If you're a data scientist, or a visualisation person, interested in getting started with hardware and collecting your own data, this is the book for you. You can use the code AUTHD to get 40% off print books, 50% on ebooks and videos when you buy the book directly from O'Reilly.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Distributed Network Data
My latest book, my first not talking about iOS and writing code for the iPhone and iPad, just went to press. It's called Distributed Network Data and it's hardware hacking for Data Scientists. It's the book of the +Data Sensing Lab and arrives just in time for this year's +O'Reilly Strata in Santa Clara, which starts tomorrow.
This book is intended for data scientists who want to learn how to work with external hardware. It assumes some basic computing and programming knowledge, but no real expert knowledge is assumed. From there the book walks you through build your own distributed sensor network to collect, analyse, and visualise real-time data about our environment.
If you're a data scientist, or a visualisation person, interested in getting started with hardware and collecting your own data, this is the book for you. You can use the code AUTHD to get 40% off print books, 50% on ebooks and videos when you buy the book directly from O'Reilly.
If you're a data scientist, or a visualisation person, interested in getting started with hardware and collecting your own data, this is the book for you. You can use the code AUTHD to get 40% off print books, 50% on ebooks and videos when you buy the book directly from O'Reilly.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Making money faster than you can type
The 3Doodler is a 3D printer, but it's a pen. This takes 3D printing and turns it on its head...
In fact the 3Doodler rejects quite a lot of what most people would consider necessary for it to be called a 3D printer. There is no three axis control, there is in fact no software, you can't download a design and print an object, it strips 3D printing back to basics.
What there is, what it allows you to do, is make things. This is the history of printing going in reverse, it's as if Gutenberg's press was invented first, and then somebody came along afterwards and invented the fountain pen.
While it looks simple they've obviously overcome some serious technological difficulties to get it working. One of the things that's hard to do on 3D printers, at least hard to do well, is unsupported structures.
As anyone that owns a 3D printer will tell you, the cooling time for the plastic as it leaves the print head is crucial to allow you to print unsupported structures. Too hot and it doesn't work, the structure sags and runs, too cold and it just plain doesn't work at all. From their videos they seem to have cracked the problem, building a free standing structure seems to be easy and well within the capabilities of the pen.
It also takes 3mm ABS and PLA as its “ink,” the same stuff used by most hobbyist 3D printers. I've got spools of this stuff hanging around my house which I use in my own printer. But unlike my printer, which cost just under a thousand dollars, the 3Doodler costs just $75.
It doesn't have the same capabilities, but that's the difference between a printing press and a pen. It has different capabilities, ones a "normal" 3D printer doesn't have. It's not a cheap alternative, it's a different thing entirely.
I'm currently watching the 3Doodler climb towards their first million dollars on Kickstarter, and I when I say their first million I mean that, they have over 30 days to go on their campaign which has today has gone viral and made them the best part of that million. This is the next Pebble. The next Kickstarter success story.
They've tapped into a previously untappable market; people that wanted a 3D printer but couldn't afford one, and people that see the obvious potential of a fountain pen over a printing press, for both art and engineering.
The guys behind the 3Doodler made $60,000 dollars while I wrote this post, my hat is off to them. Because it's not often someone comes up with an idea this good.
I'm going to be writing a series of posts on hardware startups for the Radar over the course of the next few months, and rest assured I'll come back to the 3Doodler. But not until they can type faster than they can make money.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
The black rectangle won't last as long as the beige box
It looks like putting #Linux on #Microsoft's new #Surface is going to be an up hill struggle. I was actually expecting that...
The fact you can't install #Linux on the new #Surface is just the start of what is going to be an increasingly obvious trend. It's just a symptom. The things that are open and the things that are closed are changing. Time to wake up and realise that. Being able to install #Linux on your PC isn't important any more.
I think a lot of the web and mobile people are making the same mistake today that Nokia made five years ago, Nokia was all about the hardware and wasn't watching the software hard enough...
The era of the commodity beige box is coming to an end, and the days of the general purpose computer are almost over. Most people never needed or wanted a general purpose computer, and they're going to be happy with more limited devices optimised for a single, or a few, purposes. So long as those devices just work.
As a scientist I've benefited from being able to take mass produced PCs and be able to put them on desks very cheaply. The amount of compute power we've had access to as a result meant that money that would otherwise have been spent on expensive high end workstations could be spent elsewhere.
