by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Communities, Design, Events, Networking, XBee

World Maker Faire NY is less than a week away! We’ll have project demos for you to check out, a new development kit, and we’ll be giving a talk on connecting your projects to the Internet. It’s going to be an extremely fun weekend. If you’re going to Maker Faire, be sure to stop by the Digi booth where we will be debuting our XBee Wi-Fi Cloud Kit. The Kit makes Internet-enabling your project easy. Maker Faire attendees also have a chance to sign up for the beta version of Digi’s new XCTU software.

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Digi’s Liz Presson  and I will be presenting September 22, 2013 at 12:00p.m. EST on the Electronics Stage. We’ll show you how an Internet connection can improve your project and turn it into something amazing. This will be a great first step to getting your projects online. Everything from how to get started, what technologies to use and examples of great internet enabled projects will be covered.

Learn more about the talk here!

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Communities, Design, Events

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Travis Good just wrote a nice MAKE post on my “Liking the Guest” talk from Make Media’s Hardware Innovation Workshop last month. In it I make the point that caring about the people who use your product is a basic interaction design principle, in the same way that white space and alignment are principles for graphic design. In our everyday lives, when we like someone, we cooperate. When you like your users, you travel together with them towards a common goal. John Hench, who helped design Disneyland said, ”Liking the guests is key to everything we do.” I think it’s also a key part of the maker movement. Liking our users helps us create the things that matter, not just usability but also the crafting little details, telling big stories, designing engaging experiences and above all tolerating the errors that are part of being human. Read more about Liking the Guest on the Make Blog.

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Arduino, Events, Networking, XBee

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This week we are taking part in deploying over 500 sensor motes at Google’s developer conference, Google I/O, May 15-17. The network will make up the Data Sensing Lab, a project that utilizes Digi’s XBee ZigBee modules and ConnectPort wireless gateways. The sensor data will be collected and managed by Device Cloud. The project demonstrates how real-time machine-to-machine data can provide insight into customer behaviors and preferences.

The senor network will provide more than 4,000 data streams running over Device Cloud with continuous updates on temperature, pressure, light, air quality, motion and noise levels in San Francisco’s Moscone Center during the conference. The Google Cloud Platform team will gather, transform, and analyze the information, then share heat maps and other data visualizations in collaboration with the Google Maps team.

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Google is getting a global view of their entire multi-million dollar event, as it plays out in real time. They’re learning where people are going and when, how loud the applause is for each presentation, where it’s figuratively hot and where it’s literally cool. But they’re also learning how easy it is to integrate Device Cloud’s APIs with their own cloud-based business systems. Google and Digi collaborated to create a complete end-to-end solution in just a few weeks, one that’s ready to hand us 40 million fascinating data points.”

The Data Sensing Lab crew, Alasdair Allan of Babilim Light Industries, Kipp Bradford of Kippworks, Rob Faludi of Digi International, Michael Manoochehri, Amy Unruh and Kim Cameron of Google and Julie Steele of O’Reilly Media, created the project to collect data to answer questions about the physical world in a fun and awe-inspiring way. For more information about the software involved in this project, attend the “Behind the Data Sensing Lab” session on May 16, 5:20 – 6 p.m. PDT.

Here’s a bit of the press we’ve gotten so far about the project:

 

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Arduino, Botanicalls, Networking

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Another great article called Gadgets to Help Tend a Garden in The New York Times today. Roxie Hammill and Mike Hendricks review a variety of technology solutions for home gardening, including our own:

Botanicalls, a collaboration among artists and technologists, has designed a do-it-yourself kit with a sensor that goes into the dirt to measure moisture. When it gets too dry, the plant posts, “Water me please.” And it will send out a polite thank you when you respond.

“We didn’t want it to be like that person who only calls when he wants something,” said Robert Faludi, a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York and in the Interactive Telecommunications program at New York University. The kit is for sale at botanicalls.com/buy/ for $100.

The goal was to encourage a happy relationship between plants and people. “A lot of people are afraid of plants. They’re afraid whatever they do the plant is going to die. This makes it possible for them to have a plant in their lives where they might not otherwise,” Mr. Faludi said.

Read more about the Gadgets to Help Tend a Garden.

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Arduino, Events, Networking, XBee

I spoke live with Mac Slocum at O’Reilly’s Strata Big Data conference about Digi International’s involvement in the Data Sensing Lab here, as well as the future of M2M and the Internet of Things-what I’m hoping will be an Internet of Things People Want. Our part in the lab was to assemble a network of 40 XBee ZigBee radio sensor nodes running Arduino, gateway their data via a ConnectPort X2e running the XBee Internet Gateway and post everything to the iDigi Device Cloud where it could be passed off via Amazon Web Services to a team of visualization experts for analysis. Here’s the interview:

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Design, Events

I spoke this week at the New York headquarters of Fjord design for their Fjord Kitchen event, “Where Will the Internet of Things Take Service Design?”

