Making Things Talk : Using Sensors, Networks, and Arduino to See, Hear, and Feel Your World

"Make microcontrollers, PCs, servers, and smartphones talk to each other. Building electronic projects that interact with the physical world is good fun. But when the devices you've built start to talk to each other, things really get interesting. With 33 easy-to-build projects, Making Things Talk shows you how to get your gadgets to communicate with you and your environment. It's perfect for people with little technical training but a lot of interest. Maybe you're a science teacher who wants to show students how to monitor the weather in several locations at once. Or a sculptor looking to stage a room of choreographed mechanical sculptures. In this expanded edition, you'll learn how to form networks of smart devices that share data and respond to commands. Call your home thermostat with a smartphone and change the temperature. Create your own game controllers that communicate over a network. Use ZigBee, Bluetooth, Infrared, and plain old radio to transmit sensor data wirelessly. Work with Arduino 1.0, Processing, and PHP--three easy-to-use, open source environments. Write programs to send data across the Internet, based on physical activity in your home, office, or backyard. Whether you want to connect simple home sensors to the Internet, or create a device that can interact wirelessly with other gadgets, this book explains exactly what you need." -- Publisher Make microcontrollers, PCs, servers, and smartphones talk to each other.Building electronic projects that interact with the physical world is good fun. But when the devices you've built start to talk to each other, things really get interesting. With 33 easy-to-build projects, Making Things Talk shows you how to get your gadgets to communicate with you and your environment. It’s perfect for people with little technical training but a lot of interest.Maybe you're a science teacher who wants to show students how to monitor the weather in several locations at once. Or a sculptor looking to stage a room of choreographed mechanical sculptures. In this expanded edition, you’ll learn how to form networks of smart devices that share data and respond to commands.Call your home thermostat with a smartphone and change the temperature.Create your own game controllers that communicate over a network.Use ZigBee, Bluetooth, Infrared, and plain old radio to transmit sensor data wirelessly.Work with Arduino 1.0, Processing, and PHP—three easy-to-use, open source environments.Write programs to send data across the Internet, based on physical activity in your home, office, or backyard.Whether you want to connect simple home sensors to the Internet, or create a device that can interact wirelessly with other gadgets, this book explains exactly what you need. Building electronic projects that interact with the physical world is good fun. But when the devices you've built start to talk to each other, things really get interesting. The workbenches of hobbyists, hackers, and makers have become overrun with microcontrollers -- computers-on-a-chip that power homebrewed video games, robots, toys, and more. In Making Things Talk, author Tom Igoe shows how to make these gadgets communicate. Whether you need to plug some home sensors to the Internet or create a device that can interact wirelessly with other creations, this book shows you exactly what you need. The projects in this book are powerful yet inexpensive to build. You'll become familiar with the Arduino open source electronics prototyping platform, as well as networking hardware such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and Bluetooth Provides instructions for building a variety of projects that are able to communicate with one another, including a video game controlled by a stuffed monkey and a battery powered GPS that reports its location over Bluetooth