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Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

kickstarter.com

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Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#61

Post by bryanh »

JohnConnor wrote: post #56
schappim wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hook.io looks great! FYI we're actually using http://www.zeromq.org/ and getting 10,000 messages per second off the Ninja Block ;-) Cheers, Marcus

You should consider ZeroMQ a messaging protocol. hook.io supports multi-transport messaging protocols. There has been lots of talk of ZeroMQ as a message transport in hook.io, it's coming soon. IMO, you shouldn't be worried about messages per second between devices right now. You should be worried about how you are going to communicate between 1000s of 3rd party services. hook.io aims to solve that problem.

Listen to this man! We're struggling with the same thing at my startup (https://zapier.com/), and having a robust way to hit some of the crazy API's out there is by far the most difficult thing we've come across.

Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#62

Post by jasonsack »

ychung wrote: post #21
chime wrote: post #5

Seems similar in concept as http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-li... but offers a different UI/event-action model and few more integrated services. I wonder if these tiny-sensor-computer makers can come up with a standard so we can remotely control any of them without knowing the specific APIs.

I agree, it's twine & ifttt combined into one. It's almost the next iteration of twine in its UI and functionality.

it almost seems as if the demo web interface was lifted directly from IFTTT too.

Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#63

Post by schappim »

ColdAsIce wrote: post #60
mwotton wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is a legitimate concern, but there are useful things you can do that you might feel comfortable sharing with our servers. Zero-information computing is really hard, and we didn't feel it was worth the time it'd take to give that kind of strong guarantee.

No I do not feel comfortable sharing with your servers. Are you really free software? Give me the (server) software. For $25 I can get a simple server and Ill use it.

Hey Mate,

The hardware is open. If you want to run your own software on it you can. We did have a big debate whether to go the zero knowledge route (we previously worked on building a zero knowledge file service).

Cheers,

Marcus

Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#64

Post by schappim »

RenaudLienhart wrote: post #58
glimcat wrote: post #18

You could sadly do better with an Arduino Mini and a Zigbee, if you had "Hello World" level knowledge of electronics and microcontroller programming. One of the big ongoing issues in this field is that sensor nodes need to be cheap, as you ideally want to have a number of them around. Simultaneously, you need to not be changing batteries all the time. Want to see some serious internet-of-things action? Put Bluetooth…

> Put Bluetooth Low Energy radios in the next iPhone. Not sure this is what you meant, but the iPhone 4S already has a Bluetooth Low Energy radio and an API to control it (CoreBluetooth).

As we support USB you can add Low Energy Bluetooth that way. I believe Bluegiga just release some in USB format.

Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#65

Post by ColdAsIce »

schappim wrote: post #63
ColdAsIce wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I do not feel comfortable sharing with your servers. Are you really free software? Give me the (server) software. For $25 I can get a simple server and Ill use it.

Hey Mate, The hardware is open. If you want to run your own software on it you can. We did have a big debate whether to go the zero knowledge route (we previously worked on building a zero knowledge file service). Cheers, Marcus

What is this zero knowledge you mention?

Seems quite a marketing lie, zero knowledge, while you really want _all_ the knowledge about all my sensors, and the way I use your product. While I get no knowledge of how your servers work and what you do with it.

Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#66

Post by schappim »

ColdAsIce wrote: post #65
schappim wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Mate, The hardware is open. If you want to run your own software on it you can. We did have a big debate whether to go the zero knowledge route (we previously worked on building a zero knowledge file service). Cheers, Marcus

What is this zero knowledge you mention? Seems quite a marketing lie, zero knowledge, while you really want _all_ the knowledge about all my sensors, and the way I use your product. While I get no knowledge of how your servers work and what you do with it.

We make no claims of being architected Zero Knowledge.

We're familiar with the concept from previous work, but decided it wasn't worth creating an MVP with it.

One can architect a service to be zero knowledge like the terrific job http://www.tarsnap.com/ does. Unfortunately it's pretty hard for us to do when the core value proposition of our product is that we connect your hardware to other APIs (Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter etc) (which don't follow a zero knowledge architecture).

Cheers,

Marcus

Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#67

Post by glimcat »

RenaudLienhart wrote: post #58
glimcat wrote: post #18

You could sadly do better with an Arduino Mini and a Zigbee, if you had "Hello World" level knowledge of electronics and microcontroller programming. One of the big ongoing issues in this field is that sensor nodes need to be cheap, as you ideally want to have a number of them around. Simultaneously, you need to not be changing batteries all the time. Want to see some serious internet-of-things action? Put Bluetooth…

> Put Bluetooth Low Energy radios in the next iPhone. Not sure this is what you meant, but the iPhone 4S already has a Bluetooth Low Energy radio and an API to control it (CoreBluetooth).

Thanks. I knew they included Bluetooth 4.0, but Low Energy was left out of the specs page. I actually still can't find any mention of it except in CoreBluetooth - their site organization is a bit painful if you're not there to buy.

There's also a demo implementation for Android by one of the radio manufacturers - not great, but maybe usable for initial development. This is much more significant on iPhone because it diffuses into the market more rapidly than a single model of Android handheld usually will.

Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#68

Post by glimcat »

muyuu wrote: post #35
glimcat wrote: post #18

You could sadly do better with an Arduino Mini and a Zigbee, if you had "Hello World" level knowledge of electronics and microcontroller programming. One of the big ongoing issues in this field is that sensor nodes need to be cheap, as you ideally want to have a number of them around. Simultaneously, you need to not be changing batteries all the time. Want to see some serious internet-of-things action? Put Bluetooth…

You can also do it lower level with AVR microcontrollers and a bunch of sensors. Arduino itself is a simpler, higher abstraction enabling architecture that doesn't compete with industrial level electronics in terms of cost/performance. This is simple a higher abstraction framework. Something I can probably entertain my SO with. I'm CS/EE and I'd still use something like this and enjoy it. If I had any time left for d…

I like a little (cheap) abstraction in my device development. I can always go back and bitbang in Assembly later once I'm certain what I want it to do.

I also think that reprogrammability is a significant feature for some of these IOT applications, so it may make sense to maintain compatibility with the Arduino stack longer-term if possible - and since it's open, you can do so while using your own board.

Re: Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

#69

Post by nopassrecover »

shadowmint wrote: post #42
mwotton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi - I'm one of the hackers behind Ninja Blocks. We're not actually getting funding from Kickstarter - we're just pre-selling the product.

While I love what you guys are doing, it really troubles me to hear you say that so blatantly...

I'm not sure what you're troubled by. They're using Kickstarter to pre-sell rather than a traditional sales channel.
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