New blink(1) IFTTT channel soon

blink1-iftt-new-channel We love IFTTT (aka "If This Then That"). Our blink(1) USB LED was one of the first hardware devices that worked with IFTTT and we're excited that IFTTT is helping us upgrade our IFTTT channel!

This upgraded channel will initially work just the same, but with the added ability of allowing multiple blink(1)s to work with a single IFTTT account (something many of our customers have asked for). And this new channel is more easily customizable by us so it will open up the door to more advanced features down the road.

Current IFTTT blink(1) channel users: As IFTTT gets ready to make the change, they will be contacting you. We believe that all your recipes will be migrated so no changes will be necessary by you. You will be able to distinguish the new blink(1) IFTTT channel by the updated graphic (see the above image) and your channel authentication will be via OAuth2 to our new blink(1) data feed service.

And if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Ambient Wind Energy Indicator using Node-RED and blink(1) USB LED

ambient-wind-engery Glyn Hudson created an ambient wind energy indicator using a emonPi environmental monitoring Raspberry Pi and blink(1) USB LED. Then on the software side, he used Node-RED and Emoncms to pull in real-time UK wind energy generation and map that data to colors on the blink(1).

Glyn goes into detail on how to set everything up and it's a great example of integrating disparate devices and data sources into Node-RED. Here's what his setup looks like in the Node-RED GUI:

Node_RED_Emoncms_WindEnergy

busStatus.js: blink(1) Node.js bus notification on RasPi

blink1-busNiklas was recently "nerding out with a open api, raspberry pi, blink(1) and some node.js code" and created a cool example of using Stockholm bus tracking API to light up a blink(1) that lets him know when he should leave for the bus. And since it's all running on a Raspberry Pi hanging on his wall, it's a compact easy-to-see single-purpose device.

Check out his blog post "A Nerds Way of Keeping Track of When the Next Bus Leaves" and github repo for full details.

blink(1) in Amazon US!

blink1-amazon1 ThingM's blink(1) USB notification light is now on Amazon US!  We are super excited about this and are honored to be part of the brand new Amazon service called Amazon Launchpad.  Launchpad is a curated  site for cool crowdfunded products, much like other curated product sites you might be familiar with. But this one is backed by Amazon's awesome fulfillment infrastructure.  We're still getting our blink(1) page set up and stock sent to their warehouses, but we're in the system and Amazon is taking orders and gauging demand.

 

Spooky BlinkM projects by John Park

jp-skull-e1446493480177.jpg

For Halloween, John Park made some wonderful flickery props using a BlinkM, a BlinkM MaxM, 3d printed parts, and LEGO. Check them out on Twitter and below. Thanks JP!

Ambient sentiment: IBM Watson language analysis, Slack, & blink(1) USB LEDs

yrh35mW Jonathan Kaufman hooked up IBM Watson's language tone analysis API to our blink(1) USB LED light to summarize the emotional state of his Slack channel as a color. And all using node-blink1. It's very cool.  As he writes:

Last week I picked up a blink(1) at a conference, and had a lot of fun with it. It's a pretty simple little device that can conjure up any color that can be described via RGB. Naturally, I decided to hook it up to IBM Watson's Tone Analyzer in order to visualize the sentiment of my Slack channel in real time. [...]

Watson gives us values of 0 - 1 for the following nine sub-categories from the following three categories:

  • Emotional Tone: cheerfulness, negative, and anger
  • Writing Tone: analytical, confident, and tentative
  • Social Tone: openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness

[...]

His original writeup is here, along with the code on github.

node-blink1-server for HTTP-to-blink1 fun

node-blink1-server We love Node.js.  In many ways it's the future. For those of you who also like Node and want a simple example of how to use node-blink1 or just need an HTTP-to-blink(1) adapter without running Blink1Control, here's node-blink1-server. It's the first of many Node projects we'll be creating.

And if you want to explore more of Node with blink(1), here are a few more examples: