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Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web
- SkyRocknRoll 15y agoI Like this part especially!!! Ninja Blocks are Open Hardware. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Unported license and supports the Open Hardware Definition 1.0, you are free to download and adapt them to your needs. Keep Going!!
- nopassrecover 15y agoIt's interesting to see an incubator-backed startup leveraging Kickstarter. Definitely a pretty cool concept though.
- thomasgerbe 15y agoI'm actually confused. I remember Kickstarter specifically saying that they didn't fund startups back when I applied to them.
- mwotton 15y agoHi - I'm one of the hackers behind Ninja Blocks. We're not actually getting funding from Kickstarter - we're just pre-selling the product.
- shadowmint 15y agoWhile I love what you guys are doing, it really troubles me to hear you say that so blatantly...
- schappim 15y agoWhat @mwotton means to say is that we've made a lot of progress. We could probably eventually sell Ninja Blocks without Kickstarter, but certainly not to the quality we want. Unlike software projects, hardware requires tooling, parts and materials. Kickstarter is allowing us to do this! We're also open source hardware! Cheers, Marcus (I'm a developer on the Ninja Blocks project).
- nopassrecover 15y agoI'm not sure what you're troubled by. They're using Kickstarter to pre-sell rather than a traditional sales channel.
- schappim 15y agoI think it's the case of Kickstarter funds finite projects (rather then the ongoing nature of a startup). Cheers, Marcus
- akavi 15y agoIt's like a hardware version of IFTTT.
- chime 15y agoSeems similar in concept as http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-li... but offers a different UI/event-action model and few more integrated services. I wonder if these tiny-sensor-computer makers can come up with a standard so we can remotely control any of them without knowing the specific APIs.
- DamonOehlman 15y agoI agree it does seem similar, and I backed both projects because I think these lightweight data collection devices have a big future. Definitely agree on getting some kind of standard API across the various devices, although I expect we are probably a couple of years away from having that. Still with both Ninja Blocks and Twine getting some traction I think it's something that will happen sooner rather than later...
- playhard 15y agoThe flow of video seems to be similar too. The concept, shape of the product looks heavily inspired.
- schappim 15y agoHey Chime, I'm Marcus, one of the developers on Ninja Blocks. We're currently doing Ninja Blocks within Startmate (an Australian accelerator similar to YC). To answer your question: We're open source so people could take what we've done and build a standard on it. Cheers, Marcus
- Little-Duck 15y agoHey Marcus, I don't know if this helps but www.DonationTo.com enables you to keep 100% of all your fundraising dollars. NO 5% deduction. If you don't reach your goal you still keep your funds collected. Hope this helps the Ninja Blocks project, its a very cool product overall!
- schappim 15y ago
- dmvaldman 15y agoThis is one of those great concepts that has a "this needs to happen" feeling, and it's a matter of who's going to do a great job with it. Looks like Ninja Blocks is on the right track. However, as I think about the concept more, I'm having a difficult time finding a useful case for the concept. I think it's just because I'm not creative enough. So what would you, Hacker News reader, use Ninja Blocks for?
- redthrowaway 15y agoI'm just picturing all the contraptions from Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Automatic pet feeding, for one. On a more useful note, my uncle is a quadriplegic. He was fortunate, in a sense, that he was working when he had his accident, so he has 24 hr attendants. Most wouldn't be able to afford that. There are expensive, proprietary systems that allow him to open doors, turn off lights, etc with a remote, but you could jury-rig something with NinjaBox to get the job done much cheaper.
- mwotton 15y agoyes, exactly. there are a heap of markets that are expensive to target because they're so small - we're in talks with research labs to do experiment automation,for instance, and their equipment is usually priced in the hundreds of thousands. We're aiming at being the glue: geeks have always hacked their own stuff, this just makes it possible for everyone else to do the same.
- DamonOehlman 15y agoThe attraction for me is that although I've always been able to hack electronics and stuff (and did quite a bit when I was younger), I just don't have the time. I'm a software hacker through and through, and that's where I want to spend my most limited resource. Having some hardware that takes care of most of the heavy lifting in that space is very appealling.
