Cosm :: blog

Pachube is now Cosm!

noreply@blogger.com (Usman Haque) — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:14:00 +0000

Today is a significant one in our history, because today is the day that Pachube grows up. You might have noticed already: Pachube is now Cosm!

We haven't exactly been silent over the last few months since being acquired by LogMeIn but we also haven't spoken much about the biggest task that's been occupying us almost round the clock: building out and relaunching the service under a new (pronounceable! spellable!! memorable!!!) name, with a completely new (cleaner! easier!! functional!!!) design, that brings with it a whole host of features and attributes that help you build Internet of Things products, applications and services more quickly, scalably and collaboratively. Pachube.com has evolved into Cosm.com. And we mean business.

One of the key lessons we've learned over the years – apart from the fact that few people could spell or pronounce 'Pachube'! – is that we should be focusing on helping people connect with each other as well as their devices. We aren't just building behind-the-scenes infrastructure. The idea of the internet of things needing a piece of equipment (a 'patch-bay') has become less useful than the concept of it involving shared 'workspaces' and 'environments' ('microcosms' and 'macrocosms'). Cosm has an even bigger vision than Pachube: we want it to help people, teams, companies & cities build, share and make sense of their own 'cosms': devices, environments, communities.

There may be some hiccups. After all, a design/brand/name change is of course the biggest outward change we've made in more than 4 years. But we're working to make the transition as seamless as possible. All Pachube URLs will continue to function without a hitch (if you're logged in, this works just like this), your Pachube login details, username and password, as well as API keys remain the same, and you can still email us on the old email addresses. In pretty much every case, however, you should really replace anything that used to be ‘pachube.com’ with ‘cosm.com’.

Now, here's what we're super excited about:

You now have a console. Here's mine. It's for monitoring your own feeds in real-time and also other people's. You might follow feeds created by fellow team members; or your family; or friends; or you might follow feeds created by people you don't know, just because their data is important to you. This is where we expect you'll spend most of your time, because it's where all the action happens.

You can now add devices and create feeds much more easily. Got an Arduino? Just type in a title, and include some tags if you like. Plugging in a Current Cost Netsmart/Bridge? Just need your serial number. Twitter Stats feed? Piece of cake. Expect this to fill out over the next few months with more plug-and-play devices as we firm up agreements with the companies that have contacted us about our Commercial Provisioning Service. Interested to be part of this? Drop us a line.

The site is more real time. There is an activity panel that will let you know when a trigger has fired, or one of your feeds has received a comment, or someone is following you. You can use a more legible 'debug' panel to see, in real-time, how many API calls you're making and what the individual HTTP requests were – in full detail. You can zoom down to 5 minute graphs. Our alpha testers have asked for grids: that makes sense, they're coming soon.

Commenting is more integrated. You can follow other users, as well as just their feeds. You'll be notified when significant things occur in your console. You can now create and manage OAuth 2.0 compliant apps directly from your console. Individual feed pages are more useful: you can mouseover graphs to read individual datapoints ('Graph Builder' still exists of course); see values at a glance; and set up twitter & HTTP triggers with just a few clicks.

The map is back! We lost it for a while, but there is now a global map that shows the location of the last 1000 public devices to update Cosm. In practice, given the millions of datapoints we handle per day, this means you're only seeing a snapshot of the last few moments, but we'll be building this out so that you can find all public feeds. More importantly, you can search it!

Building things and getting support is much easier. We've already had great feedback on our relaunched documentation, but we've also improved the libraries and examples listings. We've tried to make it easier to get help when you're stuck. And if you're logged in you can even assemble and test your API queries in browser.

Managing hundreds or thousands of devices? Our Commercial Provisioning Service just got a whole lot more sophisticated: work with serial numbers, device keys and activations directly from your console. Please contact us to enable this functionality.

Keep tabs on what the community is building. Apart from the forum, which remains in its current form, we now also have case studies of things that are 'Built on Cosm'. Got something to add? Please drop us a line and let us know so that we can tell the world! If you want to find us in person at upcoming events, keep an eye on the Cosm events page.

We know too well that there will be some issues with the new name and the new site. Given its popularity, we're already starting to see the effects of increased traffic and real-time interactivity. We're pretty sure also that some of the things we thought were great, will not prove to be so once they're in your hands; or that we missed something crucial. Please take the time to let us know what you love or hate about Cosm. You can either write to feedback@cosm.com or you can use the little feedback panel on the right side of your console.

For now, please join me in congratulating the Pachube... uh... Cosm (!) dev team for all their work in getting this out. Ben, Kevin and I have put enormous pressure on Levent, Paul, Simon, Sam, Owen, Pete and Ilya and, to my mind, they've done a stellar job. We can also thank Emi who, meanwhile, has been planning our office move next week – but that's for a future blog post!

Finally, thanks always to you, the community, as well: innovators at first, then early adopters and now becoming the early majority, you're why we're here, you're why we've made it this far, and you'll be why we continue to exist, I hope, for many years to come.

Onward!

Usman

Surely there's a smarter approach to smart cities?

noreply@blogger.com (Usman Haque) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:34:00 +0000

Photo by cesarastudillo

This is a reprint of an article I recently wrote for Wired, Surely there's a smarter approach to smart cities?:

For almost a decade, corporate giants like IBM and Cisco have been banging the smart city drum and, frankly, the beat is getting a little boring. We've long been promised great things: more energy efficient power grids, an end to traffic jams and even rubbish bins that let you know when they're full.

The truth is, all of these "smart city" initiatives actually only reflect the most basic functionalities of the Internet of Things (IoT). The true potential for smart cities is so much greater, so much more interesting, and so much more important.

Bin the smart trash cans
These days, every major IT company is looking for its slice of the smart city pie, given the projection that annual spending on smart city technology will reach $16 billion by 2020. In 2008, IBM launched its Smarter Planet initiative, a broad programme to investigate the application of sensors, networks and analytics to the most tricky urban issues. Meanwhile, Cisco has launched a Smart+Connected Communities division to commercialise sustainable approaches to urban environments.

Despite the subtle differences in these approaches, in both IBM and Cisco's eyes smart cities predict the convergence of smart information and communication technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of urban systems and services.

Whether we are talking about IBM deploying an Operations Centre in Rio to combine data from 30 urban agencies, or Cisco's partnership with the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York to improve rail and station monitoring, these attempts approach the evolution of smart cities from fundamentally the wrong direction.

Both initiatives are looking for a one-size fits all, top-down strategic approach to sustainability, citizen well-being and economic development. In short, their strategies focus on the city as a single entity, rather than the people -- citizens -- that bring it to life.

Any adequate model for the smart city must focus on the smartness of its citizens and encourage the processes that make cities important: those that sustain very different -- sometimes conflicting -- activities. Cities are, by definition, engines of diversity so focusing solely on streamlining utilities, transport, construction and unseen government processes can be massively counter-productive, in much the same way that the 1960s idealistic fondness for social-housing tower block economic efficiency was found, ultimately, to be socially and culturally unsustainable.

We, citizens, create and recreate our cities with every step we take, every conversation we have, every nod to a neighbour, every space we inhabit, every structure we erect, every transaction we make. A smart city should help us increase these serendipitous connections. It should actively and consciously enable us to contribute to data-making (rather than being mere consumers of it), and encourage us to make far better use of data that's already around us.

The smart city starts with you
The "smartness" of smart cities will not be driven by orders coming from the unseen central government computers of science fiction, dictating the population's actions from afar. Rather, smart cities will be smart because their citizens have found new ways to craft, interlink and make sense of their own data.
Smart cities cannot be defined by one application, or central organising body, that sets pre-programmed limits. They will be defined by individual citizens, who are anxious to collaborate with each other -- to create devices and applications that solve specific local problems. Smart cities will be places that foster creativity, where citizens are generators of ideas, services and solutions, rather than subservient and passive recipients of them. Like Jane Jacobs, I believe that citizens will shape the cities of the future for themselves, creating "spontaneous order from below".

This is an approach that makes more sense, given the current economic reality worldwide. Can a city like Rio -- one that is currently struggling financially to support basic social programs -- really "sensor enable" every street, traffic light, police car and more? And even if it could find funding for the sensor hardware and installation costs, the on-going maintenance would be enormous. The sheer volume of accessible data being transmitted would force huge investment in data centres and other IT infrastructure.

But let's say IBM did all of that. It would still have forgotten that smartness is not just about efficiency (e.g. using less power) but crucially also about creating a flexible system that can dynamically adjust to changes, one that responds to unpredictable phenomena in a way that is not planned, and that harnesses the creative capacity of inhabitants.

Citizens should be able to adjust and rewire the smart city as needed to solve problems and overcome obstacles in their own lives. Smart systems cannot just be installed atop a city, and then maintained as the unchanging status quo forever. The smart city gets reconfigured every day.