Those of us that need general purpose computing; designers, developers, scientists, are going to have to go out and buy increasingly expensive niche machines, effectively old-fashioned workstations. High end computing platforms that the general population just don't need on their desk or in their pocket.
Today people are all about the software and aren't watching the hardware hard enough. Today's mobile phone, the black rectangle with, at most, a single button is a transition device. Don't get too comfortable with it, and don't stop thinking about innovation. Because the black rectangle won't last as long as the beige box.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Predicting a Singularity
I think a lot about the future, and because of that I've gained somewhat of a reputation for making good predictions. This is a characteristic I share with prophets, messiahs and other ne'er-do-wells. I'm not entirely sure what to think about that.
However one of the problems with making predictions about the future, the main problem, is that it's actually not that hard to predict what'll happen next year. Although for some reason this doesn't really seem to help many of the major analysts whose job it is to make such forecasts. Conversely it's also not that hard to make a prediction for the far future, as "…any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."1 Why is this a problem? Well if it's easy to make those predictions, making predictions in the sweet spot, both far enough ahead to be ahead to get you ahead of your competition, and close enough that you'll still be around to do something about it is actually almost impossible.
But how far in the future is the sweet spot? The strange thing is that this actually changes, a century ago it was twenty years, or even thirty, but twenty or thirty years ago it was just ten years. Today it's probably five, or less. The rate of technological progress is accelerating, and with it the amount of change we'll experience during our lives is also changing. The time it takes for new technologies to emerge, become mainstream, become dated and then obsolete is falling almost exponentially.
For someone like me, whose career more or less relies on being on, and being seen to be on, the bleeding edge, this is painfully evident. If I'm asked "Have you heard about…?" and I have to answer "No?" you'll generally see a look of pain cross my face, something sort of like constipation, don't worry, it's just my career flashing before my eyes...
At this point having angered both business analysts and science fiction writers I'm going to make a small admission, both professions have the right of it because "...the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."2
While the pace of change has accelerated, it's hard to see how that can be sustained as the size of the install base of existing legacy technology widens. So far we seem to have sustained that pace of change by trickle down economics, the older technology spreads out, and newer technology is dropped in, eagerly seized by early adopters like myself willing to pay the premium, and experience the inevitable problems that come with all new technology, at least until the bugs are shaken out.
Despite that I'm forced to point out that if you extrapolate the current rate of technological progress the view that some sort of technological singularity must almost be inevitable is hard to argue against. Unless of course there is some sort of major catastrophe, something to set us back.
Major catastrophes that could knock us back aren't hard to spot: a global pandemic, climate change, ecological disaster, super volcanoes, mega-tsunami, overpopulation, asteroid impact, a nearby supernovae and of course worldwide thermonuclear war are all favourites. The threat of some of these seems to be fading, but some seem more likely today than ever. There are others, many others, too numerous and depressing to list here.
They're also wildcards, because sometimes the things that should set us back push us forward. It's certainly arguable that two major world wars, so close together, were a major causal factor in the acceleration of the pace of change that is part of our lives today.
Depending on the current news cycle I can swing violently; between a horribly over optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of the rise of trans-humanism, and a view bleak in pessimism, in the inevitability of the abandonment of technology and a slow slide towards narrowing horizons and the eventual extinction of the human race. Doomed as a species that turned its back on space and by having its world view limited to just that, a single world with all the disasters and catastrophes that can result.
Despite this, I'll continue to try and make predictions in the sweet spot, it's fun to be proved right, and sometimes even more fun to be proved wrong.
1 Arthur C. Clarke
2 William Gibson
However one of the problems with making predictions about the future, the main problem, is that it's actually not that hard to predict what'll happen next year. Although for some reason this doesn't really seem to help many of the major analysts whose job it is to make such forecasts. Conversely it's also not that hard to make a prediction for the far future, as "…any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."1 Why is this a problem? Well if it's easy to make those predictions, making predictions in the sweet spot, both far enough ahead to be ahead to get you ahead of your competition, and close enough that you'll still be around to do something about it is actually almost impossible.
