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
Welcome to the first edition of thethings.iO #IoTFriday whiteboard video.
Today we want to talk to you about how to connect things to the Internet.
Hello thethings.iO friends! This is a new edition of the #IoTFriday!
Today i’m going to talk about how to connect things to the Internet with my new Koubachi, a sensor plant that help me to water my plants.
Internet of Things is today a trendy topic. Introduced at 1999 by Kevin Ashton englobes a bigger picture of how to connect anything to the Internet.
The tools that we have today enables anyone to connect cheap and easy to programme hardware inside everyday objects. This new connectivity allows designers, programmers and engineers build different uses for those objects for different industrial or consumer applications.
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Below is the whiteboard in which Marc explained how to connect things to the Internet.
Whiteboard of how to connect things to the Internet #iotFriday
We hope you like it and see you at next week’s #IoTFriday. Be sure to use thethings.iO to connect anything to the Internet.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!
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.
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
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.
