Now we’re talkin’. Wow. This is a real service to the internet-of-toys community, though it’s probably omitting a few of the big boys, such as Walmart RFID initiatives, Amazon shipping centers, GE Industrial Internet, IBM urban Smart Things, Cisco whateverness, Google-mapping Android cloudiness and quite likely some under-wraps Internet-of-Stuxnet-Things military projects.
BERG Cloud is the easiest way to prototype and produce connected products for the home or business. Perfectly suited to a one-off prototype, as the backbone of your next Kickstarter project, and finally as the platform to power your product when you go to market, it’s low bandwidth, has low power requirements, and benefits from plug-and-play configuration.
BERG Cloud is best suited for products which communicate directly with the web. For personal smartphone peripherals we recommend Bluetooth 4, and for streaming media we recommend wifi.
All BERG Cloud products are associated with one or more user accounts, and take advantage of the same sharing, control and configuration user experience that we created for Little Printer.
In the future, everything will be connected to the internet. And all restaurants will be Taco Bell! The “Internet of Things” is the idea of pervasive connections between physical objects and the online world. These connected devices don’t just idly sit around waiting for commands or files…they’re active agents that anticipate your needs and can push or pull data from the internet.
Our Internet of Things Printer is a small, internet-connected thermal printer that can have a daily weather forecast ready before you head out in the morning, a puzzle to work on while riding the subway, provide a list of “tweets” relating to your interests…or any other task you can program!
This second version of the printer is built around the Raspberry Pi, a tiny computer that packs a wallop: more processing power, more RAM and the potent Linux operating system. The new kit has an easier time handling graphics and looks super tidy with its wireless networking…
The cutting edge and complete overview of all key cases and examples within the Quantified Self and Internet of Things (IoT) movements across the globe. …
With this post we wanted to compare the latest arrived boards in the world of hobbyists electronics with devices that were already on the market. We highlighted the pros and cons of the most prominent alternatives with the aim of helping our readers to choose the one better fitting with their requirements.
Chipmaker Freescale Semiconductor has created the world’s smallest ARM-powered chip, designed to push the world of connected devices into surprising places.
Announced today, the Kinetis KL02 measures just 1.9 by 2 millimeters. It’s a full microcontroller unit (MCU), meaning the chip sports a processor, RAM, ROM, clock and I/O control unit — everything a body needs to be a basic tiny computer.
The KL02 has 32k of flash memory, 4k of RAM, a 32 bit processor, and peripherals like a 12-bit analog to digital converter and a low-power UART built into the chip. By including these extra parts, device makers can shrink down their designs, resulting in tiny boards in tiny devices.
For some, the Internet of Things made its Super Bowl debut during the advertising blitz, through an offer by Budweiser Canada to come to your home and install a red goal light synced to the scores of your favorite team.
If you’re not a hockey fan, you may not know the red light’s iconic flashing, spinning glow and horn sound that accompany every goal. It’s the sport’s equivalent of a soccer announcer’s “goooooool!” or a football player doing a touchdown dance. It’s a moment of ecstatic release in a game characterized by constant tension in the ebb and flow of plays.
The device is powered by Electric Imp a start-up that makes SD-card-like chips that have Wi-Fi and an embedded processor.
Electric Imp. What is the electric imp? In essence, the Imp provides an easy, integrated way to connect almost any hardware device both to other devices and to internet services. It’s more than just a WiFi card, or even a WiFi module with processing built in – it’s an integrated platform that deals with the drudgery of connectivity, allowing you to concentrate on the application instead of the mechanics.
The Imp itself is very small – 32mm x 24mm x 2.1mm – but packs a lot inside.
For starters, there’s industry standard 802.11b/g/n WiFi, complete with WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption, along with a great antenna.
Next, there’s the processor. A Cortex-M3 core gives great performance combined with low power consumption, allowing the Imp to deal with both maintaining a secure connection to the service and also executing the developer’s code in a stable environment.
Finally, there’s the I/O. Though there are only six pins available for application use, they’re six very capable pins. UARTs, I2C, SPI, analog in and out, PWMs, GPIOs… all selectable under software control.
