internet of things Archives - Digital Urban

Linking a 1940’s Radio to the Internet of Things

Andy — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 21:58:43 +0000

In the corner of our apartment we have an old 1940’s radio, picked up a few years ago the original valves had already been removed, leaving it modified with a then transistor radio. As such it made the perfect project to remodify and bring up to date via a mix of an embedded blue tooth speaker (in our case a Bose SoundLink) and a Philips Hue for the internal lighting.

Radio linked to Philips Hue

Using our current favourite Internet of Things service – If This Then That – the front light in the radio can be linked to any number of data feeds (see out post on IFTTT, Netatmo & Philips Hue: Linking Data to Lighting), at the moment it changes colour according to the outside temperature. The movie below shows the link to the Philips Hue and the iPhone BBC Radio App (ignore the cat, it decided to take part in every example i filmed):
While in nature quite a basic modification, it does give an old radio case a new lease of life. The link to the Philips Hue for the internal lighting opens up a number of possibilities, along with the options to link the audio output to any number of rules via IFTTT.

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QRator wins the The Museums & Heritage Award for Innovation

Andy — Thu, 17 May 2012 08:35:00 +0000

QRator, the Museum focused ‘Internet of Things/Smart Places’ project developed jointly with us here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL Digital Humanities and UCL Museums, with funding from the UCL Public Engagement Unit , has won The Museums & Heritage Award for Innovation. Known as ‘The Oscars’ of the museums world we are honoured to of won, to have a museum brave enough to trust and openly engage with the public via innovative software and devices (iPads) while taking on ideas based around the Internet of Things made all the difference.

QRator is a collaborative project between the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), and UCL Museums and Collections, to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, museum curators, and academic researchers, to enhance museum interpretation, community engagement and establish new connections to museum exhibit content. It is supported by the UCL Public Engagement Unit under the Beacons for Public Engagement programme – funded by the UK funding councils, Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust.

The project is powered by Tales of Things technology developed at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, which has created a method for cataloguing physical objects online which could make museums and galleries a more interactive experience. QRATOR takes the technology a step further bringing the opportunity to move the discussion of objects direct to the museum label and onto a digital collaborative interpretation label, users’ mobile phones, and online allowing the creation of a sustainable, world-leading model for two-way public interaction in museum spaces.

Notable thanks go to Steven Gray of CASA, Claire Ross of Digital Humanities, Jack Ashby and Mark Carnall of the Grant Museum of Zoology. With the support of Prof. Claire Warwick and Dr Melissa Terras of Digital Humanities and Sally MacDonald, Director of UCL Museums it goes to show what can be achieved via cross disciplinary research and a drive to just go and do it. Thanks also goes to Susannah Chan from UCL Museums and Public Engagement for inventing the mounts for the iPads and Emma-Louise Nichols and Simon Jackson from the Grant Museum who moderate the content day in and day out.

Finally thanks to the UCL side of the TalesofThings team – Dr Ralph Barthel and Dr Martin De Jode for working behind the scenes and putting the technology in place. TalesofThings is funded by the Digital Economy Research Councils UK.

Other museums shortlisted in the category were

Glasgow Life: Riverside Museum

Pin Point Visualisation Ltd: Exhibita Pro

The Public Catalogue Foundsation: Your Painting

Victoria and Albert Museum: Five Truths

You can find our more from http://www.qrator.org see also the post from UCL Museums on the award and a write up over at DigitalNerdosaurous.

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New Paper: An Internet of Old Things as an Augmented Memory System

Andy — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:57:00 +0000

Spinger have published, in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, a paper by Ralph Barthel, Kerstin Leder Mackley, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Angelina Karpovich, Martin de Jode and Chris Speed based around our TOTeM/Internet of Things work. Entitled, An Internet of Old Things as an Augmented Memory System, the full abstract and download link are below:

Abstract

The interdisciplinary Tales of Things and electronic Memory (TOTeM) project investigates new contexts for augmenting things with stories in the emerging culture of the Internet of Things (IoT). Tales of Things is a tagging system which, based on two-dimensional barcodes (also called Quick Response or QR codes) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, enables the capturing and sharing of object stories and the physical linking to objects via read and writable tags.

Within the context of our study, it has functioned as a technology probe which we employed with the aim to stimulate discussion and identify desire lines that point to novel design opportunities for the engagement with personal and social memories linked to everyday objects. In this paper, we discuss results from fieldwork with different community groups in the course of which seemingly any object could form the basis of a meaningful story and act as entry point into rich inherent ‘networks of meaning’. Such networks of meaning are often solely accessible for the owner of an object and are at risk of getting lost as time goes by.

We discuss the different discourses that are inherent in these object stories and provide avenues for making these memories and meaning networks accessible and shareable. This paper critically reflects on Tales of Things as an example of an augmented memory system and discusses possible wider implications for the design of related systems.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v8405w81p2j35451/

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Introducing QRator – iPad and Web Based Living Labels for Museums

Andy — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:18:00 +0000

The interactive system is designed to be non intrusive while enabling members of the pubic to simply type in their thoughts and interpretation of museum objects and click ‘send’. Their interpretation become part of the objects history and ultimately the display itself via the interactive label system to allow the display of comments and information directly next to the artefacts.

The project is powered by Tales of Things technology which has developed a method for cataloguing physical objects online and capture memories and stories via the Internet of Things. QRator takes the technology a step further bringing the opportunity to move the discussion of objects direct to the museum label and onto a digital collaborative interpretation label, users’ mobile phones, and online allowing the creation of a sustainable, world-leading model for two-way public interaction in museum spaces.

At its heart QRator is an iPad/iPhone and web based system that allows everyone to be a curator and share their views on an exhibition. Visitors can examine an object before leaving their thoughts via an iPad to create a digital, ‘living’ label that subsequent visitors can read and respond to.

By downloading a free application to an iPhone or android phone, visitors are able to see rolling updates to the digital label after they leave the museum, or via twitter. Participants are also able to take part in the conversation online via the QRator site with comments appearing live within the museum.

Content currently covers two museums at UCL; The Grant Museum of Zoology and The Petrie Museum of Egyptology. he Grant Museum of Zoology is one of the oldest natural history collections in England, dating back to 1827. The collection comprises over 68,000 skeletal, taxidermy and wet specimens, covering the whole of the animal kingdom. Many of the species are now endangered or extinct including the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, the quagga and the dodo. The Grant Museum is the only remaining university zoology museum in London.

The Museum will offer a continual programme of ‘Current Questions’ for visitors to engage in. UCL is taking the opportunity to rethink what a university museum can be; a place not simply for a passive experience but for conversation – a cultural laboratory for the meeting of minds. Positioning the Museum as a place of experimentation, dialogue and debate.

You can join the conversation by visiting either the Petrie or Grant Museum or by simply heading over to http://www.qrator.org all comments appear live on the iPad screens in the Museum and on Tales of Things.

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Wired Big Ideas for 2011: Chatitecture – Talking Buildings

Andy — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:48:00 +0000

We are pleased to say that in at number 24 of Wired Magazines ‘Big Ideas for 2011’ is Chatitecture, part of the Tales of Things project. Over the past 8 months a group of us have been developing technology to allow buildings to ‘talk’, to communicate their history, their architecture and the stories of people passing through.

Its simple to do, just sign up with Tales of Things, upload a image of your building of choice (under 2mb) and add a story. Your building will then go live and your be able to add it to the architecture group. If you want you can also print out a QRCode that you can stick to the building allowing anyone to scan the code and add to the story/history of the building via the free iPhone/Android apps.

Your building will also be able to ‘Tweet’ everytime it is scanned or a new comment/story added, it will also become part of the ‘World of Things’ map – a place to view all the objects added so far to the site.

The project team are working on ways to make the objects more location aware and aware of near by objects, it could be interesting over the next few months to see how this develops.

You can start tagging anything and everything via talesofthings.com

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Wired Big Ideas for 2011: Chatitecture – Talking Buildings

Andy — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:48:00 +0000

The post Wired Big Ideas for 2011: Chatitecture – Talking Buildings appeared first on Digital Urban.

Things Talking to Things: The Internet of Things

Andy — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:21:00 +0000

The Tales of Things project is located within the emerging technical and cultural phenomenon known as ‘The Internet of Things’. The term is attributed to the Auto-ID research group at MIT in 1999, and was explored in depth by the International Telecommunication Union who published a report bearing the same name at the United Nations net summit in 2005. The term, ‘Internet of things’, refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and every device is connected in some way to the Internet.

TalesofThings.com allows any object to be given its own webpage and ability to tweet, i.e. it allows any ‘thing’ to become connected. As such we have built an ‘Arduino Thing’ that welcomes all new objects joining the Internet of Things with a ‘Hi’ in Morse Code – the movie below reveals all:

Every time anyone adds an object to talesofthings our unit starts its morse code welcome, in a small way its a step towards things talking to things. Sure its not Skynet, an artificially intelligent system which became self-aware and revolted against its creators but we are working on our own protocols behind the scenes to take this further so all the objects are aware of the other objects.

