ioBridge Project by Ryan Rusnak Featured in Best Buy Commercial

December 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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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X10 Home Automation with ioBridge Remote Control Apps

November 16, 2012 By 1 Comment

A very popular add-on for the ioBridge IO-204 Web Gateway is the X10 Smart Board. This board translates web requests into X10 commands so you are able to remotely control X10 outlets, lights, and thermostats. Mark’s Voice Activated Home Automation System used a combination of Apple’s Siri, X10, and ioBridge APIs.

Recently, the X10 interface modules manufactured by X10 were discontinued. We were able to get the last 25 that were in stock directly from X10. Then, we manufactured another 25 X10 Smart Boards to pair with the X10 interface modules. We are selling the X10 kits on the ioBridge Store and when we run out, we will not be able to manufacture more. We are looking at alternatives and also looking at supporting other home automation protocols such as INSTEON and many others. For more information on X10 Home Automation with ioBridge, check out the ioBridge + X10 App Note.

ioBridge’s ioApp for Android and iPhone supports X10 Controls and will support future protocols. Leave a comment if you have any ideas on what to support next.

[via ioBridge Store]

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Socially Aware Lights, Now Wireless with XBee and ioBridge

January 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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.

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

ioBridge Internet Gateway with XBee Radio

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]

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CheerLights: a social network of lights

December 2, 2011 By 3 Comments

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:

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]

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Voice Activated Home Automation with Siri and ioBridge

November 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

[mark] tweeted about his “Voice Activated Home Automation” system that uses Siri on the iPhone sending commands to the ioBridge X10 controller.

If you say, “Siri I’m cold”, the iPhone sends a command to the ioBridge API to turn on the furnace. Siri warmly replies, “Lighting the fire place, this is cozy.” What is really neat is how the interface is voice commands, but the language is natural.

Here are some other home automation commands demonstrated in the video:

  • Siri turn on the Christmas lights
  • Siri turn on the living room lamp
  • Siri turn off everything

Markt makes use of SiriProxy to intercept commands spoken at Siri and reroute them to the ioBridge API to control the X10 widgets connected to the ioBridge IO-204. For more information about the project, visit Mark’s blog for a detailed description and things that you need to make your own voice activated home automation system.

[via MarkHodder.com]

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