ioBridge – Internet of Things

CheerLights: Connecting Lights Together to Bring Us Closer

Hans Scharler — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:17:51 +0000

It’s that time of year… holiday time and family time. I was inspired this time to create a project that brings us a little closer. Lights are a big part of the holidays and with CheerLights you can connect your lights to other lights via Twitter with a little help by ThingSpeak Apps.

Since the project release, there has been much activity. A part from CheerLights being discussed on blogs like MAKE and Lifehacker, the community has created some interesting bits of tech that extend the project further than lights. So if you don’t have a way to connect your lights together with CheerLights, you can connect your mobile phone, browser, and web sites together by subscribing to the CheerLights feed. Right now you can check the latest CheerLights color with an Android App created by @ChrisLeitner. Another really neat thing is a browser plugin for Chrome designed by Josh Crumley. So, in the top corner of your web browser you can see the latest color in an unassuming way. It’s a little reminder that we are connected.

To join CheerLights, all you have to do is build something that subscribed to the CheerLights ThingSpeak Channel or access the data using JSON and XML. You can also use the apps, browser plugins, or web widgets to see the colors. Visit the CheerLights website hosted on Tumblr for details on making a controller with Arduino, ioBridge, or Digi’s ConnectPort.

To control CheerLights, just send a Tweet to @CheerLights and mention a color.

Just think when you send this Tweet that you are updating 1000’s of lights, apps, browsers, and widgets all at the same time.

Spread some cheer…

[via MAKE / Lifehacker / CBC / ioBridge Projects]

Visit to Hack Pittsburgh Maker Space

Hans Scharler — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:40:24 +0000

There’s a lot of activity in Pittsburgh these days. The new Bat Man movie is being filmed and HackPittsburgh is busy making amazing projects. And to top it off, HackPGH has invited ioBridge back to demo our latest gizmos and talk about our open source initiatives such as ThingSpeak. Everyone is invited to the demo at HackPittsburgh, so invite a friend. Power to those who solder!

ioBridge Demo Night

Friday, August 19 @ 7pm

HackPittsburgh Workshop [Google Map]

1936 5th Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

You Can Learn from Sensor Data

Hans Scharler — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 04:14:23 +0000

Something stuck me today. You can learn from your sensor data. Why go to all of the trouble of logging data without ever taking a look at it and make adjustments? For example, knowing your energy use only helps if you can lower your power use. This is why most power monitoring apps grow stale. In some cases there is little you can do about your power use or you’re not given the tools to make an impact. Our goal with ThingSpeak is to make it super easy to connect things, collect data, share data, and make sense of it all. We wanted to re-confirm our commitment to you. We were spurred on by a recent Tweet from @WaterSim.

[Elad Salomons] of OptiWater noticed that his house water pressure was 9 bars and this set him on a collision course with the Internet of Things. In his research he discovered ioBridge and ThingSpeak. He was able to connect sensors to the web, visualize the data, and come up with a few ah-ha’s in the process.

Elad is enjoying the process so much that he wanted to share the learning experience with you. He has created a contest based on some sensor data he has collected. You can look at the data and download historical data over at his Water Simulation blog to see if you can explain the correlations. You have until June 30, 2011 to figure it out. Visit Elad’s blog for more information or look him up on Twitter. $100 to learn something? That’s awesome!

[via Water Simulation / ioBridge]

Wireless Sensors with XBee, Netduino, and ioBridge

Hans Scharler — Wed, 11 May 2011 14:50:52 +0000

[outlet] has created a project that has it all – Netduino! ioBridge! XBee! ThingSpeak! He wanted to use the ioBridge IO-204 as a serial gateway for XBee (ZigBee) wireless sensors connected to ThingSpeak. The XBee radios are attached to a pair of Netduinos that send the data serial data via the IO-204 to the ioBridge Serial Web Services API. At this point, ioBridge relays the data to ThingSpeak, but could send the data to any website.

Outlet has created a detailed Instructables to guide you on how he created the project. This project is at prototype level, but we could see how this could be packaged into an efficient setup and used for many applications that require wireless sensors and remote monitoring and reporting. This is on the same lines as the ioBridge Tide Alerts product used by many marinas to measure and alert tide levels in real-time.

Integration with ioBridge Dashboard Applications

Hans Scharler — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 05:57:35 +0000

ioBridge just added a new feature that allows you to add custom apps and widgets to the ioBridge Dashboard application. This means you can aggregate data from many sources and one of the examples is embedding a ThingSpeak chart. You can also embed ThingSpeak Plugins and external video and truly have a custom dashboard. The new HTML App allows for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create web service mashups without having to run another web server to build applications. SSL is included in both ioBridge and ThingSpeak applications, so everything is secure and ready to go out of the box.

[via ioBridge News and Projects]