But how far in the future is the sweet spot? The strange thing is that this actually changes, a century ago it was twenty years, or even thirty, but twenty or thirty years ago it was just ten years. Today it's probably five, or less. The rate of technological progress is accelerating, and with it the amount of change we'll experience during our lives is also changing. The time it takes for new technologies to emerge, become mainstream, become dated and then obsolete is falling almost exponentially.
For someone like me, whose career more or less relies on being on, and being seen to be on, the bleeding edge, this is painfully evident. If I'm asked "Have you heard about…?" and I have to answer "No?" you'll generally see a look of pain cross my face, something sort of like constipation, don't worry, it's just my career flashing before my eyes...
At this point having angered both business analysts and science fiction writers I'm going to make a small admission, both professions have the right of it because "...the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."2
While the pace of change has accelerated, it's hard to see how that can be sustained as the size of the install base of existing legacy technology widens. So far we seem to have sustained that pace of change by trickle down economics, the older technology spreads out, and newer technology is dropped in, eagerly seized by early adopters like myself willing to pay the premium, and experience the inevitable problems that come with all new technology, at least until the bugs are shaken out.
Despite that I'm forced to point out that if you extrapolate the current rate of technological progress the view that some sort of technological singularity must almost be inevitable is hard to argue against. Unless of course there is some sort of major catastrophe, something to set us back.
Major catastrophes that could knock us back aren't hard to spot: a global pandemic, climate change, ecological disaster, super volcanoes, mega-tsunami, overpopulation, asteroid impact, a nearby supernovae and of course worldwide thermonuclear war are all favourites. The threat of some of these seems to be fading, but some seem more likely today than ever. There are others, many others, too numerous and depressing to list here.
They're also wildcards, because sometimes the things that should set us back push us forward. It's certainly arguable that two major world wars, so close together, were a major causal factor in the acceleration of the pace of change that is part of our lives today.
Depending on the current news cycle I can swing violently; between a horribly over optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of the rise of trans-humanism, and a view bleak in pessimism, in the inevitability of the abandonment of technology and a slow slide towards narrowing horizons and the eventual extinction of the human race. Doomed as a species that turned its back on space and by having its world view limited to just that, a single world with all the disasters and catastrophes that can result.
Despite this, I'll continue to try and make predictions in the sweet spot, it's fun to be proved right, and sometimes even more fun to be proved wrong.
1 Arthur C. Clarke
2 William Gibson
Saturday, February 02, 2013
You don't have to be awesome all the time...
In her post talking about the public-ness of mourning after the death of Aaron Swartz, Danah Boyd writes "...we’ve created communities connected around ideas and actions, relishing individualistic productivity for collective good. But we haven’t created openings for people to be weak and voice their struggles and demons."
Geek culture is, at least in theory, a meritocracy, and you are measured by your accomplishments. But that means the best of us, those whose work is held up as shining examples, suffer from Impostor Syndrome. Sometimes cripplingly so, even when they are accomplishing awesome things. Because awesome things sometimes look a lot less awesome from the inside, when you know the limitations, flaws and problems with what you've built and shared with the community.
But worse than that, it means when you have your moment of weakness (and we all do), and for a while cannot contribute, cannot accomplish the day-to-day awesomeness that qualifies you as a member of good standing of the community, things can look very bleak. Because we expect the most from those of us that deliver the most, and even the great and the good can fall sometimes, and need support.
We've built a culture where it's hard to acknowledge that you don't know something, because knowing things is intricately linked with the doing of awesome things — which in turn is linked to our stature with our peers.
For someone like me, whose career more or less relies on being on, and being seen to be on, the bleeding edge, this is painfully evident. If I'm asked "Have you heard about…?" and I have to answer "No?" you'll generally see a look of pain cross my face, something sort of like constipation, don't worry, it's just my career flashing before my eyes…
I have no solutions to offer, only the sure and certain knowledge, which I give freely to other geeks, that you are not alone. That the great and the good amongst us suffer as well. That it's okay to be weak and not know the answer to a question. That it's okay to rest and take from others for a while. We'll still be here when you get back, and we'll still remember how awesome you are. You don't have to live your life on Internet time.
Geek culture is, at least in theory, a meritocracy, and you are measured by your accomplishments. But that means the best of us, those whose work is held up as shining examples, suffer from Impostor Syndrome. Sometimes cripplingly so, even when they are accomplishing awesome things. Because awesome things sometimes look a lot less awesome from the inside, when you know the limitations, flaws and problems with what you've built and shared with the community.
