Discovery II: Open Source IoT

tldr; This week we'll explore how open source movements have empowered creativity and exploration around the Internet of Things. You'll identify and report on one precedent or resource that showcases this potential, you haven’t seen before, and you find particularly interesting. Share the example as a new Post in the #discoveries channel on Slack.

Outcomes: View Now

Learning Objective

Last week, we examined the consumer smart and connected products that are currently in-market. This week we’ll turn our attention to how open-source hardware communities are empowering bespoke, DIY, and creative exploration of IoT scenarios.

This is a quick assignment designed to help you become more familiar with the communities, resources and assets that might prove useful in supporting your creative projects down the road. The goal here is to become familiar with the forums and platforms in which developer communities share their projects, approaches and inspiration. This will familiarize you both with the places where work is shared, as well as, techniques and implementations that you could later build on in your projects.

As part of this exercise, you’re going to search for one resource and report back on what you find. Together, we’ll prepare an inventory of resources to inspire and support our explorations down the road.

As part of this exercise you might:

discover an interesting project contributed by a community member to Hackster or the Particle Forums
find a well documented hack or prototype prepared by developer/hobbyist
find a guide, tutorial or code sample that allows you to do something advanced
find a documented technique or tool for prototyping connected experiences and that we could use in our projects later

i.e. find something that is immediately useful to your project and can help advance it. It could be technical or conceptua.

By the end of this exercise, students will:

have identified and rigorously review one resource that relate to hacking and making hobbyist hardware prototypes
helped co-create a set of exemplars to draw on as part of their own explorations;
have increased their ability to prototype and generate a hardware prototype for later creative assignments

Instructions

Basically find a starting point that you can borrow, extend or employ in your project. Create a Post in the #discoveries channel on slack that includes the label “#opensourceiot” for grading purposes e.g. An open source nest thermostat #opensourceiot.

It’s got to be something that you haven’t seen before, are relevant to the project and you find particularly interesting. So, the emphasis here is on discovery.

Constraint

No two students may submit the same example/resource. Claim early and make sure you review each others work before posting.

Submitting your work:

Create a Post in the #discoveries channel on slack (see this guide on submitting your work for discovery exercises.

Important: Title your post with the name of the project and include the following label at the end for grading purposes “#producthunt” e.g. My example name #producthunt

In the post, embed a video and/or images of the project, and write a short critical reflection on the project (about 200 words) in which you:

Briefly describe the project (a couple of sentences) and who made it.
Describe why you selected the reference/project (what is interesting, inspirational, innovative, etc. about it)
Describe why you believe it’s an useful example of an open-source approach
Critique the project - what are its shortcomings; how could it be made better, what did they get right and what didn’t they get right and why, etc.
Draw relationships to other work: What inspired or informed it? How does it compare to other work? Why is it influential and what has it influenced?

Note: Create a separate post for each example.

Note: Follow the instructions carefully as these projects require you to follow the posting instructions to receive full grades.

Places to start looking

By no means an exhaustive list! You should explore beyond these!