The Web of Stuff

By Zachary Voase

  • Cook

  • Eat

  • lift

  • makes stuff

    • Was making stuff for Ford for big presentations
    • Interactive trade show experiences

As software developers, the world of hardware can seem confusing but alluring. Small computers are now cheap enough that useful products can be built for less than $100. But the real value from the Internet of Things comes from networking. In this talk, I’ll introduce you to basic hardware hacking, and show you how Web, mobile and microcontroller technologies can be brought together using Django—with surprising and playful results.

Act I - Little Data

  • Computers are getting big again because of server farms and huge number crunching efforts
  • Economy of size goes in both directions. Not just big data, but little Data

As backend developers it’s easy to forget that often with all the servers and code and automation we forget that at some point deep in the chain there is a a human being interaction with the system. Example: Cell Phone

. epigraph:

The maker movement is an effort by computers to liberate themselves from their human overlords. -- Zachary Voase

Note

Zach tempted the demo gods by demonstrating something that used Arduino, Github, Django, Heroku, Foursquare to do something. Alas, the demo gods were not kind. The internet was very flaky. Still, his device was really cool.

Act II - Personal Development

  • Tutorials are useful for beginners
  • Advanced experts might need references
  • In-between beginner and advanced it’s hard to get good.

Note

This in-between spot was the original target of Two Scoops of Django.