But worse than that, it means when you have your moment of weakness (and we all do), and for a while cannot contribute, cannot accomplish the day-to-day awesomeness that qualifies you as a member of good standing of the community, things can look very bleak. Because we expect the most from those of us that deliver the most, and even the great and the good can fall sometimes, and need support.
We've built a culture where it's hard to acknowledge that you don't know something, because knowing things is intricately linked with the doing of awesome things — which in turn is linked to our stature with our peers.
For someone like me, whose career more or less relies on being on, and being seen to be on, the bleeding edge, this is painfully evident. If I'm asked "Have you heard about…?" and I have to answer "No?" you'll generally see a look of pain cross my face, something sort of like constipation, don't worry, it's just my career flashing before my eyes…
I have no solutions to offer, only the sure and certain knowledge, which I give freely to other geeks, that you are not alone. That the great and the good amongst us suffer as well. That it's okay to be weak and not know the answer to a question. That it's okay to rest and take from others for a while. We'll still be here when you get back, and we'll still remember how awesome you are. You don't have to live your life on Internet time.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Goodbye Aaron
I heard this morning that Aaron Swartz has committed suicide. He was just twenty six. That's far too young by anyone's measure.
It's unclear how much the pressures of the unreasonably harsh federal prosecution for the JSTOR incident might have weighed on him, because it's been clear that he was depressed for some years. Like many of us that suffer from bouts of depression he had good weeks, and bad weeks. But the legal mess he was in can hardly have been a light weight to bear.
We've had several well known people in the community commit suicide over the last couple of years, and it's jarring. From the outside they look like the best of us, the brightest, sometimes with the most to lose. From the inside it can look much bleaker.
People in our community grew up geeks, many grew up friendless and carry that burden into adulthood. They have real trouble reaching out when they need help; to the friends they're not sure they really have, to the family they often regard as having not been there for them when they were at school. As a result the community is littered with people that suffer depression, that struggle every day with it, and with Impostor Syndrome. No matter how accomplished people look on the outside, and despite past records that should make those accomplishments as evident to them as it is to the rest of us, they suffer. Often in silence.
I didn't know Aaron well, we had exchanged a few words on a couple of occasions, but I should have had a chance to fix that. He was twenty six and he was at the start of things, not the end.
If you feel like you can't go on, if you feel like it's too much to bear the weight of your life alone. Please, don't do this, please reach out to your friends, your family, to strangers if you must. If you can't face your friends with the news that you hate your life. Because there is always someone that's going to miss you. Always.
Goodbye Aaron.
It's unclear how much the pressures of the unreasonably harsh federal prosecution for the JSTOR incident might have weighed on him, because it's been clear that he was depressed for some years. Like many of us that suffer from bouts of depression he had good weeks, and bad weeks. But the legal mess he was in can hardly have been a light weight to bear.
We've had several well known people in the community commit suicide over the last couple of years, and it's jarring. From the outside they look like the best of us, the brightest, sometimes with the most to lose. From the inside it can look much bleaker.
People in our community grew up geeks, many grew up friendless and carry that burden into adulthood. They have real trouble reaching out when they need help; to the friends they're not sure they really have, to the family they often regard as having not been there for them when they were at school. As a result the community is littered with people that suffer depression, that struggle every day with it, and with Impostor Syndrome. No matter how accomplished people look on the outside, and despite past records that should make those accomplishments as evident to them as it is to the rest of us, they suffer. Often in silence.
I didn't know Aaron well, we had exchanged a few words on a couple of occasions, but I should have had a chance to fix that. He was twenty six and he was at the start of things, not the end.
If you feel like you can't go on, if you feel like it's too much to bear the weight of your life alone. Please, don't do this, please reach out to your friends, your family, to strangers if you must. If you can't face your friends with the news that you hate your life. Because there is always someone that's going to miss you. Always.
Goodbye Aaron.
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
The inevitability of smart dust
This post was first published on the O'Reilly Radar.
I've put forward my opinion that desktop computing is dead on more than one occasion, and been soundly put in my place as a result almost every time. "Of course desktop computing isn't dead — look at the analogy you're drawing between the so called death of the mainframe and the death of the desktop. Mainframes aren't dead, there are still plenty of them around!"
