The team behind openPICUS has created an Application Note to help you jump-start your “Internet of Things” project by adding wireless technology with the Flyport and cloud services with ThingsSpeak. Both of these projects are open source, changeable, and ready for all kinds of applications. This combination allows you build “new” things that tap into cloud services via ThingSpeak apps such as Channels for data logging, Charts for seeing data, ThingTweet for making things tweet, React to send alerts, and ThingHTTP to access web data such as weather reports.

Download the free Application Note, “Interfacing Flyport to ThingSpeak“, and the Source Code to get your Flyport connected to web services via ThingSpeak.

[via openPICUS / WSNblog]

[stefano] generously translated ThingSpeak into Italian and we are very thankful. The ThingSpeak web app now supports Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, and English thanks to some awesome ThingSpeak users! ThingSpeak è un progetto di Open Internet of Things da ioBridge!

Be sure to checkout Stefano’s blog, he is working on some great Internet of Things projects using ThingSpeak, Paraimpu, and OpenPicus. Again, grazie mille.

We have update the documentation for the TweetControl app:

community.thingspeak.com/documentation/apps/tweetcontrol/

TweetControl allows you to monitor Twitter for trigger words to send ThingHTTP requests. The CheerLights project by ioBridge Labs uses TweetControl to update its ThingSpeak Channel so other lights around the world stay in sync with each other.

Why use TweetControl? Our app connects to the Twitter Streaming API. What this means to you is that you don’t have to keep polling Twitter for status updates. You can sit back and let TweetControl listen and then process the request when a trigger word gets fired. This happens in real-time and it’s quite remarkable to see in action.

TweetControl is a part of our collection of apps for social things.

MyRobots.com launched this week to much fanfare in the blog-o-sphere. The concept behind MyRobots is to be the “Facebook for Robots”. This is an ambitious goal. Just imagine a portal where robots can interact with each other and allow for meaningful, in context interactions with us. If a Robot needs their battery charged, we should be able to know that information in real-time and they should be able to alert their caregivers with any information that they collect from their environment.

The innovators behind MyRobots is the team from RobotShop lead up by robot specialist Carlos Asmat. RobotShop carries all things robots for tinkers to build and modify robots, repair robots, and extend their functionality.

We are pleased to announce that MyRobots is powered by ThingSpeak. RobotShop was able to bring this innovative service to market very quickly by leveraging the highly-scalable design of ThingSpeak and it’s suite of apps to make things social, in this case Robots! We licensed a standalone version ThingSpeak to enable the quick expansion of the MyRobots platform and give their application a kick start vs. starting from scratch.

The vision is a big one. We are just at the starting point for where MyRobots can take the future of social robotics. We are so excited to be a part of the story and also see where this project will go. When new things emerge from MyRobots we will continue to share the latest news with you. Move over Internet of Things, it’s time for the Internet of Robots!

While MyRobots shop is in beta, make sure to sign up soon and help influence the direction of this project. Robots speak now…

[MyRobots Press Release via New Scientist / Engadget / Gizmodo UK]

It’s that time of year… holiday time and family time. I was inspired this time to create a project that brings us a little closer. Lights are a big part of the holidays and with CheerLights you can connect your lights to other lights via Twitter with a little help by ThingSpeak Apps.

Since the project release, there has been much activity. A part from CheerLights being discussed on blogs like MAKE and Lifehacker, the community has created some interesting bits of tech that extend the project further than lights. So if you don’t have a way to connect your lights together with CheerLights, you can connect your mobile phone, browser, and web sites together by subscribing to the CheerLights feed. Right now you can check the latest CheerLights color with an Android App created by @ChrisLeitner. Another really neat thing is a browser plugin for Chrome designed by Josh Crumley. So, in the top corner of your web browser you can see the latest color in an unassuming way. It’s a little reminder that we are connected.

To join CheerLights, all you have to do is build something that subscribed to the CheerLights ThingSpeak Channel or access the data using JSON and XML. You can also use the apps, browser plugins, or web widgets to see the colors. Visit the CheerLights website hosted on Tumblr for details on making a controller with Arduino, ioBridge, or Digi’s ConnectPort.

To control CheerLights, just send a Tweet to @CheerLights and mention a color.