The role of governments and corporations
Corporations and governments certainly have a major role to play in the smart city -- by making data openly available for coders to build upon -- but it's not just about making data public; it's also about the public making data. So they must also make it easy for citizens themselves to create and contribute their own data.
For example, there are currently dozens of official air quality monitoring systems in place in cities throughout the world. They provide good information about general pollution levels at a neighbourhood scale and making this data available to the public could be beneficial. But the information is useless for a citizen that actually wants to make decisions: most people don't have the financial freedom simply to move house just because their neighbourhood has bad air.

A citizen-led air quality monitoring system would see measurements taken at a much higher resolution in places (e.g. at the height of a children's stroller) that the official network just doesn't reach. Children could learn which side of the park to play on. People could decide to walk different routes to work. They could measure the specific impact of their own cars. They could learn more about the real-time impact of attempts to improve their local air quality, for example by planting greenery around or inside their homes. They could easily experiment with and share strategies with each other. None of this is possible if they're merely passive consumers of someone else's data.

So there's also an important role for government to play in terms of mandating compliance with common frameworks, open standards and structured-data formats. How much easier would it be for a community to build programs around their data, for example, if a municipality made it a requirement of commercial licensure that businesses publish their data through an appropriately-defined API?

And, of course, there are some things that can only be accomplished at scale, particularly the kind of heavy infrastructural investments that underwrite robust, equal, society-wide access to connectivity. So the rollout of mobile coverage and broadband connectivity will still be very much in the hands of organisations and governments.

No golden bullet
The entry of pervasive computing into the city cannot be seen as a "one-stop-shop" that will solve all of our problems from pollution to traffic management. Despite the best intentions of Cisco and IBM, connecting systems and bridging data will not by itself solve tough issues. At best, such systems will likely just provide greater visibility of urban problems.

However, empowering citizens to find and build their own solutions dynamically may yet allow the full potential of smart cities to be realised.

#Sensemakers: Hacking Water

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:18:00 +0000

Just a few weeks ago we completed a weekend Water Hackathon in NYC as part of the Sensemakers community, where about 40 makers, students, and activists came together to tackle issues around the pollution of NYC's waterways. It's a huge, sprawling set of problems; one that can't possibly be understood fully in only a weekend. Luckily, we have connections with some fantastic groups of people, like PublicLaboratory, with insight into specific problems we knew we wanted to take a stab at. Further, as the event formed and the word got out, like-minded people in the area joined, adding further expertise and perspective. It really was awesome to watch come together.

The main project we wanted to work on was dontflush.me by Leif Percifield, which aims to reduce the amount of sewage that enters public waterways during overflows from Combined Sewer Outfalls (CSO's) in NYC. One of the issues he has been dealing with since the last mention on the blog is friction with the DEP who has not provided him with authorized access to the sewers to place his sensors (kind of understandable, I think). So, either the project stalls ...or a way to sense CSO discharges in a different manner is developed. During the Water Hackathon, the goal was to develop a sensor that could be placed ouside the CSO which would look for sudden, drastic changes in temperature and electrical conductivity, indicating that hot, dirty sewage was present.

For details on the result, I'm reposting Leif's report here:
------------

My arm was up to the elbow in water classified as unfit for human contact. I was staring down a double-barreled shotgun of pipes that release some 90 million gallons of untreated sewage and storm water annually into the very water I was canoeing in. This is the Gowanus Canal, in Brooklyn, N.Y. I was there as a participant in a hackathon created to develop tools to better understand the nature of urban water pollution.

The Water Hackathon, held March 23-25, brought together a diverse group of people all interested in better understanding the complex issues affecting water in urban environments. Public Laboratory co-sponsored the event together with Pachube, Ushahidi, Citizen Sensor, and DontFlush.Me, and the event was hosted by the Geospatial Design Lab at Parsons the New School for Design.

Ignite-style talks kicked off the event Friday night, with presentations by activists, engineers, boaters and technologists. These presentations led to the formation of groups which worked together to develop working prototypes by the end of Saturday.

The problems tackled during the event included: understanding the diverse impacts affecting urban water quality; enabling recreational boaters to collect real-time water quality information using a smartphone connected to a sensor kit; creating a sensor-based reporting system for Ushahidi crowdmaps; and providing New York City building owners a direct way to share and better understand water usage in buildings.

DETECTING SEWER OVERFLOW

On Sunday we all headed out to the Gowanus canal to test the water quality sensor we built together. Naturally, we canoed right up next to a set of pipes called "Combined Sewer Outfalls" (CSO) since these pipes dump overflowing sewage into the canal almost every time it rains.

The idea behind our design for this particular sensor was to create a device that could be installed outside of a CSO, in a publicly accessible place, and would use a variety of different sensing techniques to detect when a sewer overflow happened. The group decided that the first sensor should be water temperature. Even when mixed with storm runoff, overflows should be measurably warmer than the receiving waterbody. The temperature probe that we used is a waterproof digital sensor from Adafruit, a woman-owned business based in NYC.

For the second sensor, we decided to create our own electrical conductivity (EC) probe. The Environmental Protection Agency has a some great details about EC and how it is an indicator of water quality. Basically, the purer the water, the lower the conductivity. Conversely, the more stuff (in our case, sewage), that is in the water, the higher the conductivity will be.

"Environmental Monitoring with Arduino" is a great recently published book which includes plans for a DIY EC sensor. Using parts from Radio Shack, the team created our EC sensor and calibrated it with a solution from Atlas Scientific and some other concoctions.

These two sensors were connected to a custom arduino shield which was milled on the awesome PCB (Printed Circuit Board) machine at Parsons the New School for Design.

Everything was connected to an Arduino including a big battery, a charging circuit and asolar panel all from Adafruit, and a GPRS Shield from SeeedStudio. This all was put into a small Pelican case so that it could be installed in the Gowanus Canal.

Water Hack can be seen as a high energy moment in Public Laboratory's multi-year, ongoing engagement with Gowanus Canal activists and designers. Many Gowanus-based community groups came together around this event. The Gowanus Dredgers provided canoes; the Gowanus Canal Conservancy shared their knowledge and experience with urban water quality issues; and innumerable other individuals and organizations either participated for the weekend or contributed perspective on issues during the planning stages.

The social media feed for the event can be found here. The full description of the tool is posted on Public Lab. Related work with sensors and sewers can be found on DontFlush.Me. You can read more about our work with the Gowanus Canal here.

#AirQualityEgg: Why sensor calibration and precision is the wrong conversation

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:02:00 +0000

I receive criticism daily about design decisions that have been made around the #AirQualityEgg sensors and how we are going about deploying the hardware uncalibrated. As the project builds an ever larger following and becomes more successful, the opposition becomes ever louder and ... vexed. I sent this update out just now to the backers of the Kickstarter so that our position is clear. I think the wider Pachube community can relate to the spirit of this, so I'm including it here as well.

-----------------------------

Regarding the calibration and precision of the sensors we are using, this is the hot-button question that will continue to crop up. Before I answer it again, I want to reiterate that the PRIMARY purpose of this project is accessibility. Everything is based on open source designs and we are choosing the sensor components based on affordability and availability. (However, now that the Egg is being designed to be modular, any sensor can be incorporated. But that's not the point.)

I think Leif said it really nicely in the video we posted a week or so ago that what we are doing is deconstructing a process that in the past has been unknown and closed to us. There are already scientific sensors systems available out there. They gather "better, more reliable" data that the Egg will. But, "better" for WHO? We are not out to contribute to the agenda of the scientific community or otherwise. We are our own community of people with our own goals, our own momentum and our own vision. No one need pass judgement or proclaim success but we. This community has understood from the beginning that any single datapoint that we collect has low value while the breadth, resolution, and update frequency of the network has high value. We aim to understand whether that strategy will allow us to produce the leverage to start conversations or contribute to those already occurring.

So, on the specific issue of calibration: Impossible. We cannot build a consumer-focused product that requires regular maintenance/calibration of the sensors. Moreover, off-the-shelf sensors like we are using do not come calibrated, and so we would incur significant expenses to attempt to calibrate them after integration, only to still have the problem of re-calibration later on.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, to build a product or system that requires the involvement of expensive test equipment and specialized knowledge about how to use it is undermining what we are doing here. It inserts a dependency on someone. We need to figure out how to look at that dataset in a way that distributes the calibration across the network versus focusing the calibration requirement on a service provider.

Therefore, we can, and will, look at trends in the data. Smart people among us will find savvy ways to interpret this data, match it up with calibrated datasets (government or scientific institutions may be able to provide these), and learn things we never thought we would learn due to the unique nature of the dataset. Trends will allow us to see, albeit cloudily, the hints of problems/anomalies that are occurring in real-time. Those problems may require further investigation by other methods to understand fully, but what we've achieved by even getting to that point is a massive shift away from NOTHING, NON-EXISTENT, NOT INVOLVED. This is the fundamental difference between what we are doing here and crowdsourcing/citizen science.

This most certainly is progress. We are becoming #sensemakers.

