McFilter

The Internet of Things - Slides and Notes

At Be2Camp 2008 on Friday, I gave a Pecha Kucha presentation about "The Internet of Things". The slides are below, but they mightn't make a great deal of sense without my words alongside. If/when the video of it is available, I'll update this entry to point to it. For now I'll steal Jodie's notes from the day's Cover It Live stream.

The Cover It Live notes:

• be2camp: Now, the internet of things, by Adrian McEwen
• be2camp: embeding computer devices into the built environment
• be2camp: The future is already here - its just not evenly distributed - william gibson
• be2camp: its not about the internet fridge
• be2camp: its about...
• be2camp: parcel tracking, photo frames with flickr link, oyster cards...
• be2camp: nike + footware, real time bus times (buses with GPS), Pachube
• be2camp: the twittering house @andy_house
• be2camp: Arduino boards - microcontroller boards
• be2camp: Adrian created a light and temperature sensor within a few hours and a few pounds
• [Comment From Usman Haque] Rafi Haladjian made interesting point at recent Internet of Things session at PICNIC 08 that fridges are on average replaced only once every 8 years; so not going to be the prime market for internet-enabled things
• be2camp: he has built a wireless controllable power monitor that will hook into pachube
• be2camp: cool stuff!!!

For Further Reading or Exploration

At the end of the talk I said I'd throw some links to further information up on my blog - I'm going to break the links into two sections: the first gives you some places to read more about ubicomp, and the second contains some pointers to practical places to help you get started building things.

Find Out More About Ubicomp

• As always, Wikipedia has a useful overview and list of further reading in its entry on Ubiquitous Computing.
• Mike Kuniavsky blogs about his exploration of ubicomp at www.orangecone.com, and has co-founded ThingM - a ubicomp device studio.
• Dan Hill, who blogs at www.cityofsound.com, is interested in ubicomp in how ubicomp works at a neighbourhood or city level. His articles on The Personal Well-Tempered Environment (wondering about how communities can compete to lower their carbon footprint) and Transport Informatics (a look at how transport can be, and is being, enhanced with ubicomp) are well worth a read.
• Adam Greenfield is another blogger writing about ubicomp and the city. His blog is at speedbird.wordpress.com and he's also written a book introducing the subject: Everyware.
• Finally, the recent PICNIC 08 conference had a few sessions about The Internet of Things. You can watch Mike Kuniavsky's talk here and there's another talk, by Matt Cottam, here.

Getting Started with Ubiquitous Computing

• www.arduino.cc has everything you need to know about the Arduino microcontroller boards, including lots of information about how to build simple circuits and get started with writing progams to run on it.
• www.tinker.it is where you can buy the Arduino boards and related shields and sensors in the UK, plus they regularly run beginners workshops where you can get your hands dirty playing with Arduinos. The beginners kit for workshops is a great starting point for playing with Arduinos even if you aren't going to one of their workshops.
• As introduced in the previous Pecha Kucha session, Pachube provide an easy way to get your data out onto the web where you can display it nicely or connect it to other devices elsewhere.

Update: The video of the Pecha Kucha is now online, so if you'd like to watch my talk then you can. It starts at about 41 minutes in.

Tags: Internet_of_Things ubicomp ubiquitous computing pervasive be2camp be2camp2008