Automate Your Home Using ioBridge and Twitter
Earlier this week we brought you the story of the house that twitters. In this post we explore another experimental system that uses Twitter to automate tasks. Matt Morey, by day an engineer for Texas Instruments, has developed a two-way, home automation application using Twitter and ioBridge. We all know about Twitter, the now massively popular 140 character messaging service. ioBridge will be new to many. It's a web platform for remote control and monitoring, which bills itself (no doubt with tongue in cheek) as "one step closer to Skynet."
Those with sensitive natures about the Singularity are advised to look away now. For the rest of you, let's see what Matt has built using these two services.
Using Twitter and ioBridge, Morey has built a house monitoring system which allows him to control lights, LCDs, temperature, and more.
Many of the Twitter automation apps we've seen up till now send data from objects to a Twitter account - for example this Twitter account for a toaster, which sends a tweet every time the toaster is used.
However Morey's app does the opposite: he controls objects by updating his Twitter account. For example he can send a message to an LCD screen, turn on lights, and take a temperature or light reading. He also has a Twitter account at @MattsOffice that updates with the temperature and light readings. So this is truly a two-way system.
Here's a video showing this in action:
But wait, there's more. Morey has also developed an extension that allows you to see the (admittedly unexciting) view from his office by sending him a tweet. This automatically takes a photo from a digital camera and posts it on TwitPic.
For all of these processes, ioBridge acts as a gateway between the home objects and Twitter.
More About ioBridge
ioBridge is a company based in Gainesville, Florida. It was born because the founders saw "a demand for interfacing real world devices with the web." Their first beta release was in November 2008 and since then the company has been busy building out its product line and watching what developers like Matt Morey do with them.
In an email to ReadWriteWeb, ioBridge's Hans Scharler explained that "we make a DIY (do it yourself) gateway for sensors, controls, home automation, etc. that requires no programming." He claimed that users of all skills can "get started quickly and start making things." Primarily what ioBridge enables is sending data to - or controlling objects from - social networks, email, text messaging. Engadget has a list of other recent projects that use ioBridge, all of them showcasing the beginnings of automation via the Web.
Skynet? Probably not. But a fun way to experiment with automating your home or office using the Internet, yes!
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Would love to see this applied to TiVo
Gainesville-based start up by UF alums, awesome! Go Gators!
Amazing technology, information going to enter in a new age.It has an ability to change the world, need viral marketing to make it successful.Thumbs up to the developers.
I did something similar myself to control a secondary air conditioning unit on the 3rd floor of my house.
Since I'm a programmer, I didn't need something user-friendly, and programmed it myself (using pretty simple PHP). I have a Mac, connected to a USB INSTEON controller allowing it to control any INSTEON device in the house, and that Mac also has a web page (iPhone web app) that allows me to see temperature, start / stop the AC, or choose one of the pre-defined program I created.
I posted pictures, screenshots & more details on my website:
http://www.pommepause.com/online_files/home_automation_osx_shion.html
We keep on keeping on, dont we !
I'm actually an engineer for TI in Texas, not Florida.
Sorry Matt, fixed that. I'm from New Zealand, US geography isn't my strong point ;-)
Home automation systems need historical, proximate (weather approaching my house), predictive (rain forecast, traffic affecting my ride home, etc.) and personal data (my schedule) to make effective decisions about managing your HVAC, lawn irrigation, or when to thaw the frozen food.
Pachube.com and Sensorbase.org demonstrate much better approaches to collecting and querying data streams from sensors. The absence of any achitectural support in twitter for the services offered by these two networks will limit the usefulness of the approach described above.
For an example of a visionary system which combines support for legacy control systems with the ability to process or stream data to any sensor network or interact with Twitter with fantastic visualization capabilities, check out Shaspa.com.
Posted by: peterquirk.wordpress.com
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July 24, 2009 9:14 AM
ioBridge sounds very cool. The use of Twitter is just faddish. When RSS was new everyone wanted to remake systems using it. Now it's twitter, despite the fact that it's a poor interface for many of the projects.
Love to see more about ioBridge and similar things that interface online services with the physical world though.
Peterquirk made the comment about using home automation to control things such as HVAC and lawn irrigation, but that the systems need to be able to use the assistance of weather forecasting.
Well I though I would let the readers know that there are some irrigation controllers on the market that offer the use of weather stations to predict upcoming irrigation needs.
These controllers receive data signals from satelite weather stations, and use this information to control how often the lawn sprinklers need to turn on and water.
If controllers with this type of technology could be combined with a home automation system, as described above, it would take the lawn irrigation industry by storm.
Nice article Richard - It's neat to see the things people are doing with home automation, although I do agree with the comment about Twitter being kind of fadish in this instance. It doesn't accomplish anything that directly connecting to one's home server wouldn't.
Still neat though, and the geek in me appreciates it. ;)