This is an update to my previous plea for an energy monitor that could share its data. Thanks to Kim and Frankie who pointed me to Roo Reynolds from where I find that there is a small community of mainly IBMers who have recently been playing with exactly this. They have discovered that the Current Cost energy monitor has a data port and that you can construct or buy appropriate cables to connect this to your computer, whereby it spits out a chunk of XML every 6 seconds containing your energy data. Perfect. So I've just ordered mine for about 30 quid from the eco gadget shop. And I've also discovered that the company behind Current Cost is based in the town where I live so maybe I'll be able to buy a data cable from them directly.
So here are some of the links I've found about hacking the Current Cost:
How to make the data cable
How to buy a data cable
The XML output format
Logging and graphing the data
More about using Google Graphs to chart the data
And the Current Cost Wiki (currently a bit sparse)
Showing posts with label hacking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hacking. Show all posts
Monday, June 02, 2008
Friday, October 26, 2007
Chumbys released in the wild
What's a Chumby? It's a very cute internet appliance. Looking a bit like a tiny leather-covered TV, it is a box with a touchscreen that connects to the internet and displays all sorts of information - weather forecasts, news, photos. Best of all it's under $200/100 pounds. It has got a touchscreen, a motion sensor, wi-fi, USB ports and loudspeakers and runs Flash Lite. You can install any of the widgets already available or you can write your own.
And you can now buy Chumbys. Well, you can if you expressed interest last year, which I did. But you can't if you live outside the US, which I do. I hope they start shipping them to the rest of the world soon.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Hardware hacking at the BBC
Last week we ran a hardware hacking session at BBC Audio & Music Interactive. Two teams of three, formed from across discipines, came together on a Monday morning. At their disposal they had a Phidgets interface kit, a servo kit, a couple of RFID kits, a slightly handicapped Teleo board (the cleaners threw a load of sensors away on Thursday night!) and a Nabaztag wireless bunny.
We were aiming for something that would get people making stuff and having fun, as well as being a good team building exercise and providing a new perspective on interface design. We like the quote from the Arduino booklet...
The brief we gave to the teams was to build something to do with discovering new music, but using a physical interface. And preferably involving data from the internet. 10 working hours later they had built an RFID-reading, profile creating, music recommending rabbit and a monster who rates your iTunes tracks.
The first team built Zoltar, the music predicting rabbit. This worked by swiping a number of RFID-enabled objects to build up a musical profile. These objects represented bands or genres of music; Oasis (the popular fruit drink), rock, cheese, a glitterball (disco) and a couple of red hot chilli peppers (kind of). Once the profile was complete, swiping the OK tag caused music recommendations to be generated (via last.fm) and read out by a Nabaztag rabbit.
The second team built iRate - a monster that is used to rate your tracks in iTunes. His LED teeth indicate the rating of the currently playing iTunes track and his arm can then be moved up and down to change the rating in real time. Poking the microswitch in his eye causes iTunes to skip to the next track. There was also a virtual interface showing iRate's current expression on-screen. I love the monster/box - apparently inspired by http://www.readymech.com/; free flat-pack toys to print and build.
Overall I was extremely impressed with what the teams built in such a short time. Particularly as they came to hardware hacking with little or no experience. Ideally we'd have had a day of just tinkering and hacking to get to know what the hardware and the software can do together, then we'd have a couple of days of actually building something. But, I think, everyone had fun and we had a packed demo session at the end of the second day. One of the remits of the R&D team here is to encourage innovation, in both thinking and doing, and I think this was pretty successful in getting people fired up, thinking differently and just doing stuff.
We were aiming for something that would get people making stuff and having fun, as well as being a good team building exercise and providing a new perspective on interface design. We like the quote from the Arduino booklet...
Physical Computing is about prototyping with electronics, turning sensors, actuators and microcontrollers into materials for designers and artists. It involves the design of interactive objects that can communicate with humans using sensors and actuators controlled by a behaviour implemented as software running inside a microcontroller.
The brief we gave to the teams was to build something to do with discovering new music, but using a physical interface. And preferably involving data from the internet. 10 working hours later they had built an RFID-reading, profile creating, music recommending rabbit and a monster who rates your iTunes tracks.
The first team built Zoltar, the music predicting rabbit. This worked by swiping a number of RFID-enabled objects to build up a musical profile. These objects represented bands or genres of music; Oasis (the popular fruit drink), rock, cheese, a glitterball (disco) and a couple of red hot chilli peppers (kind of). Once the profile was complete, swiping the OK tag caused music recommendations to be generated (via last.fm) and read out by a Nabaztag rabbit.
The second team built iRate - a monster that is used to rate your tracks in iTunes. His LED teeth indicate the rating of the currently playing iTunes track and his arm can then be moved up and down to change the rating in real time. Poking the microswitch in his eye causes iTunes to skip to the next track. There was also a virtual interface showing iRate's current expression on-screen. I love the monster/box - apparently inspired by http://www.readymech.com/; free flat-pack toys to print and build.
Overall I was extremely impressed with what the teams built in such a short time. Particularly as they came to hardware hacking with little or no experience. Ideally we'd have had a day of just tinkering and hacking to get to know what the hardware and the software can do together, then we'd have a couple of days of actually building something. But, I think, everyone had fun and we had a packed demo session at the end of the second day. One of the remits of the R&D team here is to encourage innovation, in both thinking and doing, and I think this was pretty successful in getting people fired up, thinking differently and just doing stuff.
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