What happens when you get together 6 people, a banana suit, and some hardware? You get a really creative project known as the LED Wall. The crew built a giant LED Wall made up of a matrix of 350 LEDs. Over a weekend they painstakingly soldered and glued the lights to a pegboard and connected them together using MAX6953 LED driver chips. The result was a matrix of LEDs that they could control by turning each LED on and off like pixels. They took that a step further and connected the LED Wall to the Internet via the ioBridge IO-204. With a web interface, anyone can draw their own messages and send them to the LED Wall with a web browser. You can see your messages being displayed by watching the live video feed on LED Wall website. So far, 119700 pixels have been sent to the LED Wall through the web — everything from “Hello World” to Mario and Space Invaders have been submitted.
"Hello World" on the LED Wall
You can draw your own images on the LED Wall yourself and also look through other people’s messages by visiting the project website at wall.elnormo.net. If you visit the project site, you will also see how they created the LED Wall. Here’s a time-lapsed video of the project build.
After a few weeks of testing, we are ready to release some new features and updates to the ioBridge.com interface. Everything will be live the next time you sign into ioBridge.com.
Here is a list of the key updates and new features:
Drag-and-drop Dashboard
Your dashboard is now customizable. You can move around your widgets to create a dashboard for your specific application or requirements. There are three columns your widgets can be place, where the center column is wider to accommodate charts and larger widgets. To drag a widget, click and hold on the Widget Label Bar and move it where you want it placed. To edit the widget quickly, click on the gear icon.
Drag-and-Drop Dashboard
Data Feed API v2
The Data Feed API has been completely updated. Our API is opening all of the time and we wanted to set the stage with a revamped Data Feed API with a RESTful interface. We added support for SSL and the ioBridge IO-204-PRO. We also added keys for the onboard variables that you can write to offline. Check out the Data Feed API v2 documentation for more information and the complete change list and sample projects.
Module Interface
We cleaned up the Module Interface by adding tabs and adding direct access to your Onboard Rules and Actions. From one interface you can setup the module, control outputs, and configure onboard rules and logic without using multiple sections of the interface.
Automated Setup
Prior to this update, you had to configure the channel settings and then create a widget. It’s easy to miss one of the steps. Now when you create an X10 Widget, for example, the interface automatically configures the channel for X10. This also works for Server-side Actions and Data Logging.
We hope that you put the new features to good use. Let us know how the new features and updates work out for you and keep us updated with anything new we should be doing. Stay tuned…we got more hardware and features that are coming soon…including an API for external plugins.
Over 2000 people came to the first annual Maker Faire North Carolina in Durham, NC. There were makers from all over. It was a blast!
We had on display web-enabled robots, toys, and interactive projects created by the ioBridge community. Some of those projects included, an iPhone and Twitter controlled Donkey Kong, X10 controlled lamp, streaming temperature sensor, and a remote controlled dog treat dispenser.
While we were there, we captured some footage of our projects on display and exhibits that we were able to see. There were so many great projects and so little time. We made a quick YouTube video and posted pictures to the ioBridge Flickr group.
Thanks to all of the volunteers, exhibitors, and sponsors who made the Maker Faire NC such a success.
Mobile Monday Amsterdam was held March 29th De Duif, Amsterdam. This talk was centered around The Internet of Things and brought together creative minds, projects, and presentations.
Martijn Pannevis (@PanMan) created the MomoMeter which is a physical meter that takes the pulse of Twitter for certain trending topics and hashtags. The thing gives you visual feedback on your pervasiveness on the real-time web. Martijn’s project uses an ioBridge IO-204, servo controller, and servo. He built a web app that queries the Twitter API and sends relative servo positions to the ioBridge Web API which moves the meter needle accordingly. Martijn Pannevis explains how to build your own internet of things thing with his presentation. (Photos by Filip Bunkens)
EasyDAQ is the creator of a wide range of relay controllers with USB, Ethernet, Serial, and XBee interfaces. EasyDAQ partnered with ioBridge to web-enable their serial relay control modules. The integrated system includes web-based control of up to 16 opto-isolated relays, a custom serial cable that interfaces the serial relay controller to the ioBridge IO-204 module, and an international / universal power supply.
EasyDAQ and ioBridge Serial Relay Controller System Overview
Web access is provided by the ioBridge.com platform via widgets and the Static Widget API. The API provides a conduit for commands sent by HTTP or HTTPS POST/GET requests. HTML, LabVIEW, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP and Ajax are access/programming options. Refer to the ioBridge Wiki for protocol and information on controlling the EasyDAQ SER8PRMx and SER16PRMxN relay cards using the ioBridge.com platform.
