NFC Stands for Nobody F*** Cares, does it?
I had plans on writing a post about NFC & (home) automation a long while ago but the post NFC stands for Nobody F*** Cares definitely gave me the spark I needed to sit down and start writing.
Tagged: automation
The Ard-Vark project
Folks, this is a guest post from Kerwin Lumpkins who is working on a cool project he put on Kickstarter (there’s a video there too), check it out!! He has built a prototype and would like to have it funded to produce more of these. As we’re always happy to share cool projects made by others as well, here you go 🙂 The Ard-Vark is a basic electronics box that has wifi built in to allow easy remote control through a mobile app, and has the following features: Arduino compatible (can use the Arduino IDE as is, based on Leonardo...
ARM to lead the IoT?
It’s very exciting for us to see all the noise (& reposts) or the ARM Cortex-M0+ processor (aka. the “flycatcher”) that was unveiled yesterday. Branded as the world’s most energy-efficient microprocessor it is optimized to deliver high performance (with a 32 bits architecture!) for a very low power consumption, which makes it the ideal chip for intelligent sensors and smart control systems in a broad range of applications. In other words, the ideal chip to power the Web of Things.
Koubachi plant sensor is finally available!!
I know we covered them not so long ago, but our friends from Koubachi finally released their first product a few days back, it’s live finally and available! They have even already covered on Techcrunch and Gizmondo! Great job guys! For 148$, give your plant a voice and get one of these: The design of that WiFi dongle is pretty gorgeous and sleek (I wouldn’t dare saying Apple-y!) Wondering if they already have an API and we hack these and do something totally unexpected with it? Hmmm. What would you use these toys for, any ideas?
HomeWeb and Android at Home – challenges?
As Google recently announced their plans to move in the home automation world with Android at home (and we are still wondering why they waited so long to do it), I thought I would share my view on that. I do believe there are many opportunities ahead for the “home operating system” domain. The combination of cheap, yet powerful networked digital appliances in the house (NAS, networked media players, WiFi routers, etc) along with an extensible application framework, and a market place for buying new applications (or installing drivers, etc) – will be a killer combo for home automation to...
LIFT11 – talk transcript
The transcript of my talk at LIFT this afternoon. Thought it would be a good intro to WoT (although very high level), so I shared it here. Thoughts & feedback more than welcome! Yeah, it’s a lot of text, and it’s ugly to read on a blog, so I also made a pretty PDF you can print or read later.
COAP-01 draft out!
After the last draft released in december, the COAP folks just released a few days ago a more refined version of the COAP draft, with additional thoughts on coap-http mapping, RESTful verbs for constrained environments, and pub/sub notifications, and more. Abstract This document specifies the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), a specialized RESTful transfer protocol for use with constrained networks and nodes for machine-to-machine applications such as smart energy and building automation. These constrained nodes often have 8-bit microcontrollers with small amounts of ROM and RAM, while networks such as 6LoWPAN often have high packet error rates and a typical throughput...
IP-based Sensor Networks
J.P. Vasseur from Cisco (IETF ROLL co-chair, IPSO tab chair) and Adam Dunkels have written a book on IP-based sensor networks called Interconnecting Smart Objects with IP – The Next Internet. The book covers IP-based sensor networks from the link layer and up, and covers network architecture (IPv6, transport, web services, …), technology (RPL routing, 6lowpan IPv6 802.15.4 adaptation, hardware, software, uIP,…), and applications (smart grid, industrial automation, home automation, smart cities, …). The foreword is written by Vint Cerf. The book will be available in June 2010, but is already available for preorder from amazon. This is great news...
Gateway unleashed!
I’ve presented yesterday in Los Angeles a talk on the gateways I’ve been talking about for months. Okay, actually I didn’t physically present it for logistical reasons, as I’m totally in Europe. But the paper is supposed to be out in the proceedings, so I thought I should share it with you. For now still not much code to play with 🙁 Read the abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks provide unprecedented possibilities for monitoring and interacting with the real-world. Unfortunately, the lack of open and simple standards for ad-hoc collaboration between heterogeneous embedded devices makes it difficult to build large-scale deployments;...
Homecamp recap
As mentioned in some previous post, I attended a couple of weeks ago homecamp in London. The event was awesome and I had good times discussing with the folks over there. I loved the un-conference form as it allows people to show up, set up a demo (like I did ), do a talk (like I did). On the other hand, as it is very chaotic we don’t really know what’s going on and when. I wished to have had the opportunity to discuss more in detail with the people in a more relaxed way, though. Thanks for the organizers...
