I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Category: The Internet of Things

The Internet of things has become a real interest for me now although I’m still struggling to find a real use for this kind of thing for myself.

Well done IFTTT, I didn’t see that coming at all

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Today I got an email from IFTTT with news about their service. This is quite normal. They add to their service on a very regular basis. However, I wasn’t expecting the new addition to be a city. Louisville to be precise.

Whilst this was a bit of a shock, and also somewhat confusing as well initially it now makes perfect sense. IFTTT started off by connecting web apps and social services. Now it’s so much more. It moved on to hardware, IoT and more. Now it’s connecting physical locations and it makes perfect sense.

I hope that this continues. I’d like to see more and more connected cities hooked up to IFTTT, especially London. Well done IFTTT.

Still waiting for Pebble Smart Straps

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There’s been a couple of kickstarter projects that have been interesting but so far neither have delivered the goods. I’m still hopeful that the smart strap idea will deliver some really interesting possibilities and make the Pebble into more than just a smart watch and more of an IoT device.

I think next year will be a bit of a make or break time for the Pebble.

New IFTTT stuff coming to littleBits!

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So I got an email saying that there will be outage on the littleBits IFTTT channel on Monday, the 21st. This is because there’s some work going on to add new triggers and actions to the littleBits IFTTT channel. Now that’s something to look forward to next week!

I wonder what they’ll add?

So when will there be a Pebble IFTTT channel?

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Now that would be super useful. I’m sure that it was promised a long time ago, possibly when the first Pebble watch came out, but it never really happened. Well, it didn’t happen at all.

The nearest thing to it is an app called This Button for Pebble, which allows an HTTP push from your Pebble. That’s really useful, but I’ve only been able to get it to work intermittently so far. Perhaps I need to persevere with it.

Of course, a real IFTTT channel would be better. Ideally for me it would have:

  • Battery status
  • Accelerometer function
  • Access to buttons
  • Access to the microphone

That lot would do for a start anyway. That would be fun to play with and create recipes with on IFTTT. I’d like to see that.

I wonder if it’ll come about?

Deus Ex Aria: The Evolution Of SmartWatch Control … Smart Strap for Pebble Time

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I’ve been waiting to see when smart straps would arrive for the Pebble Time. This one looks really cool, the only down side is the wait before they’re manufactured. It’s a whole year away! I guess I’ll wait. I’m sure there’ll be other people making smart straps in the interim.

IFTTT’s new Maker channel

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I’ve liked IFTTT (or IF as apparently they’re now called) since right back when they started. They’ve gone from strength and delivered some really interesting and useful functionality for connecting the internet in simple ways. They’ve also supported a lot of IoT (internet of things) devices, and now, with the new Maker channel they’re supporting anything you want to use to connect to the internet.

This is a big deal I think. It means all manner of devices can use the IFTTT service with an HTTP post request. I’ve already tried it with my twine device and it works really well. I’m thinking about how to use it with my Pebble Time too. The possibilities are limitless. However, for me, what will be really important is how to make it truly useful. Without that, it is just tinkering for tinkerings sake, and whilst that’s fun, from my perspective it doesn’t get you anywhere.

So, whilst I’ll be trying it out, I’ll mainly be looking for some really useful ways to use the new channel. If I find any that I think are worth sharing, I will.

How’s that Pebble then?

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So, a couple of days into my use of the Pebble Time, how’s it going? Well so far so good. Today I was interested to see how the constant bluetooth LE connection would drain my iPhone 6. It seemed to add an additional drain, but not too much. So that’s a good sign, a good step forward.

Notifications are pretty good though. I quite like them even though they get a little bit annoying at times, but I think that’s more to do with my having too many on my iPhone anyway, so perhaps it’s a good prompt to clear those up.

Next I’m interested to see how I can do more with the Pebble and get it working for me in the way I’d really like it to. More of that soon though.

So my Pebble Time has arrived …

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Pebble Time arrived
What’s in the box
Get ready …

After a not bad wait at all my new Pebble Time smartwatch has arrived. So now I’m experimenting with it to see what it can do and what I can get done with it. That’s going to take a little while I should think, but as I decided to go with the Pebble Time just before the Apple Watch was announced and took centre stage I want to see how much I can get done with the new Pebble.

So expect updates on this over the coming weeks …

Investing in Chirp.io

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I remember seeing Chirp.io back at a Music Tech Fest when it was at Ravensbourne college. It was an interesting idea and I was quite curious about it, but I wasn’t sure how I would use it and how it could be useful. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing of course. Sometimes it takes a while for things to find a place in my world and I like stuff to be actually useful to me.

So when I found that Chirp.io was equity funding on Crowdcube I thought I’d take a look. At the same time they’re expanding chirp into the IoT world with an SDK and Arduino code. It’s getting interesting now. Also, they’ve just announced a Chrome extension, which could be fun.

I wonder where they’ll go next.

Pebble Time is now funded

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Well that was a very impressive campaign, especially with the Apple Watch right on its heels, it raised even more money than the first Pebble watch too. I’m especially interested in seeing where their smartStraps initiative leads. I think that it’s a great idea to make the watch strap itself a more responsive and useful part of the device.