The system components are available for sale and worldwide distribution directly from EasyDAQ – visit EasyDAQ.biz for more information.
Christmas lights are one way to celebrate the holidays. If you want to take the tradition further, why not web-enable your your xmas lights and let the world watch, control, and interact via the Internet. A couple of ioBridge users did just that -- they took their holiday lights to Griswold levels.
Nathan Kennedy of Pacific Lights and Kennedy Technology has created an interactive display of reindeer and Christmas Star stakes covered in Christmas lights. You can watch his display all the way from New Zealand and switch them on or off on his website. He uses the ioBridge IO-204 connected to an arduino to control the lights on his website. It’s lots of fun controlling someone else’s holiday display.
Christmas Lights Controlled via a Web Page
Noel Portugal of Oracle has created an interactive holiday lights display using a mix of technologies. The result is Christmas lights synchronized to songs that are selectable on a web page, www.xmas-box.com. Inside the box are solid-state relays to control the lights, an Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit, and of course, the ioBridge IO-204 module to add some interactivity to his website. Noel details the procedure to create your very own Christmas Light Controller Box on Instructables.com and on his blog. On a related note, Noel also won third-place for his Dropping Spider ioBridge project featured on Instructables this Halloween! His neighbors must love him!
Over at PaperMashup.com, Ashley Ford has created a predictive weather system by tying the API of BBC Weather and real-time temperature data collected by a temperature sensor on the IO-204. Ashley is a developer at MySpace.com and has created a very clever project that uses ioBridge.com as a web service. The system serves as a way for him to forecast the weather in the UK as the season starts to turn colder. The predictive element comes from getting the forecast from the BBC Weather API and mashing it up with the ioBridge Data Feed API.
Office Weather System
You can demo the system and check out the weather forecast, by visiting Ashley’s blog. While you are there check some other of his projects.
From the “My Electronics Notepad” blog, Noel Portugal created a tracking webcam using passive infrared (PIR) sensors, a webcam mounted on a servo, and the IO-204 monitor and control module.
PIR Sensors, Webcam, and ioBridge IO-204 Module
Noel was able to pull this off with using the ioBridge Actions. An action is logic created through the ioBridge interface that allows automated events to occur. For example, an action can cause a servo to move to preset position, send an email, update your Facebook status, etc. In Noel’s case, he use the output of the PIR sensor to cause the servo to move to a set position. The output of the PIR is digital – “high” means motion detected and “low” means no motion.
Using two PIRs covering two regions, he was able to detect motion in two regions. If motion is sensed in one area, the webcam points in that direction and if motion is detected in the other area, the servo moves the camera to cover the other region. Very clever.
The PIR sensor has been the subject of a recent Adafruit tutorial – it’s available on the Adafruit store and even your local Radio Shack (of all places). For more information about this ioBridge project and other projects Noel dreams up, visit his blog.
Thanks to Oprah, Twitter is a household name. You can’t avoid it. But, Twitter uses are starting to flourish thanks to an API and dedicated developers. Matt Morey has developed a two-way, home automation application using Twitter to control lights and LCDs and monitor temperature and light sensors. His app interfaces Twitter with the ioBridge IO-204 by using the PHP Widget Control API.
Follow MattsOffice on Twitter
Matt’s Twitter application allows him to make updates to his Twitter feed and send commands to his IO-204 to turn on lights, send messages to his serial LCD screen, and get temperatures and light sensor readings. He also has a nifty extension that allows you to see a view from his office by sending him a tweet, which takes a snap shot from a digital camera and posts it on TwitPic.
Jason Winters, the famous Picodore and fishcam inventor himself, created a Do It Yourself (DIY) power monitoring system to chart and track power usage in your house using AC transducer clamps and an ioBridge module for web-casting the data. This project has found a lot of interest on the world wide web and the ioBridge community. Jason has used the system and discovered some amazing inefficiencies and some power suckers all around his house. I think we are interested in knowing where our money goes and how to become more efficient. I have also noticed lots of claims that this has been done before. If you dig deeper, you will find that no one has quite solved the problem quite like this and will be surprised with the ability to use it with Google Charts, Google Documents, and social networking widgets.
Jason has provided plenty of photos and details on how to recreate the power monitoring system for your own benefit. You can check out his Picobay Projects Blog or the very detailed Instructables.
