Blog

Nowadays IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (machine to machine) communication is a much talked about topic. One of the big hurdles seems to be to establish one standard/protocol to communicate between devices and machines. Our solution to this problem has always been to directly provide Bindings for a big number of programming languages. This guarantees easy usage and there is no need for the protocol-question. To show that it is nevertheless easy to talk to Bricks and Bricklets with a M2M protocol, we wrote a Brick MQTT Proxy.

The Brick MQTT Proxy is a Python script that supports most of our Bricklets. The script is designed to be easy to extend. If you are missing a function or similar, you can easily add it yourself. More information can be found in the Brick MQTT Proxy documentation.

MQTT was already developed in the year 2000 and is meant as a protocol to exchange data between devices/machines. Is is a Internet of Things protocol that was ahead of its time. MQTT uses a so called Broker. It exchanges data between Publishers (devices that want to send data) and Subscribers (devices that want to receive data). Data sets are called Topics (for example a temperature). Topics are offered by Publishers and subscribed to by Subscribers. A device can be Subscriber and Publisher at the same time and for different Topics. If you want to now more about this, you can for example read the article What is MQTT and how does it work with WebSphere MQ?.

We look forward to your feedback regarding the Proxy!

Today we released a new IMU Brick 2.0. With the BNO055 sensor from Bosch the new Brick uses completely new technology compared to the old one. The accelerometer has a higher resolution (14 bit vs 12 bit), it has a continuous self-calibration and it has an accuracy increase of two orders of magnitude.

In a small comparison video we compare the two IMU versions:

Since last Friday we already sell the now deprecated IMU with a reduced price tag (39.99€ instead of 99.99€). Currently we still have 40 pieces of the old IMU in stock. If you still want one for the reduced price you should buy one soon. The old IMU will not be produced anymore after it is sold out.

The new IMU Brick 2.0 is available in our shop for 59.99€.

Two weeks ago we introduced lots of replacement Bricklets with more and better features than there now deprecated counterparts. Additionally we will replace the IMU Brick with a hugely improved IMU Brick 2.0 in the next week.

For some of the now deprecated products we still have stock, for those we would like to reduce the price as follows:

• *: Ambient Light Bricklet and Analog In Bricklet are already out of stock.

• +: We do still have old Moisture Bricklets in stock, but because of the corrosion problems with the old Moisture Bricklet we don’t want to sell it anymore. If you are still interested in one, please write it as an order comment. We will add it to your order for free (as long as supplies last).

Please note: If the deprecated Bricks and Bricklets are out of stock they will not be produced again and thus not be available anymore.

We haven been asked how the Load Cell Bricklet and load cells work in general several times now. To demonstrate the functionality we made a small scale project with a 1kg load cell. It turned out so well, that we put it in the shop as a Scale Kit ;-).

The Scale Kit is build from MakerBeam, a 1kg Load Cell and laser cut plastic parts. It is very easy to put together and it demonstrates the functionality of a load cell.

A precision of ±1g is the complete 0-1kg range is possible with the kit.

Instead of mostly talking about new products in our blog we want to show small and big projects more often. Today we start with two example programs for the RED Brick. The projects show how you can send and receive SMS messages with the RED Brick.

The sms_humidity example sends a SMS humidty message with a 60 second interval. It uses the callback of the Humidity Bricklet. The projects needs the RED Brick, a 3g stick with sim card and a Master Brick with Humidity Bricklet. In a Python script you can enter the UID of the Humidity Bricklet, the pin number of the sim card as well as the phone number of the sms message receiver. If transferred to the RED Brick, the python script will automatically send the humindity SMS message every 60 seconds.

The sms_location example uses a GPS Bricklet and it sends the position via SMS message. Instead of using a sending interval, the position is requested. To request the position you can send a SMS with the command “tf:loc” to the RED Brick. It will then send back the current position.

Both examples are written in Python and can be easily used as a starting point for your SMS message sending and receiving applications! Have fun with your automated SMS messaging!