What do the Big Ben Clock, MyToaster, and T-800 have in common? They all use Twitter (and are completely absurd)!
Check out this article on ABC.es.
-
Las 10 cuentas de Twitter más divertidas y absurdas
-
CheerLights: my lights are linked to everyone else’s
If you have been following my projects for the last 12 years, you probably figured out that I must have a master plan. And this plan involves connecting things to the Internet that may or may not turn against us in the future. Way back in 2001, my partners and I released FuzzBox – this technology allowed for artificial intelligence to be distributed to devices via the Web. Our thoughts were if the decision making could be made on the Internet the devices themselves could focus on their task vs. trying to be a super device on their own. This was way early on and the ideas were premature, but it started a series of events and failures that led to even more projects involving devices linked together over the web. I guess this is now called, “The Internet of Things“.
Something that has emerged over the years is social networking. I have been fascinated by the idea of collective intelligence. It’s fun to follow a football game on Twitter or on Facebook’s live stream. You get to see the take other’s have on the same event that you are experiencing. If the Steelers score, you can feel it reverberate through social networks. These networks only work if there is lots of participation by many people. I have heard that people have predicted STD out breaks from Twitter status updates, food poisoning sources, and even where earthquakes have taken place. This is fascinating to me.
The results are two-fold: you can learn from this data and that we are all connected. Enter in, CheerLights – CheerLights is my combination of distributed devices with social networking. This project that involves connecting multicolored lights to other people’s lights and allow Twitter keywords control them all. If someone tweets, “@cheerlights let’s go green” – every light connected to the project would change to green. To me this is a physical representation of a social network trending topic. It’s a way to share a moment in that moment. Just like with social networking, CheerLights requires scale to be very interesting. If you check out CheerLights.com, you will see how to build a set of lights that are linked together with other people’s lights via Twitter. I have examples using things from ioBridge, Arduino, and Digi. Please let me know if you decide to build something and connect it to CheerLights.
We are all connected. That’s my purpose for building all of this technology. Nothing else matters.
-
EL Pumpkin is Spanish for Electroluminescent Pumpkin
EL Wire is a flexible wire that glows when you apply electricity to it. I am seeing more and more things trimmed with EL Wire and it makes for interesting effect. If you watched America’s Got Talent you might have seen a finalist called Team iLuminate. The iLuminate team used EL Wire to create animations and lighting effects on top of group dancing.
My nephews and niece were in town for Halloween and I was struck with the idea of adding a little animation to our Halloween Pumpkin. I wanted to make a pumpkin that changed expression. We made a basic smiley face and angry face by carving grooves into the face of the pumpkin. Then, we laced the EL Wire in and out of the grooves. We used red for the mad expression and blue and green for the smile expression. It was pretty easy to do and I had fun sharing my bits knowledge with the kids. It was rewarding to hear them come up with their own ideas — “We could hook an MP3 player up to this and scare people” or, “What if we added motion detection?”. It was also fun to hear my 5-year-old niece Zoey say, “Electroluminescent”.
Parts:
- EL Inverter – 12v
- EL Wire – Red, Green, and Blue (3 meter length)
- Wall Adapter Power Supply – 12VDC, 600mA
Notes:
I think the Blue EL Wire worked the best and looked the best. The red looks a little orange. The Green EL Wire sometimes didn’t illuminate. You can only illuminate 2 strands of EL Wire at a time with the stuff I had from SparkFun. I need to experiment more with EL Wire and get an EL Wire controller to do some more intricate animations. I will post future projects if I come up with anything interesting.
Always start with sketches when you start your project. It’s important to have a plan to allow yourself to stray knowingly.
EL Pumpkin Sketches
EL Wire is LED of the future if you ask me…
-
ThingSpeak: Building My Own Twitter (for Things)
Over the past several months I have been working on software to allow “things” to form social networks and send status updates via the Internet. At first glance this may sound very impractical. Hopefully, in a few years this will make more sense as better applications come out. Remember how ridiculous my toaster sounded three years ago? I gave that thing a voice and since has been on TV and more people are interested in it than my Twitter status updates. More proof? At CES 2011 there were at least 10 appliances that could send Twitter status updates. I am not saying that I created them, but I am not not saying that they didn’t know about My Toaster and it’s 600+ followers on Twitter. With this project, I wanted to take it a few steps further and build something from the ground up that’s focused on collecting enormous amounts of data from everyday objects, allowing devices to interact with each other, and building applications to present some meaning. The ThingSpeak project is finally ready to go and open to anyone that wants to start building applications.