#Sensemakers: Citizens are more than just a free labor pool

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:36:00 +0000

For the past 6 months or so, I've been participating in the gradual formation of communities in the US and Europe around the "Internet of Things". Two communities that I've been working with in particular, those in NYC and Amsterdam, have shown an affinity for taking action and applying technology to urban/social issues that are affecting them. Their enthusiasm and energy has been absolutely infectious.

I just sent the following announcement out to those communities:

---------------------

Hello all,

I've talked to many of you about the opportunity I think we've got in front of us. I've said that I think this community in this Meetup is the embodiment of a cultural revolution that is happening at the intersection of open source hardware, open data, and a billion people connected by the internet who can self-organize. This is not the future, it is the present. People are waking up to the fact that they have the power to affect their own circumstances and understand their own environments on their own terms and on equal footing with corporations, governments, and academia.

Not just the power, but the right. And maybe even the obligation, too.

This is something I've learned through the process of running this Meetup group with you all. It started as an "Internet of Things"-focused gathering, but as we have continually been asking ourselves "WHY?" instead of "HOW?", I think we've arrived together in a new place where technology is not the focus. To that end, I'm putting forward "Sensemakers" as the new name for our community. "Sensemaking" is actually a term that has carried some meaning since the '70's, describing a process by which people give meaning to experience. I love that.

"Sensemaking" seems more appropriate for what we are doing than terms like citizen science, crowdsourcing, and Smart Cities. Those terms were born out of a top-down motivation to deploy technology en masse on the cheap by "harnessing the crowd". It's a win-win in many cases, for sure, but citizens are more than just a free labor pool. People need to own a large stake in both the problems and the solutions that face us. As a community that contains technologists, developers, architects, anthropologists, students, and artists, we have the diverse makeup that allows us to do that in a real way.

That being said, I've got a kitchy new tagline for us: "LESS TALK, MORE DOING". Let's own that. We've seen success recently with the AirQualityEgg project, which has been really motivating. The next step is the Sensemakers Summit, coming up soon.

-@edborden
#sensemakers

#AirQualityEgg Update: Funded on Kickstarter! Videos! Press!

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 01:22:00 +0000

The #AirQualityEgg is a community-led air quality sensing network that gives people a way to participate in the conversation about air quality. You can read previous posts about this project here and here and join the conversation here.

We finally went live on Kickstarter! You can now directly support this project and actually buy an AirQualityEgg! Getting our story together, getting our video screened/cut/graphics/blah, getting all of our pricing figured out... it was a huge undertaking. Massive props to Joe Saavedra who has stepped up over and over and really made this thing come together. Also, Albert Chao, Senem Cinar, Eulani Labay, Mani Nilchiani, and Dirk Swart were all caught up in the pre-Kickstarter whirlwind. It absolutely takes a killer community to pull this off.

Then, we reached our $39K funding goal in 4 days! WHAT?

It was a fantastic feeling and really validated the past 4+ months of work across the entire community. Not only that, but we've had coverage so far by both Wired and Forbes!

The day after the Kickstarter went live, Joe and I went on a European Egg Campaign. Between the two of us, we talked about the Egg in London, Amsterdam, and Madrid at quite a few different events. We also held workshops where we soldered up sensor units with groups of about 10 people as part of the Amsterdam and London IoT Meetups. Cindy Regalado from Citizens Without Borders captured some great thoughts from participants during a discussion at one of the events in London that is a MUST READ: "OK, so we've built our egg, now what?" We also sent 10 sensor kits home both to the Hackerspace in Antwerp and Medialab-Prado in Madrid. These things are starting to slowly get out there...

Just today, we released a video which was shot about a month and a half ago at a hackathon in London where members of our normally distributed community came together to work on the Egg for the first time in a single place. "Making Sense" is the result (below), which documents the first deployment and testing of AirQualityEgg sensing units as well as the motivations and methodologies surrounding the project.

The Google Group is really jamming. Since the Kickstarter, the numbers have grown to 128 members and the conversation has been fantastic. This is where we're really starting to see some support from people from science and academia -- we wanted and needed that. We're also hearing there from people who are dealing with real local issues around air pollution, which is another thing we were desperately lacking enough of. I think we're starting to see here what this community could become and it's really cool.

We are also making headway on the hardware. At this point, since funding is secure, we've already started ordering some long lead-time parts. Dirk Swart from WickedDevice is handling the manufacturing and he pings me daily in a cold sweat as he envisions this thing tripling or quadrupling in volume. And then I tell him that we want to engineer more sensor boxes for measuring additional environmental factors (stay tuned, this is coming) and he gets very serious.

Joe put up some resources from the workshops here. If you want to see how we were building the prototype sensor boxes, take a look. There is some good info on the sensors etc. there.

In two weeks, we'll be at EcoHackNYC doing a ton of stuff with the Egg. We'll be prototyping functional versions of the Egg base station itself, while another team will be sending the sensor boxes up on weather balloons mapping urban air columns in real-time. There's more, and you should really come be a part of it if you are in the area.

More to come soon!

-@edborden

January Internet of Things Meetups [videos]

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:34:00 +0000

We have been meeting consistently each month at Meetups in London, NYC, and Amsterdam with like minded enthusiasts to riff together on "Internet of Things topics". If you are in or around any of these cities, you should come and join us! This month we heard from all kinds of different projects, some of which you can see in the videos below the break, including:

Britta Riley from Windowfarms
Liz Barry from PublicLab
Vincent Schipper and Alexander Zeh from NetworkLab
Amran Anjum and Arnd Marijnissen from the Amsterdam Hackspace
Stefano Ingarro who came all the way from Turin to talk about EveryAware
Gonzalo Garcia-Perate from Hintsights
Haiyan Zhang from Ideo talking about geigermaps
Ben Redford talking about Olly the smelly robot
Ben Pirt from Pachube

A new group is starting this month in Barcelona! Check it out.

Internet of Things London Meetup 1/20/12 from Ed Borden on Vimeo.

Internet of Things Amsterdam Meetup 1/21/12 from Ed Borden on Vimeo.

Internet of Things NYC Meetup 1/12/12 from Ed Borden on Vimeo.

#airqualityegg: People participating in the conversation about air quality

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:41:00 +0000

Last month I blogged about a community project called AirQualityEgg aimed at giving citizens a way to participate in the conversation about air quality. You can read about it here. You can also join the google group, read/contribute to the wiki, or add your email to this list if you want to know where to go to buy one when we start taking orders.

Credit: Albert Chao

One thing that's been strongly validated in the month since has been an intense interest from communities and individuals all over the world in their local air quality. People from five continents have reached out to offer their support in various ways, over 150 people have indicated they are interested in purchasing an Egg, and 70 people have showed up to workshops in two different cities . There are 50 people participating in the google group discussions. This has obviously struck a nerve. People want to know.

AirQualityEgg got picked up by Javaun Moradi, a technologist at NPR (American news/media syndicator), who blogged about its implications for journalism. He says:

News organizations are uniquely positioned to serve as ethical overseers...or facilitators of open public dialog [for initiatives like AirQualityEgg]. For lack of a better term, I’ll call this ‘citizen engagement journalism’: applying the newsroom’s tools and values to advance the cause of journalism by means other than reporting. It’s a responsibility that is every bit as noble as reporting and can achieve the journalism goals of informing the public, investigating corruption, speaking for the voiceless, and seeking truth.

AJ Fisher, a technologist at a data consultancy in Melbourne, also picked up on AirQualityEgg as part of a concept he's defining as the "Sensor Commons", or "a future state whereby we have data available to us, in real time, from a multitude of sensors that are relatively similar in design and method of data acquisition, [and whose] data is freely available." This is a fantastic way to describe what is in essence a cultural revolution fomented by the reality of a billion connected people communicating directly with each other and with sensors embedded in the world around them. AirQualityEgg is right in the middle of this, and I have no doubt that as word of the project spreads, more groups will continue talking about how this type of activism will change their life/work/town/etc.

The biggest criticism of the project has always been around the sensor components themselves. The project aims to use low-cost, off-the-shelf, easy-to-use components to give us information that is currently only supplied by $50K scientific equipment. Last month in Amsterdam, over 30 attendees traveled in from 5 countries to attend a one day workshop which aimed to move a step forward on this sensor aspect of the project. There was a fantastic mix between hardware engineers, software developers, and "philosophers" (ie. non-technical participants who wanted to contribute in whatever ways they could). We were able to break into working groups to tackle different tasks and sensor components, and by the end of the day (after only 4-5 hours of solid work time), we had live data we could look at from a good number of sensors. We took these outside to test with the exhaust from a Vespa and got a feel for how the output from these sensors would look. Patrick Beeker, one of the attendees, blogged about how it went here. Groups in Amsterdam and NYC continue to work on this in real time.

Now that we're getting further away from the holidays, momentum is starting to pick back up. There have been some impromtu gatherings in NYC with some of the attendees of the last workshop and as well as others who have become interested. Most notably, Albert Chao and Eulani Labay have been charging forward on the Industrial Design of the product. They've been thinking hard about various aspects of how the system will work and have also been able to run off some prototypes on a 3D printer. While some have questioned the interest in this seemingly gimmicky "egg" concept so early in the life of the project, one of our primary goals here is user engagement for the purposes of building a community. That requires close attention to details that are quite different than the requirements around evaluating sensor components.