Well, yes, that's arguable. But most people, everyday people, don't know that. It doesn't matter if the paradigm survives if it's not culturally acknowledged. Mainframe computing lives on, buried behind the scenes, backstage. As a platform it performs well, in its own niche. No doubt desktop computing is destined to live on, but similarly behind the scenes, and it's already fading into the background.
The desktop will increasingly belong to niche users. Developers need them, at least for now and for the foreseeable future. But despite the prevalent view in Silicon Valley, the world does not consist of developers. Designers need screen real estate, but buttons and the entire desktop paradigm are a hack; I can foresee the day when the computing designers use will not even vaguely resemble today's desktop machines.
For the rest of the world? Computing will almost inevitably diffuse out into our environment. Today's mobile devices are transition devices, artifacts of our stage of technology progress. They too will eventually fade into their own niche. Replacement technologies, or rather user interfaces, like Google's Project Glass are already on the horizon, and that's just the beginning.
People never wanted computers; they wanted what computers could do for them. Almost inevitably the amount computers can do for us on their own, behind our backs, is increasing. But to do that, they need data, and to get data they need sensors. So the diffusion of general purpose computing out into our environment is inevitable.
Everyday objects are already becoming smarter. But in 10 years' time, every piece of clothing you own, every piece of jewelry, and every thing you carry with you will be measuring, weighing and calculating. In 10 years, the world — your world — will be full of sensors.
The sensors you carry with you may well generate more data every second, both for you and about you, than previous generations did about themselves during the course of their entire lives. We will be surrounded by a cloud of data. While the phrase "data exhaust" has already entered the lexicon, we're still essentially at the banging-the-rocks-together stage. You haven't seen anything yet ...
The end point of this evolution is already clear: it's called smart dust. General purpose computing, sensors, and wireless networking, all bundled up in millimeter-scale sensor motes drifting in the air currents, flecks of computing power, settling on your skin, ingested, will be monitoring you inside and out, sensing and reporting — both for you and about you.
Almost inevitably the amount of data that this sort of technology will generate will vastly exceed anything that can be filtered, and distilled, into a remote database. The phrase "data exhaust" will no longer be a figure of speech; it'll be a literal statement. Your data will exist in a cloud, a halo of devices, tasked to provide you with sensor and computing support as you walk along, calculating constantly, consulting with each other, predicting, anticipating your needs. You'll be surrounded by a web of distributed sensors and computing.
Makes desktop computing look sort of dull, doesn't it?
Sunday, January 06, 2013
The fifth horseman never gets invited to the good parties
This article was originally posted on Google+.
Yesterday +MG Siegler argued on +TechCrunch that Samsung is the fifth horseman of technology, filling in for the ailing Microsoft, when the four horsemen: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google go riding.
I have to disagree with the underlying assumptions. We're at yet another tipping point in technology. A few years ago we moved from the beige box to the black rectangle, but the black rectangle won't be with us for as long as the beige box.
That black rectangle, the ubiquitous form factor of today's smart phone, is a transition device and it's going to disappear quickly as the speed of technological change is accelerating rapidly. Of the four horsemen only Google seems to be working on alternatives with +Project Glass. It's possible the others, including Samsung, have working hardware, but the successor to today's smart phone is going to be all about context and user interaction.
I've stood up in front of audiences before and argued that our smart phones have our lives on them, the next generation of mobile technology is going to stand between us and our lives and add context. It's hard to do that without a lot of information about the user.
It's also going to be a big leap for the horsemen to make. Despite getting into hardware recently Amazon is about selling content, Facebook has never done hardware and I don't think have this sort of paradigm shift in their corporate bones, Apple has, but without Steve Jobs I don't think they'll have the guts to kill the iPhone and innovate. Samsung, the fifth horsemen that never gets invited to the good parties, is a box shifter. They know hardware, but they don't know design, and they don't know anything about their end users. Their customers are other companies, like Amazon, not you and me, the eventual consumers.
So out of all of them Google seems to be the only one positioned to move forward, and it'll be a big leap for them even so. The developer release of +Project Glass later this year is going to be crucial. If I had the money to lose making a wager, I'd wager that it'll be some startup you or I haven't heard of yet that makes the leap to the next ubiquitous form factor.
Either way, it's going to be an interesting year...
