We have updated our ThingTweet Tutorial to cover the Arduino Ethernet and the new Arduino IDE (v1 and above). ThingTweet is a ThingSpeak App that allows you to send Twitter status updates via your Arduino microcontroller with an Ethernet shield or with Ethernet integrated onto one board. Our Arduino examples for ThingSpeak and ThingSpeak Apps have been moved to GitHub, so that you can easily download, modify, and contribute updates.
Posts Tagged: web of things
04
Sep 12
Slot Car Race Powered by Twitter
The community from RS Components created a Scalextric Slot Car Race that is powered by your tweets. Two cars went head-to-head last week with a live Twitter race between a red and blue car. The cars move based on the number of Tweets that included their hashtag. If you want the blue car to win, you needed to Tweet, “Go #RSBlueTeam”. The team wrote a web service like TweetControl that pulls in tweets from the Twitter Stream and distributes commands to an Arduino that controls the track. This is another great project that further demonstrates how social intersects with technology and marketing. Go Tweet Racer!
[via Facebook]
02
Feb 12
Interfacing with Cloud Services using Flyport + ThingSpeak
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.
29
Dec 11
TweetControl App Documentation Updated
We have update the documentation for the TweetControl app:
http://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.
07
Dec 11
CheerLights: Connecting Lights Together to Bring Us Closer
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]
29
Nov 11
ThingSpeak visits the Pittsburgh Ruby Users Group
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.
28
Jul 11
Internet of Things: Connected devices to save our resources
How will connected devices change our lives? We believe the future is going to be filled with connected devices and new applications will emerge. Everything from medical applications to energy management applications.
Just imagine what we can learn from all of our things? Maybe we can save resources as this article by Brian McCann suggests. He also mentions connecting things to ThingSpeak as the Web of Things is being built from the ground up! Our community of developers and users are growing by leaps and bounds and we will continue to contribute to the advancement of the Internet of Things!
Brian says,
The Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects having an Internet presence. We’re not just talking about your computer, laptop, cellphone or even your TV here – we’re talking about everything. This includes your light switches, your fridge, even your toilet. With an Internet presence, all of your devices can start talking to each other and reacting to each other.
[via The Daily Gleaner]
19
Jun 11
ProgrammableWeb Includes the ThingSpeak API
Big news!
The mashup community ProgrammableWeb indexed the ThingSpeak API and the ThingSpeak Chart API. We entered the category of “Other”. Just imagine what web developers will create now that they have the Internet of Things at their fingertips.
[via ProgrammableWeb]