Credit: Albert Chao

However, at these gatherings, it's also become clear that the application aspect of the product hasn't yet been given enough consideration. As we've started to tackle the questions of how this sensor network will proliferate, and then, how the network will persist, we keep coming back to what people will actually DO with it. Moreover, designing the various aspects of the Egg in parallel creates a challenge as each element impacts the rest. So, as we move toward the zen state where considerations for sensors, product design and the application are in perfect harmony, things are inevitably changing. Some of the biggest changes:

- The Egg was originally conceived as the sensor enclosure itself. This was perceived as a way to facilitate people building a relationship with this project/movement/concept. The problem is that it's supposed to be outside gathering sensor data. So, sensors have been removed to a cheap, nondescript box and the Egg has been re-positioned inside and given a button and an LED. This gives a way for the user to actually create and receive feedback from the community. What that actually is has not yet been defined.

- Inside/Outside: The types of pollutants that are inside are very different from outside. It's been enough of a challenge to tackle the outside sensors, and so the "inside air quality" portion of the project is getting nixed for now. A future extension of the project could address this.

Moving forward, the 30 day goals are the following:

Create and install prototypes of the sensor unit in NYC and Amsterdam. We want to see data coming in.
Define the physical product and how the system works together.
Define the application and user experience.
Launch a Kickstarter campaign. This will allow for the gauging of interest and crowdsourcing of the funding for the project in one motion.

You can help and be a part of this!

All the functional groups are updating the wiki and the google group asap. You should join these to keep up to date in real time. Important discussion will be happening there.
We will physically meet in NYC to make some decisions about the user experience/application on 1/31 and then again on 2/6 to shoot the Kickstarter video. These are all open events as part of the IoT NYC Meetup.
Spread the word. Share/tweet this blog post!
Buy an Air Quality Egg! When we start taking orders, I will let you know where to go to buy one if you go and add your email to this list.

Thank you to all of the participants so far, including:

Internet of Things Amsterdam Meetup
Casper Koomen
Axel Roest <-- props
Amran Anjum
Bas Mijling
Dorien Zandbergen
Peter Manolescue
Xi SiZhe
Hans Blaauw
Cesar Garcia
Sara Alvarellos
Hans Blaauw
Jeffrey De Sadelaer
Chris Davis
Wout Tankik
Kristof De Buysere
Adrian McEwen
Patrick Beeker
Joseph Timkovsky
Hans Crijns
Ivo van den Maagdenberg
Olivier Brechon
Martin Havranek

Internet of Things NYC Meetup
Eulani Labay
Albert Chao
Volkan Unsal
Joe Saavedra
Leif Percifield

New features: Frozen feed triggers edition

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:18:00 +0000

Some new features recently went live! Unfortunately, a lot of these normally slip under the radar, but as a resolution for the New Year, we're going to be better at talking these up. After all, our awesome development team is busy making magic... and people gotta know.

- Frozen Feed Triggers

This is one of the most-requested features we've had in the past year. Frozen triggers are sent when there is a 15 minute period of inactivity on a datastream. Live triggers work the same, but are fired when a datastream becomes live (i.e. is updated after being frozen).

One of the best uses for the new frozen and live triggers is make a datastream send a tweet when it becomes frozen. To do that when logged in, first visit the feed page (e.g. https://pachube.com/feeds/504). Next pick the datastream you'd like to be notified for. In the 'Triggers' section, select 'Twitter' from the dropdown menu next to the 'Add a Trigger' link. Then click 'Add a 'Trigger'. In the configuration for the new trigger you may have to log in to the Twitter account you'd like to use. Once that is done you can set the trigger to "Send a tweet when value goes frozen" and customise the text of the tweet. When you're done customizing the tweet text click "Save", and your trigger is all set up. If you want to test your new trigger, click the Debug button and your account will send a tweet simulating the datastream becoming frozen.

- New Docs

The API Docs have been completely reformatted so they are much easier to navigate, view examples, and find stuff. Even better, the beta feature docs aren't hidden anymore! Check them out.

- Delete ranges of datapoints

Previously, you could only pass single datapoints to the API for deletion. You can now specify start and end times and a duration in the event of bad or corrupt data being uploaded to Pachube. This is documented here.

People talking about Things that tweet

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:58:00 +0000

We talk a lot at Pachube about empowering communities. The best communities develop important conversations, demand action, curate leadership, and ultimately produce some kind of output that matters. We've been thinking hard about how our global data platform intersects with global communities and how we can help facilitate this new kind of collaboration around real-time data. This has recently manifested itself in two very simple ways:

- Things tweeting (see our Twitter triggers tutorial video)

Engine bay lights at Crystal Park Fire Station in Manitou Springs, Colorado

Freezing conditions in Dublin, Ireland

Power service availability for coconut oil mills in Perambra, India

In looking through Pachube trigger activity, it's interesting to note that there are quite a few people with Twitter triggers set up to tweet data that is very specifically useful to only themselves. For example, there might be no context, units, or description whatsoever. While this is a fine use case, it's interesting to see how in the examples above, people were able to go one step further and translate their triggers into information that has wider implications. So, instead of "temperature outside my house," @DubFreezeAlert is making a statement about freezing conditions. Or, instead of "voltage levels from the transformer on my road," @sunish is providing power failure alerts. He could go even further and make some statement about what areas "Phase 2" affects, etc.

Here's the best part: Since you are able to place triggers not only on your own datastreams but on other peoples' as well (if they choose to make their data public), if you are interested in a certain datapoint or event related to that data, then you can create the trigger yourself. So, if you wanted to go and improve @sunish's power alerts in some way, you can simply go and do that.

- Comment threads on feed pages

Questioning the meaning or context of each others' data

Learning from each others' experiences

Pachube isn't just about data. For us, data simply sets the stage or provides the subject matter. It's the people that add their experiences, goals, and passions into the mix that create richness around the mundane. Without this, the Internet of Things is like a sketched painting without color. It's incomplete. The most important work -- making sense of it all -- requires participation from people. We're starting to see that become a reality here.

Opening University energy data so people can understand their own impact

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:37:00 +0000

Pachube Pioneer: Derek Foster
Resides: Sheffield, UK
Occupation: PhD Researcher
Web: http://www.derekfoster.net/
Pachube Feeds: http://pachu.be/24356
Data: Electricity

At the University of Lincoln 60 miles outside of London, there are a range of buildings that vary in age from hundreds of years old to brand new. Derek Foster, a researcher at Lincoln, is working on a project to show that just because some of these buildings weren't designed for electrical systems doesn’t necessarily mean that they must be less efficient than their newer counterparts. Why? It turns out the energy usage habits of the people inside the buildings make a huge difference! He posits: “With the understanding that automated systems can only go so far in reducing consumption, we must adopt the view that people are not just noise when looking at a buildings energy usage, they have a huge impact.”

As an example, this graph shows energy usage in December 2010 compared to the same period the previous year. Since much of the UK suffered a severe cold snap in December 2010, many people were unable to commute in, resulting in low staffing levels. Derek's theory: "The absence of ‘people activity’ significantly flattened the graph, highlighting the potential of behavior change. Of course it is not possible to completely eliminate this activity, as employees use a range of necessary facilities to carry out their working responsibilities. Rather, we can target a reduction."

After establishing that people (not just automated systems) and how they use energy is important, Derek then moved on to experiment with how to provide them with feedback on their day to day consumption levels. The first hurdle Derek had to overcome was extracting energy usage data out of proprietary storage systems in some dark data dungeon on-site at the University. "It took considerable effort to contact these vendors for technical information, understand the implementation, and then provide a ‘bolt-on’ solution to export this closed data into the Pachube platform,” he said.

The next hurdle was developing ways to easily and usefully communicate this information to occupants of the buildings.

“Although we understand the need for our carbon managers to access energy data with proprietary software for analytical purposes, the full potential and usefulness of energy data can only be realised … we can abstract away from complex energy metrics so employees can understand simpler metaphors for a kilowatt hour, the context of 50 litres of water or the Co2 impact of a 100 cubic meters of gas.

Our work uses social media channels to maximise outreach and impact in raising awareness of energy consumption in an organisational setting. [We have] a Facebook application that displays comparative live energy feedback to groups of friends. See our Wattsup and Power Ballads papers.

We are also implementing energy awareness services through Twitter where you can send a simple tweet to one of our energy handles and receive a response back with more information on the requested building’s energy. By sending the name of any one of our campus buildings to the twitter handle @lincolnEnergy you will receive a response with a shortened link to that particular buildings 24hr energy graph as generated by Pachube. I also plan on using the bot to post random updates on our energy data. This is just the start and hope to be as innovative as possible with it, time allowing.

It's really all about raising awareness of energy by maximizing social media impact and making the energy data available through as many channels as possible. We hope that our work with open energy data and subsequent publishing on Pachube is seen as the way forward for other higher education organizations in the UK and would be glad to have them on board with us!”

