Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
crowsnest.io
Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#2So I need an RPi (finally, a reason to use mine...) and a supported video camera? What other devices are you adding and when? Any other examples other than this: http://crowsnestdemo.tumblr.com.
Really cool idea, good luck with it.
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#3So I need an RPi (finally, a reason to use mine...) and a supported video camera? What other devices are you adding and when? Any other examples other than this: http://crowsnestdemo.tumblr.com . Really cool idea, good luck with it.
We started out with cameras because they are pretty rich devices, and we wanted to start with just one device. We are currently working on an open source plugin system with the intention that anyone will be able to add IP devices to Crowsnest. We're aiming to have this out in about a month.
When we release the plugin system, we're also going to release a handful of integrations made using it, including things like the Wemo outlets / switches, Philips Hue, Nest Thermostat, and Libelium's air quality / water quality / smart agriculture sensors. We want to build things that the community and our customers need, so if there are things that would be particularly useful or interesting, we'd love to work on those first. We're always looking for feedback and ideas.
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#4Really brilliant idea and I can definitely see this taking off. We built something like this at Cisco for physical security purposes so there's definitely a use case but I can see many more use cases for this.
My only gripe is that this service sounds more geared towards businesses as the pricing model for consumers seems expensive. Nonetheless, I'm rooting for you guys and can't wait to see what happens.
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#5I don't get it. API (i.e. standardization; XKCD #927 issues aside) part is understandable - except it's not really a standard at this point. But… why would one need an intermediate party who would merely act as a proxy? Or I'm not understanding what kind of service Crownest provides? Intro pages are quite scarce on real technical details on how the whole thing works under the hood.
Sorry for skepticism, but I'd say it's certainly a better to invest the same money in making the same RPi (or alike device(s)) globally-addressable and accessible from the Internet. Indeed, this approach loses all fancy cloud buzzwords, but it brings much more practical value.
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#6I don't get it. API (i.e. standardization; XKCD #927 issues aside) part is understandable - except it's not really a standard at this point. But… why would one need an intermediate party who would merely act as a proxy? Or I'm not understanding what kind of service Crownest provides? Intro pages are quite scarce on real technical details on how the whole thing works under the hood. Sorry for skepticism, but I'd say i…
While part of the service is to act as a proxy between the RPi and the Internet, we're also trying to help save devs from needing to build out the device integrations (eg, lightbulbs, cameras, etc). We're trying to take care of these more boilerplate and reusable things, so that developers can focus on building their new and creative applications, rather than communication and infrastructure. Even if the device integration someone needs doesn't exist, we're hoping to make it easier and faster to get moving along that path with our open source device integration framework (we also call this the plugin system).
If you're curious for more technical details, there is some info in the docs (https://www.crowsnest.io/portal/docs/). Or if that's not enough, I'd be happy to talk more about it, here or in our IRC channel (#crowsnest on freenode).
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#7Is it fully open source e.g. can I run my own crowsnest server for free, fork etc? And is there anything around federation and discovery?
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#8I don't get it. API (i.e. standardization; XKCD #927 issues aside) part is understandable - except it's not really a standard at this point. But… why would one need an intermediate party who would merely act as a proxy? Or I'm not understanding what kind of service Crownest provides? Intro pages are quite scarce on real technical details on how the whole thing works under the hood. Sorry for skepticism, but I'd say i…
Sorry for skepticism, but I'd say it's certainly a better to invest the same money in making the same RPi (or alike device(s)) globally-addressable and accessible from the Internet.
That's a nice idea, but unless you control the network - and if you're deploying devices for other people, you probably don't - it's just not feasible. You'll have layers of NAT and firewalls preventing it.
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#9Is it fully open source e.g. can I run my own crowsnest server for free, fork etc? And is there anything around federation and discovery?
Our API / cloud service is not. The device integration framework (which runs locally on the RPi) is going to be open source, so that anyone can create plugins / integrations for any IP device.
Although we don't have it specced out yet, we have been talking a lot internally about using some kind of discovery protocol so that devices can report their capabilities and get up and running without an explicit integration plugin.
If you have any ideas or best practice thoughts for doing the discovery, we'd love to hear them.
Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World
#10What protocols do you support? BACnet? Modbus? ZigBee? LON? X10? Does it integrate with SCADA systems? Home automation is a messy area with a dozen "standards".