Maker Community Meets the IoT, Open Source Boosts IoT Development

Kathy Giori will be our featured speaker at PARC Forum this Thurs, Nov 17th at 5pm in Palo Alto at PARC’s Pake Auditorium.  This is free for the public and you can register here.

Science is fun again.

I have had the pleasure of working with Arduino for almost a year. And, I’ve seen kids of all ages Making things. Instead of home economics and woodshop, kids are being taught and learning how to ‘Make’ with all kinds of electronics and open source software. From fashion to pet feeders to LED-laced decorations for lockers, kids are learning how fun and easy it is to create with electronics. This is truly the generation of the future.

Enter: IoT. It is safe to say that the IoT is a full-blown industry. The burgeoning growth has been quoted anywhere from $12 to $25 Billion by the year 2020. That’s Billion with a B. It makes sense, since the IoT will wire everything from our cars to our cities to our homes to the shoes on our feet. Things will be smarter, and help us be more efficient, automated, and informed. It’s already happening with our home efficiency and security systems. But, the promise of the IoT has not even scratched the surface.

What happens when billions of people, open source, and endless ideas for new Things meet? According to Hackster.io, 53% of electronics makers have direct experience creating IoT technology. This is one of the insights from a survey of 3139 people from 104 countries performed by Hackster—one of the biggest electronics maker sites on the Internet.

I think it’s even more.

So many exciting things happen when Make meets IoT. Examples range from an entire digital city built on open source hardware and software, an easy to use car app that lets you design and deploy your own ‘smart’ car, a path-to-production to support your own IoT designs, and more.

• SmartME Messina: Arduino and other open source developer solutions have been successfully deployed throughout the city of Messina, Italy. Developers are welcome to visit the project’s website to build solutions to help make citizen’s lives better, communities stronger, and government more efficient.
• Carloop: A 100% open source kit to let you connect your car to the cloud via 3G, WiFi or Bluetooth – it’s plug and play, no cables required.
• Gumstix: Using Geppetto – online design-to-order system – and a broad portfolio of small computers and boards, Gumstix helps IoT entrepreneurs go from prototype to production in as little as three weeks.
• Drop Water: Wanting to rid the world of plastic bottles, Drop Water Kiosks freshly bottles water in 10 seconds using its reseal-able, 100% compostable Drop Container, made out of cellulose fiber and PHA.
• myDevices: Cayenne on-line IoT dashboard allows businesses that manufacture, sell and support connected devices and services to connect products, manage data, and interact with customers, making it easy to participate in the IoT.

I would love to hear from you – if you have something to share, please send me a note. Arduino, a company at the heart of the open source community, loves to see things grow and change organically, through the love of Making. The love of Science is back.