Welcome to the newest edition of the IoTFriday at thethings.iO. Today we will be speaking to you about our favorite DIY platform to develop Internet of Things projects. It typically isn’t the hardware you need but actually the needs of the project that is the deciding factor in which platform to choose.
We have selected Arduino, Electric Imp and Intel Edison as some of our 3 favorite do-it-yourself electronic platforms.
Top 3 DIY platforms – #IoTFriday
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
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
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
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
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.
