Modern Vespa

I don't know how many of you have backed Kickstarter projects. I've backed a few and it's been a mixed bag in terms of results and satisfaction (screaming Banshee horn kit was a huge win... curly extra long iphone/ipad charging cable was a huge fail).

But the project that instroduced me to Kickstarter was a little greenish blue square called Twine which has finally finished production and has been shipping the rewards to the backers.

The way they describe the product is as follows: I just received my Twine and have been playing around with it for a couple of days now. There are a lot of possibilities as to how to use it, but right now I have mine attached to the underside of my scooter seat.

Since I park my scooter within the reach of my home wifi network, I've been able to set up rules related to:

1. Temperature: Send both me and my wife an email + text message when the temperature drops below 10 degrees C (meaning I need to dress extra warmly when I get dressed for my morning commute), or above 30 degrees C (this will only occur when I get home at the end of my commute and park my scoot out front. My wife's studio is at the back of the house and downstairs... so she'll know I've arrived home).

2. Orientation: Email + text message me and my wife when the orientation of the Twine changes (i.e. someone has popped upon my seat, knocked over the scoot or even leaned it while trying to muscle it out of its parking spot and onto a truck).

There is also a flood sensor, magnetic switch sensor and an open-source break out board which I haven't figured out what to do with.

I'd be interested to know of any others who have a Twine and what real world applications you are using it for.

I did the Banshee thing and I also think it was a big win. The Twine is cool. Wish I would have been in on that one. I would put it on my door at my camp so if someone breaks in, like they did last year, I would at least know about it when it happens and not have to find it a few months later.

That looks cool. I'm going to check it out.

(I backed the Banshee horn as well, along with a product called the WineHive modular wine rack).

On the other end of the home automation spectrum, I've been experimenting with devices from ControlByWeb. They make a bunch of different devices that plug into ethernet and provide inputs, outputs, switched relays, temperature and humidity interfaces, and a bunch of other nifty features like email notifications, peer-to-peer communication between devices, a BASIC interpreter, alarm thresholds, and so on. All of it is controlled by a built-in web server in each device, and they all have the option of being powered over ethernet (PoE) for super simple wiring.

Not so good for your scooter, but pretty powerful for lots of home automation tasks.

Very cool. I backed the oil filter and am very impressed with it. I'm sure you can find some good uses for it. Keep us appraised on what it will do.

That sounds like this could be a great product!