Friday, December 28, 2012
The rise of the personal space program
This article was originally posted on Google+.
Today in the mail my souvenir satellite arrived, it's just 3.5 cm square. It's an engineering prototype, presumably one that failed verification, and it doesn't have it's solar cells attached, but otherwise its just like the ones that'll be flown into orbit.
 |
| An engineering sample of a flight ready Sprite nano-satellite. |
As well as the big solder pads at the top of the board for the solar cell there are a number of unpopulated pads on the board, including space for some through hole components, so there is certainly room for more sensors to be added on the board itself, and the MSP430 has the capacity to handle them.
However the satellite is going to be entirely reliant on the solar cell for power, there is no battery back up on the board, and the satellite will only be able to operate on the Sun-ward side of its orbit. That means power is the limiting factor. The CC4305137 has good brown-out reset capability, probably one of the reasons it was chosen, however you have to wonder how much more can be crammed onto the board and still reliably operate.
While it's might not seem much beyond a shrunken down Sputnik at that point, the Kicksat is ground breaking. In just fifty-five years we've advance from the point where it takes the might of one of the world's only super powers to put something like this into orbit, to the point where several hundred of them can be put into orbit by a graduate student with some enthusiastic backers.
Despite the pessimism I often express at the way the space programme is going, this is something that gives me a lot of hope that we aren't going the wrong way. That we aren't starting a march towards the abandonment of technology and a slow fall towards an age of declining possibilities and narrowing horizons.
Despite the pessimism I often express at the way the space programme is going, this is something that gives me a lot of hope that we aren't going the wrong way. That we aren't starting a march towards the abandonment of technology and a slow fall towards an age of declining possibilities and narrowing horizons.
Kicksat, the CubeSat designed to carry hundreds of these small Sprite nano-satellites aboard, is now on track for launch in the autumn of 2013 onboard the CRS-3/ELaNa-5 mission. This will be the third Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) flight to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a +SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. KickSat, along with 5 other CubeSats, will be hitching a ride as a secondary payload thanks to +NASA's ELaNa program.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Teardown of Wireless Sensor Tags
The Wireless Sensor Tag is a smart tag system by CAO Gadgets.
The system is based around an Ethernet Tag Manager, a small box that connects directly to your home router and manages the all the associated tags. Basically it acts as a bridge between the wireless tags themselves and the Cloud backend which manages the tags.
Each tag has motion and temperature sensors and can be configured to notify you via tweet, email, push notification, or via a URL callback (either to an Internet facing host or directly to an internal IP on your home network) when the tag is moved, or when the temperature goes out of a user defined range, or if the tag itself is moved out of range of the tag manager. Each tag also has a piezo electric buzzer and an LED which can be triggered using the same ruleset.
Ordering
I actually ordered my system back in August, only to be told that the sensor tags had not been CE certified, and they weren't quite prepared to do that just yet. I could either cancel my order, or wait until they had enough orders to that it would make "economic sense" for them to obtain CE marking at which point they'd ship me my order.
I have to admit I wasn't that impressed by that. If you're offering something for sale internationally then you should have the items in stock and you should be able to ship it out of the country. If they weren't prepared to ship into the EU, they shouldn't have processed my order, or billed my credit card.
They also seem to be having supply chain problems as their current stock is sold out and their store has a note on the front page saying that the lead time for a new order is currently one to one and half months between order placement to fulfilment.
However it looked like someone had put a lot of thought into this problem space, and despite the number of similar systems that are starting to appear, the system should be a neat solution. So I hung on, and I'm glad I did, as I I'm actually quite impressed with the build quality of the hardware and how it hangs together as a system...
Unboxing
My system arrived in a plain USPS box. Inside was the tag manager, an ethernet cable, a USB power adapter and cable, ten tags with velcro strips, and somewhat oddly, seven spare batteries.
Setting up the system is a fairly simple procedure. Plug the tag manager into your router and let it grab a DHCP address and announce itself to the mytaglist.com server. Theoretically the tags included in the tag manager in your shipment should come pre-associated, but at least for me this didn't seem to be the case, but that said associating them is no big deal. Pull the battery tab, and if you have a flashing LED that means the tag is unassociated, go to the web app and click on the button to add a new tag. The tag then shows up in the list on the web backend and you can go ahead and configure the triggers for that tag.