Sending triggers with Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Pirt) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:45:00 +0000

One of the pieces of functionality we've been working away on is a way to make it easy for users to automatically send tweets when triggers are fired. Because this is based on a plugin system, it makes it much easier to build more plugins, so this is the first of hopefully many different options for being able to send triggers via different methods. Let us know if you have any special requests.
If you're an avid Twitter user then you might also find it interesting to create a feed to automatically track your Twitter stats via Pachube. With this plugin you could even automatically tweet when they change! Check out the app here. Check out the screencast for a demo below the break:

You can help build an open air quality sensor network

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:43:00 +0000

Where's the data? Look outside your window -- have you ever wondered what the quality of the air is out there? I mean RIGHT. OUT. THERE. 12 inches from your face. If so, you are out of luck. The air quality data collected by the government is likely sampled from far, far away and then applied to you on a regional level, almost completely useless from the standpoint of trying to understand or change the local dynamics of pollution that affect you. Not good. If you're interested in joining a community of people who are going to change that, read on.

Credit: Albert Chao

In the world of December 2011 that we live in, data drives activism. The dialog online has reached a deafening roar and everyone has a cause, so it takes hard evidence to turn heads. Without real air quality data, people can be easily brushed aside, or worse, ignored. But nothing screams, "Take action!" like a link to a datastream updating in real-time showing how people are being affected at this very moment. This is the next form of self-expression, a la YouTube, and it's already happening.

So, why no air quality data? It's not a technology problem. Open source hardware, data infrastructure, networks -- we have this stuff and can use it to build a cheap networked sensor. How to fund, deploy, and distribute the sensors, and then how to utilize the data we receive -- we can figure this stuff out with a bit of hard work.

The barrier is the naysayers -- people who don't understand that the engine and scale of the internet community has put what we need to solve this problem within our grasp. They are the people who ask why we'd bother, since we don't understand the science. It's true, we do not have access to the technology that builds $50,000 air quality sensor systems, but we do have the ability to put 50,000 $100 sensors systems into a city, a collective voice which won't be able to be ignored. We'll also have a much better view of trends and of what's happening in real-time -- which will most likely tell us things that the official datasets aren't looking for. Further, if we're a bit savvy about it, we'll be able to create a platform that other people can refine and improve over time. We might not hit the bullseye on the first run through (which may not be necessary anyway if we build an extensible platform), but we'll start an unstoppable movement that will re-shuffle the way issues get discussed.

With this agenda -- to create a way for citizens to participate in the conversation about air quality -- we have partnered with our Pachube communities in NYC and Amsterdam. On November 18, we held a workshop at De Waag, a center for digital media in Amsterdam in the center of the old city, which brought together people from all walks -- hardware, software, scientists, concerned citizens, etc. Led by Casper Koomen, a UX and concept developer, we were joined by Sara Cordoba of design agency Booreiland. Bas Mijling from the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute provided perspective on local issues and resources. Other speakers discussed projects that helped define our collective understanding of the challenges involved.

Following the event in Amsterdam, another group gathered at eyebeam in NYC on December 2nd, led by Mark Shepard, a well-known artist, architect, and researcher in the Internet of Things space. Dirk Swart from Wicked Device provided invaluable technical input. Incorporating the foundation built in Amsterdam, this group tackled the issues around the initial target users, user experience, and methods of deployment/funding. A consensus on a solution framework and design language which will define the project moving forward was met. Coming out of that session, a group of committed individuals in both cities are owning slices of this product concept, with the following decisions dictating how development moves forward:

- Ease of use, approachability. The basic unit comes in two parts: a “base station” RF platform that would plug directly into the ethernet port of a wi-fi router, and an enclosed sensor node that communicates wirelessly within 40-50 yards. The wireless node would be protected in a distinct “egg” casing: simple to produce with the potential to create a sense of empathy or stewardship. The project's name "Air Quality Egg", is taken from this concept.

- Requirement to be able to compare inside/outside measurements. (Should I open the window? Should I get off the bus here? How does the air in my home compare with others?) Additionally, personal space + public space measuring produces a valuable network effect while delivering immediate personal value. This is key for both distribution and engagement/participation.

- Platform focus: Applications will be limited and basic at the outset as the design of the network has the enablement of third-party applications at its core. Furthermore, the hardware will be designed with openness, extensibility in mind. This group's sensor systems will be the start, but the network will be open to adding hardware (eggs) designed by others onto the core base station. Have a better way to get at air quality data than the sensor/hardware choices made here? Make your own egg and send it out to the community!

- Crowdfunded: Kickstarter is a natural path for Air Quality Egg. The project can be funded and simultaneously reach the people who want to be part of this movement. This is a project built, funded, and run by a distributed group of citizens. eyebeam will likely be a key partner at this step.

This is happening. The Air Quality Egg group intends to prototype, test, and start marketing the product within 60 days. At Pachube, we're committed to extending resources to keep this alive and on a forward path.

You can help and be a part of this!

Come to a workshop in Amsterdam or NYC. We are hacking the hardware in Amsterdam next Saturday, Dec 17. The followup in NYC will be announced shortly thereafter.
Contribute to various parts of the project, collaboration will be collected on the wiki. If you have some expertise, particularly in low-cost air quality sensors, we want your brain!
Spread the word! Share/tweet this blog post.
Join the discussion on the open Google Group.
Buy an Air Quality Egg! When we start taking orders, I will let you know where to go to buy one if you go and add your email to this list.

Thank you to all of the participants of the workshops so far, including:

Internet of Things Amsterdam Meetup

Oswaldo Heinen
Amran Anjum
Axel Roest
Martin Jacobsson
Rene Pare
Wout Tankink
Kristof De Buysere
Xi SiZhe
Vincent Schipper
Joao Rocha
Roland van Straten
Frans Snik
Stephane Logger
Ben Lawson
Martin Havranek
Casper Koomen
Sara Cordoba
Bas Mijling

Internet of Things NYC Meetup + eyebeam
Art Mikhlin
Tom Lowenhaupt
Adam Griff
Christo de Klerk
Joe Plotkin
Eulani Labay
Volkan!
Janice Kim
Josh Levine
Cindy Konits
Daniel Toke Hansen
Mia Stigsnaes
Eken Ijeoma
Francisco Hui
Albert Chao
Mark Shepard
Dirk Swart
Victoria Marshall

OnBoard: enabling a world of open data devices

noreply@blogger.com (Usman Haque) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:43:00 +0000

Last month, we made Pachube free for all our users, removing a significant barrier to entry for people and devices to get onto our platform. As another step in that direction, we are today releasing OnBoard, our first turn-key solution aimed directly at device makers of all sizes. With OnBoard, we're making it quick, cheap and easy to offer connected services with internet-enabled hardware.

OnBoard includes:

1. Device bulk-registration: Manufacturers can provision devices onto Pachube and specify

data profiles.

2. End-user account integration: Device owners can now claim their devices and their data directly on Pachube.

3. Dashboards: Once devices are claimed, device owners view dashboards hosted within their accounts.

Pachube's OnBoard service is a pathway onto the open, people-centric Internet of Things for devices and data – that have in the past have been tied to specific services and software. By breaking open the traditional data-silo/walled-garden approach to building connected services, data can be re-used across many different applications. This increases the value of the data to both its owner and the device manufacturer, while also creating a way for third-parties to develop compatible products on a common framework.

Current Cost Opens Its Data!

We're proud to also announce that Current Cost, a leader in home energy monitoring products, is the first commercial partner to use OnBoard to deliver an online home energy dashboard to their customers. Anyone who has ever purchased a Current Cost monitor with a Current Cost Netsmart (Bridge) device can now access their energy data within their Pachube account by entering the serial number printed on their device here: https://pachube.com/devices/currentcost.

You can then:

- utilize the new Current Cost dashboard from within your Pachube account

- export the data for external analysis

- trigger external web services or use Pachube's SMS alert or twitter trigger functions

- use applications at http://apps.pachube.com/

- use 3rd party applications via the Pachube API

- create new applications on top of Current Cost data

... you now have keys to the kingdom – full access to and control of your data to do what you need with it!

The dashboards are still relatively simple in functionality but expect additions in the near future.

If you are interested in building applications that work with Current Cost data, please contact us at biz@pachube.com.

What's Next for OnBoard?

Our goal is to make OnBoard entirely automated. Today, if you are a device maker or manufacturer you will need to contact us to get things set up. Once we automate and complete the documentation, we'll release OnBoard officially.

With OnBoard we aim to make it as easy as possible to create massively scalable and secure web services that use Pachube, whether you're on-boarding two devices or two million. With more devices on Pachube integrating real-time data with third-party applications, our community will be empowered to build the next generation of device-driven Internet applications.

If you're a device maker or manufacturer, and you want to use the OnBoard service while it's in beta, we'd love to hear from you at biz@pachube.com.

Find the Pachube OnBoard press release here.

