Author: Hans

ThingSpeak at the Boston TechJam

ThingSpeak

I recently got the change to give a ThingSpeak IoT demo at Boston TechJam. MathWorks is one of the sponsors so we got to participate with other tech companies and over 8,000 students and entrepreneurs from Boston. My demo used MATLAB to detect multiple faces from a live stream of video. The MATLAB analysis code sends the count to a ThingSpeak channel. I used the new ThingSpeak gauge widget to show how many people stopped and participated in the demo.

To learn how to build a ThingSpeak People Counter with MATLAB, check out File Exchange. To learn about the new ThingSpeak gauge widgets, check out the MathWorks Documentation for ThingSpeak or the MathWorks IoT Blog. Thanks for stopping by!

Getting Ready for the Bay Area Maker Faire!

ThingSpeak

I have a lot of favorite times of the year. I get excited about the holidays, weekends, evenings, and days. I am usually filling each day with something new and/or pushing a project further along. One of my favorite events is the Bay Area Maker Faire. Imagine over 120,000 makers, hackers, builders, engineers, and students putting on the world’s biggest show-and-tell? You will see things that spark new ideas and you will see giant robotic giraffes.

You never know who you are going to run into. I was so happy to meet one of the first users of ThingSpeak! This is Andy Leer of Leer Media. Andy was introduced to my IoT projects back in 2008 at Hack Pittsburgh! He was instrumental in me being able to kickstart my startup and help support my growing community. Andy provided meeting space for my IoT Meetup in Pittsburgh.

A couple of the Mythbusters also showed up at the Bay Area Maker Faire. I got to talk about MathWorks software with both Adam Savage and Grant Imahara. Grant remembers using MATLAB quite a bit in his education and later his engineering projects.

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I have been getting ready for this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire. Stop by the MathWorks booth to see our latest hardware projects and demos. We have giveaways and info on the latest products. See you soon at the Maker Faire!

I Have Gone Too Far With My Label Maker

Workshop

I love bins. I love sorted electronics parts and tools. I love matching bins.

After I sorted everything in my workshop, I wondered what I should do with my label maker. I printed a “label maker” label with my label maker and put it in a bin.

Gaming with Edo Interview About Building Game Design Communities

Games

I really love building communities. And, I really, really love tabletop games. After moving to a new area for my technology career, I wondered how I could meet other game designers, publishers, and playtesters. After reading Mike Selinker’s book, Kobold Guide to Board Game Design, I decided to create a game design workshop using the book as its basis. A lot has changed since the book was first published – Kickstarter, legacy-style games, and Kickstarter – to name a few. My workshop fills in the gaps with hands-on exercises and discussion using the very latest research and references. The workshop is live and in-person which I really like for board games since they exist in the physical dimension.

Through some mutual contacts, I got introduced to Eduardo Baraf’s work. Edo has built a community on YouTube and is always putting out fresh content. He is also publishing some really high-quality games and supporting a large community of backers on Kickstarter with Pencil First Games. We started talking about his efforts and my projects, and Edo decided to have me on his YouTube channel, Gaming with Edo. It was a blast and an honor to be a part of his show. My episode is called, Q&A: Hans Scharler – Game Design Workshops.

Thanks for having me on, Edo. I look forward to your new game and video releases.

Use the New MQTT Service from ThingSpeak for Real-time CheerLights Updates

CheerLights, ThingSpeak

It’s that time again. That time when people all across the world synchronize their lights together with CheerLights! People have built amazing CheerLights displays. I have seen everything from color-changing shoes to snowmen… and trees.

 

CheerLights Introduction

Here’s a quick introduction to the CheerLights project for those who are new to the project. Imagine 1000’s of multicolored lights all around the world synchronized to one color. When one of the lights turns red, they all turn red. To control CheerLights, send a tweet to @cheerlights or include “cheerlights” somewhere in your message with the name of a color. This will cause a chain reaction and all of the CheerLights displays and apps will change their color to red.

