TEDxBeaconStreet: Moving Past Internet of Things Novelty to Build Smart Urban Water Systems with Geosyntec and ioBridge

February 12, 2014 By

You have no doubt been hearing about the Internet of Things. Internet of Things. Internet of Things. The current issue is we are in the novelty phase with IoT. Walking the floors at CES, shows us consumer products that simply just added a remote control aspect to a product but not much thinking beyond that. If we stick with just adding some remote control functionality, we are missing the point of the Internet of Things. Geosyntec was the first partner at ioBridge back in 2009 — Geosyntec is an amazing environmental consulting company that is thinking outside of the box and pushing smart city initiates by leveraging Internet of Things concepts and technology created by ioBridge.

TEDx Talk Geosyntec ioBridge Wi-Fi IoT

Marcus Quigley, Principal Civil and Water Resources Engineer at Geosyntec, delivered a TEDx Talk at Beacon Street, called, “Designing Smart Urban Water Systems”. The stunning revelation comes when he shows the audience an ioBridge IO-201 Wi-Fi Gateway that is capable of connecting water systems to cloud services that optimize and analyze water utilization on a large scale. The shocker is that the whole thing could be interface for less than $100! And the awesome part, this is possible today, not speculation, not the future — Internet of Things is here. We are really proud of the accomplishments Geosyntec has made and love watching the disruption of old ideas and seeing the invention of a whole new solution.

“As a society, we are re-thinking these assumptions and looking more closely at the choices we make and how the actions we take affect the value of water,” said Marcus Quigley, Principal Civil and Water Resources Engineer at Geosyntec. “I feel we’re on the cusp of a fundamental revolution of re-inventing our cities, and it has to do with all of the things that you guys have sitting in your pockets: wireless devices connected to the Internet.”

The full TEDx Talk is available on the TEDx YouTube Channel.

[via Geosyntec]

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ioBridge Founders on ITConversations Podcast

June 14, 2012 By

Jason Winters and I had the great pleasure of being on the ITConversations Podcast, “Technometria“, hosted by Phil Windley and Scott Lemon.

Technometria is a podcast dedicated to conversations about Web 2.0, programming and software development, open source, identity, new media, enterprise computing, and the emerging Internet of Things. We recommend that you check it out for other great interviews and discussions on the topics and near and dear to our hearts.

We got a chance to talk with Phil and Scott about the Internet of Things, the ioBridge origin story, our platform, our projects, and our amazing customers. I hope you enjoying hearing the story that we created together. Thanks to all of you!

[via ITConversations]

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Open Internet of Things Assembly 2012

June 7, 2012 By

As most of us are already aware, the Internet of Things is growing quickly. Companies are flocking to this space on the level of social, smart grid, and location-based services. Key decisions are being made right now as more and more people become aware of this trend. The IoT community is vibrant and pushing forward.

YOU have a chance now to help make the decisions involving Accessibility, Timeliness, Privacy, Control, and Licensing by being involved in the Internet of Things Bill of Rights spearheaded by the Open Internet of Things Assembly. Internet of Things is important and has an impact over privacy and many parts of our lives. Unlike social networking, we have a chance to get privacy and openness right before a few companies make the decisions for you.

Open Internet of Things Assembly

Open Internet of Things Assembly is assembling for the first meeting June 16-17, 2012 in London. The Bill of Rights 2.0 document will be finalized at the assembly. It will be a great event and features an amazing lineup of speakers, panels, and keynotes including Adam Greenfield – Urbanscale, Rob van Kranenburg – The Council, Laura James – Makespace Cambridge, Russell Davies – HistoryTag, Usman Haque – Cosm, and Gavin Starks – AMEE.

ioBridge is pleased to announce that we are sponsoring the inaugural Open Internet of Things Assembly. We believe initiatives like this will help shape the future of the space we know and love. This is going to be a great event and also shows how amazing the Internet of Things community is. It’s awesome to see events and initiatives like this emerging and seeing people contributing and taking control.

Follow the Open Internet of Things Assembly on Twitter and contribute on their website.

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Connected Bumblebees: Use Twitter to Follow Bees #buzzisback

May 11, 2012 By

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

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, buildings, 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 manufacturers 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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