The Pachube Debug Page

noreply@blogger.com (Pachube) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:24:00 +0000

Here's a quick demo of a new feature we're pretty pleased with. The new debug page shows you how many requests you've made to the API in the last 10 minutes as well as a stream of live API requests as you make them.

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on behind the scenes involving message queues, Node.js and websockets but hopefully the end result is easy to use and useful for debugging.

Let us know how it works for you and if there's anything else you'd like to see. Video below the break.

Bringing down the barriers: Pachube service goes free!

noreply@blogger.com (Conan Reidy) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:33:00 +0000

We’re making the Pachube service free for all users.

As of today there will only be one type of account. Every user will have unlimited datastreams, datapoint uploads and history as well as the option to create private feeds. We are setting a limit on the API request rate at 100 requests/minute. Current PRO users will see their rate limit go up from 40/minute to 100/minute. Current PREMIUM users will keep their current rate limit of 250 requests/minute. Any user can request an increased rate limit by contacting support@pachube.com.

We will be upgrading everyone’s account in the next few hours. Anyone who has paid for a yearly subscription in the last 60 days will get an automatic refund via PayPal. We made this decision simply because that’s how far back PayPal allows us to go. If you disagree with this decision, please contact us. We’re making this change to make Pachube more accessible to new and existing users, and we want to make sure no one feels treated unfairly.

So, why go free? No, we haven’t decided to become a non-profit. No, we’re not just super-nice. What we are is ambitious. And having worked with and talked with many people in the Pachube community, we know that they’re ambitious too.

The “Internet of Things” is a big idea (though secretly many of us don’t actually like that term), and we want our community to lead the effort to define it. As devices continue to find their way onto the Internet, we want them to be able to take advantage of everything the Web has to offer. We want Pachube users to control their own data, build applications that we would never envision, and share with others as they see fit. This idea, as obviously correct as it sounds to us, is not inevitable. There are significant business and technical barriers to this vision.

By making the Pachube service free, we’re removing a small barrier today, and we’re committed to removing more barriers in the coming months. The Pachube service is not as easy to use as we want it to be. It still doesn’t do everything we want it to do. This is, of course, okay. That’s why our engineers come to work every day, sit at too-small IKEA desks and code their asses off. Pachube will continue to get simpler, better and more capable. Our intention is that many of these new capabilities will be free. Some of them won’t. We hope that you’ll want to pay for the stuff we decide to charge for.

In the meantime, continue to let us know what you need from us, how we can help you build a device-friendly Internet that lives up to your aspirations, adheres to our own lofty ideals, and helps you build the next generation of Internet applications.

The value of open hardware is in the empowerment of communities

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:55:00 +0000

There's something big happening right now at the intersection of open hardware and the Maker movement -- critical mass is being reached. Chris Anderson famously termed it the next Industrial Revolution, but back in early 2010 detractors could still downplay its significance. In the mean time, the barriers to entry for building new products have been dropping at a frantic pace, opening up the market and recasting less technical newcomers as Makers. Designers, architects, artists, and activists can now build nearly anything they can dream up on top of the open platforms that are cropping up like weeds. Not only that, they can also build them at low volumes, cheaply and quickly, tapping into the "billion little entrepreneurial opportunities that can be discovered and exploited by smart, creative people." (Cory Doctorow)

This accelerated pace of innovation is also completely redefining cost structures and time-to-market in the realm of connected devices and the Internet of Things. Take, for example, a project driven by Pachube community member Ken Boak called the Nanode. This Arduino-compatible board includes an ethernet controller, a full TCP/IP DHCP stack, and over-the-air firmware updates for a total of $35 in kit form. At volume in the ten thousands, Ken can get an assembled board down to $12.

A Nanode may very well encompass 95% of the hardware/software stack of the next killer connected product. For $12. That's truly REDEFINITION, not just optimization!

However, translating the impact of this movement simply into being able to build stuff faster and cheaper is actually missing the boat completely. There's an opportunity here to blow away the old model with something completely new -- a different way to think about where the value is in a piece of hardware. Think about open source platforms instead as something that can be inexpensively/quickly leveraged to gain an audience, build a community, and drive engagement online (I'm mashing up Chris Anderson, Seth Godin, and Fred Wilson here). This is really what it looks like when the Internet gets infused into "Things".

Take, for example, the global community that coalesced around radiation data in reaction to Fukushima, driven by Arduino-powered Geiger counters. Or a community of NYC citizens concerned about sewage overflow into the Harbor. We've even seen a Canadian chili-enthusiast who wants to build connections with farmers in India, the tip of the iceberg for an Internet of Things gardening movement. That's right: social connected gardening, it's the future.

So, consider a connected device as catalyst for building an engaged community but also as a generator of open data. Open data makes a lone Arduino or Nanode infinitely useful to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. The data coming out of a custom device sensing its environment can be used, analyzed, and mashed-up by communities for which it may never have been intended. It can drive all kinds of disparate conversation, learning, and activism.

Open hardware + open data = communities of infinite diversity. This is the opportunity for developers and Makers that are building the next generation of devices and services. So, when we talk about value chains, business models, and monetization in the Internet of Things, this is really where we have to start. Our focus needs to be on how we can leverage open hardware to build these communities -- the rest inevitably follows.

There's more to discuss here, so come talk to us during the Open Hardware Summit cocktail hour, the Maker Faire this weekend at the WickedDevice booth, or show up at the Internet of Things NYC Meetup on October 6th!

Internet of Things NYC Meetup and how to pitch your Sensor Project

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:46:00 +0000

NEW YORK! The frenzy that is the startup tech community in New York City is about to get some fresh juice! Now that the city is giving Silicon Valley a run for its money (if not in $ raised, then definitely in level of awesomeness of companies funded), it's time to harness some of that POWER for the tidal wave that we call the Internet of Things. New York has got the design chops, hardware savvy, and raw thirst to make this happen, and we want to help move it along and be a part of it however we can.

To that end, Pachube will be launching the new Internet of Things NYC Meetup on October 6th. Our goal here is to foster a community that is excited about this emerging market and interested in working toward building companies and products that can capitalize on its growth. All ye with an eye toward monetization, we want to talk to you. At this first event, we'll be sponsoring talks from industry luminaries (see the Meetup page for details), enjoying some great food and drink, and sponsoring a pitch contest:

PITCH YOUR SENSOR PROJECT: A portion of the October 6th Meetup will be dedicated to hearing 5 minute pitches for innovative ideas for 50 unit sensor deployments. For example, connect up a street as a demonstration of a next-gen smart-city type application, or deploy a network of ambient noise sensors to track crime, planes, or noise pollution. We are specifically looking for ideas that have a network effect -- ie. it's about a community around data, not just a connected device. Pitches do not have to be done on-site (we will skype you in if necessary)! The best ideas will get 50 free Nanodes and free unlimited access to Pachube to produce the deployment. Sign up here. Rules: You have to be able to actually build and deploy your sensor deployment within the next 60 days. That means your team should contain the appropriate hardware/software development abilities to produce the project. Contest will be judged by Pachube representatives and prizes awarded on the day of the Meetup.

We've got a lot of cool stuff planned for this event and the Meetup in general, so we hope to see you there! In addition, any entrepreneurs, students, designers, or angels/VC's in NYC who are interested in the Internet of Things and want to partner with us, you should reach out to edborden@pachube.com right away!

No more secrets: Open data pioneer unlocks government radiation datasets

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:57:00 +0000

Pachube Pioneer: Marian Steinbach
Resides: Cologne, Germany
Occupation: User Experience Designer
Web: http://www.sendung.de/
Pachube Feeds: http://pachube.com/users/marian
Data: Gamma radiation

The death knell has rung for the Dark Ages of Data where we all had to beg to get a glimpse into BigGov's secret vaults of knowledge. People have the right to access data gathered from public space, and they are now exercising that right.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, people from all over the world came together to aid support efforts in the form of a crowdsourcing movement around real-time radiation data. While citizens in Japan continue even now to contribute public data streams to Pachube to fill in significant gaps in the official reports, others, like Marian Steinbach, have worked hard to put pressure on governments to make available the data they do have. Moreover, Marian has also done the important work of making these official feeds actually useful:

For Japanese data, I can tell you that I found no source for raw data download, so I created a way to scrape the data from the website bousai.ne.jp. The fact that so many others use the data I am harvesting tells me that there is no other way to access it in a machine readable format.

It turns out that reams of static documents containing disparate data points isn't really that useful! Now that Marian has made this data available via Pachube feeds tied to their relative geolocations, it can be pulled into an unlimited amount of applications and visualizations in real-time in a scalable way. This has proven to be very useful and has been a boon for people trying to understand real conditions in the affected areas.

However, the movement hasn't stopped there as the Fukushima disaster has touched off concern worldwide by showing the need for governments to provide data in open, accessible formats. Marian decided to next focus on his home country of Germany, which also has an official radiation sensor network:

In Germany there is a public display of radiation readings, but the raw data was not generally available to the public. The institution in charge ("BfS" fpr "Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz") may have let certain people access that data, but there was no (and still is no) publicly available download. The press officer from the BfS told me that with Fukushima the number of requests for access to the raw data has risen drastically. Finally, after several weeks of requests, they gave me a personal account for data access with a terms-of-use contract.

