Twine

[LMITOUT]

Stumbled upon this the other day and thought it was kinda neat:

Quote:

How it works

Twine is a wireless module tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. The module has WiFi, on-board temperature and vibration sensors, and an expansion connector for other sensors. Power is supplied by the on-board micro USB or two AAA batteries (and Twine will email you when you need to change the batteries).

The Spool web app makes it simple to set up and monitor your Twines from a browser anywhere. You set rules to trigger messages — no programming needed. The rules are put together with a palette of available conditions and actions, and read like English: WHEN moisture sensor gets wet THEN tweet "The basement is flooding!" We'll get you started with a bunch of rule sets, and you can share rules you create with other Twine owners.

Because the hardware and software are made for each other, setup is easy. There's nothing to install — just point Twine to your WiFi network. Sensors are immediately recognized by the web app when you plug them in, and it reflects what the sensors see in real time, which makes understanding and testing your rules easy.

Sensors: Listen to your world

Right out of the box, Twine has an internal temperature sensor and an accelerometer for vibration, impact, and motion detection. Additional external sensors plug into the multipurpose jack, and pop up on the web app ready for you to add to your rules:

*a magnetic switch (useful for doors and anything else that moves)

*moisture sensor (detect the presence of water)

*breakout board - provides analog or digital input, power and ground (allows you to easily wire up other sensors that you think up — no soldering required!)

*Output: Talk to the Internet

Using our simple web app you can configure Twine to speak in a variety of ways. We support:

Twitter

Email

Text messaging (SMS) — available for most recipients' carriers

Configurable HTTP Request

Each of these let you include sensor values (like the temperature) and your own text.

[CAMAN]

Interesting, but besides a flooding basement, where else would you use it?

[delcecchi]

If it has a temperature sensor it would tell you if the heat went out while you were away. If it has something that plugs in a socket, tells when power goes off.

Make it into a burglar alarm, using the break out board and a bunch of magnetic switches and that metallic tape on windows. Hook up a motion detector.

Connect it to a probe thermometer and it will tweet you when the BBQ pork is done. Or when you need to adjust the smoker.

[LMITOUT]

One of the next sensors they are planning on offering is one that will measure electrical current that you would place around electric conductors. It would issue a message when current reaches a set level, although I'm not sure how that would be useful.

A high temp probe is also on the list of possible sensors they have considered.

If I got one I'd probably use the magnetic switch and put one on my garage walk-in door.

Right now it sounds like they are concentrating on getting this initial concept into production and shipping by May and then working on more sensor options after that.

[LMITOUT]

The other sensor they are going to make is an IR motion sensor.

[rundrave]

anyone else been keeping up with this? I found some more info via kickstarter which then relayed me to another site I probably cant post. They start right at $99 and the full sensor package is $174.

doesn't look like they will ship until Sept if you order though.

I'll keep following until I know more but this is very intriguing.

[LMITOUT]

Yeah, I'm still following the painfully slow process.

[Shack]

Quote:

Twine is a wireless module tightly integrated with a cloud-based service.

LOL- Yeah, they are having a hard time with integration/migration with fail-safe storage area networks.

One thing I would like to know is how elastic is it's firmware and will it handle being scaled over the 60 gigs of RAM mark?

[LMITOUT]

Looks like there is another Kickstarter project similar to Twine called SmartThings, however, there appears to be a service charge of $4.99 to $9.99 per month which means I'm not interested. This outfit is supposedly based in Minnesota.