Author: Laura Weber

We’ve reached the point in the semester where it’s time to really focus in on one idea. We could continue exploring and prototyping if that was our goal for the project. However, we have decided we would much rather put together one idea with more polish than explore a myriad of ideas at the proof-of-concept level.

Our week started with additional brainstorming, trying to figure out why our ideas did not feel like they truly fit the greater concept of the Internet of Things. This led to a powerful realization of what the IoT really is.

When people talk about the IoT and all of the potential it holds, people rarely focus on any specific products. Instead, they talk about higher level scenarios.

For instance, your car breaks down. With the IoT, your car could identify which part is broken, inform the local repair shop, have an appointment scheduled, and order the necessary part from the manufacturer. Then, when you bring your car in, the mechanics are already ready for you and have all of the parts they need to complete the repair.

In this scenario, the seemingly magical result is that your car takes care of arranging its own repairs when it breaks, with minimal action from you (other than perhaps getting the car to the shop). However, if you were to examine the individual components that make this chain of events possible, none of the products themselves are particularly interesting. A sensor checks the status of the parts, some communication protocol sends messages with the part ID, a computer scheduling system assigns an appointment…. The links in this chain are all relatively simple. It is what they achieve together, the greater whole that we see on the surface, that make the Internet of Things so compelling.

This also reinforces what we experienced when we visited Target Open House during week 3. We found we were not particularly impressed by any of the individual products on display. They were all relatively “dumb” input and output devices. We were far more interested in the scenarios that the displays were able to illustrate for us.

Up until now, we have been focusing on the hardware and APIs we might use. We have now realized that to make a truly interesting IoT product, we have to consider the greater concept and interaction more than the technology that makes it possible. We were also focusing on creating a relatively singular product, which goes against the defining characteristic of IoT: many small things connecting to create something greater than the sum of the parts. For our product to have the right effect, there needs to be a greater overarching connected system. To fit within the scope of our project, perhaps what we are building is more of an Intranet of Things.

With this new perspective in mind, the team sat down with Carl for an all new brainstorming session. We focused on two different elements we found were successful so far: physicality, and games. Creating something physical that we can touch and interact with is far more compelling, especially when it is something that really can’t be recreated the same way as a digital application. It should be physical with a purpose. Something game-like is also a good direction for us. People find more intrinsic value in a game they can enjoy themselves than in something with hypothetical potential for some practical use they may not be able to experience. Plus, our team finds it a much more entertaining and exciting area to explore.

We ended up exploring two different concepts. The first was some derivation of a game of tag using smart, connected components. The second was a set of connected beach balls that people could interact, where each ball would react to certain actions as well as to other balls.

The connected ball idea was most intriguing to our team. There is a lot of potential for giving these balls personality, making them feel more like living entities with certain behaviors. Creating something more creature-like than device-like has appealed to us since week 1. Treating them as a swarm with some sort of hive-mind is also an interesting direction. In the coming week, we will keep perusing this idea, solving the necessary technical and design problems to make it a reality.

Wednesday this week was Quarters. We had 5 different prototypes up and running:

1. A light-strip based competition, as seen in previous weeks. For Quarters, we had 2 teams to choose from, and points were earned by answering movie rating trivia.
2. An initial WiFi based proximity detection demo. A strip of lights would change color based on whether or not it is within a certain distance of the designated Wifi signal.
3. A robotic arm controlled by an Arduino over the internet. We had 2 separate control stations set up, each with different controls. The 2 players had to work together to pick up blocks and drop them into a ring.
4. A robotic assistant built entirely on voice recognition and speech synthesis. She can have (unusual) conversations, answer questions, and translate English into other languages.
5. A game of checkers influenced by Twitter trends. This was simply a digital simulation, but it showed the potential to influence certain board game elements with real-time data.

Generally, people were most interested in the robotic arm and the board game.

The robotic arm was a fun activity that people really enjoyed playing with. While we enjoy the idea ourselves, it doesn’t quite have the right potential to be worth spending much more time on.

The board game was fairly abstract at this point, with the connections between the data and the game being completely arbitrary. However, people saw a lot of potential in the concept. We plan to explore the idea further.

Click here to see a more in depth video walkthrough of each of the ETC SV teams, including EnterNet.

We are temporarily shifting back into and brainstorming mode, reflecting on the feedback and existing works discussed during Quarters.

Also this week, we have made important progress on the manufacturing side of development. Laura and Vivek went and toured our local TechShop maker space, and Laura now officially has a membership on behalf of the team. Just today, she completed the training class for 3D printing, so we hope to make good use of that soon.

Our main focus for this week has been preparing demos for our Quarters walk-arounds. While we haven’t had the time or resources for any significant physical builds or fabrication just yet, we do have a number of prototypes we plan to show off.

We have a WiFi module that we have set up to essentially work as a proximity sensor. We plan to develop a group-based game around this capability.

We also have a virtual build running for a standard gridded game board that can be influenced by various forms of data. Currently, we have it running a game of checkers. This is the first step towards realizing our dynamic, physical board game concept.

