Comment on The Internet of Things: What is the IoT Toolkit? by real estate web

This is the second of a three-part series on the Internet of Things with Atmel’s Tom Vu and Internet of Things Council member Michael Koster. Read Part 1 here.

Tom Vu (TV):  What is in the roadmap for IoT Toolkit?

Michael Koster (MK):

The IoT Toolkit is an open source project to develop a set of tools for building multi-protocol Internet of Things gateways and service gateways that enable horizontal co-operation between multiple different protocols and cloud services. The project consists of the Smart Object API, gateway service, and related tools.

Michael Koster.

The foundation of the platform is purely bottom up, based on applying best practices and standards in modern web architecture to the problem of interoperability of IoT data models. I believe that the practice of rough consensus and running code results in better solutions than a top-down standard, once you know the basic architecture of the system you’re building.

To that end, I created a public github and started building the framework of the data model encapsulations and service layer, and mapped out some resourceful access methods via a REST interface. The idea was to make a small server that could run in a gateway or cloud instance so I could start playing with the code and build some demos.

The next step is to start building a community consensus around, and participation in, the data models and the platform. The IoT Toolkit is a platform to connect applications and a mixture of devices using various connected protocols.  It’s real power lies in its broader use, where it can span across all of our connected resources in industry, ranging from commerce, education, transportation, environment, and us. It’s a horizontal platform intended to drive Internet of Things more widely as an eventual de facto standard, built for the people who are interested in building out Internet of Things products and services based on broad interoperability.
We intend to create a Request For Comment (RFC), initiate a formal process for the wider Internet of Things platform and standards.  An community agreed upon process similar to the world wide web that we use today, based on rough consensus and running code, with RFCs serving as working documents and de facto standards that people can obtain reference code, run in their system to test against their needs, and improve and modify if necessary, feeding back into the RFC for community review and possible incorporation of the modifications.

The Internet of Things interoperability platform stands as an ideal candidate, leveraging the power of the open source community’s development process.  In turn, community involvement is taken to a new level, across many fields of discipline, and in many directions. Here is where we can get the most benefit of an agile community. Crowdsource the development process based on principles of open communication and free of the need for participants to protect interests toward proprietary intellectual property.

We need to build the platform together meshed around the community of Makers, DIY, Designers, Entrepreneurs, Futurist, Hackers, and Architects to enable prototyping in an open ecosystem.  Proliferation then occurs; a diverse background of developers, designers, architects, and entrepreneurs have many avenues of participation. They can create a new landscape of IoT systems and products.

This broad participation extends to industry, academia and the public sector.  We are aiming for broad participation from these folks, build a global platform based on common needs. As a member of the steering committee, when I participated in the IoT World Forum, I heard from the technical leaders of enterprise companies (Cisco and others), research departments, and IoT service providers. They believe an open horizontal platform would be needed to enable applications that span across their existing vertical markets and M2M platforms.

[via bsr.org]

Instead of a top-down approach, where people from corporations and institutions get together in a big meeting and put all their wish lists together to make a standard, we’re taking an overall bottom-up approach, bringing together a diverse community ranging from makers to open source developers, and entrepreneurs. Together with corporations, academia, and public sector, we all will participate in a very broad open source project to develop a platform that can be ubiquitous that everyone can use.

In many ways, this is modeled after the Internet and World Wide Web itself.  As we need to create a more formal standard, it will likely engage with the IETF and W3C. A good example is the semantic sensor network incubator project, which is an SSN ontology that describes everything about sensors and sensing. This enables broad interoperability between different sensor systems and platforms, based on common data models and descriptions. What we want to do is something similar to that, only on a more comprehensive scale and intended for the Internet of Things.

Tom Vu (TV):  Can you take us through a tour of the Data Object model importance and how it yields significance for simple and sophisticated connected devices?

Michael Koster (MK):

The Internet of Things today consists of many different sensor networks and protocols, connected to dedicated cloud services, providing access through smartphone and browser apps. It is rare for these separate “silos” to cooperate or interact with each other.

We abstract the complexity of sensor nets connecting devices and hardware by adding a layer of semantic discovery and linkage. This enables the sensors and actuators on disparate sensor nets to be easily combined to build integrated applications.

The way this works is using a few techniques. First, the different sensor nets are integrated through a common abstraction layer. This works a lot like device drivers in an operating system, adapting different devices and protocols to a common system interface. Only in this case, they are adapted to a common data model.

The common data model for sensor nets is based on the new IETF CoRE application protocol and sensor descriptions. This provides standard ways for common types of sensors to be discovered by their attributes, and standard ways for the data to be linked into applications, by providing descriptions of the JSON or BSON data structure the sensor provides as it’s output.