Just think when you send this Tweet that you are updating 1000′s of lights, apps, browsers, and widgets all at the same time.

Spread some cheer…

[via MAKE / Lifehacker / CBC / ioBridge Projects]

Hans Scharler is stopping by the monthly meeting of the Pittsburgh Ruby Users Group. The topic on the agenda is ThingSpeak, an open source Ruby on Rails application for the Internet of Things. The meeting is scheduled for December 1, 2011 and starts at 7:30pm.

Topics on the agenda:

• Switch over to Ruby on Rails 3.1
• ThingSpeak v2.0
• Active ThingSpeak Projects
• Adding modularity and tests to the GitHub repository
• …btw, we’re hiring!

Background on ThingSpeak:

ThingSpeak is an open source web application and API to manage devices, to create device interactions, and to store data. Users can use the hosted version of ThingSpeak or setup instances on their own servers by getting the source code from GitHub. The technology behind ThingSpeak is Ruby 1.9.2, Rails 3.0, EventMachine, Phusion Passenger, Nginx, and Memcached to form a highly scalable infrastructure for the emerging Internet of Things and its data model requirements.

You use ThingSpeak to Send and Receive “data” via simple HTTP requests, much like going to a web page and filling out a form. Data can be from
anything — Blood Sugar Levels measured by a glucose meter, Server Usage and Uptime reported by servers, or Location Info from a mobile phone. Once the data is in ThingSpeak, you can build applications that retrieve the data, use the data for process decision-making, and reporting.

[via Pittsburgh Ruby Users Group]

Everyone is expecting Hans to connect a turkey to the Internet today, but he has some limits. Although his house, office, and yard have more Internet connected things than you can imagine. Today, in the US is a day of rest, turkey (ham for Hans), football, napping, bickering, and giving thanks. So, we wanted to cross one item off of the list before the day starts, thank you everybody.

[david] from Toute la Domotique adapted the Teracom box to connect to ThingSpeak web services for data logging of sensors. In his article, “Suivi de Température“, David covers the ThingSpeak integration in a 6 part tutorial written in French.

The Teracom box allows for 1-wire connections to sensors. David connected a temperature sensor to the 1-wire bus, an Ethernet connection, and customized the controller to push data to ThingSpeak for data logging of environmental sensor data. The tutorial also includes great photos clearly showing the setup for others to repeat.

FUBAR Labs, a Highland Park, NJ non-profit, is holding many upcoming courses on Arduino, Web Services, Custom PCB, and Electronics. On October 23, 2011, they will be holding a class on connecting Arduino to RESTful web services like ThingSpeak. You will learn to use node.js and jQuery to interact with hardware and web services.

Sign up for “Hacking REST web services with jQuery” at Eventbrite.

About FUBAR Labs:

Fair Use Building and Research (FUBAR) Labs is a Nonprofit Corporation that provides a location where people with common interests, usually in computers, technology, science, and crafts can meet and collaborate. We are an open community offering classes, workshops, study groups, and long term projects.

[via FUBAR Labs]

The Arduino team recently released the release candidate of Arduino 1.0 on Google Code. It’s a available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Version 1.0 of Arduino’s IDE includes enhancements to the GUI and additions and changes to the Arduino Hardware API. Since the release, we have been beta testing Arduino 1.0-rc1 and find the updates to be spot on. This is definitely a step forward. A big change that affects ThingSpeak Arduino Sketches is the inclusion of DHCP and DNS support to the Ethernet library, which was integrated by Adrian McEwen. We are able to use the new Arduino 1.0 to make it as easy as possible to connect the Arduino platform to the Internet. Download the latest Arduino IDE on Google Code.

We have created a new ThingSpeak Sketch for Arduino 1.0 that you can use for the Arduino and Ethernet Shield or the Arduino Ethernet all-in-one. All you have to do is add your ThingSpeak Write API Key to the sketch, upload to the Arduino, and connect to your network. The sketch includes automatic network configuration with DHCP, domain name resolution using DNS, a watchdog / reset function to keep the Arduino online, and a function to update ThingSpeak Channels. The new sketch has been running without hiccup in our lab for few weeks. We hope that you get the same reliability. Go ahead and copy, transform, and combine…

View Arduino 1.0 –> ThingSpeak Sketch on GitHub