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thethings.iO at the Mobile World Congress 2014

This was our first time at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. During the MWC in Barcelona our CEO, Marc Pous, visited several events where he was able to show our Internet of things platform which is up and running, ready to connect developers devices.

Marc pitching theThings.IO at the IoT Barcelona

Marc pitching theThings.IO at the IoT Barcelona

The first event at which Marc showcased thethings.iO was the Internet of Things Barcelona community  party on Sunday the 23rd of February at Pangea Coworking space. This was the first year the Internet of Things Barcelona group has a MWC event. During the event Marc showcased how to connect things from different brands under the same user experience as Intel and HWTreck.

On Monday we visited the Mobile World Congress exposition and we saw a lot of interesting new things. Featured products included the new connected car presented by Tesla Motors at the Telefonica booth and a new watch presented by Samsung.

On Tuesday Marc presented at the 4YFN conference about the future of the Internet of Things and the role of startups in the field. It was a fun session and we had an in depth discussion about the projects of Smart Citizen and Relayr. We also had the chance to speak with Massimo Banzi, one of the founders of Arduino.

Marc pitching theThings.IO at 4YFN

Marc pitching theThings.IO at 4YFN

On Tuesday Marc presented at the 4YFN conference about the future of the Internet of Things and the role of startups in the field. It was a fun session and we had an in depth discussion about the projects of Smart Citizen and Relayr. We also had the chance to speak with Massimo Banzi, one of the founders of Arduino.

Marc Pous and Massimo Banzi at the MWC

Marc Pous and Massimo Banzi at the MWC

On Wednesday, Marc was organizing one of the biggest events at the MWC called Wearable Wednesdays, which talked about wearables and the future of human computer interaction. Great speakers and panel discussions are planned with Sonny Vu (CEO at Misfit Wearables), Laurent Le Pen (CEO at Omate) or Christian Lindholm (CEO at Koru Labs) showing the quality of the event where a lot of new things will be showcased such as Bitcoin payment with Google Glass.

Here testing the Samsung band at the MWC

Here testing the Samsung band at the MWC

In general the Mobile World Congress was awesome for us as we gained the attention from new customers. The BETA is still underway to be launched for our registered members, so make sure to stay tuned and on the lookout .

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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Jam Packed Week at thethings.iO

Last week was an interesting one here in Barcelona.

We started with the Internet of Things Barcelona meetup, which was one of the biggest, with over 85 attendants at the venue. Some of the discussions included Jiri of Claro Partners, Telefonica presenting their Thinking Things, Alicia Asín introducing Libelium and Adam Dunkels showcasing his Thingsquare last novelty (in a live demo). It was also awesome to meet Hugo Fiennes from Electric Imp and hear some of his experiences on the Internet of Things field.

On Tuesday Marc went to the radio, he went to RAC1 to talk about the Internet of Things. Checkout the podcast

On Friday Marc was invited to the IoT tapas organized by Claro Partners. It was one of the best brainstorms related to the Internet of Things we’ve ever attended. We have continued the development of our beta website and look forward on showing it off soon enough.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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Interesting Videos on the Internet of Things

Due to the Gigaom #mobilizeconf, we were able to view some mind blowing things regarding the Internet of Things. Here are some of our favorite videos we have seen to date.

The first video is a panel session at the Gigaom Structure Europe 2013 managed by Alexandra Deschamps from the Good Night Lamp with Alicia Asín from Libelium and Michael Simon from Xively.

The second video is a panel from the conference Gigaom Mobilize. Surj Patel from Smart Mocha managed the panel with Michael Rosenblatt from ATOMS express and Hugo Fiennes from electric imp

Both videos are saying that the Internet of Things will be here sooner then we think and that the pioneers of the devices actually will come from everyday people in their basements instead of a massive corporation.

If you find any interesting video of the Internet of Things let us know and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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Our Experience At The Maker Faire Rome 2013

Entrance of the Maker Faire in Rome

Entrance of the Maker Faire in Rome

We’re proud to say that the Maker Faire Rome was a success! We say this not only because the of quality of the projects showed at the Maker Faire, or  because of the new Arduino (and non-Arduino, such as the Intel Galileo, thanks!) shields presented and the people going to visit the Maker Faire (more than 30.000), but also because we got to meet a lot of interesting people that were interested thethings.iO and the Internet of Things.

Before the presentation at the Maker Faire

Before the presentation at the Maker Faire

Marc’s goal when speaking was to try to give the audience a clear vision of the current situation of the Internet of Things. At the end of the talk, we gave a coupon to Internet of Things developers. There were several questions after the presentation relating to property of data generated by the gadgets.

We had the opportunity to meet Bruce Sterling. author of the book Shaping Things and writer of the Beyond the beyond at WIRED blog.

 

Bruce Sterling with the connected beer of the Oktoberfest of Things

Bruce Sterling with the connected beer of the Oktoberfest of Things

We got to chat with the founders of Arduino, David Cuartielles and Massimo Banzi, about a few of thethings.iO’s projects such as One Seat Away and Oktoberfest of Things, which was shown by Thomas Amberg at the IoT Zurich booth.

We also had the privilege of meeting the Internet of Things Madrid meet up organizers, Sara and César. Their booth consisted of Oblobots,

which are open sourced 3D printed robots’ pieces with a conductive dow that can teach children simple electrical circuits. Children at the Maker Faire were astonished by the Oblobots which were playing and challenging them to make a mega-robot.

Oblobots

Oblobots

A few other interesting groups we had the privilege of meeting were the Cooking Hacks team and Snootlab. The Cooking Hacks team helped us with some questions regarding the next project at the thethings.iO. The Snootlab is a French startup that is building things with technology using Arduino.

