Check out this article on ABC.es.

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.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqi28Qcvvdg

[via ioBridge Blog]

Here are my slides from the 2011 Pittsburgh Perl Workshop:

From Postcapes,

As a Software Developer at ioBridge and active speaker, and developer (including having over 800 people following his toaster on Twitter) in the Internet of Things space Hans Scharler is someone to watch as he sits on the interesting intersection of DIY’ers and corporate products.

Follow Hans and his latest on Twitter @scharler.

The perspective of my presentation will be from my vantage point of being involved day-to-day working on Internet of Things projects with ioBridge and how we turned projects into products for consumers and manufacturers. Our perspective is that we see the Internet of Things being built from the ground up versus the top down. This means that there is so much innovation that will bubble up from small companies that will revolutionize the industries above them. I am honored to be part of the Web of Things Workshop.

Updates:

The Web of Things conference turned out great. I got a chance to meet the researchers and developers in other areas related to the Internet of Things and the cross over into wireless, social networking, and web technologies.

Here are the slides from my keynote presentation at the Web of Things Workshop.

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 Details

The 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:

• Netduino Plus .NET Project
• Twitter of Things Demo App

My talk is about the things that surround us – iPads, Toasters, Fridges, and Cars – and pose some questions – what if they were connected? What are the issues that we must consider? How can we can we disconnect in a connected world? After the talk I will post the slides and if they record it, I may or may not post the video.

Ignite Pittsburgh

Brillobox
7pm
Febuary 10, 2011

Abstract and Credits

Update:

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).

>> 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.

>> 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.

>> 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.

>> 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.

You might be hearing this new buzz-phrase, “Internet of Things” quite a bit lately. You might be wondering what it’s all about. Let me try to explain.

A “thing” could be a lot of things, but it’s not people (and definitely not places). That leaves everything else. Now according to the Internet, there are 6,767,805,208 people on Earth and of those 6,767,805,208 people 1,802,330,457 have used the Internet. That’s (only) 26%. So, that means one out of four people do not know what Numa Numa is all about. This also means there are a lot more things than people. A thing could be a camera, mobile device, sensors, your air conditioner, a river, and even a toaster.

The trick to the “Internet of Things” or the “Web of Things” will be providing connectivity to all of those things. Once we do, we will be able to gain access to a lot of information. The next challenge will be making that data useful in our everyday lives. We are just at the start of this, that’s why we are just starting to hear about it (with some help with IBM commercials).

I have been fascinated by this concept since I first joined the Internet, back where GeoCities and L’Hotel Chat were the hip spots. For me the interest started off by controlling things over the web. Then, I started wondering what are my things doing. What temperature is it at my house? What’s going on with my freezer? Is it time to refill my humidor? How much power is my computer using?

Over a year and half ago, I placed my toaster on Twitter (@mytoaster). Since then, my toaster starting using other social networks and discovered online dating all by itself. That is a weird thought, “What if things get smarter and smarter?” Things will eventually be able to socialize with other things. My (sentient) toaster might even find another compatible toaster using eHarmony.

I am not saying that this is the best example of the Internet of Things, but what I am saying is that it’s a start. I believe in a future of connected things so strongly that I joined a start up company that enabled my toaster way back when I was more interesting than my things.

For a good primer on the Internet of Things, check the recent article on Silicon.com called, “Cheat Sheet: The internet of things“. My toaster even gets a tongue-in-cheek reference. Actually there are lots of great sites that are covering the Internet of Things and making things happen in this emerging industry – Singularity Hub, ReadWriteWeb, Wired.com to name a few.

My guess is that you will hear more and more about The Internet of Things until it hits Smart Grid proportions, then you will hear about the next big thing – the smart internet of things grid perhaps.

My first project with ioBridge was building a remote sensor network web interface on top of the Google Maps API. The sensor network allows for the real-time monitoring of tide levels. The project got written up on MIT’s Technology Review blog and the ioBridge Projects blog. You can demo the tide monitoring application at www.TideAlerts.com.

Change is not always easy. I had a great job and got to see all of the United States minus Alaska, Hawaii, and Idaho (yes, Idaho, I have flown all over you but never landed on you…). I got to design, maintain, pen test, and provide training for some of the largest networks in the US for utilities and telecommunications providers over a 10 year period. Yes, you can blame me the next time your call drops.

