Connected product platforms. via Bruce.

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.

Doc here.

Create your own internet of things device with the BERG Cloud dev kit.  Currently in a private alpha testing, but will soon be available in a public beta.

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.

Tutorial: Internet of Things Printer for Raspberry Pi @ The Adafruit Learning System.

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…

Learn more!

Internet of Things, Quantified Self and Smart Cities in the context… via Bruce.

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. …

The Ultimate Comparison of IOT Development Boards @ Open Electronics via DP.

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.

Freescale’s Insanely Tiny ARM Chip Will Put the Internet of Things Inside Your Body.

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.

Budweiser Embraces the Internet of Things With In-Home Automatic Hockey Goal Light @ Wired.com.

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.

For more details, see the electric imp hardware page.

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!

PLEASE NOTE: The April board is not included!

In stock and shipping!

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.

Read more.

How to catch illegal logging in the Amazon? Make the trunk call – Mobile phones fitted to trees in an attempt to tackle illegal logging and deforestation…

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.

Tethercell lets you control mostly anything with Bluetooth (hands-on) @ The Verge.

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.

Have you built one of our lovely IoT printers? try out this snowflake maker! Via Wired Design.

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.

Read more.

Atmel Wi-Fi buy aimed at Internet of Things via Freaklabs.

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).

One cloud to rule them all.

From his BitBucket.org project description:

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.

Read more.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

Want a FREE RASPBERRY PI? All orders over $350 get a FREE Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM!

Hey Ladyada! Ironman is using a little printer or an Adafruit Internet of Things printer! Check it out!

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.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8 heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

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 Shield or 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)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!

Springboard via Techcrunch.

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.

Cosm :: blog: Introducing CosmJS – Cosm Javascript Library.

We are happy to announce a new library to ease the development of Cosm-powered applications built by Pete Correia. CosmJS is a lightweight but powerful Javascript library, still in its first iteration but nonetheless packing some great features that we know will make people happy. Here we’re going to show you some of its features which should help you get started using it for your website or application.

The Features
We set out to build a library that would cover our most popular API methods but also had some helper methods, becoming useful for both simple demos and complex applications.

Here’s what you get:
• All API methods for Feeds, Datastreams & Datapoints
• Socket Server support (realtime updates!)
• jQuery plugin
• ~ 2kb gzipped (~ 6kb minified)
• CDN hosted

Manifesto for a DIY Internet of Things (PDF) via Nick.

This paper presents a manifesto directed at developers and designers of internet-of-things creation platforms. Currently, most existing creation platforms are tailored to specific types of end-users, mostly people with a substantial background in or affinity with technology. The thirteen items presented in the manifesto however, esulted from several user studies including non-technical users, and highlight aspects that should be taken into account in order to open up internet-of-things reation to a wider audience. To reach out and involve more people in internet-of-things creation, a relation is made to the social phenomenon of doit-yourself, which provides valuable insights into how society can be encouraged to get involved in creation activities. Most importantly, the manifesto aims at providing a framework for do-it-yourself systems enabling non-technical users to create internet-of-things applications.

HeaterMeter v4.0 for RaspberyPi / Standalone…

HeaterMeter for RaspberryPi joins an Arduino / AVR ATmega328 microcontroller with OpenWrt running on a RaspberryPi $35 wonder-computer for the purpose of providing oven-like control of a charcoal BBQ grill via web interface. The microcontroller controls a fan which limits airflow to the pit, displays the current status on a character LCD, and passes the data on to the RaspberyPi which streams real-time updates to connected web browsers. The website also works on mobile browsers running Android or iOS, allowing users to unchain themselves from their grills and partake in many life-enriching activities such as

• Going to the grocery store to buy more beer
• Going to a bar to drink more beer
• Not get off the couch, where your beer is
• Possibly other non-beer related hobbies

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

Want a FREE RASPBERRY PI? All orders over $350 get a FREE Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM!

An MIT project by Melissa Chow, Andy Payne and Phil Seaton– Syuzi @ Fashioning Technology writes:

An inflatable version of Cute Circuit’s Hug Shirt, Like-A-Hug distinguishes itself from its predecessor by linking the wearable device to Facebook. When a friend “likes” a photo, video or status update, the vest inflates in giving the wearer a virtual hug.

