Hurricane Sandy Tide Levels

October 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Just in case you haven’t heard, there is a giant storm heading towards the East Coast of the United States caused by Hurricane Sandy. If you need more evidence that something is going to happen, you can check out our tide level data that we collect from around Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Storms of this size affect all kinds of weather system data such as pressure, temperature, and tide levels. A recipe for anticipating a major event is when you see the pressure drop and see a change in the amplitude of the tide levels. As you can see below, the tide levels are shifted upwards by 15″ to 20″. Please, stay safe! We will do the same thing as we button-down the hatches at ioBridge HQ.

Hurricane Sandy Tide Levels in Cape Cod

At one of the marinas, we have a security camera setup running off of an APC battery backup system. Here’s what really high tides look like.

Hurricane Sandy Tide Levels Security Cam

Here’s another photo of a dock submerged under water:

Hurricane Sandy Tides Dock Under Water

The system is running an ioBridge Gateway with connected battery-powered sensors over an XBee radio network. The tide level sensors are MaxBotix ultrasonic level sensors. Check out the Technology Review article, Cape Cod is Tweeting, Thanks to the Internet of Things, for more information about our tide project or contact us.

[via TideAlerts.com]

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Candy Dispenser is a Twilio, Twitter, and ioBridge Mashup

October 28, 2010 By 1 Comment

Halloween would not be complete without some novel electronics to spook the trick-or-treaters. Noel Portugal created a system that allows you to send text messages or tweets to his Halloween Candy Dispenser to drop some treats into your bag. Commands are relayed from the web via the ioBridge IO-204 to his microcontroller controlled candy dispenser. There’s a big red button in case you forgot your mobile phone in your Iron Man costume.

Internet-enabled Halloween Treat Dispenser

Internet-enabled Halloween Treat Dispenser

Noel wrote a web application using Oracle Application Express that connects all the parts together. At the heart of the design is an Arduino-based microcontroller that drives the servo-based dispenser mechanism. The commands are relayed from the web app to the Arduino using the ioBridge IO-204 via XBee radios. The Internet connectivity part is what allows tweets (@tweetfortreats) or text messages processed by Twilio to control the candy dispenser. The web application makes use of the ioBridge Widget API to parse commands from the Internet.

ioBridge IO-204 Module with XBee Radio

ioBridge IO-204 Module with XBee Radio

Just think of where this type of technology can go? Vending machines?

If you are interested in learning more, Noel has put together an Instructables so others can create their own DIY Halloween project this year. There’s also more information on Adafruit, MAKE, Hacked Gadgets, and Noel’s My Web of Things blog. Happy Halloween!

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ioBridge Tide Alerts on MIT’s Technology Review Blog

June 15, 2010 By 2 Comments

MIT’s Technology Review blog features an article about our tide level application. Along with a few ioBridge customers, we setup tide monitoring sites in Cape Cod that measure tide levels and environmental data in real-time. The data collected is used to alert people in the area of rising or falling tide levels, so you know when to bring your boat back to the dock. The sites are part of our growing sensor and control network all over the world built on top of the ioBridge platform.

Green Pond Tide Monitoring Site

Green Pond Tide Monitoring Site

Christopher Mims, journalist at the MIT Technology Review, writes, “We’re talking about the Internet of Things. Using an ultrasonic level sensor to bounce sound waves off the sea surface in order to determine its height, an XBee radio to send that data to a receiver on shore, and most importantly, an ioBridge IO-204 to relay that information to servers in the cloud, Cape Cod resident and ioBridge hobbyist Robert Mawrey is able to broadcast to his entire community near real-time data on actual sea level.”

The technology behind the tide monitoring sites is based around the ioBridge platform. We will be releasing our Pro hardware and web services soon available for commercial products and services. The tide alerts site is just one example of the new things we have in store.

We collect the data on our demo site for everyone to take a look at and sign up for email/SMS alerts. We will be opening up the feeds for others to build applications. Visit tidealerts.com to check it out.

Tide Level Charts

Tide Level Charts

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Wireless LED Sign – XBee + ioBridge

May 19, 2009 By 2 Comments

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

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.

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