We use the W3C Linked Data standard to provide web representations of data models for sensor data and other IoT data streams. Linked data representations of IETF CoRE sensor descriptions are web-facing equivalents of CoRE sensor net resources. Linked data provides capabilities beyond what CoRE provides, so we can add functions like graph-based access control, database-like queries, and big data analysis.

Internet of Things Applications are essentially graph-structured applications. By using Linked data descriptions of JSON structures and the meaning of the data behind the representation, we can create applications that link together data from different disparate sources into single application graphs.

Then we enable the platform with an event-action programming model and distributed software components. The common semantic language enables the data sources and software components to easily be assembled and make data flow connections. The result is an event-driven architecture of self-describing granular scale software objects. The objects represent sensors, actuators, software components, and user interaction endpoints.

Tom Vu (TV):  Who and what companies should be involved?

Michael Koster (MK):

Whoever wants to participate in the building out of the Internet of Things. The people that use the infrastructure should build it out; the people who want to provide products and services based on interoperability, along with those who provide the backplane of thinking low power microcontrollers/microprocessors, connected sensors, and importantly the network infrastructure.

We want to enable all avenues of participation to allow corporations, academia, policy and standards makers, entrepreneurs and platform developers, makers, and DIY hackers all to be involved in building the platform as a community.

For corporations, we will provide an important role, to build a vendor-neutral platform for data sharing and exchange, an open horizontal platform that will allow the integration of what were traditionally vertical markets into new horizontal markets.

Anyone participating or expecting to participate in the emerging Internet of Things, Internet of Everything, Industrial Internet, Connected World, or similar IoT ecosystems initiatives, could benefit by participating in creating this platform. Companies that provide network infrastructure and want to build in value add can adopt this standard platform and provide it as infrastructure. Companies that want to provide new services and new connected devices that can use the IoT Toolkit to easily deploy and connect with existing resources could benefit.

All companies, organizations, and people that can benefit from an open Internet of Things are welcome to participate in the creation of a platform that everyone can use.

Tom Vu (TV):  How important is open source to Internet of Things evolution?

Michael Koster (MK):

I don’t see how the Internet of Things can evolve into what everyone expects it to without a large open source component. We need to go back to Conway’s law and look at it from both the system we’re trying to create and the organization that creates it. Interoperability and sharing are key in the system we want to create. It’s only natural that we create an open development organization where we all participate in both the decisions and the work.

Removing the attachment of intellectual property, changes the dynamics of the development team, keeps things engaged and moving forward solving problems. It’s important for software infrastructure projects like this to remove the barrier to cooperation that arises from the self-protection instinct around proprietary Intellectual Property, or even egoism associated with soft intellectual property, “my” code.

Instead, we turn the whole project into a merit-based system as opposed to being ego driven.  Rather than worry about guarding our property, we are motivated to solve the problems and contribute more to the deliverable. The limits to participation are removed and there is a more rapid exposure of intentions and goals. Engagement and innovation can rule in this environment of deep collaboration.

Tim Berners-Lee said that he was able to achieve the creation of the World Wide Web system because he didn’t have to ask permission or worry about violating someone’s copyright. We are creating the same environment for people who want to build our platform, and even for those who want to build their services and applications on top of the platform.

We are going to create the service enablement layer as open source as well so that any one of the companies can help proliferate the idea and everyone has influence and access to the development of the underlying IoT platform.  If it’s open source infrastructure and platform software, you can make a service on top of that software that can contain proprietary code. With our license, you can even customize and extend the platform for your own needs as a separate project.

Tom Vu (TV):  Describe your work with the EU IoT organization and how you are involved as a voice for the Internet of Things?

Michael Koster (MK):

I work with the IoT Architecture group within the overall EU Internet of Things project. The IoT-A group is closely related to the Future Internet project. They have an Architecture Reference Model describing different features one might build in an IoT platform, a sort of Architecture for Architectures. Since their process mirrors my own design process to a large extent, I found their reference model to be compatible with my own architecture modeling process.

They are conducting a Top-Down activity, stewarding the participation in the architecture and standardization model.  One of the ways I work with IoT-A is to use the Smart Object API as a validation case for the Architecture Reference Model. They are building the reference model top down, and we’re building the architecture bottom-up, based on a common expression of architecture relationships and descriptions.

I am also involved in advocating open source of IoT and building of local IoT demonstrator projects, educating around IoT, open data, etc. as well as user controlled resource access and privacy.  I am providing a voice for open source and open standards, into the standards movement going forward.

Here in the USA, there is not anything like what they have in Europe. Here the process will be to engage corporations and institutions and create a participatory structure that enables fair and open opportunity for influence and access to both the development process and the final products.

