10 Hot Internet of Things Startups

As Internet connectivity gets embedded into every aspect of our lives, investors, entrepreneurs and engineers are rushing to cash in. Here are "10 Hot Internet of Things (IoT) Startups", selected by CIO Magazine.

1. AdhereTech: Provide a connected pill bottle that ensures patients take their medications.
2. Chui: Combine facial recognition with advanced computer vision and machine learning techniques to turn faces into "universal keys." Chui refers to its solution as "the world's most intelligent doorbell."
3. Enlighted: Provide a smart lighting system.
4. Heapsylon: Turn clothes into computers.
5. Humavox: Create technologies to wirelessly power IoT by using radio frequencies, thus eliminating the need for wires.
6. Neura: Neura's goal is to become the "glue connecting the Internet of Things" by developing an open platform that bridges objects, locations, people and the Web.
7. PubNub: Provide a global real-time network that "solves the problems of large-scale IoT connectivity in the wild, enabling IoT providers to focus on their core businesses."
8. Revolv: Unifies control of your smart home via a smartphone or tablet app.
9. TempoDB: Provide a cloud-based sensor data analytics backend for IoT and M2M.
10. Theatro: Provide small Wi-Fi based wearable devices intended for indoor communications within the enterprise.

source: CIO - 10 Hot Internet of Things Startups

Arduino BASIC - a BASIC interpreter running on an Arduino

Now you can turn your Arduino into an 80's home computer!

A complete BASIC interpreter for the Arduino, using a PS/2 keyboard, and SPI OLED screen. The BASIC supports almost all the usual features, with float and string variables, multi-dimensional arrays, FOR-NEXT, GOSUB-RETURN, etc. Saving and Loading from EEPROM is supported, as well as auto-running a program on power-up. You can also read and write from the analog and digital pins.

There's about 1k of RAM available for your BASIC programs and variables, so its roughly equivalent to my first computer (a Sinclair ZX81). The other 1k of RAM (on an UNO) is used for the keyboard and screen buffers, with a small bit of room left for the CPU stack. That works out quite well, since there's a 1k EEPROM on the arduino so if your program fits in the basic environment, it will fit when saved to EEPROM!

https://github.com/robinhedwards/ArduinoBASIC

Make your own mini boom box

This video show how to DIY your own mini boom box.

The Maker's Manual, powered by Intel

About The Maker’s Manual

The Maker’s Manual explores how everyone from do-it-yourselfers and artists to inventors and entrepreneurs are leveraging new tools, platforms and services to take their ideas from concepts to reality.

In our Democratized Creation theme we explore how the hardware and tools required to start building DIY technology projects are becoming more widely available, cost-effective and user friendly, encouraging a greater number of people to become involved in the Maker Movement regardless of their knowledge and level of skill. With the Community Exchange theme we look at how a growing number of digital platforms and physical spaces are helping to cultivate the Maker Movement by bringing people together to share essential knowledge and resources, while simultaneously creating new marketplaces for buying and selling their products.

The report, underwritten by Intel, also looks at Growth Systems and explores how a new set of services are allowing the Maker community to take their projects from personal passions to full-fledged product lines by providing flexible and cost-effective access to financial capital, copyright management tools and manufacturing facilities. Within these themes, we take an in-depth look at ten key trends, bringing them to life with best-in-class examples, constructing unique user experience paths for readers to navigate them based on their level of involvement in the Maker Movement. As you click through the following pages, we hope you find inspiration and innovation that you can leverage and share.

The Maker's Manual

PSFK The Maker's Manual from PSFK

or visit http://www.slideshare.net/PSFK/makers-manual

Use jSSC (Java Simple Serial Connector) on Windows 8.1

jSSC (Java Simple Serial Connector) is a library for working with serial ports from Java. jSSC support Win32(Win98-Win8), Win64, Linux(x86, x86-64, ARM), Solaris(x86, x86-64), Mac OS X 10.5 and higher(x86, x86-64, PPC.

My old post show how to Install and test java-simple-serial-connector with Arduino, running on Ubuntu and Netbeans IDE.

This video show how to use jSSC on Windows 8.1/Nerbeans IDE. Basically it is the same, with different COM port assignment.


The Java code is listed here. It send a message to Arduino Esplora via USB Serial port, COM3, using jSSC library.

package java_testjssc;
 
import jssc.SerialPort;
import jssc.SerialPortException;
 
public class Java_testjSSC {
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SerialPort serialPort = new SerialPort("COM3");
        try {
            System.out.println("Port opened: " + serialPort.openPort());
            System.out.println("Params setted: " 
                + serialPort.setParams(9600, 8, 1, 0));
            System.out.println("\"Hello World!!!\" successfully writen to port: " 
                + serialPort.writeBytes("Hello World!!!".getBytes()));
            System.out.println("Port closed: " 
                + serialPort.closePort());
        }
        catch (SerialPortException ex){
            System.out.println(ex);
        }
    }
     
}

The Arduino side code, refer to the post "Serial communication between Arduino Esplora and PC".