Connected Bumblebees: Use Twitter to Follow Bees #buzzisback

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Nik Sargent likes to “do things differently”. Nik is a technologist, artist, data collector, photographer, and bumblebee conservationist.

Busy Bees

Nik’s Bumblebee Project started off in 2011 with the goal of getting to know these amazing, social creatures. As he learned more, he found that the bees documented behavioral patterns were different from observed behavioral patterns due to climate change and unusual weather conditions. Nik observed countless hours of camera footage and discovered that the Queen’s hibernation schedule has been completely disrupted leading to disaster of new bumblebees and subsequent pollination which is critical to our food supply. There are many reports of a decline in pollination and is of global significance.

Earlier this year, Nik added sensors and a gateway from ioBridge to help automate and collect more data generated by these busy bees. The bee boxes now monitor temperature, track movement, count bees, and provide real-time feedback from the bumblebees by being connected to the cloud. The project looks to be evolving as new sensors and ideas will be incorporated over time.

“ioBridge is a big step forward in allowing us to automate and correlate environmental and activity data without resorting to manual CCTV analysis,” said Nik in an email interview. “It gives us the freedom not only to view and collect the data from anywhere remotely,  but also share it and tweet it – again helping to raise awareness.”

Nik was able to capture a photo of the first tweet triggered by a Bumblebee.

Video Still of Bumblebees

And, here’s what she said…

Bumblebee Tweet

We were so happy to find out about this project. We didn’t know much about Bumblebees and learned a lot by following Nik’s project. Thanks for sharing and we hope to do our part to help raise awareness of the global impact and never ending curiosity that bumblebees generate.

To get more info about the Bumblebee Project visit LoveBumbl.es and follow the project on Twitter.

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Small Steps Lead to Big (Connected) Things

May 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In the March/April issue of Connect World Magazine, you will find an article about a few of the small steps taken by ioBridge. We have connected toasters, thermostats, fish tanks, pet feeders, pools, garage doors, and many other things to the Internet and get to see our users, developers, and partners do amazing things. We are pushing towards a connected future, but how do we get there?

“If consumers try something connected, they will try another,” said Hans Scharler, co-founder of ioBridge. “For example, if you could open your garage door from a mobile phone, then controlling a light is right around the corner. But, the same consumer will not make a major overhaul of his or her house all at once. A connected world could potentially be much more than home automation, but it will take a series of little wins to get there.”

We believe that it will take a lot of small steps and small ideas to help push along the Internet of Things. Already a lot has happened since Jason Winters and I founded ioBridge, Inc. in 2008. We operated the very first server from Jason’s house and quickly grew to customers in over 40 countries with many servers in the US and Europe. We had big ideas for lots of markets and knew early on that we needed to partner with companies to bring out next-generation products and services. We were fortunate that our early customers wanted to invest in us by sharing great ideas and working together on new things. Our goal remains to make connected devices easy, fun, and practical for tinkerers and manufactures alike.

First ioBridge Prototype

This little guy, called the IO-100, was our first connected gizmo that could monitor and control anything that you hooked up to it over the Internet. Does that sound familiar?

First Assembly of ioBridge Module - IO-100

We look forward to the new things to come and seeing what people dream up next as the Internet of Things emerges.

[via Connect World Magazine]

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ioBridge Provides Web Connectivity Technology and Cloud Services for Pool Control Systems

February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you happened to be at the Orlando Pool and Spa Show 2012 last week, you might have noticed all of the buzz around a new product from Zodiac Pool Systems called iAquaLink. Every aspect of managing a pool and spa is possible with iAquaLink by allowing for control from an iPhone, Android device, and any web browser. Users are now able to get the spa ready before leaving work, schedule cleanings, monitor pH, set the solar heater, etc. Pool and spa installers are also able to remotely maintain a user’s pool and provide new services.

Access to iAquaLink on any Device

Here’s a quick video introduction linked by Carecraft pool builders and retailers:

Zodiac contacted us about creating a remote monitoring and control device for their pool and spa control systems. We worked with their engineering and marketing team to create a new product that incorporates Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB, and RS-485 connectivity. We also extended our web services, created an API, and provided a streaming interface to monitor and control over 100k pool and spa systems efficiently. All of our combined efforts resulted in a highly secure, real-time, connected product that is targeted to pool professionals and consumers.

iAquaLink System Overview

The pool and spa industry is highly competitive. By adding Internet-connectivity and many new features, companies like Zodiac are able to maintain their competitive edge. “It’s critically important to Zodiac and our Jandy Controls business to maintain our reputation for highly dependable, intuitive pool and spa automation,” said David Goldman, Director of Product Development at Zodiac. “We’re delighted to raise the bar yet again by incorporating ioBridge’s technology.”

