Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web | Hacker News Reader

Ninja Blocks: Connect your world with the web

kickstarter.com

165 pointsDamonOehlman66 comments

Seems similar in concept as 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.

I 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...

The flow of video seems to be similar too. The concept, shape of the product looks heavily inspired.

Hey 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

Hey 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!

Thanks for the tip!

I agree, it's twine & ifttt combined into one. It's almost the next iteration of twine in its UI and functionality.

very true...its "ifttt" in terms of hardware(sensor) triggers.

it almost seems as if the demo web interface was lifted directly from IFTTT too.

I'd like to see reviews and tests. One particular concern is battery. Twine is tiny and that's nice, but it doesn't seem to have any means of charging and frankly, having to change batteries for a number of devices regularly just kills the usability for many purposes off the top of my head. This one is bigger but it looks like it can be plugged.

yes, we're mainly focused on plugged-in hardware. there'll probably be a battery pack made at some point, but it's not our first priority.

Telecom (ETSI) has got standards for M2M APIs

This 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.

Hey Shadowmint,

I think you need to checkout http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/backing%20a%20project

Cheers,

Marcus

Who 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.

Hi 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

They seem to be clear that they're using the cash for tooling and production.

> What's the money for?

> Backers of this project will be helping to create the first production run of Ninja Blocks. Your pledges will enable us to move forward and create more sensors, actuators and add support for more of your favourite web applications!

> Every $1 will help us make Ninja Blocks better!

> Where to next?

> This Kickstarter Project will allow us to put the final polish on our prototypes and be able to afford the tooling and parts needed for production. [...]

I think what the guys is done is fair enough, although I can definitely see the point you are making. The thing for me about this that makes it more kickstarter like than ready for an online store presence is the fact that it's going to be a few months before I get my hands on some shiny Ninja Blocks.
For some reason I feel more comfortable with pledging money to a small business on kickstarter than through an online store having them say "we'll get it to you in four months time". I realise it's just a slight mental shift, but it really changes the way I look at things.
Perhaps it's time for KickStarter to adapt to the growth in this area, by spinning of a products and projects site (still kickstarted branded and hosted) which does help folks bootstrap small companies that actually need to buy stuff in quantities to make something viable.

Yup, totally agree, that'd be an great addition to Kickstarter.
Just shift the pre-sales out of the pledges and into 'we have some accountability' area for people who want to buy something.
Some kind of phased release of the funds to the project if they meet certain delivery milestones or something. I'm sure it could work~
(and you know, be ethical and legal at the same time...)

You 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.

Yep. 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.

You 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.

I 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.

> 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).

As we support USB you can add Low Energy Bluetooth that way. I believe Bluegiga just release some in USB format.

Thanks. I knew they included Bluetooth 4.0, but Low Energy was left out of the specs page. I actually still can't find any mention of it except in CoreBluetooth - their site organization is a bit painful if you're not there to buy.
There's also a demo implementation for Android by one of the radio manufacturers - not great, but maybe usable for initial development. This is much more significant on iPhone because it diffuses into the market more rapidly than a single model of Android handheld usually will.

This 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?

I'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.

yes, 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.

The 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.

Monitoring of hydroponics setups.

Yup, a pH sensor based off (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10972) is certainly on the cards.

It's like a hardware version of IFTTT.

It's interesting to see an incubator-backed startup leveraging Kickstarter. Definitely a pretty cool concept though.

I'm actually confused. I remember Kickstarter specifically saying that they didn't fund startups back when I applied to them.

Hi - I'm one of the hackers behind Ninja Blocks. We're not actually getting funding from Kickstarter - we're just pre-selling the product.

While I love what you guys are doing, it really troubles me to hear you say that so blatantly...

What @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).

I'm not sure what you're troubled by. They're using Kickstarter to pre-sell rather than a traditional sales channel.

I think it's the case of Kickstarter funds finite projects (rather then the ongoing nature of a startup).
Cheers,
Marcus

Pretty 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

It 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
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.

Hook.io looks great! FYI we're actually using http://www.zeromq.org/ and getting 10,000 messages per second off the Ninja Block ;-)
Cheers,
Marcus

You 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.

Listen to this man! We're struggling with the same thing at my startup (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.

Very 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.

yes, 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.

Interesting. 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_blo...

With 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.

Are you sure the globe is not sentient already? ;-)

There 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.

You can't claim it's Open Hardware and then not publish the layout files.

It's coming.

Wait till after Ninja Blocks gets funded...

You guys are awesome. Nice work!

Is that a raspberry pi in there?

no, it's a beaglebone and an arduino. we looked at the raspberry pi, but availability wasn't great.

Excellent work guys - looks rad

Thanks Chris!
Cheers,
Marcus

awesomeness with ifttt
I bow down before our new ninja block overlords.

Great, so now a cloud service will know when somebody is at my front door and all other sensors fire.
Privacy where are you...

Privacy 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.

No 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.

Hey 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

What 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.

We 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/ 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

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