The Software
Another frustration for me is that the iOS app that allows you to monitor the tags, and receive push notifications to your phone when one of your triggers is tripped, is only available in the US App Store. The ability to get push notifications was one of the major reasons for me to buy this system, so I'm hoping this is going to be resolved quickly. Again, if you're going to ship outside the US you need to make sure your system is ready to go there.
Update (12 Nov): The iOS app is now available in the UK store, which resolves one of my main problems with the system. Although unfortunately the software UX problems extend to the iOS application. It's comprehensive, but not easy to use.
I also hope to have my hands on the iOS app so I can use the tags as I originally intended, and enable push messaging to my phone, as that'll vastly increase the utility of the system for me.
 |
| The Wireless Sensor Tag (Credit: CAO Gadgets) |
 |
| The Tag Manager (Credit: CAO Gadgets) |
Ordering
I actually ordered my system back in August, only to be told that the sensor tags had not been CE certified, and they weren't quite prepared to do that just yet. I could either cancel my order, or wait until they had enough orders to that it would make "economic sense" for them to obtain CE marking at which point they'd ship me my order.
I have to admit I wasn't that impressed by that. If you're offering something for sale internationally then you should have the items in stock and you should be able to ship it out of the country. If they weren't prepared to ship into the EU, they shouldn't have processed my order, or billed my credit card.
They also seem to be having supply chain problems as their current stock is sold out and their store has a note on the front page saying that the lead time for a new order is currently one to one and half months between order placement to fulfilment.
However it looked like someone had put a lot of thought into this problem space, and despite the number of similar systems that are starting to appear, the system should be a neat solution. So I hung on, and I'm glad I did, as I I'm actually quite impressed with the build quality of the hardware and how it hangs together as a system...
Unboxing
My system arrived in a plain USPS box. Inside was the tag manager, an ethernet cable, a USB power adapter and cable, ten tags with velcro strips, and somewhat oddly, seven spare batteries.
 |
| The Wireless Sensor Tag System |
The Software
Unfortunately despite initial promise, I'm not finding the system amazingly reliable as yet. Tags that are within a few feet of the tag manager are being periodically being reported as "Out of Range" by the web interface. However it's possible that the hardware is fine and I'm just not understanding the software.
Update (12 Nov): Just got an email from the manufacturer saying that they've "fixed some bugs on the server" and these spurious "Out of Range" notifications shouldn't happen any more. It's a bit soon to tell one way or the other, but certainly I'm not seeing them at this point, so this might well be fixed now.
Update (12 Nov): Just got an email from the manufacturer saying that they've "fixed some bugs on the server" and these spurious "Out of Range" notifications shouldn't happen any more. It's a bit soon to tell one way or the other, but certainly I'm not seeing them at this point, so this might well be fixed now.
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| The web application used to manage the tags on your system |
The web application is confusing, the interface basically looks like someone has exposed the backend database schema in software without much thought as to how the user is going to interact with it. At the moment the interesting hardware is being let down badly by the back end software, there should be preset options, e.g. "this tag is attached to a door", "this tag is attached to a moveable object", that would auto-configure the tag to common presets.
As it is there are numerous settings to go through for each and every tag, and most of these aren't well explained, and the buttons to set the options are not self explanatory or just flat out confusing.
I'm sure it makes sense to the programmer that built it, as they understand exactly how the system works and how the components interact, to the rest of us, at least initially, it's confusing.
I've been playing with the system for about an hour now and I still can't figure out how to get a tag to start bleeping when moved, and then keep on bleeping until manually reset. It's something you'd commonly want to do for a tag that's attached to something that might be stolen, and the system should be able to do it, but I can't figure it out. It's probably obvious once you know how, but...
They need to get a good UX person in, along with a designer, to overhaul the backend. That could make a big difference to the software and its usability for the average person. The system itself is really elegant, and easy to get up and working, the software to configure the tags is letting it down.
Update (12 Nov): The iOS app is now available in the UK store, which resolves one of my main problems with the system. Although unfortunately the software UX problems extend to the iOS application. It's comprehensive, but not easy to use.
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| The iOS Tag Manager application running on my iPhone 5 |
The Hardware
There is actually very little information about how the system hardware works, and I'm not in favour of "just magic", so I wanted to take a closer look at the board to try and figure out what's going on under the hood.