Tom Vu (TV):  How important is an open standard – building of an RFC in which all industries can agree upon ultimately serving to a wider scale factors of adoption and proliferation?

Michael Koster (MK):

To simply put it, the construction of a formal RFC is something that describes part of system.  A Request for Comments (RFC) is a memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.  It is a process or evolution in achieving a more widely adopted standard.  The founders of the Internet created this process, and http, etc are all built using original RFC process from many years ago.

Through the Internet Engineering Task Force, engineers and computer scientists may publish discourse in the form of an RFC, either for peer review or simply to convey new concepts, information, or (occasionally) engineering humor. The IETF adopts some of the proposals published as RFCs as Internet standards.

If the IoT Toolkit platform becomes adopted, it may eventually be as many as 10-12 different RFCs, but it’s important to get people to agree on common first set.  This is the initial phase into a more pervasively used universal standard.  In fact, it’s sort of like a strawman platform.  It’s intent is to describe and collaborate, but also invoke and seek out broader participation…  We are at the stage of putting proposals together over the next few weeks and setting up meetings to talk to many people around collaboration and participation in building an Internet of Things platform.

We believe that an open standard platform for horizontal interoperability is key to achieving the promise of the Internet of Things. Everyone needs to be able to present and process machine information in machine understandable formats on the IoT, just as we humans enjoy commonly understandable web data formats and standardized browsers on today’s WWW. It’s important that developers be able to focus on solving problems for their clients and not waste resources on communication and translation.

Monday Read Part 3: Why IoT Matters?

Tom Vu joined Atmel in 2012 as Digital Marketing Extraordinaire looking to help transform and optimize the conductivity of Atmel’s digital landscape.  Tom is an avid maker and leader in the many digital facets of marketing.  Tom’s traversal into the semi-conductor space stems from a diverse start-up background, where the hyper-ideation brewing from the software space are vital to his keen technology compass for direction and execution.  

Stett is a senior editor at MAKE.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Comment on 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Things About Tim Lillis by Violence And Our Public Policies

San Francisco-based illustrator, graphic designer, and tinkerer Tim Lillis has contributed a number of great illustrations, technical and otherwise, to the pages of MAKE over the years. His enthusiasm for making and data visualization comes through in his clean, clear designs. Tim also spearheaded the Tricks of the Trade mini how-to series that appeared in a number of Volumes in the Toolbox section. His latest venture, Music Video Race, creatively pairs musicians with filmmakers.

One project you’re particularly proud of:
1. I’m very proud of co-founding Music Video Race, which is essentially a platform for musicians and filmmakers to collaborate and do it themselves. We pair up 20 bands and 20 teams of filmmakers to make music videos in one weekend, and then the next weekend we do a big screening/awards party.

We just had our second annual event a few weeks ago and it went amazingly well. The amount of talent on display was just insane. I couldn’t believe how much magic we packed into the Rickshaw Stop for the screening. I was truly humbled by the vibe in that room, the community, the people, the talent, everything.

It would not have happened without my co-founder Jacquelyn Marker, who’d been on the producing team at Mythbusters for years, and is just generally awesome, smart, tireless, and great to work with.

Since we started the event, filmmakers and musicians who weren’t even paired up in the event have gotten together to make other videos, filmmakers who have been looking to break into videos have had lots of calls from bands to work together, and a series of filmmaker meetups and screenings have grown alongside the event, organized by participants who met through Music Video Race.

Sample shots of a few videos from Music Video Race.

Two past mistakes you’ve learned the most from:
1. When I was a kid, I had some ideas for some new Transformers. Partly inspired by the video game Spy Hunter, and by Transformers in general, I set out to plan for their creation. I was roughly familiar with the concept of blueprints, so I created some for the robots. Being 10 years old though, I didn’t really know what blueprints were.

So I drew the plans up on blue construction paper (blueprints, duh) and somehow found an address for Hasbro (pre-internet — whaaaaat!?). I packed them all up and sent them along. I still haven’t heard back, but I’m sure they’ll contact me soon. And just to clear up any possible misconceptions, the Mountain Dew robot from the first Michael Bay Transformers movie bears no resemblance to my designs, except that it is also COMPLETELY RADICAL, DUDE.

The thing about these drawings is that I don’t have them anymore. So the lesson I learned is that documentation is really important. I learned that in college, and then on every project since then. I’m still learning to document better and more efficiently. Once you start to put together and edit your documentation for sharing, archiving, or whatever, that’s when you really learn what you need, or what shot you should have gotten. And that’s what makes you better at doing it next time. So my advice is put together a slideshow, tutorial, video, or other format presentation every time you document something, regardless of whether or not you’ll share it with others, and that will help you be a better documenter of your own work.

