The start of something

The Start of Something

I’ve been thinking about having a blog for a long time as a place to put information that other people might find useful. Finally I’ve got one (it is very easy to set up thanks to my host, Webfaction). I suppose I finally thought I had something interesting enough to share.

I bought a couple of Raspberry Pi computers a few weeks back (from ModMyPi), not with any concrete plans as to what to do with them but I felt sure that they’d be useful for something (print server, file server, XBMC system for behind the telly, programming fun for the children, etc…). Well, somehow at work I got to reading about the Internet of Things (IoT) which is a buzz word these days. I think perhaps this page was linked to from the BBC R&D blog? Anyway it’s a great read and has a “Where Dial” mentioned as one of the interesting internet-connected “things” that are possible these days. The Where Dial is inspired by the clock in the Weasley’s house in the Harry Potter books. It doesn’t tell the time, but instead has a hand for each member of the family that moves round to point at various states such as “travelling”, “hospital” or “mortal peril”.

So, I thought I’ve got a Raspberry Pi, I’ve been wanting to hook it up to some hardware and I’ve also wanted to have a play with Android software, particularly an interesting event-driven system for Android called on{X} from (would you believe) Microsoft.

Why not make my own Where Dial, or as I am calling it, a “Where Clock”? Perhaps the “mortal peril” state can be activated if the accelerometer goes above 1g?