Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Cosm, Prowl and The Internet of Things

I've been really distracted lately with various projects, and trying to explore my cooking creativity now that I'm getting bored of looking for work all the time. However, this blog isn't about my life, its about my tech research, which I've done a little bit of in the past month. Granted, I haven't gotten the Dragino to post sensor data to Pachube yet, but I'll get there. Which brings me to my first topic.

Pachube is now Cosm!

You heard it. Apparently, nobody could pronounce PATCH-BAY, so now its COS-M.
Now its interface has changed a bit from what it used to be. It's no longer just a cloud to aggregate and share your sensor data, but rather an Internet of Things system to help you control hardware based on that data. This is quite similar to PushingBox and Sen.se, except that Cosm has a much larger community, and doesn't really have to start from the ground-up. In any event, it should be interesting to experiment with the new system.

That brings me to another topic: the Internet of Things. I've found a really nifty (and very useful) iPhone app called Prowl, which allows an external site to push notifications to your phone for practically anything. Using Prowler for Firefox, Prowl for Chrome and Growl for Safari, you can push text and links to your iPhone. PushingBox can take in a sensor feed from an Arduino, and set an action to push a notification to you via Prowl. It can also send you an email, post to twitter and more. There are so many possibilities to this, but the big one that comes to mind is a notification when someone enters your home when you are not home. Doorbells are cool, but if you've got a small home, it doesn't really matter. If you're in the backyard, how likely will you have your phone in your pocket? Right. So, security is the big use that comes to mind when using this notification system. Very convenient, isn't it.

There will more plenty of time to discuss other topics I'm working on, but I wanted to give the run down on Cosm and Prowl, just to let you know of the technologies out there to give life to your next project. 

Take Care.