i see bots
In the future, you won't think this is so weird
Interesting sites, blogs, and vendors (list)
An evolving list of interesting (to me!) sites, blots, and vendors in the ‘bot space. I’m sure I’ll mess around with the taxonomy as the list expands… it’s definitely a work in progress. See also the separate “Internet of Things: list of blogs, sites, etc” page I also maintain on this blog: https://iseebots.com/internet-of-things-list-of-blogs-sites-etc.
Hacker Spaces
- NYC Resister (nycresistor.com): “We Learn, Share, and Make things”
- HazardFactory (hazardfactory.org): ” HazardFactory is an Industrial Arts studio that produces work in which risk and the artistic re-direction of technology are key components.”
News and Analyst sites
- Make Magazine (makezine.com): “Technology on your time”
- Geeks are Sexy (geeksaresexy.net): “tech, science, news and social issues for geeks”
- Slashdot (slashdot.org): “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.”
- Electronic House (electronichouse.com): “Electronic House serves discriminating consumers who enjoy the elegance, simplicity and fun afforded by integrated home technology.”
- Gizmodo (gizmodo.com)
- IEEE Spectrum (spectrum.ieee.org): “Inside Technology”, with news channels for: aerospace, biomedical, computing, consumer electronics, energy, green tech, robotics, semiconductors, telecom, “at work”, and “geek life”. Something for everyone.
- New York Times “Robots” mini-site (nytimes.com): a list of robot-related articles. (added 2010-11-08 - thanks, Charles)
Blogs and Community Sites
- Instructables (instructables.com): “Make, How To, and DIY”. Instructions (and videos) for everything from how to tie your shoes (made that up, but wouldn’t be surprised) to making an Arduino-based weather station.
- Arduino (arduino.cc): Home base for the Arduino specification and community. Development tools, articles, etc.
- MyHomeServer.com (myhomeserver.com): “Dedicated to following the home server revolution.”
- Hack A Day (hackaday.com): “Hack a Day serves up fresh hacks each day, every day from around the web and a special How-To hack each week.”
- DIY Drones (diydrones.com): “This is a site for all things about amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).”
- Robots Life (robotslife.wordpress.com): “Blog about Robots life in our world. Robots, gadgets and latest news in robot world…”
- Smartest House (blog.abodit.com): ” Here you’ll find my thoughts on Home automation, Energy Conservation, Programming, Operations, Entrepreneurship, Business, Startups, Quality, Agile, Optimization, .NET, Natural Language Processing, Digital Signage and more.”
- mbed (mbed.org): “mbed is a tool for Rapid Prototyping with Microcontrollers. Microcontrollers are getting cheaper, more powerful and more flexible, but there remains a barrier to a host of new applications; someone has to build the first prototype! With mbed, we’ve focused on getting you there as quickly as possible.”
- Hackerbot Labs (hackerbotlabs.com): “Bootstrapping the Robot Revolution”
Companies and Organizations
- Orbotix (http://orbotix.com): “Orbotix is a Boulder based startup that works with consumer electronics companies and developers to bring phone controlled open devices to market.” ” When we first started to try to figure out what product space we wanted to be in most of our ideas related to home automation. While there are definitely some huge opportunities in the home automation market it just seemed boring to us. We ended up pivoting to the gaming market and we’re stoked to release more information about our products soon! We seriously get paid to play with cool toys?!?!? Hell Yeah!” (http://blog.orbotix.com/prototype/toys)
- Thing M (thingm.com): “Smart devices make things simple… ThingM is a device studio. We design and manufacture ubiquitous computing products that combine user experience design expertise with a deep knowledge of cutting-edge technologies. We create useful tools for designers and innovative products for everyone else. Our specialty is making everyday things from the near future.”
Hardware Vendors
- ThinkGeek (thinkgeek.com): “A simple idea to create and sell stuff that would appeal to the thousands of people out there who were on the front line and in the trenches as the Internet was forged.”
