Fox Boston ran an in-depth report on the initial results of the Cape Light Compact pilot that our GroundedPower project installed in 100 homes on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. We’re now taking this to at least six more municipal utilities, tripling the size of the pilot program. GroundedPower focuses on customer engagement—employing technology as a means to creating a desirable behavioral outcomes, in this case supporting energy efficiency in homes and businesses.
Archive for the 'Networking' Category
Original Internet Coffee Maker
The Hammersmith Group just published a nice overview of the potential for connected devices by Constantine Valhouli dubbed “The Internet of things: Networked objects and smart devices.” It quotes myself, Julian Bleecker, Bruce Sterling, Adam Greenfield and covers devices from the WineM to Botanicalls to the Ambient Orb along with the original online coffee pot. There’s a variety of other interesting research papers on this site, including the one that quotes me.
People ask a lot, so here’s the ZTerm settings that work well for me. The screen I skipped have no impact on what we’re usually doing. The last screenshot shows how to save the settings. Yes for some reason they put it on the Dial menu.
Be sure to pick the appropriate serial port. Holding down the shift key on the keyboard while the application is launching will display a prompt to choose the serial port.
The Mac OS is desperately in need of an open-source replacement for ZTerm, which hasn’t been updated in eight years. A friend of mine is working on a total new Macintosh serial program, so hopefully there can be an announcement about that in the near future.
Congratulations to my students on some excellent achievements in our summer Sociable Objects Workshop at ITP. They created a full-floor permanent mesh network in a single day, then used it to concoct a toilet-activated display fountain for water conservation over a mere weekend. In the last weeks of class these hotshots produced five final projects including a sand painting sourced from distributed sound sensors, an anti-confusion teaching feedback mechanism, a musical instrument played from networked kites, a wearable dance photography system for capturing leaps, and a relationship-enhancing networked pedometer. (Links to be added as documentation becomes available.)
Everything they did was with full ZigBee protocol so they are now armed with the basic skills to create interactive wireless networks of any size for their amazing purposes.
The XBee Terminal Max is an improved version of the original XBee Terminal for Processing that features a much bigger screen, scrolling text areas, interactive serial port management and helpful reminder messages.
Thanks to Max Whitney for generating many of the improvements and Tom Igoe for the original code.
NYC Resistor is offering our Wireless Wearables class again on May 3rd. The last one sold out pretty quickly, so if you want to join us for an intensive afternoon of sew-on radio fun, it’s a good idea to beat the ninjas and sign up early.
Gave a talk (more of a conversation really) about Smart Energy and What Lies Ahead at ETech, the Emerging Technology Conference in San Jose last week. Slides for the online casinotalk are online.
Also gave a workshop called Socializing Stuff about wireless objects that was a hands-on introduction to 802.15.4 and ZigBee radios. Wrapped it all up at the last-night Fest with Wireless Wearables and the LilyPad XBee before renting a car and heading to Point Reyes to unwind by the foggy Pacific. Lots of cows and no cell phone service are the perfect complement to a week of tech.
ZigBee Internet Gateway at ITP
Getting physical projects to talk to the Internet can be tricky. Students making Networked Objects have always had tons of choices, but each with a significant downside:
- Embedded Ethernet modules like the XPort and Wiznet Shields cost about $40 and tether your project to a thick cable.
- Embedded WiFi modules like the WiPort and MatchPort cost $70 – $120 and require extensive manual configuration each time they change networks
- Cell phone modules start at around $150 – $270, require intricate plug converters, a detailed setup and of course a SIM card and data services
- Bluetooth connections require an individually paired base station like a laptop or cell phone within less than 30 feet, and frequently don’t even stay in that pairing
Now each of these methods has an upside too. Ethernet is fast and reliable, WiFi easily found, cell modules can connect from anywhere and Bluetooth has a zippy data rate and a smart-looking logo. But I’ve always thought it would be great if you could just attach a microcontroller to a cheap radio and hit the Internet wirelessly with a simple URL. No thick cable, no tricky setup, no IP address management, no encryption configuration, no data plan and no pairing.
The ZigBee* Internet Gateway I’m developing at ITP aims to accomplish just that. Students link their radio to the Gateway, then simply print a URL to the serial port and wait for the results to come back from the Internet. Each radio costs as little as $19. Using Digi’s ConnectPort X2 as a base, I’m developing code in Python that processes these requests in a way that’s simple and open to everyone. This afternoon I installed a beta test unit for my Networked Objects class to try out. Right now it supports HTTP and HTTPS requests, with plans to expand to email, FTP and XBee I/O direct formats if there’s a demand for that. I’ve started a basic documentation page for the ITP community and will publish the Gateway code when it comes out of beta.
ITPers who are interested in testing should contact me.
* the beta is running 802.15.4 since more students have those modules. Full ZigBee will be included after testing.
I’m working with a group of smart folks on a new energy-monitoring startup to put mesh networked devices into about 100 homes on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. GroundedPower’s new Smart Energy Monitoring pilot project will begin in April. I believe we’re finally seeing the first wave of embedded communicative computing that Mark Weiser predicted back in 1991 and I’m relieved that rather than mechanizing our breakfasts, the vanguard devices will be combating climate change.
Weiser described ubiquitous computing by what it wasn’t, “Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people.”* The sociable objects that we’re making to moderate power consumption take this one step further, enlisting embedded computing to protect the world in which we people live. I’d like to think that Weiser would be pleased.
We work with the LilyPad open-source wearables system and the XBee radios a lot at ITP, so Kate Hartman and I decided that it was time to put the two together. My Friday 7 in 7 project was to create a XBee LilyPad board, the first draft of which is pictured above. There’s probably going to be a second draft before we have the printed circuit boards made, adding some decoupling capacitors and possibly a few output LEDs. I’d like to keep things pretty bare bones and just see how people might use them before adding complexity like sensors or independent power. We’re planning to run some tests on the prototypes to evaluate wearability and integration methods. The XBee can transmit information from an Arduino module, but also has some ability to function independently. There’s eight pins of input and output, including analog transmissions, that can be used without a microcontroller. Therefore it makes sense to think about another iteration with integrated battery power.
When the board files are done, they’ll be posted publicly on my site (under Projects) and can be used by anyone under a Creative Commons open-source license. A couple of my Sociable Objects students working on socially shape-shifting skirts. Hopefully the new XBee LilyPad will enable their creations.
