Intel IoT Roadshow - Brooklyn

A few months ago Octoblu was invited to give the keynote speech at the Intel IoT Roadshow Hackathon held at Brooklyn based design firm, Huge Inc. The objective of the hackathon was to produce creative Internet of Things solutions using the Intel IoT Development kit, which included Intel Edisons, Galileo boards, grove sensor kits, and various other components. Like most hackathons, participants were allowed to incorporate anything else they can get their hands on into the project. This led to some pretty cool projects that got us excited! Naturally, we encouraged teams to use Octoblu, but mainly we go to these events to join in on the hacking fun!

What is Octoblu?

Octoblu is an IoT platform that is designed to be used across all demographics, from consumer to maker to enterprise, Octoblu provides a single standardized system that connects web services, things, and people. At the core there is a messaging infrastructure, Meshblu, that handles messaging based on registered devices with Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) as addresses. This means all you need to make devices talk is connect them to the public Meshblu cloud or a private cloud instance using any of the most common protocols like MQTT, REST, COAP, or websockets. 

Meshblu

Meshblu talks to all these devices and translates them for you, so that everything speaks the same language. A device can be anything as long as it can connect to the meshblu api, even a webpage can run a meshblu connection in the background. Using this backend infrastructure we've build a series of apps that allow you to connect and control all your different devices and web services. 

Designer + Gateblu

At app.octoblu.com we've build a web app that brings all your devices and web services into one environment with a visual programming language that abstracts logic and various functions. The visual flow designer lets you draw virtual wires to connect different "objects" together, these objects can be web APIs or abstractions of a connection to a physical device connected through wifi of its own or via our Gateblu Gateway app. Gateblu can run on an embedded linux device or as a desktop application on any system, it provides a way to install plugins that interface to devices that would otherwise not be able to connect to Meshblu on its own!  

Mobile apps

Our mobile app, Mobiblu works in the same way, but for sensors on your phone, location, and BLE wearables. We have one other mobile app called Blu, which takes any button you place in an Octoblu flow design and makes it readily available as a button in a simple Android or IOS app. If you have android wear it will show up as a watch app! With all these apps, libraries, and our designer, we're effectively becoming the glue that binds any all platforms together in a way that anyone can use!

Octoblu + Edison

Using the Intel XDK environment we put together some sample code that lets you read and write pins from the Octoblu designer. In this way you can keep all the Edison IO logic in the cloud. 

http://www.hackster.io/virgilvox/intel-edison-octoblu 

What makes a winning entry?

In addition to presenting the keynote and mentoring teams, Aaron Herres and I were also judges for the hackathon. Along with the judges we came to a well thought out consensus on who deserved what prize. There were some projects in particular that we found to be prime examples of potential Internet of Things products with real value.

Context

Good design and effective solutions in IoT should be unobtrusive, elegant, and should function well at one task. With something like an Intel Edison it becomes easier to achieve this type of design since the form factor is so small yet it packs a lot of power and capabilities. It combines WiFi, BLE, ibeacon, and a powerful linux machine with lots of memory and storage. Having something like this passively perform different operations based on context has immense value on the consumer market and in an advancing digital culture. This is why we felt Bttn succeeded in the most subtle way and why we awarded them with first prize. Their hardware was simple, a glowing aluminum button attached to the collar of a leather jacket with an Edison board hidden behind. On the outsite it just looked like a futuristic and unobtrusive collar snap. However, tap it while in a bar with TouchTunes running on their jukebox, your favorite song will play in that bar. For the presentation it was used in this specific use case, but if it were connected to an IoT platform such as Octoblu, the end user could change its behavior in different situations. Such contextual behavior can impact culture without being a "device" or "gadget" that consumes user attention, but rather adds powerful action without need for much reaction or interaction. 

Gamification

Second place went to two teams, The Venus Fly Trap and project T.E.E.T.H. In both projects gamification was a component. The Venus Fly Trap was a robotic fly trap running on an Edison connected to Octoblu with a companion mobile app to "feed" your fly trap and the physical Venus Fly Trap would respond remotely. The T.E.E.T.H. project would gamify based on how long you brushed your teeth but would also perform analytics on your tooth brushing habits via the Intel IoT analytics platform. What we liked about these ideas is that possibility of creating a game on top of an IoT platform that to the user would be a fun game but would affect something more significant in their life through analytics or something physical. As an example, Games for Change did something along these lines that led to the solving of real world problems in DNA folding research. Gamification has a huge place in creating valuable products and data.

Ambient Environment

The environment in which we live, work, and play directly impact quality of life. From lighting to air quality there are many different factors that play an important role in ensuring good mental and physical health. Controlling ambient environment through IoT has been one of the key product categories in pushing this market movement. On the other side of this subject is collecting data about existing environments and how that can be changed. 

One of the third place projects, SunCatcher, found a means to control the amount of natural light coming into a space. What we loved most about this project was the creativity, the use of hardware, and the math behind it. Essentially it was a machine that moved an arrangement of mirrors in order to constantly direct natural sunlight to a specific target location. Having this tied to an IoT platform for control or an analytics platform could yield new and interesting data.  

Healthcare

Probably the most self explanatory category of valuable IoT. With remote analytics and monitoring of medical sensors becoming more and more available the door to life saving innovation is opening up. Patients can keep their doctors up to date on their habits and automated systems can alert healthcare professionals about certain trends. The Portable Vitals Monitor was one such system at the Intel Hackathon that touched on this subject. Their entry won third place for their creative use of the kit of parts and their use of the Intel IoT Analytics platform to produce useful healthcare data from heart rate and temperature sensors. This is something we could see being using by telepresence doctors and to monitor a patient recently discharged after a heart attack.

At Octoblu we connected a BLE heart rate monitor to our cloud platform via our mobile gateway, through that we setup a proof of concept flow that alerts someone via text with your location if your heart rate hits a dangerous spike. All the pieces for created a connected and healthier world are starting to really come together and we're excited to see where this goes and how we can involve everyone interested by creating easy to use software and hardware solutions.

Adaptive Education

"We developed a new concept for classrooms: Classrooms that not only serve as a place for teachers to hold classes, but also as a place that learns the personalities and particular behaviors of each student and adapts itself accordingly.  "

Thats how team SmartEdu ( Third place ) describes their entry. This project was a huge hit for tackling something that hasn't been visited much in the world of IoT. At the heart of all things internet is the goal of connecting people, places, and things with control, feedback, and analysis. Those three concepts are what we use every day, its how we function on a biological and mental level! So as we bring those into all aspects of life and technology it makes perfect sense to tie them to education, especially in early developmental environments. By finding ways to tailor and adapt environment around students and teachers using a broad selection of data points we can ensure that every student gets the care and attention they need to reach their potential via a consistently positive means. This is one major category of IoT that I urge innovators to pursue.

What next?

We here at Octoblu look forward to working with Intel on hackathon in the future. The ecosystem they've built for IoT hardware and software applications is really starting to come together and has paved the way for novice and expert developers alike to innovate with connected apps and hardware. I hope that developers and anyone interested in IoT will consider the categories discussed above in their next project. The beauty of it all is that these five layers of a connected world can also all be connected together. Further down the rabbit hole we'll see vast layers of systems, concepts, devices, people, and environments "wired" together in ways that could change culture and our way of life in ways we can barely imagine. 

Read to start playing? Apply for the Octoblu beta and you just might make a difference.