and fully within your control as a device owner, bolstering security while freeing up dev and ops resources
- Choose to bundle and version your mobile apps with the OS or deploy them independently
- Organize your devices into groups to safely partition your fleets and incrementally roll out new features
- And much, much more — learn all about it by requesting a demo or reaching out at support@bymason.com!
You can manage everything in one place via our handy Controller interface, with our world-class customer support team ready to help with any questions that might come up.
How do I get started with the Mason platform?
Partnering with Mason means you can achieve your smart device goals easier, faster, and with fewer resources spent. To kick things off:
- If you haven’t already, sign up for a free Mason account to begin exploring the platform.
- When you’re ready to move forward and see how your app works on Mason hardware, you’ll want to order a Developer Kit. This kit includes both a developer-friendly Mason device and full access to our platform’s services and dev tools (like the CLI).
- A friendly Mason expert on our team will help you navigate any questions you might have about building and scaling with Mason. Feel free to get in touch with us today to start the conversation!
If you’re ready to start building, head down to the Setup Guide for a guided walkthrough on starting your journey with Mason.