The rubberised enclosures are more-or-less indestructible and amazingly stretchy so they're fairly easy to take off, which is a good thing as you'll need to do that before pulling out the battery tab to activate the tag as they tend to break off if you try and do this with the enclosure still on...
The tag is powered by a single CR2032 button cell Lithium battery which they're claiming will last anywhere between two months and seven years depending on the sensitivity and polling interval you choose for the tag.
The rubberised enclosures are more-or-less indestructible and amazingly stretchy so they're fairly easy to take off, which is a good thing as you'll need to do that before pulling out the battery tab to activate the tag as they tend to break off if you try and do this with the enclosure still on...
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| Wireless Sensor Tag |
The onboard processor is a Microchip PIC16LF720 micro-controller, an interesting choice that draws about a fifth of the current than the Amtel ATmega micro-controllers used in the familiar Arduino boards. Wireless operations for the tags is provided by the Microchip MRF 49XA radio, which operates in the sub-GHz MHz ISM bands. While this can be changed, the tags ship and by default operate at 436 MHz. Unlike the US this is not an ISM band here in the UK, and although it is part of the amateur band, a license to operate is required and the primary user of the band is the MOD.
The choice of the sub-GHz ISM band is an interesting one, most competing products on the market use the 13MHz RFID bands, or more commonly the 2.4GZ band used by both Wi-Fi, Zigbee and Bluetooth LE devices. I'm guessing that they went with the sub-GHz bands to keep power usage to a minimum and extend the battery life of the tags themselves and provide a good range.
Motion sensing is provided by an Honeywell HMC5883L sensor, a three-axis magnetometer, again an interesting choice as most of the competitors are using linear accelerometers. I'm presuming they used a magnetometer to get good angular measurements, which is a perfect fit for one of the main uses cases for the tags; checking whether doors are open or closed.
Finally I'm guessing temperature measurements are provided by a fairly anonymous chip marked with "AXWB." While that's just a guess, the word "TEMP" is the silkscreen legend next to it, so it's probably a decent one. I haven't been able to track down the data sheet for this chip or the manufacturer, although the specifications page gives an operating range of -40°C to 85°C with an typical accuracy of ±1°C and a -2 to +4°C maximum deviation, with a sensor quantisation of around 1°C.
Developer SDK
The system isn't "open hardware" but that's just fine, not everything has to be open, people have to eat and keep a roof over their head and that takes money. However I was pleased to see that there is some developer documentation available for the web service API of the mytaglist.com backend server, along with the the source code for the management software I was complaining about earlier. The source code for the iOS and Android applications is also available if you email the company.
Update (12 Nov): I emailed the manufacturer and they want to know why I want the source code, and for me to sign an NDA before they release it to me, which wasn't exactly what I was expecting from the API documentation. I'm not sure what to think about that...
Update (12 Nov): I emailed the manufacturer and they want to know why I want the source code, and for me to sign an NDA before they release it to me, which wasn't exactly what I was expecting from the API documentation. I'm not sure what to think about that...
The system does crucially rely on a back end server provided by the manufacturer, but the FAQ tells us that if the tag manager can be flashed to point at a different server, and it's at least theoretically possible to run your own. The vendor then talks about licensing their own server side software, and promises that if their mytaglist.com server gets shut down that they'll release the code and allow you to update the tag manager to point at your own server. So I'm happy enough at that point.
Summary
Just as I thought when I initially placed my order, someone has thought long and hard about this problem space, and it really shows in the quality and flexibility of the hardware if not the software.
I'm fairly sure the software issues are going to get ironed out eventually, at least for me the existence of some sort of documentation would probably solve most of the problems I'm having. Although I do think that for the average user the interface needs a good UX expert and a redesign.
From poking around on the manufacturer's website it seems that there are probably more tag types coming, including current (for home energy monitoring?) and moisture (for detecting water leaks) sensor tags. I'll certainly go ahead and purchase those when they arrive.
Despite some of the criticism above, I am impressed with this system and would recommend it.
Update (23 Nov): My tags were suffering from spurious "out of range" and "reconnected" messages. So I have just sent all my tags back to CAO Gadgets for a firmware update.
Update (23 Nov): My tags were suffering from spurious "out of range" and "reconnected" messages. So I have just sent all my tags back to CAO Gadgets for a firmware update.
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