My Problem
One problem with the Internet of Things is the concept of “the killer app” – the app that defines a new industry. The internet connected refrigerator is our poster child. Recently, Ryan Rusnak connected a mini fridge to the iPhone via ioBridge, added a motor controlled beer selector, and strapped on an air cannon to fire beers to his couch from 25 feet away – now that’s a killer app. So, my problem was trying to find an application that highlights key features of ThingSpeak and why it’s different.
My App
What I come up with is the idea of “my_house”. “my_house” is a collection of “rooms” that all hold computers, appliances, and sensors aka things. I recently installed some light sensors in “my_room” that push light levels to the ThingSpeak API. I did this to remind me when to turn my lights on so I don’t work in the dark when I get plugged in. And an interesting side benefit was that now I can detect whether or not someone is in the room based on the light level. I will admit this could have been done other ways, but sometimes you solve problems with what you have lying around. “my_house” already keeps track of my location using Google Latitude to control my thermostat. Eureka moment…
Now I can tell when my mom goes into my room when I am out on the town, most likely Sheetz!!!
Below is a screenshot of the demo app and how I aggregate the data collected by my light sensors. Here are a few things I want to point out:
- “my_house” is sending the status updates via a collection of networked sensors
- The status updates were generated by the light sensor device itself
- The timestamps were recorded by the ThingSpeak API
- If you click the chart icon you get what the actual light level was
- The app works in real-time and you can check it out here
The Technical DetailsThe light sensor uses a Netduino Plus that connects to my home network over Ethernet. This device uses Microsoft .NET Micro Framework and I wrote an application that interfaces with the ThingSpeak API. I also wrote a tutorial over at the ThingSpeak community site on how to use the Netduino Plus for those that want to get started with it fast.
The front-end application is written using only HTML, CSS, and jQuery. I have the fully documented source code attached and you can also see the app live in your web browser.
Project Files:
-
Automatic Thermostat Control Based on Location and Weather
The Pittsburgh Perl Workshop will be held at the Carnegie Mellon University on October 9-10, 2010. The PPW is a gathering of Perl programmers from around the world (and near Pittsburgh) to learn more and discuss the future of Perl.
At this year’s PPW, I will be giving a talk called, “Connecting the Internet of Things with Perl” (visit pghpw.org for schedule info). I will also explain how to create an Internet of Things application using off-the-shelf Perl modules and web control technology by ioBridge.
As you may or may not know, Perl is a really powerful programming language that enables everything from fast prototyping of web applications to large-scale software platforms. What makes the language unique is the library of modules available to you. If you get a great new idea for a web app, you can get started quickly and find modules that others have written. In some cases, it’s literally copy-and-paste.
A big movement for the past few years is this concept of The Internet of Things. More things will be on the Internet than people in the next few years, so my talk is to highlight why Perl is still relevant after 20 years and needs to be apart of this emerging technology. Internet of Things applications involve connecting sensors and controllers to the web. Perl is perfect for parsing lots of data, pushing data into databases, and connecting services together, known as “mashups”.
My Internet of Things project, written in Perl, allows your current location and home weather conditions to control your home heating and cooling system.
Location Aware Home Automation
I call it, ”Location Aware Home Automation”. You don’t have to do anything to control your HVAC/Thermostat, it all happens based on where you are. If you are home, the thermostat regulates the inside temperature as normal. When you leave, systems turn off or enter power saving modes. When you get near your home, the heating/cooling system kicks back on so you have a comfortable temperature by the time you get back home. In order to pull off all of this passive and automatic functionality, I have mashed up several APIs from Google Latitude, WeatherBug, and ioBridge.