Moderated by Fast Company‘s Cliff Kuang, the two groups of panelists included:

  • Steven Dean, Partner, Prehype. Adjunct Faculty, ITP.
  • Scher Foord, Executive Director, Design, Condé Nast Technology.
  • Tim Queenan, Director of Strategy, Google Creative Lab.
  • Rachel Ramoni, Executive Director, SMART, Harvard Medical School.
  • Jacob Styburski, VP Customer Experience, Enterprise Growth, American Express.
  • …and me: Rob Faludi, Collaborative Strategy Leader, R&D, Digi International!

Some of the key themes that overlapped in both groups:

  • The Internet of Things is here, and will become more ubiquitous and invisible.
  • Good service design will continue to humanize the technology and the data around us, making its complexity disappear into the background.
  • Given that, our panelists agreed that it’s high time to kill the term “Internet of Things.” What’s important is to create an “Internet of Things People Want,” that should eventually evolve into the “Internet of Things People Expect.”
  • To make this a reality, designers must create a shared language that allows for collaboration across the companies, industries, and individuals creating the services of tomorrow.

We had fun and great food. Here’s some more pictures and more about the event.

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Design, Events, Networking, XBee

The BBC News interviewed me live, explaining the Digi technology behind YesYesNo’s Connecting Light art installation for London Festival 2012’s Cultural Olympiad. We’re on the edge of a craggy cliff about halfway along the installation of 400 huge interactive weather balloons that are illuminated in different colors by text messages sent from people around the world. I’m explaining how Programmable XBees and the iDigi Device Cloud make that possible. And although you don’t see them in the live shot, we are entirely surrounded by sheep:

…more photos here.

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Design, Events, Networking, XBee

Here’s how the Connecting Light system is created from Digi equipment for the 73-mile-long installation of 400 giant illuminated balloons on Hadrian’s Wall in northern England. The huge network will go live tonight for an crowd expected to bring traffic along the 80-mile World Heritage site to a crawl as thousands of spectators flock to the interactive event. Connecting Light is a perfect example of a large-scale system for centrally controlling remote devices—the same advanced infrastructure that hospitals use to monitor patient ventilators, infusion pumps or dialysis machines, and that forward-thinking power utilities use to network their entire grid.

The technology required for Connecting Light was assembled by Digi Professional Services—my same colleagues who network dynamic message signs along highways, smart thermostats for utility networks and positive train control systems for railroads. Putting all these different devices online is arguably the next big revolution for the Internet. Organizations are starting to demand visibility to their remote assets along with centralized control for everything out in the field as their competitors begin benefitting from the systems currently being put in place. It’s an exciting time to be involved with this stuff!

The diagram above shows how Programmable XBees, ConnectPort GSM mobile routers and the iDigi Device Cloud all work together to form a reliable backbone behind a breathtaking artwork that spans England’s coasts.It is also available as a PDF.

 

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Events, Networking, XBee

This week I’m heading to Newcastle upon Tyne in the U.K. for Connecting Light, 400 giant illuminated balloons that will cross England coast to coast along Hadrian’s Wall, a 2000-year-old Roman barrier. This will be my first exposure to 73-mile-long art! The interactive installation was networked with help from me and Digi using Programmable XBees and the venerable iDigi Device Cloud. Connecting Light was conceived and built by my friends at the YesYesNo collective, including artists Zach Lieberman and Molmol Kuo. You can see it in person in the U.K., or watch it online the evenings of August 31 and September 1st.

This video shows them testing it few weeks ago, along the New York City waterfront:

by Rob FaludiPosted on Posted in Communities, Networking, XBee

You want your project noticed? Nobody can ignore a hyperactive cymbal-playing chimp that creates a cacophony of sound when triggered over the Internet. Inspired as always by Tom Igoe’s Making Things Talk, we hooked this toy terror up to an XBee radio, creating a wireless alarm that grabs the ear as well as the eye and the heart. From the project instructions on the Digi Examples site:

By pairing an XBee with your percussive primate, you create an unmistakable alarm that gets immediate attention. It’s a first-rate way to present alerts that cannot be ignored. Web server down? Customer service queue climbing beyond your comfort? Kids ignoring their chores? This easy hack will put a monkey on their back, and he won’t let go until the warning is heeded!

Check out the ape alert in action in its video below: