by Hans Rempel, on May 9, 2011
Exosite recently presented on Open Source Hardware at Minnebar - Minnesota's top (un)conference destination.
Most Engineers love to tinker - every so often someone at Exosite will put together some kind of office "efficiency" system that makes use of our Data Platform and Web Dashboards for remote monitoring and/or maintenance. Fun stuff - like office electricity power draw, coffee status, plant soil moisture, etc.... Depending on the engineer, they will use their favorite open source hardware device (e.g. Arduino, mbed, Fluid) to grab the data and put in online. The speed with which these open source hardware systems can be extended and deployed as part of a connected system really makes them fun to prototype with.
Enter Minnebar - Minnesota's unconference destination for tech and design communities. We thought others may want to hear about how easy we've found it to prototype and deploy these open source hardware systems and so we signed up to present. The talk was well attended - about 1/3 each of software/hardware/non engineers, and had great feedback during and after the discussion with some of the 1200 conference attendees.
The talk focused on the different open source hardware platforms available today, the historical path & future roadmap these systems are on, and how they are fueling an explosion of innovation in tech communities & startup companies. The Arduino demo files from the talk can be found out on the github Exosite Garage Arduino Demo project.
A big thanks to the organizers of Minnestar - leading the charge on getting the thriving tech activity in the cities together and promoted.