 

ThingSpeak MQTT Service

CheersLights is powered by ThingSpeak IoT. And, this year, I am happy to introduce real-time CheerLights updates using ThingSpeak’s new MQTT service. Using the MQTT service by ThingSpeak, your CheerLights change instantly. ThingSpeak has posted an example that gets a Particle Photon connected to CheerLights using MQTT. The Subscribe to Channel Updates Using Particle Photon Client example shows you how to use a Particle Photon Wi-Fi board to subscribe to channel updates from the CheerLights channel. The program displays the color read from the channel on the built-in LED on the Photon board. You can subscribe to the channel feed or directly to the color field on the CheerLights channel.

Once you learn how to use the MQTT service from ThingSpeak, you can easily adapt it to your IoT project. This is a great way to have real-time control of a device or real-time monitoring of sensors.

If you want to follow the project and see what others are building, visit CheerLights.com or follow on Twitter.

Use AWS DeepLens to Determine If Hotdog or Not Hotdog

ThingSpeak

While at re:Invent, I got to take a deep learning workshop to learn about the new capabilities of AWS such as SageMaker and Greengrass. We used a new device created by AWS and Intel called DeepLens to build an image classification model, deploy it to the device, and use the model to predict image labels. In reference to the TV show Silicon Valley, we trained a neural network to determine if the image from the video camera contained a “Hotdog or Not hotdog.” My machine learning model performed better when the hot dog had mustard on it.

Fun aside, the DeepLens device is a really powerful way to learn image and video-based machine learning and artificial intelligence. Once you get ahold of the device, you can follow the workshop by downloading the materials and code from GitHub.

Michael Stevens and Adam Savage at Brain Candy Live!

Talks

My friend and colleague, Paul Kassebaum, and I had the opportunity to meet Michael Stevens and Adam Savage after their touring show called, Brain Candy Live. Paul and I are extremely passionate about science education and community building. Michael and Adam have been very successful using TV and YouTube to build a culture of science and making. The show is filled with puns from Molecule Stevens, exploring fluid dynamics, and building up to a ping-pong ball finale. I particularly enjoyed Adam’s monologue about his father making a race car for a Christmas present while Adam was making a juggling club. This taught Adam as a young kid that you can make things that you don’t have or make things that don’t exist. Brain Candy Live was truly a remarkable show. Let’s demonstrate to the world that the US has a culture of science and making, and let’s get more scientists on the US currency (at least we have Ben Franklin).

Making and Designing Board Games Lecture

Games

I have been leading a 10-week workshop on tabletop game design near Boston, MA. Over 20 students have participated and several of them have created board game design prototypes throughout the course. This is really exciting to see! I gave a lecture last week to go over the entire course in one 30-minute session. I share a few of their game designs. Fortunately, the lecture was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Over the coming weeks, I will be sharing the content for the board game design course and release more supporting content.

Panobook: Do I Need Another Notebook? Yes.

Games, Writing

I spend a lot of my time at my desk, in front of my computer, designing. I love using a notebook for generating ideas, doing research, game design, and software design. For me, the notebook helps me extend the ideas further without bounds. I have grown accustomed to bouncing between the digital and analog worlds.

When I saw the Kickstarter introduction video to a new product called Panobook, I thought to myself, “Here are some people who just get it.” (It is the love of notebooks and their utility.) My love started by watching my father collect different types of journals and Moleskin notebooks. He had many unopened ones, but the ones he did use were spiral bound and could fit in his pocket. He was often taking notes on the go writing his lectures and sermons. I typically design in front of my computer. I have been known to turn my notebook around and design particular to the lines.

 

I don’t need another notebook, but I have found that Panobook serves a purpose. I like that Panobook lays flat on my desk, it fits in front of my keyboard, it is spiral bound, it has a dot grid, and it is designed to be catalog on my shelf when I am done with it. Love oozes out of every design decision of the Panobook. Well done.

Geoffrey West: What Does Exponential Mean?

Games

My friend Paul gave me a really great book for my birthday. The book is Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey West. I spent the whole summer digging into this book and having regular conversations with Paul. There are many landmines in the book. Once you step on one, you find yourself searching the internet for more information and digging even deeper.

“One of the things that I have discovered in my talking with politicians and policymakers is that most people don’t understand what an exponential is.”

—Geoffrey West

One small piece of the book is about exponential growth. I really liked his thought experiment on exponentials and I have applied his insight to game design and development.