Rob Faludi

Island in Thailand – Digital Naturalism Conference

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Rob Faludi Posted in Communities, Events, General — No Comments ↓

Spent much of June on a jungle island in Thailand, attending a biology-art-hackathon-“un-conference” to build electronics projects that interact with nature. The first-ever Digital Naturalism Conference on Koh Lon island ran for six weeks of arty, ant-licking, bio-mimicking, data logging, fruit roasting, butane soldering fun that pushed my limits and reminded me how outstanding and wildly creative the maker community can be. More will be written about this but special thanks to Andy, Tasneem and Yannick for their extraordinary efforts to create a wilderness community out of thin air and coconut rope.

Here’s some photos I took during my time on Koh Lon with ~100 motivated makers:

Supply boat to Koh Lon	The island appears
The island appears	The Diva, our floating makerspace
Registration booth	Examining insects

LTE-M vs. NB-IoT: Determine the Differences Between Low Bandwidth Protocols

Posted on April 2, 2017 by Rob Faludi Posted in General

New cellular protocols rolling out in 2017 will provide low power and low cost cellular connectivity for industrial Internet of Things applications. In this new video for Digi International, I explain the LTE-M and NB-IoT low bandwidth protocols by breaking down the differences between the two and sharing some examples of their use in industrial applications.

NASA Puts XBees in Orbit

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Rob Faludi Posted in General

On Monday, March 6 at 10:20 p.m. Pacific time. NASA released TechEdSat 5 (Technical and Educational Satellite 5) satellite equipped with Digi XBee 802.15.4 modules as part of a test program for wireless communications between satellites and payloads from the International Space Station (ISS). TechEdSat 5 has been collecting data every 10 seconds and transmitting it from these radios via Wi-Fi ground link to monitor aerodynamics, gravity vector and magnetic field (for orbital positioning). As of August 2017, TechEdSat 5 continues to generate data from orbit, greatly exceeding its planned 6-week mission length. The data will be used to design passive de-orbit system for future space station payloads, so that experimental samples can be quickly returned from the ISS without waiting for a cargo mission.

The TechEdSat 5 mission has two goals:

Assisted GPS positioning for orbital determination (including aiming of antennas).
Checking the orbit and orbital decay before modulated Exo-Brake deployment, during full deployment and throughout the remainder of the de-orbital braking process.

The TechEdSat program is used to bring engineering interns up to speed with real spacecraft and space operations. Interns do most of the development and testing work, with everything reviewed by professional staff to guarantee mission reliability and safety.

XBee MicroPython Examples

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Rob Faludi Posted in General, Internet of Things, Networking, XBee

Introduction

Simple programs can make a big difference! An XBee running small amounts of code can perform some pretty important tasks. Cryptic readings can be transformed into useful data, excess transmissions can be intelligently filtered out, modern sensors and actuators can be employed directly, operational logic can glue inputs and outputs together in an intelligent way.

Here are some useful MicroPython examples that should run within 12KB of RAM, useful even in a small sandboxed implementation. Required parts and a method for simulating limited RAM are noted below.

Examples

Send “Hello World”

This example shows how to send some text data via an XBee in transparent mode.

SETUP: Connect the XBee (configured to factory defaults) as shown in the diagram below:

PROGRAM: Load the code sample into your pyboard’s main.py file

# main.py -- Send Text Example v1.0 - XBee MicroPython
from pyb import UART              # load UART resources
uart = UART(4, baudrate=9600)     # create UART object on X1, X2
uart.write('hello world!')        # write data

# main.py -- Send Text Example v1.0 - XBee MicroPython

from pyb import UART # load UART resources

uart = UART(4, baudrate=9600) # create UART object on X1, X2

uart.write('hello world!') # write data

RESULTS: Connect a second XBee, also configured to factory defaults, to your computer. Then use a terminal program like XCTU or CoolTerm to receive the text data. Each time you reset the pyboard, it sends “hello world!” one time to your computer. The results will look like this:

Four Trends Transforming IoT in 2016

Posted on December 9, 2015 by Rob Faludi Posted in General

Software is eating the world and the Internet of Things is no exception. In a new post for IoT NOW, I talk about four “software-minded” trends that I believe hardware vendors will increasingly consider for their equipment designs:

Overbuilding for longevity & flexibility
Service models
Data-driven decisions
Systems thinking

Read my post to learn more!

XBees Rocket into Space

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Rob Faludi Posted in Arduino, Communities, Events, Internet of Things, Networking, XBee

XBee radios have rocketed into space! Early in the morning on July 7, NASA launched a NASA Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket from their Wallops Flight Facility. Onboard the rocket was an experiment running the very first wireless XBee network to leave our planet. Here’s a quick description recorded on launch day:

The rocket carried the SOAREX-8 Exo-Brake flight test from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, a kind of thin-air parachute for returning cargo from the International Space Station or for future landings on Mars. The XBee sensor network was used to collect temperature data, air pressure readings, and 3-axis acceleration parameters.

The NASA team retrieved these readings via an on-board gateway created with an Arduino Mega, XBee radio, and an Iridium module. The Arduino Mega microcontroller was used to manage communications between the local XBee wireless network and the long-range Iridium satellite uplink. All of these components were chosen as part of a NASA initiative to use commercial off-the-shelf parts wherever possible, and to employ rapid prototyping tools to efficiently explore new ideas.

An on-board wireless XBee network relayed science data back to NASA throughout the space flight.

The XBee network soared to an altitude of 206 miles before ending its maiden voyage in Atlantic Ocean after completing its duties. Since all data was relayed successfully back to Earth, NASA did not plan to recover the payload.

