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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.

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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 Highway1, Lemnos 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!

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Your data is your data

Jan Chipchase wrote a post where he talked about how some of his Internet-connected devices made him feel guilty when he wasn’t using them anymore. The purpose of this post was triggered by an email from Twine telling him that he wasn’t using his Twine enough.

This type of email is one demonstration of the new source of data generated by the Internet of Things. Most companies are becoming interested in the amount of usage of your device. They want to know where you use your things, when, why, what you are doing when you are using this thing, how many times, and what things you use together.

Canon EOS 500D (Flickr by sindykids)

Canon EOS 500D (Flickr by sindykids)

These companies want to gain an understanding on how we use our devices and therefore will try to market us better from that understanding. For example, imagine that you have a Cannon EOS 500D, a basic camera, but imagine that Cannon could know that you have a normal zoom lent and you have been taking several photos with zoom. With the Internet of Things, this is possible and advertisement will be more focused on what you do and how you do it. Thus, privacy will be more and more complicated with Internet-connected objects around.

At thethings.IO we believe that data made from users is user’s data. Therefore, users have the right to own their own data and give access to this data to third parties which will receive ads and coupons.

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