2. This isn’t one mistake per se, but for a while I was afraid to “go for it.” That got old when I realized I wasn’t doing the things I wanted to be doing, whether personally or professionally. I now know not to wait until I’m fully prepared to do a thing. Phillip Torrone has a great post here on Makezine about this that breaks it down very well, highlighting especially well how fun it is to learn new skills. I owe all the illustration work that I’ve done for MAKE and CRAFT (and because of that, work for Google and others) to a blind email I sent to the magazine after seeing the first issue. I was earnest and interested, and had skills, but no one would have known about any of that had I not just reached out. Do not wait for things to happen to you — happen to them.

Tim’s illustration for the Roomba Hacks article from MAKE Volume 10.

Three books you think every maker should read:
1. Maybe this an easy answer, but I just read Chris Anderson’s Makers and I do think every maker should read it. Especially young makers, who might not remember a time before things like the internet and smartphones (I think we just call them “phones” now). It highlights that we are really in a unique time, and I feel it’s very inspiring for those who are on the cusp of becoming makers, showing how low the barrier to entry really is.

2. The book Tibor Kalman, Perverse Optimist, about graphic design legend Tibor Kalman and his firm M&Co, is fantastic and inspiring. It shows what one person, working with a talented network of people, can accomplish. There are some great “fake it until you make it” anecdotes, and there’s a memorable essay by David Byrne called “The Holy Grail of No Style” in which he urges the creative pursuit of taking on each task in a dynamic way, while attempting to remove oneself and letting the solution emerge.

3. Your old sketchbooks. There should be way more ideas in them than you can remember. Aside from just serving as external memory, they’re great for combatting creative block (maker’s block?), reminding you that yes, you do have ideas. And if there’s no one else around to collaborate with, reading them is like collaborating with your past self.

Four tools you can’t live without:
1. My computer running Illustrator — is that two? Rules are for squares.

2. Pen and paper — I did it again!

3. Other people. People aren’t tools, but they are resources, partners, collaborators.

4. Is a bike a tool? It’s how I get everywhere, and it’s a great place to think.

One of Tim’s Tricks of the Trade mini how-to series that ran in MAKE’s Toolbox section.

Five people/things that have inspired your work:
1. Tim Hawkinson. He’s an artist that I’ve seen exhibited a few times, first in a giant warehouse at Mass MoCa, where he made a seriously huge air bladder thing called the Uberorgan. It’s a reed instrument, anatomical model, junk pile, and player piano all in one, and it’s fantastic. I then saw his retrospective at the Whitney in N.Y., which was equally impressive. He has a way of turning everyday materials into something truly remarkable. The resourcefulness is amazing to me.

2. Airplane emergency diagrams. Infographics are quite popular these days, but the first place I remember really being struck by how illustration and design can convey information in an exciting way was looking at these. Maybe it’s just that the subject matter was exciting, but they stuck with me.

3. Improv. I do like comedic improv. But more generally, I like when people (or animals) attempt something that they are not officially prepared for or don’t have the “right” tools for. Looking at people’s kludges is a) sometimes hilarious and b) inspiring because it shows that there is always another way to do something. Seeing this stuff in action is even better though, as on a film set, when new challenges are always popping up, and new solutions are always required. Some of the less elegant ones are included here.

4. Music. I’m always listening to music while I work, and I don’t discriminate, though I do curate. I’ve found that I can reinforce my mood, excitement about a project, momentum, etc. by picking music that’s in line with it. If a phase of a project requires some analytical thought, I’ll pick something mellow — Tristeza or CocoRosie come to mind. If it’s more about production and getting it done, I’m more interested in creating a mood or environment that allows me to put my head down and draw/edit/whatnot. I might play something more upbeat and rocking. Cloud Nothings and The Mae Shi have been recent faves.

The connection between visual art and music is certainly well-established. I was recently inspired by an essay by composer John Cage (who himself was inspired by visual things, including Rauschenberg’s White paintings, for his silent piece 4’33”) to create a drawing series where I interpreted Cage’s phrases in a style of graphic notation that is theoretically playable.

5. My friends. I’m constantly amazed and inspired by the projects they put together.

Tim’s diagram that accompanied the $5 Heli-Rocket project from MAKE Volume 25.

I'm senior editor of MAKE magazine and have worked at MAKE since the first issue. I'm a word nerd who particularly loves to geek out on how emerging technology affects the lexicon as a whole. When not fawning over perfect word choices, I can be found on the nearest mountain, looking for the ideal alpine lake or hunting for snow to feed my inner snowboard addict.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad