ioBridge Blog » instructables

Make Your Own Snowbird Snow Meter

hans — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:29:12 +0000

If you head over to Instructables, you will find many how-to guides and step-by-step instructions on how you can make things. It’s kind of like recipes for everything. Today I came across another brilliant project from Noel Portugal from the My Web of Things blog. This time Noel builds a snow meter displaying the live snow fall for any ski resort right on your desk before heading out to the slopes.

As my snowboarding trip approaches, I find myself checking Utah Snowbird’s snowcam a few times a day, wishing for more snow to accumulate on my favorite ski resort.

Snowbird Snow Meter

Noel shows you how to create your own snow meter using the ioBridge IO-204 and the Servo Smart Board. He connects the Snowbird’s weather data to ioBridge using the Widget API that controls a servo motor position that corresponds to the snow accumulation. Here’s a video of the Snow Meter in action:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Ld70ZKyyU

As a bonus project, Noel also shows you how to link the Snowbird weather feed to Twilio, so you can get personalized snow updates via the phone or SMS. Check out the complete “” on Instructables.com.

Let it snow!

Feedback MP3 Player and Activity Logger

hans — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:31:07 +0000

Steve (aka Polymythic) created a Motion Feedback MP3 Player that plays music tracks at varying volume depending on the level of activity the system detects. The concept is to encourage more activity by creating a feedback loop between the volume of music and the level of your activity.

Motion Feedback MP3 Player

Motion is detected with a Parallax PIR Sensor. When motion is detected, the output pin of the sensor goes high. That out is monitored by the ioBridge IO-204. With or without a network connection, the IO-204 sets the volume of a DIY MP3 Trigger board from SparkFun. The volume is controlled by sending serial strings to the MP3 Trigger. Steve took advantage of the new Onboard Rules that turn the IO-204 into a standalone controller. When the IO-204 is connected to the Internet, the IO-204 also data logs his activity by sending it to the ioBridge data logging service in the cloud.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ozYBGHlto

To learn more about how to make your own, visit Instructables and Polymythic.com or YouTube. The project also is posted on Engadget and UberGizmo. Well done, Steve.

Halloween Project Round Up

hans — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:56:34 +0000

A number of ioBridge users created some amazing ioBridge-based projects for this Halloween. We were impressed with the diversity and how they interacted with the IO-204. From using some new offline features of ioBridge to using social networks to poke fun at their Halloween prey.

We have a steam powered steampunk pumpkin that blows smoke out if it’s ears. We have a spider dropping on it’s victim and snapping a photo and posting to Twitter via TwitPic. We also have a motion sensing, talking skull that scares co-workers in the owner’s cubicle. Check them out!

Halloween Dropping Spider by Noel Portugal on My Electronics Notepad
Jaw Dropping Skull (aka the Half Hour Hallow Hack) by Steve from Polymythic
Steam Pumpkin by our own Hans Scharler of his personal blog called, “I am Shadowlord“

Well done guys. Thanks for your creative ideas and sharing your projects with the ioBridge community. And, Happy Halloween!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtpxKK6kfi4

Data Logging Your Water Usage

hans — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:21:10 +0000

Jason has released a new ioBridge project that monitors water usage for his whole house in real-time. The system uses a water meter, an IO-204, and ioBridge data logging services. His first system monitored power usage, sunlight, and temperature which included a live demo mash-up with Google Charts.

On one channel of the IO-204, the water meter is connected to the digital input. On a digital state change, the module sends that data to the ioBridge servers. Included with the free user account is the ability to log two data feeds from your module. In this case, the type of log is a Digital Input Counting Log. Evey count is the equivalent to one gallon of water used. The project is rather interesting and the next step in conservation. Knowing water usage and finding your high water use times will help curb use in the long run. Details on the water meter project can be found on Jason’s blog and Instructables.

Web Based Water Metering with ioBridge

Serv O’Beer – ioBridge Project in Popular Science

hans — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:24:47 +0000

Who knew when Steve aka “polymythic” posted his ioBridge project using iTurn to pour a real beer that it would get over 100k hits on YouTube and make it into print. Well, if you check out the April 2009 issue of Popular Science you will find Steve’s Serv O’Beer is the “Build of the Month” in the How 2.0 section of the magazine. There’s a photo of the latest version of the system with a sturdier frame made of Contrux and an ioBridge IO-204 to link the iPhone to a web application to drive a servo. You can read all about on Popular Science and learn how to build your own Servo O’Beer at Instructables.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtUyzQBNT3k

Real-time Power Monitoring System

hans — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:46:46 +0000

Jason Winters, the famous Picodore and fishcam inventor himself, created a Do It Yourself (DIY) power monitoring system to chart and track power usage in your house using AC transducer clamps and an ioBridge module for web-casting the data. This project has found a lot of interest on the world wide web and the ioBridge community. Jason has used the system and discovered some amazing inefficiencies and some power suckers all around his house. I think we are interested in knowing where our money goes and how to become more efficient. I have also noticed lots of claims that this has been done before. If you dig deeper, you will find that no one has quite solved the problem quite like this and will be surprised with the ability to use it with Google Charts, Google Documents, and social networking widgets.

Jason has provided plenty of photos and details on how to recreate the power monitoring system for your own benefit. You can check out his Picobay Projects Blog or the very detailed Instructables.