Hugs can also be sent back by squeezing and deflating the vest.

Raspberry Pi and Cosm by MrMobileWill -

Over a month ago I decided to give Cosm.com a try instead of using my own MySQL database and graphing in Python. Since this was awhile ago I don’t remember everything I did to get it working but I will post the code and libraries I am using that work.

Here is a simple library to making sending to Cosm easy.

http://www.netfluvia.org/layer8/?p=175

Here is the full code I am using to log the PIR sensor to Cosm, after the jump.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi.

Arduino Cosm library via Dangerous Prototypes.

What’s the Arduino Cosm library? It’s the latest version of the library used to communicate with Cosm, an Internet of Things service now known as Pachube. “Cosm is the platform, API and community where devices, information, developers, apps and commercial applications come together to bring connected products and ideas to life.”

You can find the latest version of the Arduino library for use with Cosm on GitHub. The library requires the HTTP Client library also available from GitHub.

Internet of Things and Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is becoming one of the largest funding platforms in the world and Makers and hardware manufacturers are continuing to see the site as a quick way to test their product concept on the market, cover bulk upfront supplier costs, and bring their connected products to life. 

Twine, the sensor block system developed by Supermechanical was the first web enabled product to be a breakout hit on the site by raising over half a million dollars in early January, and recently the Pebble watch blew through Kickstarter’s old funding records by raising more than $10 million during its month-long campaign.

…we take a look at some of the successful (and a few not so successful) Internet of Things related projects that are driving this trend and where they currently stand in their development process.

Nice list!

Err, yuck … radio-controlled cockroaches …. and yet, I can’t pull my cringing eyes away.  Classified as “internet of things”.  Just not the things you expected.

thefloe1/Raspi-Thermal-Printer. Tobias writes -

Today I finished writing the first part of my current project which involves connecting your Thermal Printer to a Raspberry Pi. For this I have written a Qt Class for communicating with the raspberry pi. I thought as you offer both items for sale your customers may like my class (which was inspired by your arduino class).

My next step (almost done!) is to write a Qt app (based on QT WebKit Browser) that can make snapshots of web pages, save them as a image and print them on the printer. With that it is possible to fetch news, images and almost everything and have it printed!

Hope you like my idea and maybe you like to write some lines about it on your blog. I will try to write some documentations and publish it on my webpage (tobiscorner.floery.net) ones I find the time.

I already created a github repository to share my code:
https://github.com/thefloe1/Raspi-Thermal-Printer

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi.

ThermalPrinter library- OpenProcessing. Bruno writes -

This is a library to facilitate printing on the thermal printer sold from Adafruit. It supports printing text, barcodes, and images. Almost all functions are documented except the ones used for converting color or grayscale images to black and white. The function “printImageWithEffect()” converts the supplied image to grayscale, resizes it to one third of the printer resolution, calculates for each pixel the amount of gray and transforms it to a 3×3 grid of pixels which has some pixels black and some white effectively making it look more or less black. Enjoy!

More…

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.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8 heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

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 Shield or 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)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!

Brendan Dawes made this Happiness Machine for The London Design Festival:

The Happiness Machine is an Internet connected printer that prints random happy thoughts by random people from across the web; press the big black button and the Happiness Machine prints a thought from someone who mentioned the word happy.

Though The Happiness Machine uses content from We Feel Fine, the printer is completely agnostic to the data it prints; the logic is all done on the server so I can easily change what type of data comes back. It could easily be train times, news headlines or your day’s appointments – the printer doesn’t care – it’s dumb. It just prints what comes back.

More photos on Brendan’s Flickr.

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.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8 heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

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 Shield or 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)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!

After playing around with the Emic 2 text to speech module, I decided to try having it read tweets. The gutenbird sketch from the Internet of Things Printer served as a good starting point as it already had the ability to parse the JSON feed from Twitter and output the content via a serial port.

