There are many standards and proprietary solutions used for connecting things to each other or to the cloud: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Active RFID, loWPAN, EtherCAT, NFC, RFID to name a few. Among these technologies, Wi-Fi has been the most successful. It has
become a ubiquitous standard of connectivity and is used in the home,
enterprise, schools, hospitals, airports etc.
In this post, we will see some existing commercial things that we can use right now. These include
In this post, we will see some existing commercial things that we can use right now. These include
- Smart home devices,
- Medical devices,
- Wearables, and
- All kinds of gadgets.
All of these devices connect to your Android phone
using either WiFi or Bluetooth,
pacifically Bluetooth low energy (BLE),
sometimes know as Bluetooth smart.
One of the most well-known internet of things (IoT) is the Phillips Hue Lighting System. talk to both Android Phone and Android wear watch.
Let's go take a look at some existing devices. Kaptur band this is a simple wrist band,
that essentially consist of a microphone sensor,
some memory, and a Bluetooth radio. It sits and records in a loop,
60 seconds, and whenever you tap it,
it captures that 60 seconds,
and sends it to your device.
Another well-known device is the Nest thermostat,
which as I believe everybody know,
is also owned by Google.
They also make a smoke detector,
both of which connect up via WiFi,
and talk to your Android phone.
One of the most well-known companies in
the home automation market is a company
called SmartThings.
They make a number of devices
that allow you to connect up to your phone.
They build locks, sensors, so you can tell when
doors are opened or closed,
cameras, speakers, and so forth.
Talking about the internet of things
would be completely empty if we didn't
talk about Android wear.
The two most prominent devices right now
for Android wear are the Moto 360
and the LG G watch. There's also the Pebble watch.
It's not a specific product that's just for Android,
but it does have a very nice SDK,
and it actually has some physical buttons on it,
so you can build apps that do a variety of things
with the user punching the buttons on the device.
Then, using your Android phone to either
control your phone or to use your phone
then via WiFi to control other devices.
Lumo Lift is a small device to track your activity and calories burned, as well as improve your posture.
It is essentially an accelerometer,
and you can see here it goes on the shirt/bra
by holding it with a magnet.
Essentially, you just sit up straight,
double-tap it, and then if you ever start to slump,
it'll buzz, vibrate and remind you to sit up straight again.
In terms of wearables and fineness,
one of the most popular's called Fitbit.
Fitbit, essentially, will tell you
how many steps you've taken,
route your map, and do all of that
while you just wear it around everyday,
and it'll help you manage your weight,
eat better, sleep better, and so forth.
One of the early entries in the internet of things
was a company called Withings.
They make everything from activity tracker
to a bathroom scales,
to this fashionable Activite steel white watch
and activity tracker.
They also make a pulse oximeter,
so that you can tell how much oxygen is in your blood
while you're exercising, and even a home camera.
The internet of things goes everywhere,
including into your peaceful moments.
The muse, the brain sensing headband monitors your brain waves,
and allows you to determine when you brain
is actually calm. There's also an SDK that you can use
to experiment with using your brain waves
to control other things.
TI Sensor Tag.
The reason it's great is because it's $25,
and it contains all of these things,
temperature sensor, humidity sensor,
pressure sensor, accelerometer,
gyroscope, and magnetometer.
That works on one CR2032 battery,
and it's very, very easy to talk to it
with Bluetooth. And also you can do your Android phone
or Android tablet to talk to a Bluetooth device. This is a easy way to get started,
so that you can understand how to build a Bluetooth app.
Then, there's this great product that's a
internet of things developer kit called WunderBar.
It's from Germany from a company called Relayer. We'll talk to the Relayer master module via WiFi,
and it will talk to the different individual
modules via Bluetooth.
Then, we're going to go even further,
and build a simple intelligent device
that you can mount at your door,
so that when somebody rings the doorbell,
you can pick up your phone and snap a picture
of who's there, so you can see who's at the door.
For that, we're going to use the Tessel platform.
Tessel's very interesting.
It's a microcontroller that runs JavaScript.
It uses no JS, has WiFi,
it's got four connectors.
Tessel's very unique in it,
all of the components are only on one side. You can always tell when you've got things plugged
in correctly with the Tessel,
because it can only go in one direction.
With components on one side, if you flip it over,
all you see are the backs of all the boards.
You can plug pretty much any component into
any one of those things,
and you can power the Tessel with via USB or with a battery.
It's very, very easy to program using JavaScript.
Lot more are available or existing which can be used as a solution in demanding market.
