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.

What to do with my twine?

Posted by on in The Internet of ThingsLeave a comment

twine-wireless-sensor-monitor-qtooth

I’ve had this little IoT device for ages now. It’s fun, it’s ok, but I’ve always struggled to find a real use for it. Something that I could do with it that would be even a tiny little bit useful. The latest use I had for it was on my Romo. I put the twine on the back of the Romo and it tweeted on any movement in the Romo.

That was ok. Nothing amazing, but ok. More than anything it was fun. But what I’d really like is a way to use the Twine so it serves an actual useful purpose. The biggest problem with achieving this seems to be the fact that the twine is wifi only so I can’t take it outside, can’t use it mobile. That’s really a problem for me.

But perhaps the bigger problem is what to actually use it for? That’s something I’ve never got to the bottom of.

 

What to do with a wemo switch?

Posted by on in The Internet of ThingsLeave a comment

I’ve had this WEMO switch for ages now, and I got it working doing things like switching on a light depending on twitter hashtags using IFTTT. That’s all fine, and quite good fun, but essentially not too useful. So I’ve been thinking about what I could use it for that would be a really good and useful application of the device.

So far, nothing. No ideas at all. Which is a shame as I think it’s a good idea and should have a use. I just haven’t found it as yet.

Numerous, the dashboard I don’t know what to do with

Posted by on in Tech, The Internet of Things

When I saw that IFTTT had integrated the Numerous app into their ecosystem I was intrigued. I hadn’t heard of the app before, but when I read about it I knew it was something that I’d want to play with. And it was. However, what I hadn’t bargained for was the that I’d very quickly realise that whilst it’s interesting to be able to collate all these numbers into a dashboard, I wasn’t really sure of what numbers I wanted to track. It was in effect a dashboard with no need for any information. Which is a little bit defeating.

So I’m still wondering what to use this for. What I can usefully measure or track that won’t be obvious or boring or pointless. I do hope that something comes to mind in the not too distant future as I think that Numerous and IFTTT are a great combination.

If this then apparently not that (or when things go wrong)

Posted by on in Tech, The Internet of Things

Something I have relied on for a while now is IFTTT (if this then that). Today, it fell over. Here’s what they had to say about their issues:

Last night at approximately 10:00pm PST much of the work IFTTT does in the background stopped due to an issue with one of our backend services. Our monitoring systems would have alerted us to the problem immediately, but those unfortunately failed as well and we weren’t able to fix the issue until this morning at 10:00am PST.

Any affected Recipes should pick up right where they left off last night.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We know that many of you have come to depend on IFTTT in your everyday lives and we take great pride in that. A stoppage of work for this duration is unacceptable and we will do whatever it takes to ensure we get in front of these issues much faster in the future.

As always with this kind of thing you know that it’s going to get sorted, but waiting around is just a pain. It makes me realise that we rely on these services for so many things, or rather I do anyway, and increasingly, with the rise of the internet of things, these services extend themselves into the real world too.

IFTTT Getting more and more Physical

Posted by on in The Internet of Things

I find it quite interesting to see how IFTTT (If This Then That) is continuing to move from just automating the social web into the internet of things. Of course, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that IFTTT just automates the social web. It’s a huge accomplishment to do it in a way that is simple and easy to use for just about anyone. But for IFTTT to connect social networks and real world devices in the same simple and elegant way is really impressive.

It makes me wonder where they’ll go next. I’d like to see some more social channels and more functionality, nothing major, simple things like multiple twitter accounts and the like. But most of all I’d like to see an iOS app from IFTTT to connect and orchestrate everything. They promised one a while back. I hope they come up with the goods soon.

Getting back to the internet of things and IFTTT I’ve been impressed with their integration of Belkin’s WeMo hardware, and now Philips Hue, but I’d like to see support for Pebble and Twine. Pebble has been talked about but not Twine, at least not so far anyway.

I’m sure that IFTTT will continue to pull more coolness out of the bag. I’m looking forward to it.

Experimenting with TWINE

Posted by on in The Internet of Things

I backed TWINE on kickstarter. I thought it was a great idea. I still do. What I struggle with a bit though is what to use it for. So, after a long period of not using it, I’ve upgraded it to the latest firmware. Now it can tweet and respond to vibration etc.

However, this doesn’t really help, I still don’t know quite what I’m going to use it for. It’s very interesting to get it to tweet the temperature, but so what? I’m sure that eventually I’ll work out a way of making this do something worthwhile. When I do, I’ll let you know.

Hubcape updated

Posted by on in Tech, The Internet of Things

I’ve been interested in the internet of things for a long time although to date I haven’t properly found a use for the technology for myself. However, hubcape, and the service it links to, now cosm, provide a great way to monitor stuff connected to the internet of things, and today Hubcape got an update after a very long time.

This is good for a couple of reasons, firstly it means that the developer is still interested in the app and is hopefully going to continue to support it, and secondly it means it’ll work better with cosm, which used to be called pachube, which is a service on the internet that lets you connect objects and then make use of the data that they send out.

So I’m glad to see a new version of hubcape and it’ll make me think about doing something with data again.

Hubcape - Beepscore LLC