- stef25 15y agoMonitoring of hydroponics setups.
- willthefirst 15y agoWith tech like this, that can sense and communicate events that happen in the physical world, I'd imagine that the globe will become sentient in 100 years. Just adding more and more nodes to the ever increasing network.
- yesbabyyes 15y agoAre you sure the globe is not sentient already? ;-)
- replax 15y agoVery nice concept! And by making them very very easy to use & pricing them accordingly high, they don't really compete with arduino+shields and the like. As they are "open", I wonder if it will be possible to only use their webservice with other devices (arduino etc) by paying a monthly fee.
- mwotton 15y agoyes, we're investigating this. arduinos are a bit tricky because the hardware either needs a general-purpose interpreter which can load new code at runtime, or needs to be able to reprogram itself wholesale over the net. It's doable, I think, but it's a lot harder than uploading some new code to a full linux machine.
- glimcat 15y agoYou could sadly do better with an Arduino Mini and a Zigbee, if you had "Hello World" level knowledge of electronics and microcontroller programming. One of the big ongoing issues in this field is that sensor nodes need to be cheap, as you ideally want to have a number of them around. Simultaneously, you need to not be changing batteries all the time. Want to see some serious internet-of-things action? Put Bluetooth Low Energy radios in the next iPhone.
- mwotton 15y agoYep. But we're aiming this at beneath "Hello World" level electronics knowledge, and at people who _could_ do the work but appreciate being able to work with it at a more abstract level.
- muyuu 15y agoYou can also do it lower level with AVR microcontrollers and a bunch of sensors. Arduino itself is a simpler, higher abstraction enabling architecture that doesn't compete with industrial level electronics in terms of cost/performance. This is simple a higher abstraction framework. Something I can probably entertain my SO with. I'm CS/EE and I'd still use something like this and enjoy it. If I had any time left for distractions right now. Might take the plunge.
- glimcat 15y agoI like a little (cheap) abstraction in my device development. I can always go back and bitbang in Assembly later once I'm certain what I want it to do. I also think that reprogrammability is a significant feature for some of these IOT applications, so it may make sense to maintain compatibility with the Arduino stack longer-term if possible - and since it's open, you can do so while using your own board.
- RenaudLienhart 15y ago> Put Bluetooth Low Energy radios in the next iPhone. Not sure this is what you meant, but the iPhone 4S already has a Bluetooth Low Energy radio and an API to control it (CoreBluetooth).
- chrisrickard 15y agoExcellent work guys - looks rad
- schappim 15y agoThanks Chris! Cheers, Marcus
- GigabyteCoin 15y agoIs that a raspberry pi in there?
- mwotton 15y agono, it's a beaglebone and an arduino. we looked at the raspberry pi, but availability wasn't great.
- fsniper 15y agoThere some other projects like these. But I do not believe they can break their "niche toys" market and became mainstream. They are expensive and meaningless toys for any other sane people except us, nerds.
- david_a_r_kemp 15y agoYou can't claim it's Open Hardware and then not publish the layout files.
- JohnConnor 15y agoIt seems to me that the hook.io project would make an ideal candidate for the software to connect these devices. https://github.com/hookio/hook.io https://github.com/hookio/hook.io hook.io is all about building the software for connecting devices together to do functionality like this. It would be amazing to see this coupled with actual custom hardware.
- schappim 15y agoHook.io looks great! FYI we're actually using http://www.zeromq.org/ http://www.zeromq.org/ and getting 10,000 messages per second off the Ninja Block ;-) Cheers, Marcus
- JohnConnor 15y agoYou should consider ZeroMQ a messaging protocol. hook.io supports multi-transport messaging protocols. There has been lots of talk of ZeroMQ as a message transport in hook.io, it's coming soon. IMO, you shouldn't be worried about messages per second between devices right now. You should be worried about how you are going to communicate between 1000s of 3rd party services. hook.io aims to solve that problem.