And, we are thrilled as well to be working with innovative partners like Zodiac. We have many other projects like this going on under the hood and we love being able to share this one with you.

“We are extremely proud to have been chosen by Zodiac to provide connectivity technology for their new iAquaLink intelligent pool control system,” said Dr. Robert Mawrey, CEO of ioBridge. “The flexibility and accessibility of the ioBridge platform allows companies to enhance the value of their products. We believe that the iAquaLink is a wonderful example of an Internet-enabled product and that it provides a competitive edge that sets Zodiac apart from other pool and spa control system providers.”

Visit http://www.ioBridge.com for more applications and information on how ioBridge works with manufactures such as Zodiac.

[via ioBridge Press Release]

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Cisco Reports Mobile Internet of Things Traffic to Grow 22x from 2011 to 2016

February 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The predictions of numbers of connected devices isn’t anything new.  A few months ago there were estimates of 24 billion Internet of Things by 2020.  Cisco has spent some time looking at the whole mobile landscape from number of connected devices to the traffic they use all across the world.

In a recent white paper written by Cisco they state that the compounded annual growth rate of mobile M2M devices from 2011 – 2016 will be 42% going while the traffic growth rate will be 86%.  From 2011 to 2016 that 86% compounded annual growth rate yields a 22x increase in traffic.   All that traffic adds up to 508,022 terabytes per month in 2016.

Where is all this growth coming?

Internet of Things of course!  All those pet feeders and tweeting toasters are going to eat up the world’s bandwidth.  Okay, maybe not, but on a more serious note big industries are making large moves in the M2M space.

Cellular communication between objects, machines, or sensors has led to the growth of M2M connections. These connections are in the form of smart metering, business and consumer surveillance, inventory management, fleet management, and healthcare modules, all of which are designed for operational excellence. M2M technologies are being used across a broad spectrum of industries. As real-time information monitoring is helping companies to deploy new video-based security systems and hospitals and helping healthcare professionals to remotely monitor the progress of their patients, bandwidth-intensive M2M connections become more prevalent. Traditional appliances and devices, such as home appliances, vehicles, energy meters, and vending machines-which traditionally have not been connected directly to cellular networks-are now entering the network.

What is ioBridge’s take on this?

At ioBridge, we see the same trends.  Practically everyday we talk to prospective clients on new applications for mobile connected things and how we can help complete their vision.  The examples listed above have been well-known for years and will be a substantial part of the growth.  What we are excited about are the applications people haven’t thought of yet and how they will affect these numbers.

We also see the increase in bandwidth usage.  Plain and simple, we see the desire for more types of data and in greater frequency.  More data than just a temperature and a power reading.  Video, voice, images and arrays of sensors painting pictures with a much broader brush.  This is a much larger influx of data plus everything out there being more chatty to give more data resolution.  All of this contributing to one of the other recent trends we’ve discussed in Big Data.

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Big Data’s Relationship with The Internet of Things

February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I may be a couple of days late of Valentine’s Day, but there is a serious love fest between Big Data and The Internet of Things.

What is Big Data?

The Wikipedia says:

Big data is a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set.

What does this have to do with the Internet of Things?

Well, in short it has a lot to do with the Internet of Things.  In a recent article in the NY Times called The Age of Big Data  the Internet of Things is mentioned as playing a major contributing role to Big Data.

There is a lot more data, all the time, growing at 50 percent a year, or more than doubling every two years, estimates IDC, a technology research firm. It’s not just more streams of data, but entirely new ones. For example, there are now countless digital sensors worldwide in industrial equipment, automobiles, electrical meters and shipping crates. They can measure and communicate location, movement, vibration, temperature, humidity, even chemical changes in the air.

Link these communicating sensors to computing intelligence and you see the rise of what is called the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet.

What is ioBridge’s take on Big Data?

One major part of our product and services is being a repository and gatherer for all this “Big Data”.   We agree the data is growing, but based on what we’ve seen here at ioBridge we think it is growing a lot faster than 50% per year.  We know how important the data is to our customers, which is why we’ve build our product to be rock solid in gathering the data and never missing a “sensor” beat.

So what is going to happen with all this “Big Data”?

All that data is the foundation for intelligent decision making.  One way to look at it is without the data all the things you see labeled as “Smart” really don’t have much information to figure out what the smart thing to do is.

At this point it is up to our clients to figure out what they can do with the data, but in the near future we can see playing a part in providing tools to help them discover more things about their data.

 

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