The folks at Postscapes have announced the nominees for their second annual Internet of Things awards to recognize projects that are moving us closer to the Internet of Things. In particular, I'm interested in the DIY category. It is the place where the hobbyists, Makers and Do It Yourselfers get recognized for creating projects that you or I
Tworse Key
Descriptive Camera
Another is the Descriptive Camera which allows you to take a picture like a normal camera, but instead of getting an image out of the camera you get a text description of the scene. The way it works is rather ingenious. The camera takes a picture and submits it to Amazon's Mechanical Turk API. This system provides a mechanism for Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) where people from around the world can submit answers to problems posed to them... in this case describing a scene. Essentially, in 3-6 minutes of "developing" time the image will get transcribed by a human being somewhere on the internet and the result will be sent back to the system and printed out.
Tempescope
Tempescope is an ambient weather display. It tells you tomorrows weather forecast by actually reproducing the conditions in a clear container for you to see. It can reproduce rain, clouds, lightning and several other conditions. Through an interface, you can ask it to step you through the weather for a remote location as well. Watch the video and see it in action.
Personal Energy Orb
The Personal Energy Orb charges up as you ride your bike. Once charged, you connect it to your computer. As you use your computer, the orb runs out of energy (as shown by the color of the orb) and starts to slow down your mouse movements and generally make your computer more sluggish. If you want it to speed up again, you need to go out for a bike ride to charge it up again. It is there to remind you not to spend all your time parked at the keyboard.
There are several other great projects, including an aquaponics system, an umbrella stand that reminds you that it is raining outside, an energy monitoring system and several more. You can read about all of them at the Postscapes site.
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