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Socially Aware Lights, Now Wireless with XBee and ioBridge

hans — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:30:35 +0000

Check out the iDigi blog for details of a new project involving CheerLights - a network of interconnected lights. In this project, Noel Portugal created a wireless version of CheerLights using Digi’s XBee radios and the ioBridge IO-204 web gateway. Lights, apps, and objects all stay linked together by listening to the Twitter Stream for colors. When a color gets tweeted to @cheerlights, all of the objects change to that color.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqi28Qcvvdg

“It’s a way to connect physical things with social networking experiences. We are all connected.” -CheerLights

Colors from Twitter are processed via ioBridge’s Internet of Things Platform called ThingSpeak. ThingSpeak is a suite of apps to make things social and interact with each other and social networks. CheerLights takes advantage of the TweetControl app. This app can be used to monitor Twitter and then send a control signal to anything that supports HTTP like thermostats, ioBridge X10 Home Automation gear, kid’s toys, interactive trade show displays… and whatever you come up with next.

[via iDigi / My Web of Things]

CheerLights: a social network of lights

hans — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:07:15 +0000

It’s that time of year to spread some cheer and strengthen our connections. We are all connected on this little planet and our latest projects hopes to prove this. ioBridge introduces CheerLights - a social network of lights that stay in sync with the rest of the lights linked to a messages from social networks. It’s kind of like following a trending topic on Twitter but with physical objects.

Here is a video introduction to CheerLights:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqi28Qcvvdg

To join the CheerLights project all you have to is build a controller that subscribes to the “cheerlights” keyword, receives the latest color command, and sets the color on your lights. So, when you see the color change know that the color it is now changing all across the world. Instructions on how to build your own physical controller are based around GE G-35 Color Effects Lights and the ioBridge IO-204, ConnectPort X2, or Arduino Ethernet.

The last color processed by CheerLights is accessed through the CheerLights Channel hosted on ThingSpeak. With that data you could this a lot further and build all sorts of applications that read in that color value and do something with it. Your application could be an Android widget that shows the latest color, a set of Christmas lights, ambient orb, or dynamically setting the background color of a website.

ioBridge has been working on a way to distribute a command from a social network and distribute to thousands of end points in real-time – a many to many issue. The technology behind CheerLights paves the way for an alert system that could cascade across the globe.

[via CheerLights.com]

Internet of Things on Big Bang Theory

josh — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:14:13 +0000

I was watching a rerun of the Big Bang Theory TV show (my wife and I are big fans) last week and there was a pretty funny clip with the guys experimenting with the Internet of Things. It was in the beginning clip just before the credits in the episode called “The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization” that originally aired on March 17, 2008.

This made me think back at how far ioBridge has come and where they were at that time. The funny thing about it is the technology they are simulating could have just as well be using an ioBridge module. Public access for internet users to control things in their house was something only super geeks could do at that time. At the time this episode aired ioBridge only had a working prototype of public internet interactivity with Jason’s original fishcam that open and closed a gator’s mouth in his fish tank.

Obviously ioBridge has come a long way since that prototype, but it’s interesting to see how the ideas have been bouncing around for years but only now is it starting to get the attention where the number of Internet of Things devices now and in the future are in frequent conversations.

For your viewing pleasure I was able to find it on my search through YouTube and wanted to share it with all the Internet of Things fans out there.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kzjqBacF1k

ioBridge at Remote Monitoring and Control 2011 [video]

hans — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:45:20 +0000

The ioBridge team is back from Nashville, TN where we had the privilege to be part of the Remote Monitoring & Control 2011. The Remote Expo featured the latest solutions for professional applications in the fields of remote monitoring, remote control, site management, M2M, and SCADA. Also, as we found out, there were many product companies looking to add remote monitoring and control capabilities to their products or looking to add cloud-services to their already connected devices. Working with manufactures and licensing our technology is a big part of our business, so the conference was a perfect fit for ioBridge. As one attendee stated after demonstrating ioBridge technology, “Our product plus ioBridge equals a revolutionary step forward for our business“. It seems like the Internet of Things is on everyone’s radar these days.

While at Remote Expo, we were able to grab some bits of video so that you could see our booth setup and see one of our consumer product demonstrations. One of our exhibits was a web-enabled garage door opener, designed for one of our customers, that features real-time control, integrated video feedback, and mobile and web application control. Here’s a quick video from Remote Monitoring & Control 2011 with introduction and demonstration by our CEO, Dr. Robert Mawrey.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUx-q0zh7ZA

Thanks to everyone that stopped by and thanks to the organizers for such a successful event! We enjoyed our visit to Nashville and look forward to working with the many people that we met at Remote 2011.

ioBridge Introduction Video by WidgetWerks

hans — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 06:00:48 +0000

The good folks over at WidgetWerks.com created an ioBridge introduction video. They use our ioBridge Io-204 to track humidity in the basement by setting up a dashboard, data logs, and alerts. They also discuss many other uses for ioBridge including garage door remote control from a smart phone and controlling a web cam position with servo motors — monitoring and controlling anything from the web. Thanks so much for posting this video! We appreciate it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYRqU6XfCX0

ioBridge Internet of Things OEM Solutions (video)

hans — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 04:54:19 +0000

You might be wondering how to Internet enable a product. Or, you might be thinking about what the “Internet of Things” means for your business. Over the years we have worked with many startups, consumer products companies, government agencies, and developers. We have learned a lot about what it means to add the web to a product and really take advantage of web services connected to traditional products and business processes. Think about how energy monitoring has revolutionized the power industry and has created Smart Buildings. Our customers have found a competitive edge by adding our technology to their products and services. Not only is the result low cost, but the solution is typically new and disruptive. We offer everything from embedded to wireless and from web services to mobile apps. We can web-enable anything.

If you are considering adding remote control and monitoring to an existing product or creating a new web-based product and service, contact us now at oem@iobridge.com. Leverage our experience and take advantage of our first-of-its-kind, patent-pending Internet technology.

Here is a video introduction to the ioBridge platform and OEM Solutions that we offer:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eewM6MupNdo

Video transcript:

Let’s say you have created a product that you want to web-enable. In this video, we intend to give you a quick introduction of ioBridge and our OEM solutions.

To get started, visit www.ioBridge.com.

ioBridge is a platform to enable device interaction, remote control, and monitoring of devices via the Internet.

Once your product is connected, you can leverage the web to give your product a competitive edge. You can tap into web services such as email alerts, real-time monitoring, charts, reports, remote control, remote upgrades, user account management, and social networking.

The ioBridge platform is seamless. We can help you with any aspect of bringing your products to the Internet. We offer licensing of our patent-pending technology, custom web apps, custom mobile apps, product integration, website integration, and custom engineering services.

You may have questions on how to get started, so please contact us. We have worked with many customers and projects ranging from extremely large consumer product companies to helping startups companies create their prototypes.

If you want to learn more on how ioBridge can help you with the Internet of Things, contact us at oem@iobridge.com.

New HTML App Widget

hans — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:48:43 +0000

The new Custom HTML App widget allows you to embed HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a widget so you can create custom widgets, apps, and mashups without having to run your own web server. The widget can hold embedded video, ThingSpeak charts, Google Visualizations, JQuery UI, and mobile web app frameworks. You can securely add the HTML App widget to dashboard so you can watch see live video right along with your ioBridge controls. That’s one only one application idea, we look forward to see what you come up with.

HTML Apps on Dashboard

Visit the ioBridge Wiki for more information on the HTML App Widget.

Beer Cannon Hits 1 Million Views, International TV

hans — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 05:09:59 +0000

The “personalbeerrobot” YouTube channel now has over 1.1 million views for Ryan Rusnak’s mini fridge beer robot project. It was definitely amazing to see this project being discussed on every media outlet over the past 30 days and recently in The Register and The Sun in the UK. Just think that over a million people heard “controlled with the ioBridge IO-204″!

And to top of the viral success of the project video, Ryan was asked to feature his iPhone controlled mini fridge live on The Graham Norton Show on BBC One. Here is the clip featuring Matt LeBlanc catching a beer being fired from the refrigerator.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=An8LA132hMc

Discovery Channel Canada also featured the project on its Daily Planet TV show. Talk about an internet of things…

Cheers!

Send Drawings to the LED Wall via the Web

hans — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:02:57 +0000

What happens when you get together 6 people, a banana suit, and some hardware? You get a really creative project known as the LED Wall. The crew built a giant LED Wall made up of a matrix of 350 LEDs. Over a weekend they painstakingly soldered and glued the lights to a pegboard and connected them together using MAX6953 LED driver chips. The result was a matrix of LEDs that they could control by turning each LED on and off like pixels. They took that a step further and connected the LED Wall to the Internet via the ioBridge IO-204. With a web interface, anyone can draw their own messages and send them to the LED Wall with a web browser. You can see your messages being displayed by watching the live video feed on LED Wall website. So far, 119700 pixels have been sent to the LED Wall through the web — everything from “Hello World” to Mario and Space Invaders have been submitted.

"Hello World" on the LED Wall

You can draw your own images on the LED Wall yourself and also look through other people’s messages by visiting the project website at wall.elnormo.net. If you visit the project site, you will also see how they created the LED Wall. Here’s a time-lapsed video of the project build.

LED Wall from Norm on Vimeo.

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.

Wireless Robot with Web Controls

hans — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:58:01 +0000

Any good SkyNet starts with a robot. Well, we are in luck…User “badcat89″ posted in our forum about a Web-enabled, Wireless Robot that is controlled via a web interface. We can imagine a swarm of robots controlled by data received from the web.

Web Powered Robot

The robot uses a pair of serial bluetooth adapters to form a wireless link with the ioBridge IO-204. The serial levels of the IO-204 are TTL and a circuit using the MAX-232 was required to allow the serial interface work properly. On the robot is a set of serial servo drivers that control the steering and speed.

IO-204 and Serial Bluetooth Adpater

The interface is standard web page using an embedded ioBridge.com serial widget to make the connection to the IO-204 base station module. You can control the direction and throttle by clicking on the itnerface and using the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard. The interface generates serial strings that the serial servo drivers react to when received. You can see the strings and the serial widget in the debug part of the web interface.

Web-based Robot Controls

Here is a YouTube video of the web powered robot in action – looks like a lot of fun to drive. One step closer…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UmOqWQZbcY

TankedCam Interactive Aquarium [MoreControl.com]

hans — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:42:28 +0000

Pete from Pete’s Fishcam and TankedCam fame got a great writeup on MoreControl.com. His system uses the ioBridge IO-204 to control and monitor his fish tank from anywhere.

“Designed for the iPhone/iPod (and Mac/PC desktop), the TankedCam app allows you to turn your Atlantis into an aquatic home automation paradise.”

Learn more at MoreControl.com and TankedCam.com.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5eYERAa1_A

Serial LCD and IO-204 Mash Up using JavaScript, PHP

hans — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:53:28 +0000

Marc Fonteijn, form the Netherlands, mashed up the ioBridge IO-204 with the Spark Fun Serial LCD based on the HD44780 chip. His project includes some JavaScript to control the LCD display via a web page which uses his PHP-based proxy and control API for the IO-204.

ioBridge IO-204 Controlling Spark Fun LCD

The JavaScript on Marc’s blog post includes control and animations examples for the LCD display. The display can be driven by an open I/O channel using the serial out functionality or from a two-way serial smart board.

Here is a demo of the screen in action:

We are not sure what he is up to, but I for-see an interactive website in his future. He already has LED’s blinking when users visit one of his sites. Check out Marc’s blog called MarcAThing – Physically Mashed Up for some cool photos and projects. Dank u zeer!

Update:

The PHP Widget Control API is now a part of the ioBridge Wiki and includes a few enhancements.

Wireless LED Sign – XBee + ioBridge

hans — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:43:34 +0000

OharaRP created a wireless LED scrolling sign that displays messages received from the Internet. The sign uses an array of 8×8 LED modules connected together – expandable to 16 segments. The LED’s are controlled by a MAX7219 controller board that can receive messages from an Xbee wireless module and is power by 5VDC (using a standard mini-USB plug). The sign has a wireless base station that forwards text and commands towards the sign relayed from Twitter or an ioBridge widget embedded on a website.