This also means I saw a lot of hotels and airports. I probably stayed at a Hampton Inn from 30 different states. I can’t tell you how many times I woke up to a USA Today being crammed under my door. For whatever reason on my first trip to a DSL testing company in Manchester, New Hampshire, I saved the room key. I know you are supposed to return them, but maybe in the excitement of it all, I kept it. This tradition continued with my next project in Lincoln, Nebraska and the next and the next. When I got home I would shove the room key in a box. I just dumped it out and could not believe it…Here’s a photo so you can see what I am saying…

I don’t advocate stealing room keys, but this pile is  a quick snap shot of 1000′s of trips and projects and experiences. With the new gig, I will travel less and that might be good. I am looking forward to it and might even join a bowling league where I can actually make the games. I will keep you updated on the progress. It’s time to start-up (.com).

]]> http://iamshadowlord.com/2010/06/new-gig-less-hotels-2.html/feed 1 http://iamshadowlord.com/2010/03/best-invention-since-sliced-bread.html http://iamshadowlord.com/2010/03/best-invention-since-sliced-bread.html#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:29:00 +0000 Hans http://iamshadowlord.com/?p=32 My toaster is back in the news with a post on FoxNews.com regarding “Things that Tweet”. I love things that can speak and soon the idea of a “web of things” will not be so odd.

The website “Global Toaster” reported that my internet toaster is a celebrity. Their site is chock full of toasters, toaster info, toaster love, and a toaster blog. Check it out.

http://iamshadowlord.com/2009/10/steam-pumpkin-my-steampunk-pumpkin.html

Fast forward 20 years and I am still shoving LEDs into pumpkins. This year my inspiration comes from steampunk, a growing subculture fascinated with steam-aged garb and future technology fusion. Steampunk was born of the H. G. Wells and Jules Verne visions of futuristic technology and style. Call it what you want, Steampunk is an inspiring movement of makers and re-users of technology and materials.

Here is my steampunk inspired pumpkin.

This little story sounds made up. Well, it’s not.

My toaster has had a Twitter page since December 2008, tweeting the status of my toast making habits for all of the world to follow. On occasion people even write to the toaster to ask what it’s toasting. Oddly enough, it can tell you.

I get asked, “Why have your toaster on the Internet?” Well, it’s a starting point for future projects and part sarcasm. I have been working on gizmos, web control, and power / resource management projects with my friend Jason Winters of ioBridge for over a decade. One day I had the idea to overlay appliance usage data onto a graph of my power consumption for my house. My theory is to use this appliance meta data to reduce the power I use everyday by pointing directly to the power hogs. It’s a start to my internet of things at my house. If you want to get start your own Skynet, visit Wired’s Wiki on making things talk. I use the IO-204 control and monitor module from ioBridge.com.

OK, mostly it’s sarcasm.

My Toaster has been recently written about on Wired.com, ReadWriteWeb, PC World, Tiscali, De Morgen, XYCity China, etc. If you want to hear about it straight from the bread slot, you can get live updates from my toaster by following @MyToaster on Twitter.

I am now jealous of my toaster which has made for awkward moments when I want some crunchy Wonder Bread.

I took the leap and bought an Arduino from LiquidWare. An arduino is an open-source microcontroller that has a processor, some digital I/O pins, and analog inputs. You can create little standalone programs that monitor inputs, control LEDs, and pretty much anything that you dream up. My favorite projects are ones that involve the Internet. A microcontroller is rather simple by itself, but what if it could use the web to get answers, send email, maybe update my Twitter status? That means there is a unlimited number of projects ahead – Microcontrollers collaboarating in cyberspace. The missing link for the web part is the ioBridge IO-204. I know you are no stranger to the the IO-204, but for those of you who have not heard. The IO-204 sits on my network and relays data from its channels to ioBridge.com servers and back into my network. It allows for remote control and monitoring without network configuration and programming. One of the expansion boards is a two-way serial board that accepts serial strings and connects them to APIs of web services that ioBridge interfaces to and sends back responses. For instance, I can send the commands, “[[[calc|9*9]]]” and this returns 81. OK, maybe not impressive on the surface, but that result came from Google Calculator. Anything Google Calculator can solve, your microcontroller has access to those results. For more examples, visit the Serial Web Services API on the wiki.

//
// Message Center using Arduino and the ioBridge IO-204
//
// An open-souce Shadowlord Project
// www.IamShadowlord.com

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

// SoftwareSerial Pins
#define rxPin 2
#define txPin 3

// Setup Software Serial
SoftwareSerial softSerial = SoftwareSerial(rxPin, txPin);

// Global Setup
int middleLED = 11;
int rightLED = 10;
int leftLED = 12;

int leftButton = 5;
int leftButtonCurrent = LOW;
int leftButtonReading;
int leftButtonPrevious = HIGH;
long leftButtonTime = 0;
long leftButtonDebounce = 200;

int middleButton = 4;
int middleButtonCurrent = LOW;
int middleButtonReading;
int middleButtonPrevious = HIGH;
long middleButtonTime = 0;
long middleButtonDebounce = 200;

int rightButton = 6;
int rightButtonCurrent = LOW;
int rightButtonReading;
int rightButtonPrevious = HIGH;
long rightButtonTime = 0;
long rightButtonDebounce = 200;

int tempPin = 5;
int tempAnalog = 0;
int tempF = 0;

char* currentRequest = "";