Here are some more stories on the flight:

Botanicalls in MoMA’s “This is for Everyone” Exhibition

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Rob Faludi Posted in Botanicalls, Events, Internet of Things

We are pleased that Botanicalls was not simply acquired by the Museum of Modern Art but is also being presented in a new exhibition called “This is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good” running through January 31, 2016.

Here’s a description of the show:

“This exhibition takes its title from the Twitter message that British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) used to light up the stadium at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremonies. His buoyant tweet highlighted the way that the Internet—perhaps the most radical social design experiment of the last quarter century—has created limitless possibilities for the discovery, sharing, and expansion of knowledge and information. As we revel in this abundant possibility, we sometimes forget that new technologies are not inherently democratic. Is design in the digital age—so often simply assumed to be for the greater good—truly for everyone? From initial exploratory experiments to complex, and often contested, hybrid digital-analog states, all the way to “universal” designs, This Is for Everyone explores this question with works from MoMA’s collection that celebrate the promise—and occasional flipside—of contemporary design.”

You can read more about this intriguing new exhibition on the MoMA blog.

XBee ZigBee Cloud Kit Winning Awards

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Rob Faludi Posted in Design, Internet of Things, Networking, XBee

The XBee ZigBee Cloud Kit that our team developed last year recently took home several nice industry
awards. We had set out to create a kit simple enough to help non-engineers quickly connect their creations to the cloud yet flexible enough for professionals to build rapid prototypes using advanced programming and cloud-based data sets. The kit is built around Digi’s XBee ZigBee Gateway. It includes code examples and powerful tools for making Internet-connected projects. It also enables remote control of devices and data through a highly customizable open-source dashboard application, pictured here.

IoTInnovations_logo_2015-small-300x164 Our XBee ZigBee Cloud Kit won the IoT Innovations 2015 award from ConnectedWorld magazine. ConnectedWorld’s Peggy Smedley notes, ”Building wireless and cloud-connected solutions are made easier for developers as a result of the Digi XBee ZigBee Cloud Kit and XBee Gateway.” We are told that winning products were seen as the most creative and technologically advanced products, services, and platforms currently available for the Internet of Things. That’s pretty great.
The kit was also honored with the 2014 M2M Evolution IoT Excellence Award, given by TMC & Crossfire Media. This award “honors innovative products that support the availability of information being deduced, inferred and directly gathered from sensors, systems and anything else that is supporting better business and personal decisions.” We’re certainly happy to be a part of making good decisions!

The XBee ZigBee Cloud Kit includes:

One XBee Gateway – ZigBee to Ethernet/Wi-Fi
One XBee-PRO ZigBee 2.4GHz module
One development board w/breadboard
Cables and power supplies
Basic prototyping components: LED gauges, jumper wires, resistors, vibration motor, temperature sensor, audio buzzer and a potentiometer
Sample Web application on Heroku
- Completely open source for easy customization
- Configurable widgets
- Integrated with the Device Cloud

You can learn more here about the XBee ZigBee Cloud Kit. Ready to try one out? They’re available from Digi-Key Electronics, Mouser Electronics or Digi’s online store.

United States Patent 9,026,261

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Rob Faludi Posted in Design, Internet of Things, Smart Energy

The wheels of government do not turn quickly, but they do turn. Six years after our initial inventions, five years after our company’s acquisition, and about four years after we each moved on to new lines of work, the U.S. Patent and Trademark office just awarded #9,026,261 for “Methods and systems for managing energy usage in buildings” to the GroundedPower team of Mike Bukhin, Paul Cole, Demetrie Tyler and myself.

The vast majority of what I’ve done is open-source and will continue to be so. I’m largely convinced that shared innovation tends to be the most valuable to society. Still, it’s neat to have an official U.S. government document accredit me as an inventor and a childhood goal pretty much accomplished. Now all I need is my astronaut’s license.

Constructing an IoT Strategy – ForenSecure 2015

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Rob Faludi Posted in Communities, Events, Internet of Things

Last week I presented “Constructing an Internet of Things Strategy” at Forensecure’15 near Chicago, Illinois. This talk is about how any business can develop and adopt IoT methods to remain competitive in a connected world. The conference is sponsored by IIT’s Center for Cyber Security and Forensics Education, who were kind enough to invite me to speak. I also joined a panel discussion on “The Internet of Things” with Mel Gehrs, Silver Spring Network’s Distribution Automation expert, and Tonnetta Oubari, Verizon’s Manager of IoT for Smart Cities & New Business Innovation. The panel talked about security, new protocols, building automation and the bright future of the IoT.

Here’s the abstract for my talk:

“Planning for the Internet of Things has become a competitive necessity. Pundits have endlessly heralded the arrival of an IoT mega-trend. Yet creation of a workable organizational strategy around connected devices has not received nearly as much attention. Many important questions remain. Does the Internet of Things really offer business benefits? Are there any realistic plans that can be implemented today? What does an IoT strategy even look like?
In this presentation, we’ll share the key factors that IoT-ready organizations should consider, the essential people and roles to get involved, and the tremendous real-world advantages that a successful strategy can offer. We will begin by reviewing how IoT methods can address previously intractable problems and the pathways to inventive solutions.
At the podium for “Constructing an IoT Strategy”
Attendees will learn the key elements of an IoT strategy, how each can be put into action, and how to create IoT business cases with valuable outcomes. Hard benefits, soft benefits, customer advantages, social rewards, priorities, and timing considerations will all be covered. Need to author a documented IoT strategy that provides immediate benefits for your organization? Here’s how to get started!“