Much has been written about the rise of connected devices – the number of people who are tinkering with Arduino, various sensors and wearable devices is growing rapidly. One aspect of connected devices use that has been a little lacking however is platforms to easily integrate connected devices with existing web services. Temboo, an interesting company that brings a visual approach to data workflows and app development (more about them here), has recently announced that its technologies are now embedded on the latest Arduino hardware board, the Yun.

Yun was only released last week but the embedding of Temboo means that tinkerers can now create Arduino devices that connect with the 100 or so different APIs in the Temboo library – direct integrations to services like Facebook, Dropbox and Twitter for example. Not only are there standard integrations, but Yun users can use all of the different processes that Temboo has in its library – rather than having to hand code specific actions from Arduino inputs, users can test and run processes directly from their browser with the required code being auto-generated as needed.

Temboo has written a special Python program on the Yún’s Linino processor that interacts with the Temboo platform to send and receive data. A C++ library Temboo created for the Arduino processor on the board allows makers to communicate with the Linino-side Temboo program in addition to this, Temboo has developed a unique way for users to select the particular data they need from APIs and web-based resources, filtering out extraneous information and reducing the load on the board.

It’s a pretty interesting glimpse at the future of web services tied to connected devices – whether it’s something as simple as logging data into a Google spreadsheet, or some crazy idea around auto charging a PayPal account based on some Arduino inputs (an OpenSource alternative payment processing option maybe).

It is going to be interesting to check back in after a few months to see what things the flexibility of Arduino, and the existing Temboo library, have enabled people to do.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

1 Comment
  • There are a lot of these ‘pseudo’ personal/professional IoT service providers appearing now, and some good ideas ( see https://ifttt.com/wtf & http://tessel.io ), but there is a plethora of standards vying to be adopted (XMPP, MQTT, CoAP, AllJoyn, aProtocol, M-Bus, DALI, Bacnet etc) all driven from legacy vendors with vested interests. There is also a vast sea of API’s in the IoT space with high churn as well.

    Personally, I’m spending more time investment in open standards emerging, and Node.js / Javascript libraries accompanying them. If there isn’t an interface to these, my time investment in them goes down on the priority list.

    regards,
    Andrew L.

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