// Start up program
void setup() {

pinMode(rxPin, INPUT);
pinMode(txPin, OUTPUT);

pinMode(leftLED, OUTPUT);
pinMode(middleLED, OUTPUT);
pinMode(rightLED, OUTPUT);

pinMode(leftButton, INPUT);
pinMode(middleButton, INPUT);
pinMode(rightButton, INPUT);

softSerial.begin(9600);
delay(100);

Serial.begin(9600);
delay(100);

Serial.flush();
delay(100);

// Setup LCD
clearLCD();
setBacklightBrightness(9);
delay(1000);

// Test LEDs
digitalWrite(leftLED, HIGH);
digitalWrite(middleLED, HIGH);
digitalWrite(rightLED, HIGH);

delay(1500);

digitalWrite(leftLED, LOW);
digitalWrite(middleLED, LOW);
digitalWrite(rightLED, LOW);

}

// Start main program loop
void loop(){

// Get Analog Input and scale as temperature for ioBridge temperature sensor on arduino
tempAnalog = analogRead(tempPin);
tempF = tempAnalog / 6.875;

// Monitor left button status and debounce
leftButtonReading = digitalRead(leftButton);

if (leftButtonReading == HIGH && leftButtonPrevious == LOW && 
          millis() - leftButtonTime > leftButtonDebounce) {
if (leftButtonCurrent == HIGH) leftButtonCurrent = LOW;
else {digitalWrite(leftLED, HIGH);
clearLCD();
delay(100);
softSerial.print("Outside: ");
delay(100);
softSerial.print(tempF);
delay(100);
moveCursor("02", "01");
delay(100);
softSerial.print("Atlanta: ");
leftButtonCurrent = LOW;
//Request temperature in Atlanta via ioBridge
Serial.print("[[[weather|Atlanta]]]");
digitalWrite(leftLED, LOW);
}
leftButtonTime = millis();
}

leftButtonPrevious = leftButtonReading;

// Monitor middle button status and debounce
middleButtonReading = digitalRead(middleButton);

if (middleButtonReading == HIGH && middleButtonPrevious == LOW &&
         millis() - middleButtonTime > middleButtonDebounce) {
if (middleButtonCurrent == HIGH) middleButtonCurrent = LOW;
else {currentRequest = "Google";
digitalWrite(middleLED, HIGH);
clearLCD();delay(100);
softSerial.print("GOOG: $");
delay(100);
middleButtonCurrent = LOW;
//Request Google Stock Price via ioBridge  
Serial.print("[[[stock|GOOG]]]"); 
digitalWrite(middleLED, LOW);
}
middleButtonTime = millis();
}

middleButtonPrevious = middleButtonReading;

// Monitor right button status and debounce
rightButtonReading = digitalRead(rightButton);

if (rightButtonReading == HIGH && rightButtonPrevious == LOW &&
            millis() - rightButtonTime > rightButtonDebounce) {
if (rightButtonCurrent == HIGH) rightButtonCurrent = LOW;
else {
digitalWrite(rightLED, HIGH);
clearLCD();
delay(100);
softSerial.print("Alert: ");
delay(100);
rightButtonCurrent = LOW;
//Send email via ioBridge  
Serial.print("[[[email|hans@nothans.com|Alert|Mom, is pressing your buttons]]]");
digitalWrite(rightLED, LOW);
}
rightButtonTime = millis();
}

rightButtonPrevious = rightButtonReading;

// Display serial messages
if(Serial.available() > 0){

delay(100);

char charIn = 0;
byte i = 0;
char stringIn[32] = "";

while(Serial.available()) {
charIn = Serial.read();
stringIn[i] = charIn;
i += 1;
}

if (currentRequest == "Google") {

softSerial.print(stringIn);
int stockPrice = atoi(stringIn);
delay(100);
moveCursor("02", "01");
delay(100);
stockPrice = stockPrice - 405;
softSerial.print("Change: $"); 
delay(100);
softSerial.print(stockPrice);
currentRequest = "";