Developing for the Imp is quite unlike most embedded development. No SDK to install, no JTAG pods, no long download times… you develop your code in a browser-based IDE and can compile and run your code on the Imp – wherever it is in the world – in under a second. The Imp even sends logging back to your browser.
Software that runs on the Imp is written in Squirrel, a C-like language, with extensions to communicate with the hardware interfaces and the service. As the Squirrel code runs on top of the electric imp OS, you get many big system benefits like buffered I/O and crash recovery – plus you can push updates to devices in the field with a few clicks.
Data passes to and from the service over a TLS encrypted interface, and can take many forms including scalars, strings and tuples. An open API on the server allows devices to communicate with other communications networks (email, SMS, twitter, etc), web pages (displaying data and controls), APIs to communicate with other services (RESTful API, TCP pipes) and of course soft nodes, that can perform server-side processing on data that would be inconvenient to do device-side.
This innovative wifi controller has a few things that you’ll want to watch for. Although it is shaped like an SD card it will not work in a device that uses SD cards for storage. It won’t damage the imp or the device, but it wont work at all. Instead, a project that uses the imp is supposed to use an SD socket in a unique configuration with an Atmel ID chip. The SD shape just makes it easy to find matching sockets, the ID chip is so the imp knows ‘where it is’ and what program to download into its memory – so that you can swap in a new imp at any time and it will change its behavior based on the socket. If you’re starting out, we suggest picking up an April breakout board – it takes care of the ID chip, socket and power supply, letting you get on with the project!
See the latest keg monitor data from an “Internet of Beer” project created by Ted Alonso. While not super active at the time I scraped this screenshot, it’s a handy demonstration of a postcard project page with data collection.
The metrics are stored in an attached open source document-oriented database system, MongoDB, available as a Heroku addon. The Heroku application also serves the page which you are currently reading. Every 5 seconds, this page queries the Heroku API to get the temperature for the last 8 hours and pours per day for the last 2 weeks using MongoDB map/reduce functionality to aggregate the data.
Trees in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are being fitted with mobile phones in an attempt to tackle illegal logging and deforestation.
Devices smaller than a pack of cards are being attache d to the trees in protected areas to alert officials once they are cut down and the logs are transported. Location data is sent from sensors once the logs are within 20 miles of a mobile phone network to allow Brazil’s environment agency to stop the sale of illegal timber. The technology, called Invisible Tracck, which is being piloted by Dutch digital security company Gemalto, has a battery life of up to a year and has been designed to withstand the Amazonian climate.
The “internet of things” is great, in theory — the problem is that you need new connected stuff to replace your old unconnected stuff. Tethercell is trying to fix that: it’s basically a plastic sleeve that converts an AAA battery into an AA, grafting on Bluetooth 4.0 support that lets you control the flow of power with a smartphone. It can also send you alerts when you’re low on power, set on-off timers, and so on. In theory, it should work with any of the millions of gadgets out there that run on AA cells.
No two snowflakes are alike, not even these computer-generated versions….
James Adam, the project’s creator, says the site grew out of a last-minute decorating frenzy for the team’s annual mulled wine party. “It only occurred to me the day before the party, as I was tidying up our table of soldering gear, that we really ought to do something with the printers to mark the occasion,” he says, “The idea of printing out ‘artisanal algorithmic snowflakes’ occurred to me late in the evening.”
The project is based on their Printer software, which is designed for a federated network of tiny printers. “It’s all based on creating small webpages which can be sent for printing on any connected printer,” says Adam.
The snowflakes are drawn using HTML5 canvas. Each of the six spokes of the snowflake have five bits that branch out and the properties of each of those are controlled by three random numbers. Once a spoke is generated, it’s repeated by rotating the canvas 60 degrees five times for a total of six spokes. Then, four pairs of hexagons, also controlled by random numbers are added on top. Altogether, you get a snowflake.
Atmel Corp., a vendor of microcontrollers and touch technology, is buying Ozmo Inc., a provider of low-power Wi-Fi for an undisclosed amount of money. Atmel said it will the use the technology that comes with Ozmo to help it address wireless applications and in particular devices targeted at the Internet of Things (IoT).