We now have a robotic arm that we have assembled. We’ve been working to rig it with an Arduino as the controller instead. Eventually, we want to have multiple users across the Internet controlling different joints/components in the arm to work towards a common goal.

Finally, we also have our own talking digital assistant. It uses speech recognition to feed requests into a number of different internet-based APIs, including Cleverbot for general conversations, Wolfram|Alpha for information requests, and YouTube to play music. Eventually, we would like to give this assistant an engaging 3D-printed robotic shell, complete with lights, servos, and a bit of personality. For now, we are making do with a rough paper stand-in, so at least we have a character to direct conversations to rather than just a bare circuit board and microphone.

Next week will be all about prepping for Quarters and choosing our next steps based on the feedback we received.

Early this week, we decided some inspiration was needed. To took a group field trip out to the Target Open House display in San Francisco. This particular location showcases “smart home” technology in a mock home, complete with visual walkthroughs of use cases that really bring the whole setup together. Many of the devices demonstrated were already familiar to us; we were far more intrigued by their execution of the display itself! However, it did get us thinking more about what kinds of capabilities are actually practical for different objects.

Our small hardware tests and experimental prototypes have continued as well. With the addition of individually addressable LEDs, we have changed our color-selection display into a team competition! The more points a team has, more of that team’s color is on the strip. Initially, points were based on a very simple voting system. Later in the week, the system evolved so that each point had to be earned by correctly guessing which of 2 presented Twitter hashtags is more popular.

We have other tests currently underway including speech translation and NFC tag reading.

Additional brainstorming has been ongoing. Right now, we have 3 ideas that we would like to keep building upon:

• Physical Weather Visualizations
  • Weather data is easy to just look up, but we are intrigued by the idea of turning it into a physical display. Wind and rain could be signified by actual fans and water. The sun, moon, and clouds could move. “Warmer” and “cooler” lighting can indicate temperature changes.
    We have also discussed the potential to select different weather locations by putting different RFID tagged items onto the display (like a model house).
• “Everybody’s Pet”
  • This concept is inspired by hitchBOT. Encouraging random strangers to help or care for a robot/creature in a public place is an interesting direction to explore. Perhaps it needs to be taken to certain locations, or “fed” at certain intervals. Maybe it is trying to learn human emotions or expressions. Whatever the interaction may be, we could also take pictures of the kind stranger (with their permission of course) to organize and share in interesting ways.
• Connected Board Game
  • We like the idea of a game board that can physically changed based on certain data. These changes would also influence gameplay. One version of the board we considered was a grid of squares that could change elevation, along with changing water levels (with actual water).
    This concept still needs more thought into the types of data we could use, what game would be played, and how they would affect each other, but the concept is appealing.

We hope to start prototyping the first 2 ideas in the coming week, while we continue to flesh out the 3rd.

Finally, the first draft of our branding is complete. You can see our latest branding materials on our Media page.

Early this week, we went over our initial concepts with our project instructors, Carl Rosendahl and Heather Kelley. Unfortunately, none of our ideas seemed to quite hit the mark. Most of them could really be done without an internet connection; they didn’t need the internet in order to function properly. That needs to be a critical piece of our design. With that in mind, we went back to the drawing board.

During all of this brainstorming, we’ve also been conducting a number of small experiments, getting ourselves accustomed to working with these various little bits and boards. The most exciting test to date is an LED strip set up to change color based on SMS messages it receives. The other teams have enjoyed playing with it too (not to mention what a nice, decorative addition it has been to our work space).

Over this next week, we will be focusing on our team branding materials. Laura, as our primary team artist, will be spearheading that effort. Meanwhile, we will all continue testing and try to keep fresh ideas coming. We should have some new hardware delivered in just a few days, so there will be plenty more for us to start prototyping with.

It is the start of a new semester, and a new project. We are team EnterNet. Our goal? To explore new possibilities and potential within the “Internet of Things” (IoT).

At its core, the IoT is “the network of physical objects […] which are embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data”. [Wikipedia]

Over the course of this semester, our team would like to prototype a number of different concepts. Ultimately, we will select our most successful idea to see through to a relatively polished state by the semester’s end.

Of course, the first step in our process is finding these ideas. During our initial brainstorming as a group, we found 6 different categories or “buckets” that encompass the concepts we are most interested in pursuing:

• Creatures
  • Whatever function a piece of technology may serve, it is always more appealing if it feels like an entity rather than an “it.”
• Wearables
  • Wearing connected technologies makes data readily accessible and can even provide people with new, artificial senses.
• Artistic Visualizations
  • The Internet contains a whole world of digital data; our goal would be to visualize this data in a beautiful, tangible way.
• Online Communication
  • We can use physical elements to interact across long distances in more meaningful and emotionally engaging ways than our standard digital communication channels allow.
• Online Collaboration
  • Ideas in this bucket involve multiple people around the world influencing the control of a single physical setup.
• Smart Objects
  • This includes a number of items like smart blocks, interactive tables, and drones.

We have been fleshing out more specific ideas within each of these “buckets”: refining them, building upon them, and even combining ideas together.

In the following week, we hope to select a few of our most promising ideas to start exploring in depth.