Monthly Archives: April 2014

Saturday night – redeemed

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After a long hard day of hacking, our persistence has payed off. Yesterday Charles and I got off to  quick start  by getting lots of stuff talking to each other via MQTT   for our DIME project.. ….. but today, we spent most of our time wrestling with various radio protocols (wifi, bluetooth. zigbee trying to get more things connected .. the wind was not at our backs.. we kept getting 80 percent of the way there only to find we had some problem or other getting the two sides (sensor/cloud) to talk…

Mid afternoon we had to put down the soldering iron and take a break,. i even jumped in the Huntington river (brrrr) to shake off the F-up ferry’s evil spell..

 

 

Finally.. after dinner, our luck changed.. we managed to get a whole lot more stuff workign all at once..

  • we managed to create an ultra low cost  remote smoke detector measurement.. that even I have to admit is pretty clever. it measures battery health and tells others when the alarm is actuated..
  • we also used the same modular sensor on water detectors for flooding.. bonus !
  • we created a simple rules engine that sends txt messages (eg.  hey.. the sair quality in here is pretty bad.. or hey.. the smole detector is goign off ! ) via Twillio
  • we got a simple XMPP link working to compliment our existing MQTT data IO..

here’s us trying out the smoke alarm.. feebly trying to keep the alarm from waking up Diane.. (sorry love !)

 

here’s our wirelessly monitored smoke alarm (stolen from the roof of our hallway..) .. hey nest.. ours cost $15

 

here’s Gabe trying on Charles Google glass.. pretty geeky !

now the house is a wreck.. but we did soem great stuff.. now to document it all..

 

first soem sleep.

nite all, nite sam

-me

Friday night – DIME time

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It’s been a funny day.. full of forgetfulness.. gabe forgot his shoes, diane forgot her purse.. and I forgot that the mike gordon show was sunday not tonight. I was in the car this evening about to drive to the show when colin reminded me that I had the day wrong…

too much on all our minds maybe ?

Great afternoon and evening though. My friend Charles is up from MIT to a work on a combined work/hobby project called DIME. We’re doing this as part of the  SmartAmerica challenge  that’s being sponsored by the Presidential technology fellows from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Our team is composed from folks at Montgomery County MD, UC Irving, Schenider Electric, IEEE, Sigfox, MIT , Twilio and IBM . We’re looking at how an open data hub (which we call DIME)   can help governments like Montgomery County can run better and take better care of its inhabitants

After several months of group calls and power point, Charles and I decided we were goign to do a few days of hacking and actually build something . We’re trying  to show how a open data broker can help integrate a variety of sensors and applications using IoT  standards like MQTT and XMPP. It’s very timely because that’s exactly what I’m working on now at work. In fact.. I’m using soem of the code techniques we’ve been pulling together for an IoT Hackathon I’m helping organize at the end of the month.. very good practice for me !

Here’s an architecture we’re working towards

So far its been a blast. ! We have an architecture and code already running. Our first project is to link an air quality sensor to DIME by way of mqtt over wifi from a raspberry pi.

 

 

we now have the air quality data data streaming to our phones. tablets and laptops.. here’s charles testing the air quality sensor

here’s the data on my phone

on my laptop

 

on charles laptop

and combined with geolocation data from my iphone

 

not bad for a nights work !.. More on this tomorrow !

nite all, nite sam

-jc

 

Thursday night – invisible friends

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In the past two days I’ve had five (!) occurrences of the  weird 21st century social phenomenon of ‘invisible friends’,. That is .. ive been sitting in a room talking with folks only to realize that we are old friends.. we’ve just never seen one another in person. So many of my good friendships have been formed over work calls, social networking or even emailing.. All three of these folks were people I know ‘well’ by all other accounts.. We talk often, know each others histories, goals, work and personal stories.. ..

I guess there have always been ‘penpals’.. but something about the immediacy and informality of todays electronic communications makes these relationships seem more current and vibrant than they would have in the snail mail genertion..

Most of the time when I’v ehad that aha moment its a pleasant surprise.. like ‘Oh… your..XYZ’.. but sometimes its embarrassing… like.. I should have known that was you.. but then again.. it never works to imagine what soemone looks like basede on their voice.. or (at best) their tiny phoen book picture..

Anyway.. alls, well.. I’ve now rounded out 5 relationsships with faces.. .. even heads and bodies.. how cool is that !?

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Wednesday night – fellow fellows

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I had the honor today of helping welcome 11 new IBM fellows.. the largest class in the 51 years of the IBM Fellow program That brings the number of Fellows to 87.. an all time high !

I was really glad to see several friends in the room this morning when I arrived to speak with them.. It was really fun to be with them on such a happy day

Congrats friends..now we need to teach you the secret handshake !

nite all, nite sam

-me