Posts

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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!

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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Learn Electric Imp in 5 minutes #IoTFriday

Welcome at the new edition of the IoTFriday at thethings.iO. Today let me show you a quick overview about how to learn Electric Imp, in a little bit more than 5 minutes. With this quick introduction we show how to blink up the Electric Imp, what is Squirrel and how to program devices and agents. Enjoy!

BTW now you can connect Electric Imp with thethings.iO with the official library!

The main part of the Electric Imp platform are the Imps. The Imps are these tiny modules (some with SD card size if they are developers edition) with CPU, memory and WiFi plugged with electronics through a shield and the GPIOs for sensors and actuators.

To blink up the imps and connect them to the Internet, is needed to BlinkUp them with a patented system that flashes the Electric Imps through the mobile device display. That means, that the WiFi SSID and password is transmitted through blinks.

These imps are connected to the Electric Imp cloud through the WiFi, and every one has an agent running on the cloud that attends the events that affect the device.

Electric Imp SD card developer edition

Electric Imp SD card developer edition

The Web IDE from Electric Imp is simple but it works effectively. The console and the agents are running very well (usually). During next days we are going to publish theThings.IO Electric Imp libraries and code examples.

Sign up at thethings.iO and eel free to send us comments and feedback and even topics for the next IoTFriday

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Learn Arduino in 5 minutes #IoTFriday

Welcome to another video of IoTFriday here at thethings.iO. Today we plan to give you a quick overview about Arduino.

 

What is Arduino

Arduino was born in Italy in 2005 by a group from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII) who wanted a board for its design students to use to build interactive projects during their thesis at the institute.

Arduino Uno - R3

Arduino Uno – R3

Arduino is open hardware and open source. The combination of both plus the simplicity of the product, created an entire ecosystem around Arduino with multiple shields, libraries and add-ons that everyone could build from their house or lab.

Arduino library at thethings.iO

At thethings.iO we published the Arduino library for thethings.iO and we made several examples about how to connect Arduino with thethings.iO using HTTP and MQTT. Some of these examples are built with Arduino Uno and Ethernet shield, WiFi shield (ESP8266, C3300 and Yun) and GPRS (Arduino GSM) in our github account.

Please send us any comments or feedback if you connect Arduino Uno or Arduino Yún at thethings.iO and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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Learn Intel Edison In 5 Minutes #IoTFriday

Welcome to the new edition of IoTFriday at theThings.IO. Today we want to show you how to start a project with the new platform made by Intel, the Intel Edison, in just 5 minutes.

A new DIY platform of Internet of Things is on the block! After being announced at the last CES 2013 with a lot of high expectations, Intel Edison has finally arrived! We are happy to say that the final result lived up to these expectations. With the Intel Edison, Intel is pushing their new processor, Intel Atom, to focus on the Internet of Things with a very small energy consumption.

Read more

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theThings.IO team is going to the Web Summit 2014

Web Summit 2014 is almost here and thethings.IO team will be in going to Dublin Ireland to present some of our companies awesome capabilities!

Web Summit 2014

Web Summit 2014

We plan on bringing a few surprises to the Web Summit such as our real-time platform demo, the backend website and also the notorious connected boxing glove.

 

We are looking for the strongest man/woman of the Internet of Things.

 Our infamous connected boxing glove will be in attendance in Dublin so come on by and give it your best shot. We will have categories for both men and women.

Make sure to visit our booth on Tuesday November 4th at HRD123 (Summit Machine) to take part in the challenge, and who knows maybe even you can win some of the super cool prizes we are bringing with us.

 

Our Calendar at Web Summit

On Monday we will visit Wayra Ireland, being a part of Wayra Barcelona has let us connect with a lot of interesting startups and we would like continue making new connections all over the world.

On Tuesday the contest for strongest IoT man/woman of the WebSummit 2014 and then at 3:45 p.m. Marc will take part in the panel session on “Legal issues of the Internet of Things, wearable technologies, eHealth”.

On Wednesday and Thursday we will be visiting the Summit Machine and look forward to meeting some awesome people who are speaking there.

How To Fund Your Internet of Things Project

Welcome to the new edition of IoTFriday at thethings.iO. Today we will be discussing how to fund your Internet of Things project.

We have come across multiple startups and companies who have innovative ideas and prototypes but they don’t know how to get funding to produce their things and enter the market successfully. Usually, they are restrained until they get to the point where they have a few prototypes but are unable to receive funding therefore they are unable to produce anything. Today we want to cover some ideas about how to fund your Internet of Things project.

The Internet of Things business cycle

At thethings.iO we work using our own lean approach. This IoT business cycle is an approximation of how we think people build products.

IoT business cycle

Idea: Teams want to solve daily life problems; they have an idea about how to solve that problem with a networked object.

Prototype: Teams should then prototype the idea of the solution through design and electronics. From there, they should refine the idea as needed by user tests and iterations.

Promotion: Now it’s time to market to the proper target. It’s important to understand what is the niche of people who are more apt to buy your product and see it as useful. Today, it’s becoming easier to fund hardware and software products through new funding instruments such as crowd funding platforms.

Sell: If you are using crowd funding campaigns or pre-selling on a website, you are already in the selling process.

Manufacturing: With the proper funding, it would then be time to decide where to produce the final product. Before this point, you may already know where you can produce this product, the cost of producing it, and delivery timing, as well as several other small details. However, it is important to remember that everything can change so being familiar with these small details is extremely important for the future of the product. Lastly in this manufacturing process, you will need to create a team in the country of the manufacturing strictly devoted to testing and tuning the last details of the product.

Distribution: As the final step, you will need to send your product to your first clients and wait for feedback. Then, you should take into account things like stocks, logistics, etc.

Although creating hardware can be complicated, it is very doable.

Some examples of IoT Crowd Funded Projects

1. Smart Citizen Kit Project

Smart Citizen Kit was provided with two important things through a crowd funding campaign: cash to produce the first prototypes in China and enough market traction to attain people’s interest on the product.

2. SmartThings project

Unlike the Smart Citizen Kit Project, SmartThings received funding from investors before attending their Kickstarter campaign. They used their crowd funding campaign as a marketing campaign to get traction which insured them that there were early adopters who were very interested in their product.

They get funded by investors before going to their Kickstarter campaign. They used their crowdfunding campaign as a marketing campaign to get traction and proof that people and early adopters were really interested on their product.

 

Advice From Thethings

If you are searching for funding for your startup, there are several accelerators and incubators available such as Highway1Lemnos Labs or Startupbootcamp IoT, among others, that can help Internet of Things startups to get their seed funding to set up the first prototypes and help define the target market strategy.

Investments from venture capitals and angels can make things a bit complicated for the Internet of Things and hardware companies. If investors don’t see a direct value and future revenue stream from the hardware, it’s difficult to get funded.

At thethings.iO, we help hardware companies connect their things to the Internet for a variable cost. With this pricing, our vision and main goal is to encourage companies to focus on their product development while we take care of the underlying cloud platform of their solution.

If you are looking for extra information on how thethings.iO can help your product, feel free to contact us at any time!

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