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How To Start With Internet of Things #IoTFriday

Welcome to the new edition of IoTFriday at thethings.iO. A lot of people have ask us how to get started with the Internet of Things. Today I would like to talk about what you can learn or do to get into the IoT. It depends on what you do, ideas you have and what you want to learn. Enjoy the new #IoTFriday video.

During this #IoTFriday, we proposed 3 different situations depending on if you are a designer, a programmer, or a business man with a lot of amazing ideas.

If you are a designer our suggestions are to design something useful that solves a problem in your daily life. After that, print your design with a 3D printer. Finally, learn how to code to continue working on your solution.

 

If you are a developer our first suggestion is first to buy electronics such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi or Intel Edison and begin the coding process. Learn how these IoT platforms work;  it’s quite simple and the most important part is to have fun programming things. Finally, developers always need to meet a designer.

If you are a business person, create a nice idea and think of the best way to scale it. If you have a business idea related with the Internet of Things that scales, meet with developers and designers to make it happen.

Feel free to write in the comment area below if you have any questions or comments! We will do our best to respond promptly. If you need to test our back-end solution, write us a message to thethings.iO.

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

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Xmas lights at theThingsiO #iotFriday

At thethings.iO, we have been working a lot during the last months. We have been connecting things from our first customers and being in involved in awesome projects. We have also had some time to do some internal projects:

 

You are probably wondering, what did I just watch? Well, we were able to connect the Christmas lights and our Twitter handle (@theThingsIO), so that every time someone mentions us on Twitter they blink. We connected them via an Intel Edinson that listens to thethings.iO process.

Developing the Xmas lights connected to @thethingsIO

Developing the Xmas lights connected to @thethingsIO

We would like to use this opportunity to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year for 2015

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HackLeumi & thethings.iO

Shalom hackers and makers of the HackLeumi hackathon 2014. We are sad to say that we will not be able to attend the HackLeumi at Tel Aviv in Israel for this reason we will be writing this post instead of our usual #iotfriday.

In this post, we will guide you through the tools and APIs of thethings.iO. We want to help everyone succeed at the hackathon and win the prizes being offered this year. In our video below we will tell you how to register, how to connect things (or processes) and finally how to contact us in case you have any problems.

Read more →

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3 Internet of Things Protocols #IoTFriday

Happy IoTFriday ! Today we are going to talk about three of the most popular Internet of Things protocols: HTTP, REST, MQTT and CoAP.

 These three protocols are often discussed among experts who decide which one has the best features, security, and lowest cost, among several other important categories. Deciding which protocol should be used depends on your needs and potential uses. At thethings.iO, we have endpoints with REST, MQTT, CoAp and Websockets. (You can find documentation for IoT developers here.)

Marc showing 3 Internet of Things protocols #iotfriday

Marc showing 3 Internet of Things protocols #iotfriday

REST APIs are the most popular of the protocols. Based on HTTP and TCP/IP, it is the most standard used to share information among services on the Internet. REST APIs enable developers to access their data using market standardized methods and formats also known as JSON and XMLs.

MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) is an IBM open source protocol that offers a light-weight and easy publish-subscribe outlet to the Internet of Things. MQTT is based on TCP/IP in which several platforms are using for atomization of subscriptions and push messages to customers.

Lastly, CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) is a simplification of the HTTP protocol. CoAp is mostly designed for processing restrictions that cannot process or run HTTP on the hardware. Even though it is not a standardized protocol, there are a lot of interesting features such as the observe or discovery methods that will boost the Internet of Things.

 

At thethings.iO, we are offering for developers four Internet of Things protocols. Write us in order to have an invitation and test our Internet of Things real-time platform.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!

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Does Your Thing Need An Open API? #IoTFriday

Welcome to the newest edition of the  IoTFriday segment at thethings.iO. Today, we are trying to answer some questions we have been receiving asking why one should open their devices on API.

 

Remember that the Internet of Things is a bottom-up technology wave, much like the Web was some years ago. Most of the innovation and new features are coming from makers, hackers and new startups. Opening your things’ APIs allows you to build new features on the top of your things. That means more functionalities for you, which in turn leads to a smarter device and finally brings you more revenue due to third party people.

What do you think? Feel free to send us your feedback and comments!

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

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therhings.iO at the API Strategy Conference in Amsterdam

A few weeks ago our CEO, Marc Paus, was invited to speak and showcase  thethings.iO at the API strategy conference in Amsterdam located at the Track of Hardware and Internet of things.

The panel session had other great speakers such as Rob Zazueta from Mashery, Marco Herbst from Evercam.io, Paul Hopton from relayr and Marc Pous from thethings.iO.

Marc presented thethings.iO as the GlueCode API of the Internet of things. Check out the video below to view the video for yourself.

Feel free to send us some comments or feedback and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

 

 

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thethings.iO at the Sonar+D 2013 with One Seat Away Project

As we mentioned some weeks ago, we attended the Sònar 2013 collaborating with the One Seat Away project. Simone Rebaudengo, Ken Frederick, Daniel Kluge and Marc Pous with thethings.iO were working hard to have the One Seat Away at Sonar and their hard work paid off!

The Sofa of the One Seat Away project

The Sofa of the One Seat Away project

Our main vision was to offer a new kind of interaction to citizens and Sonar attendants with music. Usually, we are familiar with interacting with music the our ears but why not convert the music into a haptic experience? By connecting objects to the Internet, we could send the physical music far away from the speakers played by DJs at Sonar music festival. In this case, we were exposing a sofa that was vibrating at the DJ’s Sonar Village vibe.

Getting interviewed by TVE during the Sonar+D

Getting interviewed by TVE during the Sonar+D

The architecture

The components to connect an IKEA sofa

The components to connect an IKEA sofa

The IKEA sofa was connected to the Internet through and Arduino UNO and Arduino Ethernet shield. At the Sonar Village sound technician table, we set up a laptop connected with a MAX/MSP software in which was converting music into analog music and pushing it into thethings.iO every second. Through thethings.iO API connected to the Arduino, it was able to request a “music package” to thethings.iO API and sending the signal to the motors installed inside the sofa, making them moving at the vibe of the music.

The modulator of the vibe at the connected sofa

The modulator of the vibe at the connected sofa

With some components we were able to modulate the potence of the vibe and the Arduino PWM. Like the volume on the music stereos.

Laptop converting music into analogical music

Laptop converting music into analogical music

The experience

The experience of people feeling the music was a great! The visitors were showing up at our space sitting on the connected sofa experiencing a new way to feel the music. People were impressed with the sofa and the vibe. We enjoyed receiving positive feedback and we hope next year we have the chance to repeat this experience!

Do you want to connect anything to the Internet? Just try thethings.iO and make it happen! And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

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