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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Christmas Lights Synchronized Around the World to Twitter, Powered by the Internet of Things

December 4, 2013 By

For the third holiday season in a row, the CheerLights project is gearing up. The idea behind CheerLights is to show that we are all connected by synchronizing the color of lights around the world. Christmas lights are a staple around the holidays and with Internet-connected lights, the color of your lights matches the color of everyone else’s lights.

It has been a real treat watching this project evolve as more and more people add lights… and other things. Things like Android and iPhone apps that check the latest color of CheerLights, an old Commodore 64, and Christmas trees.

To control the lights around the world, send a Tweet mentioning @CheerLights and a color. The command is processed by ioBridge’s ThingSpeak platform and distributed to all of the lights listening to the CheerLights API.

@CheerLights I am dreaming of a White Christmas

Another powerful aspect of the CheerLights project is that is shows off what is possible with the emerging Internet of Things. With a single message sent via a social network like Twitter, 1000’s of objects around the world are in sync with each other. Lights are connected by many types of controllers, such as Arduino, ioBridge, Philips, and the Raspberry Pi. This project is only possible through the Internet and the coordination of developers around the world.

Learn how to join the project at CheerLights.com.

We are all connected…

[via CheerLights]

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Connected Appliances at the Connected World Conference

June 21, 2013 By

After a tweet from Peggy Smedley, we found a summary of the Connected World Conference on The iMums website – Reviews by mothers of little gadget lovers. In the review, they mention what they saw from ioBridge. Thanks for the note!

On the lighter side on the ioBridge stand I saw a toaster that tweets every time it makes a slice of toast and a coffee maker that you can text to make you a cup of coffee. ioBridge provides products that allow both professionals and hobbyists to connect pretty much anything to the internet.

Here’s a quick video of the @MyToaster exhibit at the Connected World Conference:

This concept of making things tweet lead us to build social and alerting functions for other devices such as washers and dryers at laundromats, and then lead us to create to our ThingSpeak platform specifically designed to allow devices to post status updates and share object data with other users.

And for fun, follow @MyToaster on Twitter to watch its toasting habits.

[via The iMums]

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From Toasters to Smart Cities, See How ioBridge is Building the Internet of Things

March 7, 2013 By

What is the internet of things?

This might be a question that you have been asking lately as we all keep hearing more about smart things and connected devices. “Internet of Things” concepts were introduced to us over 10-15 years and have shifted from humble object tagging ideas to much more sophisticated concepts. We believe the Internet of Things is an ecosystem of devices and systems interacting with each other using the Internet on behalf of people. This interaction may produce automation systems, social entanglement with our objects, efficiency in systems, brand new product categories, and meaningful analytics.

Claudia Bracholdt of Quartz recently invited Robert Mawrey, CEO of ioBridge, to share our experience and view-point on the Internet of Things. In the following YouTube video, Robert discusses the Tweeting Toaster (@mytoaster) and demonstrates a smart plug that is able to be controlled by a smart phone and social interaction. The smart plug is powered by the ioBridge Iota Wi-Fi Module making anything smart and cloud-connected. Manufacturers use the Iota module or a reference design in many products when they are looking to build scalable, stable, and secure connected products and services.

Using the ioBridge platform, known as RealTime.io (real-time input and output), users are able to build all kinds of interactions among things, people, and apps. RealTime.io provides social context such as Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare and system context with Email, back-end systems, weather systems, analytic processing, and voice services such as Twilio. Robert mentioned a “tweeting toaster” which tweets when it is in use. This was created over 5 years ago and has stirred up many conversations about connected objects. The idea is not to stop at this humorous example. We ask ourselves, “What does this mean?” and “What else can we do?” Knowing if a toaster is in use can tell us the power consumption of the appliance. What if this was not a toaster but a washer and dryer? You could get notified at laundry mat that your laundry is ready. Instead of a public output to Twitter, how about to sending notifications to phones. This could have been a medical device that is out of spec and alerts you that you need calibration or service and possibly do that calibration remotely.

Social Appliances, Laundry Mats, Powered by ioBridge and the Internet of Things

What else could you do? How about building a smart city. This is exactly what Geosyntec did with the ioBridge platform and devices. Instead of reacting to Twitter, water systems in cities react to weather conditions read in from weather websites, remote locations, local sensors, and now have the ability to make real-time control decisions in determining how water is collected, routed, and used efficiently.

How The "Internet Of Things" Is Turning Cities Into Living Organisms

Again, the idea is to keep pushing the ideas further. With ioBridge, we make it possible to create all kinds of newly imagined ideas. Let’s keep the conversation going… Please contact us and see how we can work together and build amazing new things.

[via Quartz]

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ioBridge Project by Ryan Rusnak Featured in Best Buy Commercial

December 21, 2012 By

If you happen to be kicking back and watching TV over the Holidays, chances are you are going to see a Best Buy Commercial. Best Buy’s new commercial campaign is called, “Gifts That Do”.  [Ryan Rusnak] created a beverage cannon using a mini-fridge, air compressor, servo motors, and network connectivity with an ioBridge gateway. Using his smartphone, Ryan selects, aims, and fires a “beverage” over 20 feet to himself sitting on the couch in front of his flat screen TV from LG. The TV being a gift from his mom. Best Buy was inspired by Ryan’s project and featured him on their latest advertisement. Check it out on YouTube!

Congrats, Ryan! It’s great seeing an ioBridge project on TV mixed in with a movie marathon of The Christmas Story, football, and reruns of Seinfeld.

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