Using the API for Google Latitude, I track the location of my Android mobile phone. When I get near my home, I check the weather using Google Weather API, WeatherBug API, and my home temperature (via ioBridge) to see if I need to to use the air conditioner, the heater, or neither. If I do need to control the HVAC, I send the control commands using the ioBridge API that routes the commands to the IO-204 controller that’s hooked up to my thermostat.
This application is really just a beginning. Right after I got everything working, I started having a flood of ideas. I can see some real power here.
The How To Portion of the Show
>> Google Latitude
You have to enable Google Latitude on your mobile phone and get your Badge ID. This ID represents your position in the world, your latitude and longitude. Visit the Google Latitude API site for more information.
Install the latest Geo::Google::Latitude Perl module from CPAN.org – this module completely abstracts the access to the Google Latitude API for you. All you have to do us pass your ID and the module returns the date, time, last known latitude and longitude (the values are in decimal degrees).
use Geo::Google::Latitude;
my $gl=Geo::Google::Latitude->new;
my $id="7832225593622256926";
my $badge=$gl->get($id);
my ($lat2, $lon2) = $badge->point->latlon;>> Calculating how far you are away from home
You have to figure out how far you are from home, you do this by doing some math. Oh wait, there’s a Perl module for that. Install Geo::Distance and all you have to do is tell it what latitude and longitude to compare and it spits out the distance.
use Geo::Distance;
my $geo = new Geo::Distance;
### Home Location
my $lon1 = "-79.76408";
my $lat1 = "39.980342";
### Calculated Distance
my $distance = $geo->distance( 'mile', $lon1, $lat1 =>; $lon2, $lat2 ); # Use 'meter' to calculate distance in meters>> Getting the Weather
You can use a number of weather APIs to get weather data for your home location. All you need to know is where you live. The easiest to implement is Google Weather (Weather::Google), but the WeatherBug API has a lot more information you can use for other Internet of Things things you may do.
use Weather::Google;
my $gw = new Weather::Google(15401); # Zipcode
my $current_outside = $gw->current->{temp_f}; #Use temp_c for Celsius>> Connect to ioBridge
All you have to do to connect with ioBridge is to send command via the ioBridge Widget API. First you create the control widgets for your heating and cooling system. For mine, I can use relays. Others may need serial strings, which you can send as well. Once you have the widgets created, locate there widget ID’s and send them to the API.
use LWP::Simple;
my $Air_Conditioner_widgetID = "Gb2Q1FUKPmzZ"; ### Replace with your widget ID's
my $Heater_widgetID = "9c3WEGHKemnzJ";
my $Inside_Temp_widgetID = "D32SDghy98iOu";
my $ioBridgeAPI = "";
$ioBridgeAPI = "http://www.iobridge.com/widgets/static/id=" . $Inside_Temp_widgetID . "&value=1&format=text";
my $current_inside = get($ioBridgeAPI);
### Test if the heater or the air condition should be turned on
if ($current_outside >= 78 && $current_inside >= 72) {
$ioBridgeAPI = "http://www.iobridge.com/widgets/static/id=" . $Air_Conditioner_widgetID . "&value=1&format=text";
get($ioBridgeAPI);
}
elsif ($current_outside <= 60 && $current_inside <= 68 ) {
$ioBridgeAPI = "http://www.iobridge.com/widgets/static/id=" . $Heater_widgetID . "&value=1&format=text";
get("$ioBridgeAPI");
}>> Putting it all together
Once you have the entire built all you have to do is call the app periodically using CRON Linux or Task Scheduler on Windows. Here is a TXT file of the Perl application with all of the parts tied together, probably will be easier to read and understand.
The hardware side uses the ioBridge IO-204 connected to the control lines of a thermostat or an HVAC control box. The lines switch at 12 volts, so I use relays trigger them. Other thermostats that I researched use serial lines which the IO-204 can tap into using RS-232.
It may seem like a lot of work, but just think about what is happening. Feeds from Google Latitude and WeatherBug are being processed and passed to your home network via the Internet. All of this is happening without your direct interaction – your things are working for you. I hope that you can see that is a start of some pretty amazing applications of technologies that will advance over time. A lot has changed in the past year, I can’t image what comes next.
If you get around to building a project like this, please drop me a line. I love this stuff.