A Java webapp to control your GPIO ports of the Raspberry Pi using http.
What is raspberry-pi-gpio-web-control?
raspberry-pi-gpio-web-control is a lightweight java based web application to control your GPIO ports of your Raspberry Pi over http. It is based on documentation at elinux.org: RPi Low-level peripherals
It is tested with Winstone Servlet Container, but any other servlet engine will probably do, too.
Features:
Every port can be set as input, output or analog input (requires a simple circuit based on raspberrypi-spy.co.uk: Reading Analogue Sensors).
Output ports can be set conditionally on values of input ports (i.e. darknessSensor1in==1&lamp1out=1, see cron.conf).
You can give each port a custom name to make your client look better.
You can define a default state on output ports.
You can define a blocking time for an output port (so it is not switched to fast in case the user makes a request twice).
You can define a toggle time for an output port (i.e. if you want to turn a port on for a defined period of time, it can be done with a single request).
You can set a simulation mode for testing your client.
Setting multiple ports in one requests are set one after another, but the code is optimized and nothing unnecessary is done in between (it takes about 2-5ms on an idle Raspberry Pi to set all 17 ports, some artificial load (e.g.’find /’ in the background) will slow it down to 10-15ms).
Cronjobs (exact to the second) for output ports are based on quartz-scheduler.org. Output ports can be set conditionally and you have a simple but powerful semaphore mechanism.
You may define your own variables with a prefix VIRTUAL which are persisted in memory (unknown virtual variables default to “0″).
Planned Features
If GPIO ports are used to represent binary output values, blocking single ports is dangerous: Delayed/Queue requests
Automated tests
Custom hooks (pre/post), e.g. for notifications
More status and configuration information requestable via json (disengageable)
Possible Unplaned Features
Bit sequences (especially with AUTO.TOGGLE.TIME) for serial output or to control a servo (probably an SPI interface)
Some kind of PLC (Programmable Logic Controller)
Suggestions are welcome
Project Status
The project has started and I use it by myself mainly for simple output (manually and with cronjobs). If I had to give it a release number, I would say it is a 0.85 release. Bug reports and feature requests are welcome.
Adafruit IoT Printer Project Pack Internet of Things printer. Build an Internet of Things connected mini printer that will do your bidding! This is a fun weekend project that comes with a beautiful laser cut case. Once assembled, the little printer connects to Ethernet to get Internet data for printing onto 2 1/4 wide receipt paper. The example sketch weve written will connect to Twitters search API and retrieve and print tweets according to your requests: you can have it print out tweets from a person, a hashtag, mentioning a word, etc! Once youve gotten that working, you can of course easily adapt our sketch to customize the printer.
The project is not very difficult but does require some light soldering, so youll want to have a little experience with a soldering iron. Youll also need a small flathead screwdriver to assemble the box. Its also best if youve had a little Arduino experience so you can feel comfortable downloading the IDE and uploading our example sketch.
This pack does not contain an Arduino+Arduino Ethernet Shield, Arduino Ethernet or Ethernet cable To complete the project you will need to add either an Arduino + Ethernet Shieldor an Arduino UNO Ethernet. If youre using an Arduino UNO Ethernet you will also need an FTDI friend or FTDI cable to upload the sketch. A plain straight-thru Ethernet cable is also required (any length)
Move over, software: the London and Cambridge, U.K.-based accelerator, Springboard, is launching a dedicated program for hardware startups, focusing on the Internet of Things. The new three-month accelerator bootcamp — called Springboard Internet of Things — is backed by program partners ARM, Unilever, Neul and Raspberry Pi, who will play an active role in supporting Springboard founders and providing senior mentors to participants.
Springboard Internet of Things (“IoT”) is an accelerator program that accepts the ten best teams in any area of IoT technology — from bright idea to Series A funding. Participating founders receive more than $150,000 of free services, seed capital and mentoring from more than 100 industry leaders around the world, in an intensive three-month bootcamp.
Printable catalog (PDF) or (EPUB)
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