We feel very fortunate to have met such amazing and innovative startups, teachers, architects, and makers all who are interested in the future of the Internet of Things. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday weekly blog!

 

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Maker Faire Rome 2013

We are glad to announce that we will be attending the Maker Faire Rome 2013.

Come check out a 30 minute workshop session we have planned at 2:30 PM in Room G- Archimede and learn how the connect your gadgets to the Internet. We hope to see everyone at the event!

Maker Faire Rome 2013

Maker Faire Rome 2013

Hope to see you at the Maker Faire Rome 2013 where we are going to show the latest news of thethings.iO for developers.

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One App For Each Gadget? No Way! This Is Not The Internet of Things We Want

When we envision the future of the Internet of Things, we see this scenario that Apple and Google helped to build with their mobile devices and their application market. We see tons of gadgets and objects connected to the Internet each one (or even brand) managed through their mobile application.

Dozens of IoT mobile apps (Photo by: Gonzalo Baeza)

Dozens of IoT mobile apps (Photo by: Gonzalo Baeza)

Philips Hue and LIFX are both household light bulbs and both are compatible with the analogical light bulbs that we have at home. However, both require the user to download separate apps to control their own device, this doesn’t make any sense.

Philips HUE and LIFX

Philips HUE and LIFX

People love to monitor their health by using scales but now with the invention of wearable trackers such as Fitbit or Nike+ people are able to also monitor their physical activity throughout the day. There are scales such as the Withings scale but this is not compatable with the Fitbit or the Nike+. We feel as if technology should make watching our health more convenient, not more difficult.

Our solution

We believe that the users of these millions of gadgets do not want to use dozens of mobile apps to interact with their devices. We propose a central place where they are able to aggregate, manage and interact in real-time with all of the devices.

We want to provide a platform where all of the Internet of Things in our market are interoperable and end users do not need to deal with different mobile apps.

Stay tunned and  don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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Welcome to the Programmable World

The June 2012 Wired magazine (US edition) has an awesome article that talks about the Internet of Things and the future. Called In the Programmable World, All our objects will act as one his author (Bill Wasik) perfectly explains by hand of the CEO of SmarterThing the present and future of the Internet of Things.

Awake and welcome to the Programmable World @ Wired US June 2013

Awake and welcome to the Programmable World @ Wired US June 2013

The author explains clearly the next three steps of the Internet of Things:

For the Programmable World to reach its full potential, we need to pass through three stages. The first is simply the act of getting more devices onto the network—more sensors, more processors in everyday objects, more wireless hookups to extract data from the processors that already exist. The second is to make those devices rely on one another, coordinating their actions to carry out simple tasks without any human intervention. The third and final stage, once connected things become ubiquitous, is to understand them as a system to be programmed, a bona fide platform that can run software in much the same manner that a computer or smartphone can. Once we get there, that system will transform the world of everyday objects into a design­able environment, a playground for coders and engineers.

At theThings.IO we fully agree with this evolution of the Internet of Things, with some comments.

For the first step more evangelizers are needed. From my point of view, most of the manufacturers and OEMs are still dubitative about the Internet of Things. The history says that people is not really interested on objects with embedded gadgets, such as the “smart” fridge, the “smart” coffee machine, et al. We must move from the gadget connected to the Internet to the object with a real value. That said, the openness of these objects is needed.

For the second stage, I could say that years of research have been granted innovating on this topic. Brokers, hubs, ESBs, lightweight M2M protocols among other technical names have been developed in order to make the interoperability a reality. As Bill Wasik pointed, Smart Things is doing an amazing work on that field with their hardware. Ninja Blocks is also working on this direction.

The final stage is the most interesting. We are focused on developing to make real this third stage. We truly believe that developers might be able to apply their innovation and creativity on the top of the Internet connected objects. Manufacturers will be empowered with objects with new functionalities. And finally end-users with objects that can be reprogrammed for free or just for few cents.

We love this idea of hacking objects… why a glass cannot be a flowerpot?

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Sonar+D: One Seat Away Project

Today is the day, thethings.IO will be at Sonar+D presenting its new project, One Seat Away, in collaboration with Simone Rebaudengo, Ken Frederick, Daniel Kluge and Marc Pous.

The One Seat Away project at Sonar+D

The One Seat Away project at Sonar+D

What is One Seat Away

One Seat Away is an artistic project that aims at the exploration of the relationship between the rhythms of a musical performance and the hidden rhythms of a city such as Barcelona. The rhythm of a musical performance is typically measured in BPM (beats per minute), an easily detected value. However, within an urban space, there are multiple ways to define rhythm. There is a physical layer of people, noise, temperature, bikes shared systems. Then there is a virtual layer of activity in a city such as Foursquare check-ins, Facebook likes, Instagram pictures, Tweets among others, that remain mostly “hidden”. Their value reveals another side of how the rhythm of a city can be understood.

We will define the BPMs of the two environments and translate them into an experience that binds these two disparate contexts in real-time: bringing the rhythms of the festival into the city and the rhythm of the city into the festival.

The main goal of One Seat Away is to use connectivity and sensing to augment the sense of the urban space around us and merge it with music and rhythms as a way of experiencing data in a tangible way: something that one can feel and not necessarily have to understand in detail or rationally decode.

How does it work

The project will connect daily objects such as sofas and chairs to Internet. The sofas and chairs will receive the sensed data processed from the real-time Sónar music being played and converted into vibration. In the same way that one can feel music outside of an event without “hearing” it via vibrations of physical structures, we want people to feel and experience the rhythm without actually hearing it.

 

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