#272 – An Interview With Luke Beno of Analog.io

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Welcome, Luke Beno of Analog.io!

• Analog.io is a data collection and charting website where you can view and share datastreams with others.
• Luke entered Analog.io (including a hardware component) into The Hackaday Prize.
• This is used for keeping track of lots of data over time, but Luke uses it for tracking beekeeping. 
• The site does not directly collect data, currently Analog.io pulls mainly from data.sparkfun.com. That server runs the open source phant.io.
• Luke says it’s easiest to get started using an Electric Imp or a Particle board.
• The boards make http requests which get recorded by phant.io. Notification based upon trigger levels is not currently supported. 
• As platforms get larger, holes in server reliability become more apparent.
• Dave and Chris have been reading Free by former guest Chris Anderson.
• One example of a likely purchaser of services would be monitoring temp/humidity of vacation home (making sure the heat isn’t broken). 
• There was a kickstarter about a bee hive with a direct tap.
• Other similar platforms include xively and thingspeak.
• Luke has a tutorial for getting up and running using a tiny temp/humidity board and an electric imp. 
• The service used to be called imp.guru, but changed names.
• The electric imp uses a server/agent scheme. 
• You don’t always need to use an Electric Imp, it just makes compiling and downloading (or updating) code easier.
• Instead, Luke targeted a lower power solution using a sensor node built with an MSP430 and an NRF24 radio. The base had another NRF24 radio and an ESP8266 to talk to the wifi network. 
• Google is making a new router called OnHub.
• Chris sees parallels to Distributed Control Systems.
• The day of recording is BTTF day (Oct 21st, 2015).
• Dave was very concerned about power consumption.
• MQTT has a “broker” that acts like a satellite. Anyone subscribed to the broadcast message will get the data packet that is submitted by a device.
• SmartThings was bought by Samsung and acts as a connected home router.
• LoRA has 7 mile low power RF coverage. There is a kickstarter for this with the Things Network.
• APRS is a ham radio version of multi node system. 
• Luke utilized the 43oh.com forums to build his system. 
• Software for his stack
  • He programmed using Energia for the MSP430 (arduino style).
  • He used arduino for esp8266
  • The Sparkfun server running phant.io is NodeJS
  • Analog.io is Ruby on Rails.
  • In browser processing and mapping is javascript/angular.js
• In his day job, Luke is an ASIC architect for Triad Semiconductor.
• He attempted to answer why aren’t there low pin FPGAs with tons of resources like Dave wants (some are starting to hit the market).