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Jam Packed Week at thethings.iO

Last week was an interesting one here in Barcelona.

We started with the Internet of Things Barcelona meetup, which was one of the biggest, with over 85 attendants at the venue. Some of the discussions included Jiri of Claro Partners, Telefonica presenting their Thinking Things, Alicia Asín introducing Libelium and Adam Dunkels showcasing his Thingsquare last novelty (in a live demo). It was also awesome to meet Hugo Fiennes from Electric Imp and hear some of his experiences on the Internet of Things field.

On Tuesday Marc went to the radio, he went to RAC1 to talk about the Internet of Things. Checkout the podcast

On Friday Marc was invited to the IoT tapas organized by Claro Partners. It was one of the best brainstorms related to the Internet of Things we’ve ever attended. We have continued the development of our beta website and look forward on showing it off soon enough.

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

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Interesting Videos on the Internet of Things

Due to the Gigaom #mobilizeconf, we were able to view some mind blowing things regarding the Internet of Things. Here are some of our favorite videos we have seen to date.

The first video is a panel session at the Gigaom Structure Europe 2013 managed by Alexandra Deschamps from the Good Night Lamp with Alicia Asín from Libelium and Michael Simon from Xively.

The second video is a panel from the conference Gigaom Mobilize. Surj Patel from Smart Mocha managed the panel with Michael Rosenblatt from ATOMS express and Hugo Fiennes from electric imp

Both videos are saying that the Internet of Things will be here sooner then we think and that the pioneers of the devices actually will come from everyday people in their basements instead of a massive corporation.

If you find any interesting video of the Internet of Things let us know and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and be sure to check out our #IoTFriday blog!

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Our Experience At The Maker Faire Rome 2013

Entrance of the Maker Faire in Rome

Entrance of the Maker Faire in Rome

We’re proud to say that the Maker Faire Rome was a success! We say this not only because the of quality of the projects showed at the Maker Faire, or  because of the new Arduino (and non-Arduino, such as the Intel Galileo, thanks!) shields presented and the people going to visit the Maker Faire (more than 30.000), but also because we got to meet a lot of interesting people that were interested thethings.iO and the Internet of Things.

Before the presentation at the Maker Faire

Before the presentation at the Maker Faire

Marc’s goal when speaking was to try to give the audience a clear vision of the current situation of the Internet of Things. At the end of the talk, we gave a coupon to Internet of Things developers. There were several questions after the presentation relating to property of data generated by the gadgets.

We had the opportunity to meet Bruce Sterling. author of the book Shaping Things and writer of the Beyond the beyond at WIRED blog.

 

Bruce Sterling with the connected beer of the Oktoberfest of Things

Bruce Sterling with the connected beer of the Oktoberfest of Things

We got to chat with the founders of Arduino, David Cuartielles and Massimo Banzi, about a few of thethings.iO’s projects such as One Seat Away and Oktoberfest of Things, which was shown by Thomas Amberg at the IoT Zurich booth.

We also had the privilege of meeting the Internet of Things Madrid meet up organizers, Sara and César. Their booth consisted of Oblobots,

which are open sourced 3D printed robots’ pieces with a conductive dow that can teach children simple electrical circuits. Children at the Maker Faire were astonished by the Oblobots which were playing and challenging them to make a mega-robot.

Oblobots

Oblobots

A few other interesting groups we had the privilege of meeting were the Cooking Hacks team and Snootlab. The Cooking Hacks team helped us with some questions regarding the next project at the thethings.iO. The Snootlab is a French startup that is building things with technology using Arduino.

We feel very fortunate to have met such amazing and innovative startups, teachers, architects, and makers all who are interested in the future of the Internet of Things. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

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

 

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Maker Faire Rome 2013

We are glad to announce that we will be attending the Maker Faire Rome 2013.

Come check out a 30 minute workshop session we have planned at 2:30 PM in Room G- Archimede and learn how the connect your gadgets to the Internet. We hope to see everyone at the event!

Maker Faire Rome 2013

Maker Faire Rome 2013

Hope to see you at the Maker Faire Rome 2013 where we are going to show the latest news of thethings.iO for developers.

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We Have Been Interviewed by ARA.cat

The newspaper Ara is one of the newest newspapers in Catalonia. Every sunday there is a special magazine focused on new technologies and entrepreneurship. Last week, they interviewed our founder Marc Pous.

theThings.IO at the ARA newspaper

theThings.IO at the ARA newspaper

Translation in English

Marc Pous is a computer engineer and since some years ago he has been involved on the Internet of Things research scenario. That means, how to connect quotidian objects around us to the Internet and how people interact with them.

“The costs to make processors have decreased a lot and today is much easier to integrate computers inside objects: from watches, glasses, bikes or even plants at home”, says Pous, born in Barcelona. “One thing is to manage three or four mobile applications to interact these gadgets, but when we will have 30 or 40 gadgets connected to the Internet it will be much more complicated”, add the entrepreneur.

In June, Pous created the company Next Big Thing Labs SL with the goal to launch the platform thethings.iO, a kind of social network where users will be able to add and manage the information generated by their gadgets in real-time. “For example, if you run, the running application will share the running information with your scale; you also will be able to turn off your lights from your mobile device or see when do you need to water your plants”, says.

The Next Big Thing Labs team is composed by three people. They are looking for 150.000€ as an investment to make a strong development team during the next years. “We want to lead the Internet of Things from Barcelona”, says Pous. The beta version will be available at the end of the year.

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

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One App For Each Gadget? No Way! This Is Not The Internet of Things We Want

When we envision the future of the Internet of Things, we see this scenario that Apple and Google helped to build with their mobile devices and their application market. We see tons of gadgets and objects connected to the Internet each one (or even brand) managed through their mobile application.

Dozens of IoT mobile apps (Photo by: Gonzalo Baeza)

Dozens of IoT mobile apps (Photo by: Gonzalo Baeza)

Philips Hue and LIFX are both household light bulbs and both are compatible with the analogical light bulbs that we have at home. However, both require the user to download separate apps to control their own device, this doesn’t make any sense.

Philips HUE and LIFX

Philips HUE and LIFX

People love to monitor their health by using scales but now with the invention of wearable trackers such as Fitbit or Nike+ people are able to also monitor their physical activity throughout the day. There are scales such as the Withings scale but this is not compatable with the Fitbit or the Nike+. We feel as if technology should make watching our health more convenient, not more difficult.

Our solution

We believe that the users of these millions of gadgets do not want to use dozens of mobile apps to interact with their devices. We propose a central place where they are able to aggregate, manage and interact in real-time with all of the devices.

We want to provide a platform where all of the Internet of Things in our market are interoperable and end users do not need to deal with different mobile apps.

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

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Selected For The Startup Pitch Marathon in Berlin

We have good news! We have been selected among 42 finalists of the 108  startups presented for the pitch marathon in Berlin the July 31.

Pitch Marathon in Berlin

Pitch Marathon in Berlin

We are carefully preparing our new pitch with a demo included to show in Berlin. If you are in Berlin during this time, we can meet up and talk about thethings.iO, the Internet of Things, or the future of technologies.

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