As a result of this, Marian has made available via Pachube approximate 1750 real-time radiation feeds. This is a real example of not only a shift in how governments are choosing to communicate and partner with their citizens, but of a new class of individual that has the ability and insight to leverage the Internet of Things to affect society in a significant and powerful way.

Not content simply with policy change, Marian has also applied his skills as a designer to create an stunning visualizations of this radiation data in Germany over time. Watch the video below as the ambient readings pulse across the country:

So now we can see how radiation behaves dynamically. Not everybody knows that radiation is a fact of daily life. Even fewer might know that it differs quite a bit between locations and also changes over time. To me it’s particularly interesting to see how values rise and fall similar to waves moving over the country. The probable explanation for this is the influence of rain, which causes readings to rise. The BfS has more information about this in german language.

Marian recently put out a call to crowdsource real-time rainfall data. As his recent visualizations have raised questions in his own mind, his goal is to substantiate the information being provided to him by BfS and hopefully promote further education around the topic.

The correlation bewteen high gamma values and rains appears to be a fact, but not known in public. If I can create a visualization that shows nicely how rain and radiation correlate, it might raise people's awareness of that fact.

Marian's exercises in leveraging the power of crowdsourcing, openness, and real-time data is paving the way for a new process for how citizens and activists can respond, contribute, and understand world events. At Pachube, this is a process that we have been both excited and humbled to be a part of, and we aim to continue to help shape how it evolves.

Pachube just got some rocket fuel!

noreply@blogger.com (Usman Haque) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:17:00 +0000

We've spent the last three years building out what we believe is the most fully featured Internet of Things web service that you'll find. We've brought together an incredible team, architected an open, scalable and secure infrastructure, and been lucky enough to be joined by all of you: the most innovative and creative Internet of Things enthusiasts in the world.

But we're not stopping there.

We want to scale up further, connect more sensors and devices, track more environments and help more people build tools for understanding real-time data from their cities. We envisage an ecosystem of trust – between users, application developers and device companies – in which collaboration supports creative initiatives for sensing and responding to conditions in the physical world.

With that in mind I am absolutely delighted to announce that Pachube just got some “rocket fuel”... We've just been acquired by LogMeIn, a leading provider of cloud-based connectivity solutions! With the technical boost, financial freedom and community expertise that being part of LogMeIn affords us, we're going to be able to spend a whole lot more time and effort on the thing we think is most important: helping support the demands of a fast-growing community of connected pioneers, their devices and their environments.

As anyone who has gone through the process of an acquisition will tell you, it's almost like a wedding – complete with pre-wedding jitters! We initially connected with the LogMeIn team at our offices in London and after spending several hours with CEO Mike Simon and CTO Marton Anka, I was convinced they were people I'd want to work with. Anyone who knows me well knows how careful I am about who I do business with and, as protective as I am of Pachube, I knew straight away that we had a shared ethos and a deep mutual respect. These guys are top notch and I believe we'll be able to go far together.

Ben, Ed and I have been travelling to Boston and Budapest for a few months now, getting to know others on the team and mapping out our future growth plans. We’ll be working closely with seasoned professionals like Conan Reidy VP of Business Development and Sandeep Bajaj, VP of Network Operations. They bring a proven expertise in building both large-scale user-communities and the secure platforms to support them - and they share our aspirations for accelerating growth of Pachube's global community.

The vision I first had more than 10 years ago, of connected cities, connected devices and connected environments defined and created by their inhabitants is becoming a reality. And with LogMeIn behind us, that vision just got a whole lot more real.

...........................

Press Release: From Millions of Computers to Billions of Devices; LogMeIn Acquires Pachube, Takes Aim at Internet of Things

For any press people out there, you’ll need to contact the LogMeIn PR team to organize interviews for the next few weeks. Here’s their contact info:

CONTACT:
Investors
Erica Abrams or Matthew Hunt
Blueshirt Group
415-217-5864, 415-489-2194
erica@blueshirtgroup.com
matt@blueshirtgroup.com

Press
Craig VerColen
LogMeIn, Inc.
781-897-0696
Press@LogMeIn.com

YOU are the "Smart City"

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Do you buy this "Smart City ®" that is being peddled to you? Do you feel the magnificent effects of BigGov and BigCo overhauling urban infrastructure with "Smart City ®" connected traffic lights, energy meters, and surveillance systems? Does knowing where the "Smart City ®" subway is in real-time BLOW YOUR FREAKING MIND??

Here's a newsflash: (Dramatic pause.......) Using computers and the internet increases efficiency! Of basically everything! Even cities!

Blistering cynicism aside, let's face it, BigGov missed the boat big-time on this one. Shouldn't they have delivered on the "Smart City ®" a long time ago? I mean, it's 2011. People are building their own flying drones out of cell phones and Arduinos. People are consolidating all the world's information onto Wikipedia. People are using Twitter to stage national revolts.

And BigGov is busy connecting garbage cans.

Just like the M2M dinosaurs are on the brink of extinction in the commercial world, BigGov has become irrelevant in the public sector, eclipsed by someone with a supercomputer in their pocket, open source hardware and software at their fingertips, and a global community of like-minded geniuses at their beck and call: YOU.

YOU are the Smart City.

While BigGov is bickering over what datasets it might want to release for the use of developers and entrepreneurs, people like Leif Percifield are climbing down into the sewers and getting data that BigGov doesn't have. A massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami causes one of the worst nuclear disasters in history to occur on his home soil, so Shigeru Kobayashi leads an effort to crowdsource radiation data that BigGov wasn't providing publicly. Jeff Starin has jumbo jets flying over his house at low altitude all day long, so he starts publishing ambient noise data that BigGov doesn't even want to see, let alone make available themselves.

These are people who are building their own collective understanding of what's going on around them. They're establishing their own standards and questioning the standards of others. These people are special, certainly, but only because they've grasped at what is actually available to all of us (your kids in high school are learning these skills, building software, and conducting similar types of experiments). Some might write them off as hackers, DIY'ers, or some such, but they are in fact the same as you and me. So if there is any smartness to be found in the city, it's found in people like this, filled with inspiration, hustle, and a little bit of means.

As far as BigGov goes, the future that is defined by Pervasive Computing / Internet of Things / Smart City is not simply silicon all over the place connected to a pretty application you access. It's not a box you pay money to climb into to live within programmed bounds. What happens outside that box is what really matters, and what's going on out there thrives on sharing, openness, and collaboration.

So, if what you are being given doesn't have sharing, openness, and collaboration at its foundation, you'd better damn well raise hell. Those things are what will make cities smart and those are your rights.

One of our good friends here at Pachube is Adam Greenfield founder of Urbanscale, a design firm focused on "networked cities and citizens." He is a thought leader in this space and this conversation would be incomplete without his input.

Adam, we need better verbiage here. What do we call this "citizen of the Smart City" and how we make sure there are a whole lot more of them?

- @edborden

We call them "citizens," Ed. : . ) I'll get to the reason why in a moment, but first I want to emphasize that all your points are well-taken. We believe every technology inevitably has a politics inscribed in it, and the politics we bring to the design of the things we build has a great deal to do with the things you're talking about. The whole interest of these systems as far as we're concerned is to enhance both the ordinary citizen's agency — and equally importantly, their sense of their own agency — over the places they live.

But I don't want to suggest that government doesn't have a role to play here. It's taken a bit of getting used to for an old anarchist like me, but I'd suggest that there's an important role for government to play in terms of mandating compliance with common frameworks, open standards, structured-data formats and so on. How much easier would it be for the Pachube community, for example, if a municipality made it a requirement of commercial licensure that businesses publish all their data through an appropriately-defined API?

Furthermore, there are some things that can only be accomplished at scale — I think, particularly, of the kind of heavy infrastructural investments that underwrite robust, equal, society-wide access to connectivity. And for better or worse, governments are among the few actors capable of operating at the necessary scale to accomplish things like that; they're certainly the only ones that are, even in principle, fully democratically accountable. So I'd never want to write them off, especially since that access to connectivity is a precondition for the kind of inspired, inspiring bottom-up activism you're talking about.

Having said that, we exist in a historical moment in which, for a variety of economic and ideological reasons, the state is retreating from the provision of services that have traditionally been its responsibility — we see this worldwide. Whether you think of it as an opportunistic offloading of that responsibility, as reorienting the state to focus on its core competencies, or as simply facing up to an unpalatable but nonnegotiable financial reality, it's just a fact we now need to account for. So we need that particular genius you're talking about more than ever: that just-do-it spirit that binds together curiosity, the belief that we have the right to know and understand the circumstances that condition our life chances, the instinct to share one's findings and the determination to act on them.

