Sometimes you just have to track the sleep habits of the living things around you. For example, maybe your children wake up at mysterious and unexpected times. Otherwise, in the case of Ricky Robinett at Twilio, you might just be wondering how much your dog sleeps while you're away. One solution, as it turns out, is a sleep tracker built with Tessel and Twilio. Robinett has written a solid tutorial on how to build such a thing, and all it requires is a Twilio account (of course), along with a Tessel microcontroller and accelerometer module, a USB battery pack, and a somewhat cooperative dog. From there, Robinett walks you through everything you'll need to know: setting up Tessel and sending SMS, using Twilio libraries, interacting with the accelerometer, and so on. Then, once you're all set up, you're ready to take an action rarely described in technical circles: Deploy to Your Dog The end result (depending on your personal choices regarding dog-clothing) is something like this: (via Ricky Robinett at Twilio) It keeps you updated via text message on your dog's sleeping habits by generating an update after five minutes without movement. So, if your dog is just a particularly lazy creature who spends extended periods of time staring, stationary and wide-eyed, at a fixed point on the wall, it sounds like you might get some inaccurate numbers. In general, though, it's a cool idea: regular updates letting you know how long your dog has slept. So, as long as nobody hacks your dog and starts running Doom on it (as those pesky hackers are known to do these days), it looks like a fun project.
It's fairly clear that not everybody agrees on how to define the Internet of Things, but certain aspects are more generally agreed upon. For example, DIY computing (along the lines of Raspberry Pi) is opening up in a big way because of the growth of IoT, allowing developers to solve a lot of new problems in new spaces and think outside of the box a bit. To illustrate that point, Sunanda Jayanth at Contract IQ has assembled a round-up of SDKs for IoT and wearable devices. The list covers six SDKs, each with a brief description: Google’s Android Wear SDK Samsung’s Tizen SDK IBM + Libelium WunderBar by relayr Microsoft Windows on Devices u-blox + ARM Some of these SDKs - Windows on Devices, for example - are not available quite yet, but have been announced and are coming soon. Beyond the round-up, Jayanth warns of possible hurdles for IoT, despite the bright future: At the stage of growth that IoT is in right now, incumbents are in danger of stifling growth simply by accidentally introducing complexity. If your things and my things have to talk together, we need a common language. A rapid development and uptake of common platforms and standards that encourages seamless cooperation is what the industry is in dire need of. But the solution Jayanth suggests, is open source software. Industry-wide standards for architecture and APIs could help prevent these problems, and developers taking advantage of these new SDKs and growing a community - an open source community, ideally - around these new technologies could go a long way to keeping things orderly in the future. That, and making sure we don't end up with mountains of bug-ridden, unkillable IoT devices.
As a developer, it's always good to know which way the job trends are going - you know, which database is everybody all about this week - but according to VisionMobile, it looks like they're all going to the same place: the Internet of Things. In particular, VisionMobile estimates a 4.2 million increase in the number of IoT developers over the next six years - from 300,000 to 4,500,000: So, whether you're interested in fancy thermostats, killer robots, or any number of other more practical IoT endeavors, it looks like there will be a place for you.
If you're in a Best Buy sometime around November or December working your way through your Internet of Things shopping list, you might come across a new department: Connected Home. According to Best Buy's overview, it will include a lot of IoT products: We’re talking video monitoring (including security cameras and systems like Dropcam); smart thermostats (from Nest and Honeywell); smart lighting (check out Philips Hue); smart locks (with options from Kwikset); garage door accessories (like those from Chamberlain); motion, water, door and window sensors; smoke/CO2 detectors; automation/control hubs, light and appliance controls (including Belkin WeMo); and energy monitors. It's an interesting development - IoT is becoming fairly mainstream these days. Check it out: (via Best Buy) According to Stacey Higginbotham at Gigaom, Best Buy isn't the only one, either: Jim Frey (@smartlumens) sent me a picture of a Massachusetts Target featuring an end cap with Wink’s hub and various good, as well as what look like connected locks. Given the predictions for IoT's growth over the next few years, it's not surprising to see IoT being featured a little more explicitly in retail settings - I'm sure there's more to come.
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So, you heard about IoT. You got your Apple Watch and your Intel Edison and you're putting Doom on everything and your refrigerator is sending all kinds of emails. All you have left to do is check all the entries on your IoT shopping list and get your home fully automated, bring your life into the future. Before you worry about the technological singularity, though, you may want to consider something more immediately threatening: your rapidly emptying bank account. According to Terence Eden's recent look at the price of Things, a truly automated home is a bigger economic undertaking than it might seem to be at first glance. First, he points to sensors for his windows: After a traipse through my family home, I discover that I have 20 separate external doors and windows. I don't live in a mansion - but all my windows are split into two different sections. So, if I want my windows to become part of "The Internet of Things" I'm going to be shelling out £600. That's quite a lot of money. And that's only for a passive system. And, as Eden points out, that's just to let you know whether the window is open or not. It doesn't lock or unlock your window. It doesn't close or open your window. That's £600 - $980.30 USD according to my extensive research - just to keep you from worrying about your carpet when it starts raining. But it gets worse from there. Eden also looks at more branded scenarios, such as decking out your IoT house with some better lighting: Suppose I want some smart lightbulbs? The highly desirable Philips Hue Personal Wireless Light Bulbs are FIFTY QUID EACH . . . If I were to deck my place out completely in Philips Hue bulbs, I wouldn't have much change left from £1,250. And those are just a few of the items that the home of the future would likely include. Eden briefly looks at iBeacons and NFC tags, for example, and his conclusion is the same: IoT is expensive. Certainly these prices will drop over time, and it's definitely not an all-or-nothing game when it comes to these devices, but either way, Eden presents an interesting look at a less-often-explored aspect of the Internet of Things. There are a lot of exciting things happening right now, but to what degree will we actually have access to them?