Gemio is giving friendship bracelets an IoT makeover

---

This piece of smart jewelry combines self-expression with the ability to connect with friends in-person.

---

Friendship bracelets first emerged on the wearable scene in the 1970s, and have remained pretty much the same ever since. In order to evolve with the times, one Seattle startup has unveiled more intelligent and interchangeable jewelry for today’s tech-hungry and fashion-savvy world.

Whereas most wearable devices have a uniform appearance, Gemio boasts modular Gemsets that can be snapped on and off with ease. These Gemsets can be programmed with various light and special effects from a palette of colors, so you can create an entirely new look each and every day. You can even swap out designs in a matter of seconds via its accompanying mobile app.

Crafted with a social component in mind, Gemio is the first wearable to focus on connecting people rather than the gadgets themselves. The bracelet employs much of the technology commonly found in existing trackers and smartwatches, such as Bluetooth, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and 20 LEDs, but applies them in a different manner.

Using BLE connectivity and a mesh network, wearers are able to sync their Gemios through gestures like high-fives and handshakes. Once paired, the bands alert its user to their friends’ proximity through the detachable Gemsets. The unit not only recognizes who you’re with and responds to what you are doing, it also illuminates when your friends are nearby, playing a signature “light tone.” (Think of it as a personalized ringtone, but in lights.)

What’s more, the responsive bracelet can detect various gestures and allows users to assign light effects to them. For example, wave hello and Gemio plays a light show, or twist your wrist to make it sparkle.

The startup was founded in 2014, with some of its earliest backers including Tricia Black, the first vice president of sales at Facebook. Gemio joins the likes of JewelBots and several others in developing wearable products that appeal to girls with hopes of enticing more to pursue STEM-related disciplines.

Set it and forget it! Sprinkl is a smart irrigation system

Let’s face it, not only can watering your lawn can be a hassle, it can often times be a waste of resources as well. Luckily, Dallas-based startup Sprinkl has developed a smarter way to automate lawn sprinklers capable of reducing water usage by up to 50%. Not only is it great for your water bill, but is surely good news for drought-ridden homeowners throughout the country.

The innovative system is comprised of a patent-pending controller and multiple sensor units. Each weatherproof wireless sensor unit relays soil measurements back to the controller using a power-efficient 802.15.4 mesh network — driven by an ATmega256RFR2 — where additional information, such as local watering restrictions, is used to determine per-zone watering schedules.

Sprinkl is built on the Android OS, runs on a 1GHz processor and can even last seven years on a single lithium battery. Equipped with a capacitive touchscreen, the team stuck on some valve controls, enabling the system to command separate zones. Currently, Sprinkl comes in both 8- and 16-zone packages.

Furthermore, the smart irrigation system is also Wi-Fi enabled, meaning that it can pull weather forecasts and water conservation schedules directly from the cloud. Once watering and soil measurements are uploaded, homeowners can easily plot the data in their web browsers. Think of it of as a Nest thermostat for your lawn. Based on the sensors’ readings, the controller determines just the right amount of water to distribute.

According to our friends at PubNub, Sprinkl needed a real-time infrastructure to power their mobile API integration layers with their cloud system to ensure that its cloud and mobile apps were up-to-date based on any changes happening on a user’s controller. In order to achieve just that, Sprinkl seamlessly implemented the PubNub Data Stream Network, significantly reducing development time, as well as development complexity for their real-time backend.

“The Internet is at turning point in the home. Lighting and HVAC controllers have really evolved over the past four years, but irrigation and lawn care technology have been lagging behind,” explained Noel Geren, Managing Member of Sprinkl. “With Sprinkl we wanted to bring an evolutionary product to market; a gorgeous and extensible Android touch based controller that can automatically determine how much water to use per-zone, saving up to 50% on monthly watering bills and preserving earth’s precious resources.

Sprinkl is an ideal alternative for those looking for a smarter, more intuitive watering system for their lawns and landscapes. Interested in learning more? Head over to its official website here.

 

High altitude balloon tracking with the ATmega644

A Maker by the name of Ethan (and team) recently designed a low-cost open hardware/software high altitude balloon tracker with sensors that effectively form a mesh network with a master node.

The above-mentioned platform – powered by Atmel’s ATmega644 microcontroller (MCU) – is equipped with an onboard GPS module (NEO-6M), a micro SD card slot, a 300mW APRS (144.39MHz) transmitter and convenient headers to plug an XBee radio.

As HackADay’s Mathieu Stephan notes, the hardware is tasked with obtaining wireless data from various slave platforms, storing it in the uSD card while transmitting the balloon position via APRS along with other data.

“It’s interesting to note that to keep the design low-cost, they chose a relatively cheap analog radio module ($~40) and hacked together AFSK modulation of their output signal with hardware PWM outputs and a sine-wave lookup table,” Stephan explained. “The slave nodes are composed of ‘slave motherboards’ on which can be plugged several daughter-boards: geiger counters, atmospheric sensors, camera control/accelerometer boards.”

Interested in building your own Atmel-powered modular high altitude balloon tracker with mesh networked sensors? You can check out the project’s official page here.