> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…
It doesn't make you a fraud. Things like this are obviously done simply for fun, and not everyone will find exactly the same things fun.
> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…
Controlling a lamp isn't very useful on it's own, but it's a good simple proof of concept for tying in-game mechanisms to internet-connected resources. Step 2 is getting an external event to have an effect in-game. Once you have that, you can start building VR interfaces to the real world.
For some reason I get weary when I see cheap Chinese products that connect directly to a DC source. Mostly because of the stories of cheap phone chargers catching fire, or electrocuting users.
I'm also a little weary of cheap Chinese products that connect to my network... I'm always a little worried that they'll be doing something malicious, and I don't have the network know-how to prevent that. That said, I'm not entirely sure the risk is that much greater with off-brand Chinese products than "American" (designed, programmed and made in China) ones.
Since we can't install firewalls on cheap Wi-Fi IoT devices, it would be interesting to have a Wi-Fi router that handles that for you, isolating every device on the network by default. Just have every device have a web control interface so that you don't have nasty surprises from devices starting to communicate on ports they aren't expected to be operating on. Or just close all outbound ports from devices by default, and just open those that are needed to operate the device. Requests to communicate on closed ports could trigger a message to the Wi-Fi admin who could decide what to let open. A smart interface would pre-generate Web searches for the device ID and port trying to open up so you can read up about it.
> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…
Don't worry about it! I figure most of us only have the time and attention to work on a few things. If you don't happen to be fascinated by integrating lightbulbs and Minecraft, that doesn't make you a boring/uncreative/dumb/whatever person.
Now if this whole thing could be accomplished using pure redstone circuitry http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109385-Computer-Bu...
Redstone has no means of communication to the outside, so even if you created an entire computer with redstone(very unlikely) you would have no means of communication outside of minecraft.
Reverse engineer the client code such that a little bot player runs around in game flipping levers and seeing if redstone torches are on/off. Then you would truly have a computer with a little guy running around inside it doing all the thinking.
The famous (is it?) minebot already implements about 99% of the required functionality and requires no server side mods. There are of course competitors to minebot some of which may be closer or further away from this goal.
I'd like to hear more about the bulbs used. Cheap wifi bulbs with a simple protocol sound like fun.
prob the Phillips bulbs. Sadly they don't sit flush in most sockets, despite using the same fixture name.
Definitely not the Philips Hue bulbs. Those use a REST API on port 80 for network control, whereas these bulbs are using a proprietary binary protocol on port 5577.
> I have a couple of WiFi-enabled bulbs near me, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control them using Minecraft? I mean nothing against the author and like-minded individuals and I have the utmost respect for people with such a "tinkerer" mindset, but often reading things like this on Hacker News makes me feel like a bit of a fraud, because my internal answer to the question above is basically "No, not really". I'm w…
I hear you. But my kids would FLIP if they could control lights in our house from a Minecraft world :)
I'm also a little weary of cheap Chinese products that connect to my network... I'm always a little worried that they'll be doing something malicious, and I don't have the network know-how to prevent that. That said, I'm not entirely sure the risk is that much greater with off-brand Chinese products than "American" (designed, programmed and made in China) ones.
Since we can't install firewalls on cheap Wi-Fi IoT devices, it would be interesting to have a Wi-Fi router that handles that for you, isolating every device on the network by default. Just have every device have a web control interface so that you don't have nasty surprises from devices starting to communicate on ports they aren't expected to be operating on. Or just close all outbound ports from devices by default,…
That's a really cool idea. I've actually considered having a second "guest" network for everything I don't trust my ability to secure, like windows machines and cheap IOT stuff.