For this project I used:

• Emic 2 TTS Module
• Arduino Ethernet

Connecting the Emic 2 to the Arduino is very straightforward, requiring only four wires:

While working with the Emic 2, I wrote a small wrapper class to handle the various commands. This is used at the beginning of the sketch to configure the voice parameters and later on to speak the text:

emic2TtsModule.init();
emic2TtsModule.setVolume(5);
emic2TtsModule.setWordsPerMinute(120);
emic2TtsModule.setVoice(BeautifulBetty);
…
emic2TtsModule.say(fromUser);
emic2TtsModule.say(F(" tweeted "));
emic2TtsModule.say(msgText);

The Social Chatter sketch diverges a bit from the original gutenbird sketch by explicitly expanding certain characters to words to control how the Emic vocalizes them. For example, the following code causes the # sign to be spoken as “hash” instead of “number sign”:

if (c == '#') {
len = writeStringIfPossible(len, maxLen, dest, " hash ");
}

During development, I noticed that having the Emic 2 read URLs was not particularly helpful. There is a simple state machine to detect links and replace them with the work “link” in the spoken output:

if (state == STATE_NORMAL) {
if (c == 'h') {
state = STATE_LINK_H;
…
}
} else if (state == STATE_LINK_H) {
if (c == 't') {
state = STATE_LINK_HT;
} else {
state = STATE_LINK_FALSE_POSITIVE;
}
…
}

The full source is available on GitHub. How will you use the Emic 2 to give a voice to the Internet of Things?

HOW TO – Send Raspberry Pi Data to COSM @ The Adafruit Learning System.

The combination of connecting a Raspberry Pi to COSM makes creating a internet of things much easier than it has been in the past. The Pi with it’s easy access to ethernet / WiFi and COSM’s drop dead simple usability will graph all sensor data you send to it. This tutorial explains how to connect a analog temperature sensor to the Pi and use a small python script to upload that data for storage and graphing on COSM.

Learn more.

Feel, Act, Make sense • Sen.se. An open Cosm/Pachube/ThingSpeak

At Sen.se, we believe there is no such thing as the Internet of Things.

We rather believe in an Internet of Everything where Humans, Nature, Machines, Objects, Environments, Information, Physical and Virtual spaces all mix up, talk, intertwine, interact, enrich and empower each other in all sorts of ways. This is what we are building and we think that we are not alone.

This is why we have created Open.Sen.se an open platform for all those who want to imagine, prototype and test new Devices, Installations, Scenarios, Applications for this globally interconnected and immersive world. Designers, developers, tinkerers, students, hobbyists, R&D departments, artists, self quantifiers, dataviz maniacs, whatever your skills are, we tried to make Open.Sen.se easy to use and yet powerful for you. Needless to say Open.Sen.se is free.

It’s in beta but you can sign up for an invitation.

Internet of Things (PDF) from Cisco.

The Internet of Things (IoT), sometimes referred to as the Internet of Objects, will change everything—including ourselves. This may seem like a bold statement, but consider the impact the Internet already has had on education, communication, business, science, government, and humanity. Clearly, the Internet is one of the most important and powerful creations in all of human history.

Now consider that IoT represents the next evolution of the Internet, taking a huge leap in its ability to gather, analyze, and distribute data that we can turn into information, knowledge,

and, ultimately, wisdom. In this context, IoT becomes immensely important.

Already, IoT projects are under way that promise to close the gap between poor and rich, improve distribution of the world’s resources to those who need them most, and help us understand our planet so we can be more proactive and less reactive. Even so, several barriers exist that threaten to slow IoT development, including the transition to IPv6, having a

common set of standards, and developing energy sources for millions—even billions—of minute sensors.

However, as businesses, governments, standards bodies, and academia work together to solve these challenges, IoT will continue to progress. The goal of this paper, therefore, is to

educate you in plain and simple terms so you can be well versed in IoT and understand its potential to change everything we know to be true today.

Good overview and report, just needs more Nimbus.

Twitter Controlled Pet Feeder. amandaghassaei writes -

A great project for busy pet owners.  This Twitter-Controlled pet feeder automatically dispenses food in response to activity on your Twitter account.  The project is controlled by an Arduino and uses the Arduino Ethernet shield to receive data from Twitter.  I hacked this automatic Pet Feeder from Amazon to build this project, but you could easily modify your own motorized feeder to work.

Updated tutorial: Internet of Things Printer @ Adafruit Learning System.

In the future, everything will be connected to the internet. And all restaurants will be Taco Bell! The “Internet of Things” refers to the idea of pervasive, ambient connections between physical objects and the virtual world. If every modest sensor or output device could share information via the internet, what new paradigms will arise? Our little printer is one such experiment. What value can be culled from the internet without a browser interface, or even a computer screen for that matter?

Learn more!

We have a series of “Internet of Things” projects and products (Tweet-a-watt, IoT printer, IoT camera, etc) – so we wanted to have a cute little friendly icon. Here’s what we came up with, *but* the cloud entity did not have a name so, we asked all of you here and on Google+ to post up suggestions, and the winner is… Nimbus! Thank you Anthony Clay for the suggestion!

We’re releasing Nimbus under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Here is a zip file with the artwork in a variety of formats, feel free to use Nimbus for your #IoT projects!

We have a series of “Internet of Things” projects and products (Tweet-a-watt, IoT printer, IoT camera, etc) – so we wanted to have a cute little friendly icon. Here’s what we came up with, the cloud entity does not have a name. Feel free to suggest one in the comments here or over on Google+

BERG Little Printer Hackday.

Yesterday BERG had a ‘practice’ hackday for Little Printer, to test out an early version of their API and to try running a hackday. 30 odd people spent 6 hours seeing what they could do with small bits of thermal paper.

Check out the project list, lots of fun examples and ideas!

If you can’t wait for the BERG to come out, you can start using, making and hacking your own open-source IoT print today

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.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8 heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

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 Shield or 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)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!

luopio/py-thermal-printer. Lauri writes -

Hi all, I’ve released a small library to control the thermal printer sold by Adafruit and others (http://www.adafruit.com/products/597). It can print text and do bitmap graphics. Just fire up the printer, connect to UART2 and run “python printer.py”. https://github.com/luopio/py-thermal-printer/

Opent IoT Assembly and document… via Bruce.

We, the undersigned, believe that the class of technologies currently described as the “Internet of Things” has genuine potential to deliver value, meaning, insight, and fun. Its definition, however, is not self-explanatory, nor do we believe these benefits are by any means guaranteed. There are areas that need to be explored, understood and considered carefully in order to secure the potential we see…

“Open Internet of Things Definition” is taking shape.

IFTTT Blog – The New IFTTT.

Today marks our first foray into the physical world. Now IFTTT works with Belkin’s WeMo devices! WeMo is a family of simple, ingenious products that allow you to control home electronics from anywhere. Turn them on or off, trigger them with motion, even put them on a schedule. You’ll find two new exciting Channels – The WeMo Switchand the WeMo Motion – on our Channels page. 

The tasks/channels now have some physical hardware that will work with them too.

Andy writes in the forums:

Here is a Tweeting Dog Dish with ThingSpeak

An Arduino, a Ethernet Shield, Flow Meter, the Ethernet Bridge is just because no wired connection was close. Auto Dog Water Dish was bought online and a few fittings were needed to convert my 1 inch flow meter to and from standard hose connectors.

Pin 2 is used to receive pulses from Flow Meter. Note that the meter is not exactly the same as on AdaFruit, only the pulse factor is different. Adjust ratio in the code as needed. Ground and 5 volts pins are used to power the meter. The picture also shows a very short distance connection. Eventually I replaced that short wire with a longer wire relocating the electronics inside and out of the elements.

The Ethernet DHCP client connection, combined with Limor’s Flow Meter example and the ThingSpeak code makes this a very easy project. Only a few lines is original code. Tweeting is done using a react app within the ThingSpeak site. The project took only a couple hours.

My only problem with the project is that my dogs still prefer to drink from the pool.

He also showed his project last Saturday on our Show and Tell! The video above will start playing at Andy’s turn.

You might be asking “Just how many more physical things can be made to respond to tweets?” The answer is “at least one more.”

Tasty Tweets via Cool Hunting

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The IoT Printer for Esquire Korea– fun! Thanks to Yoonie Oh for the writeup.

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.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8 heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

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 Shield or 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)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!

Scott Maysons IoT printer sports a rad 3D printed case. Nice!

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.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8 heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

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 Shield or 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)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!

Alexandre Girard ‏writes on Twitter:

Here is my entry for @github data challenge “Daily Repo Newspaper” with @adafruit thermoprinter

Cool!

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 we’ve written will connect to Twitter’s 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 you’ve 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 you’ll want to have a little experience with a soldering iron. You’ll also need a small flathead screwdriver to assemble the box. It’s also best if you’ve had a little Arduino experience so you can feel comfortable downloading the IDE and uploading our example sketch.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8″ heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

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 Shield or an Arduino UNO Ethernet. If you’re 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)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!

Ember, the company known for their ZigBee system-on-chip hardware, founded by Ethernet pioneer Bob Metcalfe, will be purchased by Silicon Labs for 72 million USD. Silicon Labs, a prominent mixed-signal manufacturer, hopes to gain traction in the low-power Internet-of-Things market. More from GigaOm:

Ember has raised $81 million over its lifetime, so the $72 million price tag isn’t exactly a win. Investors in Ember have included Polaris Venture Partners, GrandBanks Capital, RRE Ventures, Vulcan Capital, DFJ ePlanet Ventures, DFJ New England, WestLB Mellon Asset Management (formerly West AM), ChevronTexaco Technology Ventures, Hitachi Corporation, Stata Venture Partners and MIT.

Silicon Labs says the acquisition will put it in a good place for the increasing “demand for low-power, small-footprint wireless technology” “as more and more IP-enabled end points are being connected to the Internet of Things.” The acquisition is expected to contribute between $10 million to $12 million to Silicon Lab’s revenue in the second half of 2012, and will be accretive on a non-GAAP basis in 2013. Ember says it has shipped 25 million units.

I’ve been hearing about a potential acquisition of Ember for months. The company has played an important role in the development of ZigBee and the Internet of Things. But as pioneers in a sector, it can be difficult to build a business off of creating building blocks for an ecosystem.

[via twitter]

Check out this awesome Kickstarter project by the same guys that worked with Ladyada to develop the Drawdio.  Take a MaKey MaKey controller, connect up some alligator clips to just about anything conductive, and interact with your computer and the internet.

Alligator Clip two objects to the MaKey MaKey board. For example, you and an apple.

When you touch the apple, you make a connection, and MaKey MaKey sends the computer a keyboard message. The computer just thinks MaKey MaKey is a regular keyboard (or mouse). Therefore it works with all programs and webpages, because all programs and webpages take keyboard and mouse input.

Make + Key = MaKey MaKey!

Learn more, and back the MaKey MaKey here.

Pachube is now Cosm!.

Today is a significant one in our history, because today is the day that Pachube grows up. You might have noticed already: Pachube is now Cosm!

We haven’t exactly been silent over the last few months since being acquired by LogMeIn but we also haven’t spoken much about the biggest task that’s been occupying us almost round the clock: building out and relaunching the service under a new (pronounceable! spellable!! memorable!!!) name, with a completely new (cleaner! easier!! functional!!!) design, that brings with it a whole host of features and attributes that help you build Internet of Things products, applications and services more quickly, scalably and collaboratively. Pachube.com has evolved into Cosm.com. And we mean business.

Derek automated his dorm room to the extreme! Watch the overview video and then check out his site for the complete details. Via Geekologie.

Connecting Students with the Environment Using Open Source Hardware @ Next Level Labs. Brendan writes -

Although miles of suburban sprawl surrounded us, complex environmental processes were constantly occurring all around us. They were just a little difficult to see. I decided to shift the focus of the course from simply “What is the environment?” to, “How do we study our environment?” Using parts primarily from Adafruit Industries, I made an environmental sensor. Temperature, humidity, light level, and ozone concentration data were collected using the DHT22 sensor, a photo cell, and Futurlec’s MQ131 gas sensor. A Boarduino and Xbee got our sensors talking to our school server and a 6V solar panel powered the beast. Everything fit nicely into an Otterbox and some Sugru provided stability and weatherproofing.

I’m working on a project which involves the thermal printer, but couldn’t run the LCD assistant since I’m on Linux — the Ruby code which is included with the lib is a fine backup, but since I also didn’t have Ruby installed, I decided to do a quick Byte-array tool in PHP. I think it may come handy for others as well.

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 we’ve written will connect to Twitter’s 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 you’ve 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 you’ll want to have a little experience with a soldering iron. You’ll also need a small flathead screwdriver to assemble the box. It’s also best if you’ve had a little Arduino experience so you can feel comfortable downloading the IDE and uploading our example sketch.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8″ heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

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 Shield or an Arduino UNO Ethernet. If you’re 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)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!