- SparkFun (sparkfun.com): Lots of Arduino boards, shields, and good technical community interaction. Other stuff, too.
- MakerShed (makershed.com): Retail arm of Make Magazine. Arduino stuff, kits, books, other fun stuff.
- AdaFruit (adafruit.com): “All-original DIY electronics kits – Adafruit Industries is a New York City based company that sells kits and parts for original, open source hardware electronics projects…”
- Bug Labs (buglabs.net): “Bug Labs envisions a future where CE stands for Community Electronics, the term “mashups” applies equally to hardware as it does to Web services, and entrepreneurs can appeal to numerous markets by inventing The Long Tail of devices.”
- DealExtreme (dealextreme.com): Excellent source for all kinds of hardware, especially cutting-edge high-power LEDs and power circuitry, and an active community as well to help you along.
- GlobalCache (globalcache.com): “Connect any device to any network”
- Lantronix (lantronix.com): One of several supplies of embedded wired/wirless ethernet servers.
- Proliphix (proliphix.com): Offer a line of web-enabled thermostats.
- ioBridge (iobridge.com): Offer control boards which can be managed/controlled via their Cloud services. “We have created a platform for the Internet of Things that is easy-to-use, low-cost, and secure.”
- TinyCAD (sourceforge.net/projects/tinycad): Free schematic drawing tool with extensive component library
1-Wire
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- Embedded Data Systems (embeddeddatasystems.com): “Ranging from Host Adapters to Sensors to IO Devices, Embedded Data Systems manufactures one of the most complete lines of iButton, Thermochron, and 1-Wire interface products in the world.”
- Midon Design (midondesign.com): Source for 1-wire kits
- Carl’s Electronics (electronicskits.com): Offers an inexpensive RS-232-based 4-port 1-Wire bus controller kit.
- Quozl (quozl.us.netrek.org): An interesting fellow and offers an interesting site, describing a number of open source projects and hacks. He supplied the code for abovementioned 4-port 1-Wire bus master.
- Arduino support for 1-Wire: background and library (http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/OneWire)
- Arunet (http://www.arunet.co.uk/tkboyd/e1didx.htm): More background on 1-Wire, including links to software for directly driving the 1-Wire bus from a PC .
- Hobby Boards (hobby-boards.com): offers a range of 1-Wire devices and kits, including: temperature, humidity, relays, displays.
Software Vendors - Home Automation
- HomeSeer (homeseer.com): Home automation software with active community and extensive 3rd-party plug-in offerings.
- Charmed Quark (charmedquark.com): Industrial/home automation software.
- Elve (codecoretechnologies.com): New/rebranded entry in the home automation software space.
- Girder (promixis.com): Industrial/home automation software. Known for IR integration.
- EventGhost (eventghost.org): Open source automation tool. Support for IR and other kinds of events.
Programming and Scripting Tools, Web Services
- Scripting Layer for Android (code.google.com/p/android-scripting): “Brings scripting languages to Android”
- Programmable Web (programmableweb.com): ” Keeping you up to date with APIs, mashups and the Web as platform.”
- Amazon Web Services aka AWS (aws.amazon.com): ” Since early 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS you can requisition compute power, storage, and other services–gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them.”
- Google App Engine (code.google.com/appengine): “Run your web apps on Google’s infrastructure… Google App Engine enables you to build and host web apps on the same systems that power Google applications. App Engine offers fast development and deployment; simple administration, with no need to worry about hardware, patches or backups; and effortless scalability. Discover why developers are choosing App Engine.”
- Twitter API (dev.twitter.com): “Create cool applications that integrate with Twitter”.
- Notifo (notifo.com): ” Mobile Notifications for Everything… Real-time notifications from tons of services pushed to your mobile phone. Free. Easy to setup. Passionate support. Impossibly quick.”
Sites I intend to spend some time on at some point (but maybe you’ll get to them first?) and other to-do items:
