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

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:

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.