

Twine: Listen to your world, talk to the Internet - potomak
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet

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pavlov
The copy highlights something that I don't understand about Twitter. It reads:

 _Maybe you want to get a tweet when your laundry's done [...]_

Who would actually do this? Why would I use Twitter to send a private
notification like that? It's pretty much the worst system imaginable. Twitter
works great for broadcasting to people, but it's nonsense for one-to-one
messages.

Is this really how I want to set up my washing machine:

1) Create a Twitter account for the machine. Let's call it
@pavlovs_2011_electrolux.

2) Subscribe my public Twitter account to @pavlovs_2011_electrolux.
(Alternatively, maybe the washing machine can be configured with my public
Twitter account so it can send messages to me.)

3) Keep an eye for my washing machine's notifications amongst a sea of
disorganized tweets about public topics.

~~~
mariorz
twitter has private messages and comes with an ecosystem of apps with
notification systems for pretty much all mobile devices.

~~~
sjs
So does email. Email will be around in 5-10 years and is not tied to a
company. Who knows what will happen to Twitter.

~~~
ErrantX
If my washing machine emailed me that would likely get lost in the noise. A
Twitter DM is, relatively speaking, more noticeable.

(Although; an actual direct notification service would be even better)

~~~
acgourley
Wait, really? You must use email and twitter in strange ways. I would also
suggest setting up a "priority" email path for certain cases, like this.

~~~
ErrantX
On my phone there is no simple way to prioritise it; that happens when I sit
in front of the computer and cut through my pile of email :)

So for something that I consistently need to notice at the time it arrives,
things like SMS, Twitter DM or other low-traffic notifications are better.

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postscapes1
If you guys like this project, Green Goose is another sensor based system
coming out: <http://greengoose.com/>

Overall sensors + connectivity will be getting very cheap soon and it is cool
to see a project like this see beyond this to include ifttt type functionality
integrating other existing systems and actions.

The move to become the platform for all of data being generated by devices
like this is getting heated as well (not sure if the Twine guys are thinking
this route or not with the Spool web app) With Pachube, Thingworx, and a whole
host of others attempting to become this centralized hub. It will be
interesting to see if we end up with specialized platforms for different
segments of our lives (i.e: one for health, one for your home, etc) or if a
'Facebook' for your things will emerge.

Self Plug: We are tracking this "Internet of Things" on
<http://postscapes.com> if you are interested in the topic at all.

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aquark
Greengoose looks interesting, but I've just read every page I could find on
their site (3 mins?) and still don't understand exactly what the 'sensors' are
and what they can 'sense'.

How does a sensors tell if I've fed the dog today?

~~~
postscapes1
They are a little sparse on the details in their marketing. Apparently the
tags have embedded custom 915MHz radios and MEMS accelerometers in them.

Articles with a little more about them:
[http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/23/green-goose-sensors-
monit...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/23/green-goose-sensors-monitor-your-
life-you-earn-experience-point/)

[http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663528/green-goose-tracks-
wheth...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663528/green-goose-tracks-whether-your-
kids-are-doing-their-chores)

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lwhi
I love the idea, but conceptual and economically, I find the idea of using one
sensor in a multisensor device on a long term basis problematic. I'd prefer a
modular system where I can provide a wifi base module with specific sensors as
required through plugin parts.

Lovely project in any case.

~~~
mseebach
It feels wrong, I agree, but the individual sensors are dirt cheap. From
poking around on farnell.com, it seems likely that the total bulk value of the
sensors is probably south of a few dollars per unit, which is much, much
cheaper than introducing the complexity and brittleness of modularity.

~~~
acgourley
yeah the sensors are basically free, it's the wifi radio / board thats the
single most expensive piece on that. Might be more than the rest combined.

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quizbiz
I think the idea is ingenius. Best of luck to them.

I can't wait until the price point falls down for products like these. At a
price point like $10-$20, I would be buying a six pack.

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Fargren
This could work great with ifttt <http://ifttt.com/>

~~~
jsilence
I really wish services like this would use and promote pubsubhubbub
(<https://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/>) instead of constantly polling the
sources.

As it was said in a discussion here in HN a couple of says ago ("Welcome to
the new web"), RSS and Atom feeds are becoming less and less supported. Which
is a sad and bad thing with regard to the internet of things that is to come
with Twine and GreenGoose and Arduino/xbee/sensors.

The appropriate protocols are there. Please use them.

~~~
bryanh
We're doing a similar startup (<https://zapier.com/>) and would _love_ to use
pubsubhubbub, but most API's don't stream, so we resort to polling... again.

It's unfortunate, and something we'd like to work towards changing.

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cloudwalking
I've seen a lot of people talking about Twine today (HN, Twitter, TC), but I
haven't yet heard any use cases that are _actually useful_. I am _certain_
there are plenty of great uses for this, but I haven't seen any yet.

I don't want a tweet when my laundry is done. It's pretty unlikely my basement
will flood. How could this add value to my life, say once a week?

~~~
yesbabyyes
I don't know you, but I imagine lots of people who could use a bunch of these
for a summer home or winter cottage. Temperature, did someone enter the door,
is it dry... Good things to be notified about.

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gtufano
Sun SPOTs (Sun Small Programmable Object Technology) was a similar project of
Sun Microsystems. Now open source: <http://java.net/projects/spots/pages/Home>

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antninja
So it hopes to become an alarm system for everything, not just robbery and
fire. The smartphones are replacing specialized devices like cameras and music
players, so maybe there's an opportunity for a generalized alarm system.
People want to listen their babies, prevent kids from going to the pool alone,
and this anti-flooding alarm seems quite unique too. Certainly the pods should
alert us when the batteries are empty, and it should be an install-and-forget
type of thing.

We'll see if it's the iPhone or the Newton of alarms systems.

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delosfuegos
Great idea. This is obviously not the final step for this product. It is a
great concept with a great deal of potential (basically any domotics
application) and it will probably have a large potential user base. Think of
all the DIYers, techies, semi-techies and others who want to create their own
way of domotics.

I love it.

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paulgailey
the sensorial web for the pleb

