MINISTRY OF SENSORS (MINISENSE)

ioBridge + Google Latitude + WeatherBug means never having to touch the thermostat again.

The "smart" power grid is all about making people aware of how much energy they consume--the problem is they quickly lose interest in acting on that information. If we really want to save money on heating and cooling our homes, the trick is to borrow a principle from good web design: never make the user think.

And what could be simpler than a home climate control system that, like the all-seeing eye of Sauron, knows where you are at every moment of the day, and adjusts the thermostat accordingly?

That's what Hans Scharler, president of software at ioBridge, whipped together with a little Perl, an IO-204 board, Google Latitude, and the WeatherBug API. Scharler calls it Location Aware Home Automation.

Put simply, the system knows, via his smartphone, where he is at all times. When it becomes apparent, via Google Latitude, that he's heading home, it springs into action.

First the system uses WeatherBug to look up the current outside temperature near his house in order to determine whether or not it should crank the AC or the heat. Then his Perl script signals his IO-204 board, which is connected to his home thermostat. (The IO-204, which I've covered before, is a favorite of hackers and a mainstay of the nascent effort to create the Internet of Things.)

Mote Runner Dr. Thorsten Kramp, research staff member and co-developer of Mote Runner at IBM Research - Zurich, holds a mote programmed with Mote Runner to detect movement and light. IBM

In IBM's planned future, everything will communicate with everything. The company has now announced a new software development kit, Mote Runner, that will allow programmers to put anything from coffee makers to environmental monitoring systems on the "Internet of things."

Mote Runner -- nicknamed for motes, wireless sensor nodes that gather information and refer it back to a network -- can interlink any hardware equipped with wirelessly connected sensors. The extremely lightweight software is made to run on sensor chips tiny enough to be built into almost anything. IBM Research, which built Mote Runner, aims to increase adoption of such wireless sensor networks by making them easier to program and use.

Mote Runner apps can live in a tiny 64K of memory, and be written in standard languages like Java or C#. The apps can be debugged and deployed on simulated motes that run on a host computer.

In theory, motes can be connected across large or remote areas like agricultural fields, multi-story buildings, rainforests or glaciers, IBM says. Eventually, using chips that can connect any gadget, you could "talk" to all your home appliances from afar.

Exemplifying the quickening movement towards “the internet of things“, DoGood Headquarters has developed an ambitious concept for a reusable coffee cup that can be folded back into your pocket or purse (foldable for storage), is BPA free – and possesses a solar powered clock, Bluetooth integration with your mobile phone and respective real-time Twitter feed.  Not to mention automatic Foursquare check-in.

While the concept is just that at this point in time, it’s also an example of how “the internet of things” will continue to bridge the digital and analog worlds.  A portable, connected coffee cup could theoretically allow you to automatically check in on Foursquare as you change locations throughout the day – directly from your coffee cup.  This is also one of several examples of rich creative ideas looking for a business or institution in need of a brilliant idea to take to market.  The concept is available on jovoto, a marketplace for creative ideas.

Via DoGood

Not sure we agree with the title the uploader gave it, though.

Two London designers decided to come up with a get-rich-quick scheme whilst waiting for a bartender to mix their drinks. The result? A kitchen appliance which could communicate through Twitter. And what kitchen appliance would any self-respecting Englishman choose? An electric kettle, or the Twettle.

When we first saw Tweeting appliances, they were a laughable novelty: a Twittering toilet designed to show up the banality of most Tweets, for example. But as the network has grown into a ubiquitous and always-on tool, a tool designed for fast, short and current messages, using it to tell you your toast is cooked now seems a lot less trivial.

The Twettle works via WiFi, connecting directly to the internet and tweeting when it has boiled. Now, if you switch it on yourself, you know that the kettle will boil in a minute or two, but in, say, an office, it might be helpful to know that the water is done so you can rush to the kitchenette with a sachet of powdered soup, or even to catch up on gossip as others make their tea.

But putting WiFi into a dumb appliance isn’t easy. You need, for instance, a way to get the network password into the wireless radio (housed in the kettle’s base). The simplest way turned out to be a small screen, something that microwaves and other appliances already have. You also need to enter Twitter account details.

The Twettle also has an API (application programming interface) to allow others to hack it and add functionality. For instance, you could actually switch the kettle on via Twitter Direct Message (useful in student houses where nobody wants to leave the sofa - or the joint - to make the tea). Or the Twettle could be told to “boil” at a lower temperature for making coffee. The API also allows for stats, as seen below. You can count how many cups you have made, for instance, to make sure you reach the weekly quota required to remain in the country.

People like to joke about incontinence when it happens to someone else, but for nursing staff or those taking care of the elderly it's simply another duty that must be managed. The SIM cycle system from Australian company Simavita makes things a little easier with text messaging. The system, which is now being deployed at nursing homes following successful clinical trials, involves a replaceable pad with electronic leads that detect moisture. Those leads are run to the SIM box, which sends a text message to the resident nurse when it's, uh, changing time. This should enable the staff to spend less time peeking in unsightly places and more time helping those who need it. Meanwhile, reports can be generated from the system to keep track of incontinence problems.

DecaWave's ScenSor uses wireless radio chips to enable "precision RTLS (Real Time Location Systems) applications."

In the concept video, distance measurements are used to determine proximity and do things such as enable/disable a laptop, find a lost teddy bear, enable access in a hospital room for a doctor, identify nearby patient info and then download the correct records to the doctor, and advise of approaching friends. Other concepts shown in the video include an in-store location application guide for shoppers, proximity of tagged clothing, and information transfer capability with patient data.

"When we talk about a smarter planet, you can say that it has two dimensions. One is to be more efficient, be less destructive, to connect different aspects of life which do affect each other in more conscience and deliberate and intelligent ways. But the other is also to generate fundamentally new insights, new activity, new forms of social relations. So you could look at the planet as an information, creation and transmission system, and the universe was hearing its information but we weren’t. But increasingly now we can, early days, baby steps days, but we can actually begin to hear the planet talking to us.”

btw the Party's first task is to change this ridiculous name "Internet Of Things."