If you'll forgive a momentary lapse into jargon, ultimately our project at Urbanscale is to alter the subjectivity of contemporary citizenship. We want to use networks and sensing and computation and visualization to help people understand the power they already have over the circumstances of their lives, and to enhance that power. That's at pretty significant variance from the model of "the smart city" inscribed in, say, Cisco's promotional material — which treats these technologies as tools for city managers, and ordinary people as, at best, individual data points — and has a lot more to do with what you're up to at Pachube.

We hear a lot of rhetoric, a lot of lip-service paid to the ostensible wisdom of crowds, and how that wisdom might generate the ideas that magically resolve the contemporary urban crisis. But truth be told, that notion strikes me as really offensive. Somehow it manages to be simultaneously an abdication of professional responsibility, an admission that one has run out of insight, and an insult to what people are actually capable of. Jake Barton of Local Projects makes the point that crowdsourcing — the solicitation of clever ideas from people, ideas that would then be acted upon by overarching civic institutions acting in their interest — is precisely the wrong idea. But giving people the tools to act on and actualize those clever ideas themselves? That's much closer to the mark. That strikes me as what you're interested in, what your community is actually doing, and what we aim to support in any way and on any level we can.

-@agpublic

Crowdsourcing data accuracy

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:49:00 +0000

There are now about 2500 radiation feeds on the Pachube platform! This is an unprecedented, massive amount of data, packed with potential, but also pretty frequently criticized. The sources are unknown and the calibration and quality of the sensors are unknown, so this movement at times has been labeled as simply an untrustworthy source with the potential to cause mass-panic. A comment on one of our previous blog posts asked, "Most of these sources have a disclaimer that 'we are not responsible for data quality.' So be it. But if you can't count on anything, what use is it?"

The beauty about crowdsourcing is that the dataset draws strength from its heterogeneity. The outliers are easily spotted and discarded while the data that is consistent across completely unrelated sources is reinforced. There is a network effect here as each additional source to some degree "validates" the rest. Additionally, with the inclusion of over 1700 feeds from the German government thanks to Marian Steinbach, we actually have far more government data than citizen-supplied data on our platform. So if you lean toward trusting "official" datasets, they are here as well for you to use as a baseline.

On the flip side, regardless of whether a specific sensor can be confirmed to be calibrated to exact specifications, crowdsourced data holds a wealth of value through its ability to generate clear pictures of trends. Is it more useful to know if the value at a particular location is exactly ".075 microsieverts" or if it has been steadily rising over the past 3 days? One is just a datapoint, the other is real information.

When it comes down to it, whether you're a government, non-profit, or individual, a healthy dose of suspicion should flow in all directions. The fact that you can now make comparisons, have a wealth of different sources, and draw informed conclusions for yourself with real-time data, well, that's the really novel part.

Pachube is IPv6-ready! Smart-city demo with Cisco, AT&T, and Worldsensing

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Today is "World IPv6 Day", an industry-wide test-drive of the IPv6 infrastructure. As part of this event, Pachube has worked closely with AT&T to implement a redundant pair of IPv6 tunnels into our network. The pachube.com website and the Pachube API at api.pachube.com will be from this point forward fully IPv6 compliant. Users and applications can now pull data directly from devices with IPv6 addresses and fire HTTP triggers at IPv6 URLs with no changes to their applications.

IPv6 is pretty much right up our alley in the spirit of open data. Since IPv6 introduces the concept that every object and sensor can have its own identity (IP address) without being abstracted in any way, it means that real, direct access to data sources can be had, and shared, by their owners. In the context of our Bill of Rights and specifically real-time data, our focus here at Pachube, some degree of direct access to devices/sensors is a must. Without it, users don't have the amount of control they are due.

To test the functionality and stability of our IPv6 network, we collaborated with a consortium of companies to produce a real-world demo using production-level equipment and solutions:

AT&T is providing IPv6 transport services using the AT&T global IP network as well as expertise in configuring the end sites
Cisco is providing the routers to connect the various locations and the Cisco IOS is delivering the intelligence to keep the data flowing without interruptions
Worldsensing is providing the low-power embedded sensor nodes that are gathering data in real-time
Pachube is providing the data infrastructure

The data from this deployment can be viewed at http://pachu.be/25937. Sensors underneath parking spaces in Barcelona transmit an on or off (0 or 1) signal to Pachube. From here, the real-time parking data can be embedded into millions of instances of applications, visualizations, or analytics suites. Parking is only the enabler -- the sky is the limit as to what the data can actually be applied to.

See the joint release from all four companies on Smart+Connected Communities Institute.

The Internet of Sewage and Leif Percifield's "dontflush.me" revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:02:00 +0000

Pachube Pioneer: Leif Percifield
Resides: Brooklyn, NYC
Occupation: Parsons Grad Student
Web: http://dontflush.me
Pachube Feed #24004: http://pachu.be/24004
Data: Water level of overflow sewer

Some 27 billion gallons of raw sewage is dumped in NY Harbor every year. This harmful waste comes from Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) that open when the sewer system fills up with runoff during wet weather. However, by measuring the water level at a CSO, it's possible to know when an overflow event is likely to occur. If residents of the city were notified that such event was imminent, they could make conscious decisions to use less water and take a little pressure off of the system. At the least, they can make sure what's in their own toilet bowl doesn't end up in the Harbor! Multiplied a million times over, a serious issue plaguing urban environments could be avoided.

Armed with an Arduino rigged up to a cell phone, Leif Percifield is making it happen. Waste water levels are sent to Pachube via SMS, then made available to users in real-time via Pachube's Twitter and SMS gateways. Moreover, Leif has another hardware up his sleave, the "Bulbuino". The Bulbuino is a connected light bulb that gives users a more constant, ambient connection to the data as it is streamed to Pachube via changes in color in real-time.

Next steps for Leif are:

Get some funding to deploy more sensors (it costs over $40/month for data plans, batteries, etc for just one sensor). You can donate HERE!
Get everyone in one building using the service and a Bulbuino, and mashup the data with a new tool from the NYC DEP that allows building water use to be tracked on a daily basis. Leif could then find out if dontflush.me is actually working!

The best part is that this system could be a driver for any number of smart city applications that can leverage water usage data, both at the individual building level and across a city! Awesome!

How Google PowerMeter got it wrong and how to fill the gap

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Borden) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 23:26:00 +0000

[Update: PowerMeter is dead as a doornail! You gotta be out by September 16 of this year. 90 day eviction!] A few days ago Google deprecated a bunch of their API's, including Google PowerMeter. The reaction from the community has been a bit raw, with notables like Limor Fried of Adafruit saying she had predicted almost a year ago that PowerMeter wasn't "a serious effort at Google" and that "Google didn't really do much in this space". This isn't so surprising to us though, as they've never been able to deliver on a few key drivers:

Direct consumer access to real-time data
Secure access to data by third-party service providers / application developers

The lack of a true real-time open data platform is the core of why the service had to fail. "Open data" is about ownership, portability, and empowering users. PowerMeter dealt with none of those things and instead was an end-point in the system, a silo, with far too little value for all parties involved (utilities, consumers, service/app developers). "Open data" in this form is useless, while still providing a means of invading the data for any number of Google's own purposes. Not what we're looking for.

Jesse Berst from SmartGridNews adds:

Naïve in the ways of the utility industry, Google thought it merely needed to show up at the doorstep and grateful utilities would crowd around to happily hand Google their customer consumption data. When most utilities (wisely) said no thank you to Google's heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition, the firm then sailed off to Washington D.C. It spent more than a year lobbying the hill to force utilities to hand over their data. With the failure of that effort, the Googliputians largely lost interest in PowerMeter. It now is in the software equivalent of a vegetative coma.

We think the right approach for not only the energy space, but any market related to the Internet of Things, is to put the user in control, at the center. With direct control over their data and how they use it, and the ability to share that data securely with both peers and service providers, you create an environment where both activity and engagement flourishes. When a business model is applied to this system in which the utilities and service providers/developers also benefit, innovation driven by market forces will explode.

This is how we are already working with governments and cities in several pilot deployments we are doing with Cisco, and it's how we will potentially work with energy utilities as well. As data is being gathered and applied to business needs such as billing and analytics, Pachube is the link to the citizen/consumer, giving them a way to manage their data and, soon, connect it with third-party apps and services.

As far as Google PowerMeter, we'll carry the torch from here! We already have almost 10,000 users who are managing their personal energy data on our platform. Users will find graphing tools, dashboards, mobile apps, and embeddable widgets in our app repository that can be used with any real-time data, including energy data. Moving forward, we are working with application developers and hardware companies who are building energy-management products to connect into Pachube and are always on the lookout for more. Additionally, disaffected PowerMeter users can bring their historical data into Pachube by using our import app. To get data pushing directly to Pachube in real-time moving forward, we will need to work with the data provider or hardware manufacturer. Users should let them know they want to get their data into Pachube and then have them contact us at biz@pachube.com. We'll take it from there. Also, we're happy to extend free Premium accounts to users who bring their data over from PowerMeter.