In this photo OharaRP sent IOBridge to the sign from his iPhone.

XBee Wireless LED Sign

If you would like to learn more about this project check OharaRP’s blog or watch his very instructional demonstration of his Wireless LED Sign Project on YouTube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PAir5JP9J8

Office Space Invaders — Remote Controlled Airsoft Gun

hans — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:23:38 +0000

Every time we check in on Jay of thecapacity, he is mashing up more technologies to wreak havoc on his co-workers, friends, and/or wife. This time Jay has created a remote controlled Airsoft Gun that is sighted using an IP camera and controlled using the feedback from a Wiimote — all from his Internet web application. A harness supports the gun which allows the gun to aim using a servo. The trigger is also servo controlled and linked to the trigger of the Wiimote. The ioBridge allows Jay to be anywhere in the world to reign terror on unsuspecting victims. On thecapacity blog, you can find some cool YouTube videos of the making of the system and see him take down some space invaders.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DtSdZZAp2w

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

Remote Dog Feeder with iPhone

hans — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:52:42 +0000

The inventor known only as “hacklife” created an iPhone-controlled dog feeder. He converted some household parts into a stable, servo-controlled food dispenser. At the heart of the system is the IO-204 from ioBridge that allows the iPhone to direct servo positions over the Internet with no programming involved. His YouTube video, ioBridge Forum post, and MAKE post explain the system in more detail. Well done, hacklife.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaePrjwCLg4

ioBridge Project Featured on YouTube

hans — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:17:18 +0000

We all remember Stephen Myers’ dog feeder and dog treat dispenser app — the very first app and project using the IO-204 module from ioBridge. The iPhone dog treat dispenser is used when Stephen is at his lab and wants to check on his dog, “Cooper”. With a click of a button from his iPhone or his Mac he can watch his dog and give the dog a treat before he gets home.

On YouTube’s Science and Technology channel, the iPhone Dog Feeder project is the current featured video. Way to go Stephen! You are going to get some random email and comments as you hit main stream. We know from our server activity that were are 5 other dog feeder project going on worldwide using the IO-204. You started a virtual revolution. Thanks for the the cool ideas.

Here is the YouTube video of the iPhone Dog Feeder project by Stephen Myers:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L3hdPxMa_o

Make Your Computer Aware of You

hans — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:41:50 +0000

Jay from thecapacity sent us project details about making his computer aware of him sitting in front of the computer or not by using a temperature sensor and an ioBridge module. He wanted the computer to turn off the screen saver and adjust the volume of his music depending on his presence. Jay sent us a few questions along the way and this caused us to accelerate the release of the Data Feed API. His proof of concept is a beating heart that speeds up when the temperature increases.

Bridge to my heart… from thecapacity on Vimeo.

Jay took our technology in a new and interesting direction. He successfully bridged his computer to his workspace with ioBridge and his clever desktop and web applications.

For more project details, check out Jay’s posts on his “thecapacity” blog.

iPhone Aquarium Project with ioBridge

hans — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:36:47 +0000

One of our users sent us his “iPhone Aquarium Application”. Pete from WaveJam sent us a YouTube video of his home aquarium which he cannot only watch, he can control his fishcam from his iPhone. He can log in and move his camera, monitor the water temperature, turn on the tank light, control accent lighting of the tank, and open and close a spooky sunken treasure chest (what a cool idea!). “Look out below” and you catch his video of the behind the scenes interactive fishcam project.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK5ST-TEn-M

x10 Pro Control from Web

hans — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:19:26 +0000

Stephen from the iPhone Dog Feeder fame, sent us a video of how to use the x10 controller with the ioBridge module to control lights. He has a lamp setup in his lab that he can control from his Cygnet blog and his ioBridge dashboard.

Here is the YouTube video of the x10 smart board in action:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr-DkaWkK0o

Video of iPhone Dog Feeder

hans — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:26:43 +0000

Stephen’ Myers iPhone dog feeder project has made it’s way YouTube. Watch a video of the ioBridge-based project in action.