IoT SmartSphere

The IoT SmartSphere is uniquely simple - using Artik Cloud and nearly any readily available open source hardware, you feed real time data from the world around you to your brain using only light and color. I'll start with a description of the day in the life of a SmartSphere user.

As Billy wakes up, he walks to the coffee maker. Next to the coffee maker, the SmartSphere flashes green, followed by one blue pulse of light. "Awesome", he says "it's finally going to be cooler today!". As the coffee maker gurgles and hisses, he puts a few dirty dishes in the dishwasher while out of the corner of his eye the flashes and pulses of color coming from his SmartSphere describe what kind of day he will have. He notices a whiteish blue flash, followed by a red pulse. "Great", he says "looks like that construction is still causing horrible traffic between here and work". Billy notices the next purple flash, followed by a green pulse. He knows he better hurry if he wants to catch the Chicago Red Line train to work - because he knows the train will get him to work faster than driving. As Billy is drying his hands off, he sees an orange flash, followed by two red pulses and he knows he's about to have a busy day at work.

Billy doesn't know how the Chicago Transit Authority API feeds data through Artik Cloud to his SmartSphere to tell him when the bus or train is coming, he just knows that it's a lifesaver. He doesn't even know how the hardware inside his SmartSphere works, he just knows that when he opens the app on his smartphone, it's as easy as selecting "CTA Trains", then picking a color from the dropdown menu, and if he wants to be alerted about the trains after traffic but before his stocks, he drags the CTA item up to where it's nestled in his app between Google Traffic and the "Work Emails" item.

As he's heading out the door, he notices a green flash followed by a bright blue pulse. "Good job, SmartSphere!" he says to himself as he grabs the umbrella, knowing it will probably rain.

So that's the experience of using it. Most engineers are already thinking of how simple yet powerful something like the SmartSphere could be. It can run on a $3 ESP8266, Arduino, Raspberry Pi and almost any other platform. Most design engineers realize the brilliance of a device that uses only light, because a device that beeps or buzzes at you will usually end up getting turned off out of annoyance. Pretty much everyone who lives in the maker's realm realizes the limitless possibilities of translating the millions of APIs from stocks to weather to traffic and social media and even warnings such as Amber Alerts, tornado warnings, etc. Those who work with the differently abled will immediately realize how revolutionary this will be for the hearing impaired, but also for the anyone who wants a background, real-time data feed of what's going on around them.

The nature of this project means it is constantly growing and evolving. New APIs are available every day, refinements to the hardware and software are infinite, as are the platforms it can be ported to.