Thanks go to Martin de Jode of the TOTeM team – via the TOTeM Blog.

Head over to TalesofThings.com to add your own object.

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Remote Space: The Weather Ceiling

Andy — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:51:00 +0000

Bringing the characteristics of a remote physical space to a new interior location is something we will talking about over the coming months with regards the ‘Internet of Things’. As such, we really like the ‘Weather Ceiling’ undulating landscape brings a bit of the outdoors inside:

The network of sensors translate the exterior conditions to a dynamic interior experience. The behavior is semi-autonomous, like cellular automata, creating unpredictable patterns that change over time.

The Cloud is an interactive installation by Dominik Zausinger, Sofia Georgakopoulou, Edyta Augustynowicz and Jeannette Kuo – part of the MAS course at www.mas.caad.arch.ethz.ch.

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Tag Architecture – A Call for Images and Stories of Buildings

Andy — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:57:00 +0000

You may of noticed that we recently launched our project ‘TalesofThings‘, a site that tags any media to any object using QRcodes or rfid tags. We have just pushed an update that introduces ‘groups’ so all objects of interest can be viewed in one place. As all things urban are close to our heart, one of the first groups is ‘Architecture’ and we would like you to add your own building with a story.

Its simple to do, just sign up, upload a image of your building of choice (under 2mb) and add a story. Your building will then go live and your be able to add it to the architecture group. If you want you can also print out a QRCode that you can stick to the building allowing anyone to scan the code and add to the story/history of the building via the free iPhone/Android apps.

We are working on ways to make the objects more location aware and aware of near by objects, it could be interesting over the next few months to see how this develops. We look forward to seeing some of your buildings on the site and will sort out some sort of prize for the best stories…

You can start tagging anything and everything via talesofthings.com

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Tales of the City: QRCodes, Architecture and Wired

Andy — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:34:00 +0000

The London Festival of Architecture is underway and via the project Tales of the City we have been capturing people’s memories of Shoreditch and playing them back them back via small readable and writeable QR codes and RFID tags. Tales of the City extends the TalesofThings project into the urban realm with the architecture of the city able to replay memories and its history and its just made Wired…

As Wired states: The project has been tagging architecture for a few months. In one location in Chalk Farm, a wall that used to feature a piece from Banksy that has a tag that lets scanners see what the work looked like. The BBC’s Broadcasting House has also been covered in tags. In one Oxfam shop in Manchester, the project used RFID tags and QR codes to allow objects to be tagged with the memories of those who donated them.

Tales of the City starts off with a pre-placed tag at the historic heart of Shoreditch, St Leonard’s Church. From there you will be able to spot tags (QR codes) on Shoreditch High Street which you can add your own stories to, contributing to the growing network of tagged architecture.

This will enable people to form a personalised tour of London’s contemporary history through architecture. If you have an iPhone or an Android handset be sure to download our free app – talesofthings to enable you to leave comments on the QR codes, or create your own codes to put on your favourite buildings.

In order to take part simply download our free “talesofthings” app for your iPhone or Android and when you spot a code on a building scan the code to add your own memory such as what the building used to be, why it is important to you or perhaps it is simply a building you hate.

If you don’t have a smartphone you can still take part by visiting our website www.youtotem/talesofthecity where you can clip on the map and add comments to buildings which have been tagged.

Tales of the City is part of ‘TOTeM’ – a collaborative research project run by Edinburgh College of Art, Brunel University, University College London, University of Dundee and University of Salford. This project aims to find a new way of preserving social history – through people’s memories. People will be able to preserve their family/community history by “tagging” (labelling) their personal objects via our website www.talesofthings.com. Users will be able to attach memories to their objects in the form of video, text or audio, this will enable future generations to have a greater understanding of the object’s past. TOTeM will carry out its research initially through case studies with different community groups who are not included in a written history of our time but their experiences and memories are just as valuable.

Its simple to tag architecture and objects with memories – you simply upload a photo, give it a story and print a QRCode:

Trailer for Tales of Things from digitalurban on Vimeo.

The project aims to offer a new way for people to place more value on their own objects in an increasingly disposable economy. As more importance is placed on the objects that are already parts of people’s lives it is hoped that family or friends may find new uses for old objects and encourage people to think twice before throwing something away.

If your in Shoreditch be sure to look out for the QRCodes, of course its not limited to Shoreditch, you can tag anything and everything with stories via http://www.talesofthings.com

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