}
elsesoftSerial.print(stringIn);
}

// End program loop     
}

//
// ioBridge Serial LCD Functions and Parameters (for SoftwareSerial)
//

void displayMessage(char* message){
softSerial.print(message);
}

void clearLCD(){
softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("Z");
}

void setBacklightBrightness(int level){
// level
// 0=Off -> 9=Brightest

softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("B");
softSerial.print(level);
}

void setBacklightTime(int level, byte seconds){
// level
// 0=Off -> 9=Brightest

// seconds
// 01 = 1 seconds => 06 = 60 seconds

softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("T");
softSerial.print(level);
softSerial.print(seconds, BYTE);
}

void moveCursorHome(){
softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("H");
}

void turnCursorOn(){
softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("J");
}

void turnCursorOff(){
softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("K");
}

void turnBlinkingCursorOn(){
softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("P");
}

void turnBlinkingCursorOff(){
softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("Q");
}

void scrollMessage(int row, int speed, char* message){
// row
// 1=First Line -> 2=Second Line

// speed
// 0=Slowest -> 9=Fastest

softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("S");
softSerial.print(row);
softSerial.print(speed);
softSerial.print(message);
softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
}

void moveCursor(char* row, char* column){
// row
// 01=First Line -> 02=Second Line

// column
// 01=First Position -> 16=Last Position

softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("L");
softSerial.print(row);
softSerial.print(column);
}

void drawHorizontalGauge(int row, char* leftLabel, char* rightLabel, char* length){
// row
// 1=First Line -> 2=Second Line

// leftLabel and rightLabel
// 2 character labels

// length
// a=Empty -> k=Full (filled in from left to right)

softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("G");
softSerial.print(row);
softSerial.print(leftLabel);
softSerial.print(rightLabel);
softSerial.print(length);
}

void drawVerticalGauge(int height){
// height
// 0=Bottom -> 8=Top (filled in from bottom to top)

softSerial.print(0xFE, BYTE);
softSerial.print("V");
softSerial.print(height);

}

The iPhone or iPod Touch has an accelerometer that detects how the device is oriented. As the devices moves off axis (from straight up and down) the screen rotates. I want to use that feedback to control the position of a motor or servo or cause specific events to happen depending on the device’s position.

Taking the ioBridge IO-204 module, I connected the servo controller and a servo to one of the channels. On the servo I taped a Best Western hotel pen to show the movement of the servo. I found from hours of testing that the Best Western worked the “Best” and Hampton Inn worked slightly worse.

On the ioBridge website, I created 3 widgets that corresponded with the orientation of the iPod. “Left” for when tilted towards the left, “Right” when I turned right, and “Forward” when I was holding the iPod normally (straight up and down).

Warning: The next part involves some light programming. I made a quick HTML file with some JavaScript that detected the orientation of the iPod and called the appropriate widget. The orientation code is below for those of you that are interested in trying this for yourself:

Load up the completed HTML file on your iPhone or iPod Touch and now you can control a servo with the turning of your iPhone. I call it “iTurn” (didn’t see that one coming, did you?).

Here is a YouTube video of the iTurn project:

That statement sounds odd. Well, let me explain. My friends would describe me as the kind of person that has a lot of time on their hands. They would be right. That time is never put to productive use, but over Thanksgiving I got the gumption to start a new project. Sometimes, I start little servo, robotic, web-based projects for my own gratification, but I get fed up with all of the time I invest just so I can impress my 3 friends that also have nothing do to over the holidays.

My friend Jason Winters has been working on an module that simplifies the connecting of projects to the internet. He sent me one of his ioBridge modules to beta test and my mind started spinning. My goal this Thanksgiving was to think of a crazy project that would be the most senseless thing someone has ever heard of before.

Again, My Toaster Twitters…

Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to tell the world your current status – kind of like a microscopic blog that gets to the point. You can write, “Hans is going to lunch” or “Hans is tired”, etc. It’s fun to follow people and see what they can do creatively with just a few characters of updates.

I use my toaster when I am home and I thought that the world may want to know when I’m toasting.

twitter.com/mytoaster

How do you make a toaster twitter?

I grabbed my old bagel / toast toaster and glued a switch to the outside, so when the slider gets pressed down it triggers the switch and when it pops up, the switch opens (couldn’t be any more binary then that).

The ioBridge module has a digital input that I can hook the switch up to and monitor that state of toasting or not. Using a terminal board, a pull up resistor (1k), and some alligator clips, I hooked up the resistor from the digital input to the +5v source from the module, and clipped my clips on the resistor and the ground. A few pictures are worth more than my description.

Here is the whole system hooked together:

The Web Stuff

Using the ioBridge website, I created an event widget that monitors the input state of that particular digital input. And when the input is “high”, the site sends an email to any address of my liking. And the same for the “low” state. I chose my Twitter Mail address, but really could of hit any social network, email by blog, or even UberNote.

Follow My Toaster on Twitter at twitter.com/mytoaster. I think I proved empirically that I have too much time on my hands.