- bryanh 15y agoListen to this man! We're struggling with the same thing at my startup (https://zapier.com/ https://zapier.com/), and having a robust way to hit some of the crazy API's out there is by far the most difficult thing we've come across.
- shadowmint 15y agoThis is a cool project, and I'm supporting it... ...however, sigh this is exactly what you should _not_ be using kickstarter for. Kickstarter is not a shop, and I hope that anyone who pledges towards them realizes that they are supporting the project _not buying something_, and those $$$ have absolutely 1) no guarantee on receiving any product or 2) no recourse if anything is defective / wrong / whatever on it. Kickstarter shouldn't be allowing this sort of project.
- schappim 15y agoHey Shadowmint, I think you need to checkout http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project Cheers, Marcus
- shadowmint 15y agoWho is responsible for making sure project creators deliver what they promise? Every creator is responsible for fulfilling the promises of their project. Because projects are usually funded by the friends, fans, and communities around its creator, there are powerful social forces that keep creators accountable. Creators are also encouraged to post regular updates about the progress of their project post-funding — communication goes a long way. -- Yes, I'm quite familiar with the Kickstarter FAQ and TOS. As a project owner, you are not legally obliged to provide anything. It's entirely up to you. You earn negative karma and never-allowed-on-kickstarter-again status if you mess it up, but that's about it. Kickstarter is not an ecommerce site. If you're selling things, you should use a shop. Wordpress and paypal will get you off the ground in about 20 minutes. If you're doing a startup that needs funding to get off the ground, awesome, use kickstarter... ...but not as a shop. The only point I'm making is that it's deceptive practice to pretend that Kickstarter is a shop, when none of the normal legal provisions apply. Of course, what you do it entirely up to you, but people should be aware.
- schappim 15y agoHi Mate, >> "If you're doing a startup that needs funding to get off the ground, awesome, use kickstarter" That's exactly what we're doing! As previously mentioned, unlike software projects, hardware requires tooling, parts and materials. Kickstarter helping us to pursue our vision! We've run an e-commerce site in the past and we know how much people's expectations matter. Cheers, Marcus
- ColdAsIce 15y agoGreat, so now a cloud service will know when somebody is at my front door and all other sensors fire. Privacy where are you...
- mwotton 15y agoPrivacy is a legitimate concern, but there are useful things you can do that you might feel comfortable sharing with our servers. Zero-information computing is really hard, and we didn't feel it was worth the time it'd take to give that kind of strong guarantee.
- ColdAsIce 15y agoNo I do not feel comfortable sharing with your servers. Are you really free software? Give me the (server) software. For $25 I can get a simple server and Ill use it.
- schappim 15y agoHey Mate, The hardware is open. If you want to run your own software on it you can. We did have a big debate whether to go the zero knowledge route (we previously worked on building a zero knowledge file service). Cheers, Marcus
- ColdAsIce 15y agoWhat is this zero knowledge you mention? Seems quite a marketing lie, zero knowledge, while you really want _all_ the knowledge about all my sensors, and the way I use your product. While I get no knowledge of how your servers work and what you do with it.
- schappim 15y agoWe make no claims of being architected Zero Knowledge. We're familiar with the concept from previous work, but decided it wasn't worth creating an MVP with it. One can architect a service to be zero knowledge like the terrific job http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/ does. Unfortunately it's pretty hard for us to do when the core value proposition of our product is that we connect your hardware to other APIs (Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter etc) (which don't follow a zero knowledge architecture). Cheers, Marcus
- mbaukes 15y agoawesomeness with ifttt I bow down before our new ninja block overlords.
- dennislo 15y agoYou guys are awesome. Nice work!
- felipe 15y agoPretty interesting and creative way to pitch the project: They created their main web site [1] as if the product already existed, giving the potential donor a good feeling about the end goal. [1] http://ninjablocks.com http://ninjablocks.com
- steele 15y agoInteresting. The official logo seems to have rounded eyes -- good intentions I suppose. However... http://50.57.81.138/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/new_ninja_block.png http://50.57.81.138/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/new_ninja_blo...