IOT Archives - Digital Urban https://www.digitalurban.org/blog/category/iot/ Data, Cities, IoT, Writing, Music and Making Things Mon, 13 Jun 2022 12:23:54 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://www.digitalurban.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Dulogosm-1.png IOT Archives - Digital Urban https://www.digitalurban.org/blog/category/iot/ 32 32 Mobile Communications Technologies in Tree Time: The Listening Wood  https://www.digitalurban.org/blog/2022/05/06/mobile-communications-technologies-in-tree-time-the-listening-wood-%ef%bf%bc/ Fri, 06 May 2022 12:22:00 +0000 https://www.digitalurban.org/?p=7071 This article presents a practice-led investigation by a cross-disciplinary team of artists and computer scientists into the potential for mobile and digital communications technologies to engage visitors to London’s Hampstead...

The post Mobile Communications Technologies in Tree Time: The Listening Wood  appeared first on Digital Urban.

]]> This article presents a practice-led investigation by a cross-disciplinary team of artists and computer scientists into the potential for mobile and digital communications technologies to engage visitors to London’s Hampstead Heath with the histories of its veteran urban trees. Focusing on the application of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies within the arboreal environment for the digital poetic walk, The Listening Wood, it considers the reciprocal impact of “tree time” on the development of “slow tech.”

You can read the paper via – Lovett, Leah & Hay, Duncan & Hudson-Smith, Andy & Jode, Martin. (2020). Mobile Communications Technologies in Tree Time: The Listening Wood. Leonardo. 54. 1-2. 10.1162/leon_a_02006.

The post Mobile Communications Technologies in Tree Time: The Listening Wood  appeared first on Digital Urban.

]]> Urban IoT: Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities for Mass Data Collection, Analysis, and Visualization https://www.digitalurban.org/blog/2022/04/13/urban-iot-advances-challenges-and-opportunities-for-mass-data-collection-analysis-and-visualization/ Wed, 13 Apr 2022 09:43:00 +0000 https://www.digitalurban.org/?p=7059 Urban Internet of Things (IoT) is in an early speculative phase. Often linked to the smart city movement, it provides a way of sensing and collecting data—environmental, societal, and transitional—both...

The post Urban IoT: Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities for Mass Data Collection, Analysis, and Visualization appeared first on Digital Urban.

]]> Urban Internet of Things (IoT) is in an early speculative phase. Often linked to the smart city movement, it provides a way of sensing and collecting data—environmental, societal, and transitional—both automatically, remotely, and with increasing levels of spatial and temporal detail. From city-wide data collection down to the scale of individual buildings and rooms, this chapter details the technology behind the rise of IoT in urban areas and explores the challenges (societal and technical) behind city-wide deployments. Drawing from a series of deployments at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, it details the challenges and opportunities for mass data collection. Widening out the view, it looks at what is becoming known as “the humble lamp post” in Urban IoT fields to detail the potential of Urban IoT with the objects that already form part of the urban fabric. Finally, it examines the potential of Urban IoT for input into urban modeling and how we are on the edge of a shift in the collection, analysis, and communication of urban data.

You can download the paper at – Hudson-Smith, A., Wilson, D., Gray, S., Dawkins, O. (2021). Urban IoT: Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities for Mass Data Collection, Analysis, and Visualization. In: Shi, W., Goodchild, M.F., Batty, M., Kwan, MP., Zhang, A. (eds) Urban Informatics. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8983-6_38

The post Urban IoT: Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities for Mass Data Collection, Analysis, and Visualization appeared first on Digital Urban.

]]> Linking a 1940’s Radio to the Internet of Things https://www.digitalurban.org/blog/2014/03/02/linking-a-1940s-radio-to-the-internet-of-things/ Sun, 02 Mar 2014 21:58:43 +0000 http://www.digitalurban.org/?p=3625 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...

The post Linking a 1940’s Radio to the Internet of Things appeared first on Digital Urban.

]]> 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

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.

The post Linking a 1940’s Radio to the Internet of Things appeared first on Digital Urban.

]]> QRCodes, Sociable Objects & RFID – The Oxfam Curiosity Shop in Selfridges https://www.digitalurban.org/blog/2011/04/05/qrcodes-sociable-objects-rfid-oxfam/ Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:59:00 +0000 http://digitalurban.net/?p=877 Tales of Things is all about memories, the stories we attach to objects as we move through life. As such we are very pleased to announce our latest partnership with...

The post QRCodes, Sociable Objects & RFID – The Oxfam Curiosity Shop in Selfridges appeared first on Digital Urban.

]]> Tales of Things is all about memories, the stories we attach to objects as we move through life. As such we are very pleased to announce our latest partnership with Oxfam for their Curiosity Shop in Selfridges, London. The Curiosity Shop is open until 10th of April on the lower ground floor with a host of fantastic fashion on sale. All of the items have been donated to raise money for Oxfam to help fund projects around the world that support and empower vulnerable women.

Annie Lennox introduces The Curiosity Shop below:

The clothing donated has some very respectable previous owners such as Annie Lennox, Colin Firth, Helen Mirren, Kate Moss, list goes on…Each item in the shop has been tagged with a QR code which links to stories about what the money raised will buy.
Visitors to the Curiosity Shop can view these stories on their own Smartphones or use one of our bespoke RFID readers to scan the item. The readers glow when scanned near a RFID tag and play the associated narrative on the screen. Designed by Jon Rogers from the University of Dundee with tech inside from here in CASA it links direct into the Tales of Things system. Once the item has been scanned the object story will appear on a plasma screen in the store, making the object come alive.
There are some hidden gems in the collection too which have a unique story attached to them from the celebrity who donated the item such as the dress below which Annie Lennox wore at Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday party in London.

Over the last few weeks TalesofThings has been working with Oxfam to collect the celebrity stories and tag items in the store with both RFID and QRCodes. In essence this allows items of clothing to tell their story via either our bluetooth enabled curisoity reader or via our free Android/iPhone apps. Once the items have been sold, the owners are able to add their stories – via a mashup of sociable objects meets the antiques roadshow.


If you come into the shop you can try out the curiosity reader, scan Annies dress or any of the other items with codes and see the stories behind the objects. We are in Selfridges until April 10th, come down to grab a celebrity item tagged with their story, help raise money for Oxfam and take a look at the emerging technology behind the Internet of Things.

A massive thanks goes to Oxfam, Selfridges, Annie Lennox and the TalesofThings team who have worked hard behind the scenes, the installation is simply wonderful…
You can see a list of donated items direct via the tales of things site.

The post QRCodes, Sociable Objects & RFID – The Oxfam Curiosity Shop in Selfridges appeared first on Digital Urban.

]]>