How is this much different than Ninja Blocks, which was funded in March (and a few months late on delivering)?
<a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ninja/ninja-blocks-connect-your-world-with-the-web" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ninja/ninja-blocks-conne...</a>
X10 reborn. I know people who were playing around with stuff like this back in the 90s and the X10 protocol has existed since the mid 70s. I don't know if these are the guys to do it but it does seem like the time is right for this sort of home automation to finally take off.
Sorry, but I think this is pure fantasy. Of course it is possible, but they won't provide all those things for 100K.<p>What I mean is: all they show is a smartphone app and a fancy looking device. All the cool things we all dream about will have to be built on top of that. That is exactly the state we already have without that Kickstarter project (could as well go for Arduino or whatever). Yet nobody is building those things. Hence my conclusions that these are just pipe dreams...<p>Might as well start a Kickstarter for a Teleporter.
Why is the link to the backers page? All due respect to the backers, but I want to hear about the project first, not who's backing it. Not hard to find the actual page, just annoying.
very cool - love me some internet of things.<p>A side note: crowd-funding platforms are really sparking a renaissance in hardware startups. VCs have stopped betting on these companies, because software companies have a much cheaper and faster to scale. But the really interesting advancements are going to happen on the open-source hardware side, and consumers are willing to fund that in exchange for early access and involvement in the creative process.
Cool project. In the future, it's probably better for the story to link to the description instead of the list of backers. I'm guessing most people would prefer to initially read about the project instead of seeing who already supports it.
I started thinking about a similar concept a few months ago. When researching if to connecting various things in your life to some sort of central, network connected, interface already existed, I wasn't entirely surprised to find out there are a few less than inspiring home automation systems developed by garage door opener companies, Time Warner Cable, etc. Their applications are limited and their UI's look pretty terrible.<p>It would be awesome if this could be pulled off in some manor that either has a ton of applications from the vendor, or has a fairly open architecture that allows other sensors / devices to be applied it. And if it can do all of this while still being simple for non-tech people who may still want some basic functionality, I could some big potential in it.
How is this different from Twine? <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet?ref=live" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-li...</a>
My only concern is that this is a lot of hardware / installation to get some of the basic use cases down, which might be intimidating for non-savvy users. Unless they can sell a home-installation service as well...
I am missing something or is this actually built with a cellular data connection? A new data plan seems like a huge barrier of entry. Why would you not use local internet or at least offer both? Wouldn't most if not all the consumers in this market have in home internet? Cellular data outside of the huge city is terrible on average, even in ATL it is very iffy. Maybe it is because I have never lived in the valley, but cellular data is still a third class service in my experience.<p>Not trying to be negative, just hoping someone from the team could answer on why no wifi?
I don't think these guys know how complex and difficult this is going to be. They might have an SDK out this year, but chances are its pretty rubbish. Its not as if others haven't tried. And having written my PhD thesis on these things I know its a complete and utter pain.
Chances for success: less than 1%.
Interesting take on the problem. It reminded me of Steve Ciarcia's quest to automate homes [1]. Perhaps this is the right time for it.<p>[1] <a href="http://circuitcellar.com/?s=Home+Control" rel="nofollow">http://circuitcellar.com/?s=Home+Control</a>
This is definitely a great idea. My only concern about any products like this, that connect to a centralized location on the Internet, is privacy. There are enough details about me online as it is.
My only complaint is that it uses generic bulky looking (from what I see in the photos) add-ons (things). If only they had more slimline pieces to go with the style of the base station.
I love this idea. Two years ago, when I had just moved to Silicon Valley, I came up with a concept called OpenAnno for a hackathon about Twitter's new annotations API feature. Lucky for me (I didn't realize this then, I didn't know a lot about them), two of the judges were Ron Conway and Paul Graham. I naively presented the project and later ended up talking to Paul and Ron. Ron thought it was interesting and asked me to send him a follow up email. This is what I sent, I just dug it out and thought it might be interesting in this context. I've never really shared it with anyone either so I'd love some feedback even thought it's such a long time ago :)<p>--<p>OpenAnno is Twitter for Objects.<p>We want to build a close approximation of the real world "object graph".<p>OpenAnno stores public annotations (formerly tweets) on unique objects
(formerly people). Objects are connected via typed edges (formerly
mention, follow, reply), thus establishing the "object graph"
(formerly "social graph"). Anybody can add annotations and edges.<p>Objects can be "followed" (an edge-type; there can be other types with
other semantics). Objects can follow objects, too. A vendor can follow
product ratings of products and adjust prices. This adjustment is
pushed to following objects which might order those items once they
are cheap enough. An alarm clock can follow your work schedule and
your friends and toaster can follow the alarm clock. Thus, OpenAnno
becomes the message bus in a global computational network. The
interplay of smart objects reacting to one another is incredibly
powerful (brains works like that, too).<p>Another application is search: the object graph can give you shopping
advice that matches your wardrobe, can summarize and add value to
complicated news events, can help you learn new languages and
cultures, can suggest shops that sell every item in your fridge etc
etc..<p>In certain domains (e.g. shopping) the object graph may be suitable to
do analysis/research/simulation.<p>Possible "early annotators":<p>- Cars with license plates (a la bump.com)<p>- Anything with a barcode (a la stickybits.com)<p>- Real World that can be recognized in images (a la Google Goggles)<p>- Pictures/Media (comp. tazpic's presentation from yesterday)<p>- Objects other APIs give you<p>OpenAnno is a desirable partner for the mentioned companies allowing
them to put their data in context. Data from non-partners is pulled in
through "API tunneling" (as per yesterdays presentation).<p>Yesterday's demo is at
<a href="http://www.justin.tv/jonashuckestein/b/264542955#r=Fs6GQLI~&s=05" rel="nofollow">http://www.justin.tv/jonashuckestein/b/264542955#r=Fs6GQLI~&...</a> and a
working prototype of the API at <a href="http://openanno.com" rel="nofollow">http://openanno.com</a>. It's built to
scale but a rewrite will be necessary (current code is public on
github). Everything was built in less than 24 hours.<p>Challenge: We can build the "starting graph" from all the information
we can gobble. This is difficult. Getting from there to a close
approximation of the "object graph" is even more difficult and
interesting.<p>Social proof: PG first called OpenAnno a "superset of Twitter
annotations" and then a "communication channel that is bigger than Twitter".<p>--<p><i>sigh</i> You gotta love the "it's built to scale but a rewrite will be necessary" line and the "social proof" section :) Makes me feel like I've come a long way in those two years.<p>Me and my friends talked to SV Angel for a little but I had already decided to take a different job for immigration reasons. Back then I didn't realize that these people were kind of a big deal and I should somehow capitalize on that. Good times :)<p><i>Edit: Formatting</i>