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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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thethings.IO at LeWeb London 2013

It was an incredible honor to present thethings.IO at the startup competition of LeWeb London 2013. Surrounded with 15 other stunning startups, Marc Pous, the founder of thethings.IO made the presentation in front of investors and assistants.

We could not win the competition. It was not our main goal but it was an excellent opportunity to meet people interested on our startup and the new social network of the Internet of Things.

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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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Selected Semifinalist at the LeWeb London 2013

We are very happy to announce that we have been selected among 16 semifinalists out of over 350 start-ups that presented at the LeWeb London Startup Competition. This is the first times that thethings.iO, the Internet of Things social network, will be presented to the public. Needless to say we are extremely excited for this opportunity and hope to see some familiar faces in the crowd supporting us.

LeWeb Lodon Startup Competition

LeWeb Lodon Startup Competition

If you are in London during the 5th and 6th of June, ping us on twitter @theThingsIO or e-mail. See you in London

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We Were at Make Munich Last Weekend

 

Our booth at Make Munich

Our booth at Make Munich

Last weekend thethings.iO attended Make Munich.

On Saturday, we showed how to connect objects to the Internet using Arduinos and Ethernet Shielts. With the Arduino we were pushing real-time air quality data (with a hacked Air Quality Egg: temperature, humidity, NO2, CO) to Cosm and poll real-time data and embedded that data using D3.js in a map.

Actuators ready to hack chairs

Actuators ready to hack chairs

On Sunday, we wanted to show everyone how to connect a chair to the Internet. Sadly, the Wifi at the event went down so we were unable to show off our connected chair, but don’t worry we will explain the use and purpose of the connected chair in a later post.

All around though it was a great event to introduce the Internet of Things and what thethings.iO really is.

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Scott Jenson talking about Bears, Bats, and Bees. Does the Internet of Things Needs Our Social Network?

Since the Scott’s SXSW presentation, we have been trying to reach the Scott Jenson video of his presentation’s slides and finally we were able to get ahold of it.

In the video, Scott exposes the new technology trends and how the Internet of Things will mutate the current technology by using great facts and examples.

The aim of thethings.iO is to offer developers and makers of devices a platform able to reprogram devices, offer new functionalities on top of existing devices and create add-value to real services. Our point of view is that the Web will lead this change. The users will receive benefits from these new programs since things will be inter-connected and accessible through one sole device. We work with a passion to give each user a meaningful product where they will be able to manage and interact with everything they have connected via the Internet.

We truly believe that the Internet of Things will revolutionize the technology market, and we hope that our social network will be part of this change!

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

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Internet of Things at CES and MWC 2013

After two days at the Mobile World Congress 2013 and reading about CES 2013 at Las Vegas, we strongly believe the Internet of Things will be big in 2013.

CES 2013 at Las Vegas

One of our companions from , had a booth set up and they caught several people’s interest due to their Kickstarter campaign.

The Good Night Lamp at CES 2013 (by todbot at Flickr)

The Good Night Lamp at CES 2013 (by todbot at Flickr)

Experts says that Quantified Self has been the guest star at CES 2013 because they create a lot of expectations with HAPIFork, Fitbit, Jawbone and Withing among other interesting companies.

The Mobile World Congress 2013 at Barcelona

In our opinion, the star of this conference was the Internet connected coffee machines. With an unclear use of companies defended the product saying that people do not want to wait to have coffee prepared when they go to the machine. A coffee takes thirty seconds to one minute to prepare through a machine.

The Cisco coffee machine connected to the Internet

The Cisco coffee machine connected to the Internet

The engineering solution for coffee machines were very intriguing.

On the other hand, the stackable pieces of plastic are ready to send the real-time information to the Telefonica cloud servers.

Thinking things by Telefonica I+D

Thinking things by Telefonica I+D

At the SMA Connected Cities booth, Jordi Corominas was presenting Ecooltra, an electric motorbike connected to the Internet. The system lets the users rent a motorbike using their mobile devices. Then, they could use NFC to start the motorbike at the Ecooltra parkings.

We were very excited to have this opportunity to join in on this conference. We hope that thethings.iO will help users improve the ability to interact with their Internet connected objects through our dashboard.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @thethingsIO and check out our weekly #IoTFriday Blogs!

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What is thethings.iO?

Nowadays the Internet of Things is becoming the Internet of Walled Gardens. Most of the IoT projects are vertical solutions that cannot interoperate with other objects or projects. Kickstarter has accelerated this scenario, funding some awesome projects related with the Internet of Things and Quantified Self, nevertheless that has increased the silos existing in the current situation.

Technology experts and big companies do not have a clear idea about the real volume of the Internet of Things in the future, but they are confident that it will be big. That means that we will not be able to deal with one mobile application for each object connected to the Internet. All the things connected will have to have its own experience with the different vertical solutions.

thethings.iO is an horizontal solution built to create an interoperable Internet of Things scenario. Thethings.iO is a platform designed to extend the Web by providing access to real objects in the physical world. Our main goal is to let you manage, share and interact with any thing connected to the Internet anywhere, when you like.

Are you a manufacturer?

We want to make your products interoperable with other existing Internet-connected objects. We would like to offer the end-users the same experience interacting with all the objects and things that they own. And of course we want to give you an extra-value for sharing the access and information of your things. Contact us for more detailed information.

Are you a maker or a developer?

theThings.IO would allow you to create add value on the top of the Internet-connected objects compatible with our platform. I’m sure that you will be interested. theThings.IO is the hub in charge of handling all the communications and the requests to access and interact with them. Let us make the hard part!

theThings.IO for end users

Thethings.iO is built as a social network, seen as an interoperable platform that allows one to interact and  remotely manage their Internet-connected objects, such as Fitbit activity trackers, Withings scales or your Arduinos, among other within the same dashboard.

Learn how to connect Internet of Things and Quantified Self with thethings.iO, the new social network for your Internet-connected objects and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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