An IoT dashboard | Hacker News Reader

An IoT dashboard

dashboard.sidlee.com

119 pointsMaakuth79 comments

OK, this is epic. Well done guys! I especially like this: https://undo.meteor.com/

I sometimes worry about the privacy implications of making this data public but aggregating by hour seems to alleviate some of this. How do you get staff buy-in? e.g. the undo is effectively a key logger.

I thought monitoring door locks [0], power usage [1] and temperature [2] was fairly advanced. What are you using for the power monitoring?

[0] https://unop.uk/dev/spark-core-shower-room-door-sensor/ (v2 write-up with Blinkytape coming soon) [1] https://unop.uk/dev/raspberry-pi-electricity-monitor/ [2] I use a https://twitter.com/myjoulo (their main site is down)

http://i.imgur.com/ZKbUnKO.png

God Damnit Hugo, Get your shit together!

In France, there is a socket on electricity meters where you can get serial data about your consumption, so we use this

Thanks! https://undo.meteor.com was a side project last year that we aggregated into the dashboard. The undo is indeed a key logger on all Macs at the office. The server only registers the events when the IP address from the sender matches the office's (so we don't log events outside of the agency). We're about 30 people at the office, they all know and trust me. They're all aware of the logger, and it does show in the menubar. And it really, really, really only logs LeftCommand-Z and sends the first name from the logged in user + the active app. Looking forward to your sensors btw!

Is the source code for this key logger available somewhere? I'd be interested in extending it to track Ctrl+C and Esc (heavy Vim user here)!

Here! My first OS X app, and I'm no developer, so probably poorly written. https://github.com/SidLeeParis/UndoLogger

Their YouTube video [0] and GitHub repo [1] are providing some background details (it's all made with Arduino sensors).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TioYIJhdaKo

[1] https://github.com/SidLeeParis/sidLeeAgenceConnectee

You are the real MVP!

I'm sure you worked very hard on this. It looks attractive.

Why would anyone want to know the number of times someone used the stairs at your office?

To encourage people to take the stairs over the elevator.

The stairs maybe singularly interesting as a novelty or curiosity, but to gain better perspective, you'll want the stairs, hallways, entry/exit-ways, etc.

If you can gather data of human traffic flow around the workplace in all sort of spots, you can then analyze that data to gain perspective on that flow. And it's not so much of the obvious patterns, but maybe those that didn't seem obvious (until hindsight after the fact). Proximity and placement of different facilities (printing/copying facilities, toilet facilities, lounge/kitchen facilities) within the office space can lend to different interactions or even wasted time.

And, of course, one can casually observe and make qualitative observations. But those qualitative observations may not necessarily be impartial nor rigorous in their recording. To avoid subjectivity and anecdotal evidence, quantitative evidence through raw data recording aids in eliminating potential subjectivity.

Based on this, you may choose to layout the office space differently. Or when choosing a new office, you may better know certain attributes you're looking for in a space.

For example, Pixar's centrally located toilet facilities intentionally shape traffic flow with the intent of increasing interactions among employees for facilitating potential conversation and discussion.

As shiftpgdn mentioned, another example seen often is stairs vs. escalator/elevator usage for encouraging subtle, healthier choices. The counter, when displayed publicly for those respective areas, can serve as a mechanism for real-time, interactive feedback to the observer. Confronted with this reminder, it may coax them a little, giving them the little mental kick to use the stairs instead.

Maybe you determine that if you put an appropriately shaped obstruction — e.g., a wall with a sign of company logo — carefully placed immediately in front of the entryway, it may result in better flow through the that area. Notably, it might encourage people to not stop in the doorway, blocking; but rather proceeding further into the lobby area to converse.

Although more of a larger crowd thing in this example, studies have been done in this area and have demonstrated such results: http://www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/strategically-p...

Related reading:

"Handbook of Positive Behavior Support" by Sailor, et al.; "Behavior Supports in Nonclassroom Settings" chapter, "Features of the Physical Environment" section (page 499).

"Office Planning and Design Desk Reference" by Rappoport, et al.

But how do you know which interactions are useful to your business and which are not? How do you the right amount of flow through an area? What about the things you can't measure, but may matter to the health of your workers? I still don't see how knowing stair steps in isolation will generate any valuable insight.

It's probably what the other commenter said. Trying to motivate people to use the elevator less

> But how do you know which interactions are useful to your business and which are not? How do you the right amount of flow through an area? What about the things you can't measure, but may matter to the health of your workers?

For most people, using their experiences throughout their life as a perspective. Once you get into a new workplace, you can use those years of experience as a basis for perspective relative to the observations of the new workplace. For a lot of people, their intuition makes this kind of thing obvious once they start looking at the data and look around casually in the workspace with note of looking at the people, their movements, and what they're doing. It's the kind of thing that after working at a new place for a week, I already would have a solid feeling and a useful perspective — not just from the new workplace, but comparing that new workplace based on my experience of other workplaces that I've worked in, consulted for, and otherwise visited.

But, there are formal studies on human interactions in the business workplace addressing all three of these questions. I don't have particular citations of interest off-hand.

> I still don't see how knowing stair steps in isolation will generate any valuable insight.

Strictly empirically speaking, it doesn't really. However, this set data from one location combined with observational perspective of the people within the space, could easily lead to more informed conjecture and related hypotheses.

However, the novelty of the single location data set may be as useful distraction; to serve as an element introducing "fun" and "amusement" into the workplace at acceptable levels of "fun" and "amusement". (There are studies on this, as well. This information can serve as a device to break monotony and a "humdrum" atmosphere. You can employ other devices as well. For example, free soda can be used as a device. Whether or not that device works effective and the full consequences (positive & negative) is beyond the scope of this simple comment.)

If you want to pursue this beyond typical intuition, I recommend taking human behavior studies in psychology with respect to interior design and architecture.

This goes beyond just traffic flow, but incorporates other aspects of the environment and its influence on humans.

However, you don't need to have academic training to be useful. Many people have the intuition to reasonably and appropriately make observations, analyze, and comment on their surroundings.

But, on the more academic side of things, here are some quick and dirty Google search results. Random examples of literature in ballpark of this field in an assortment of contexts:

A Homely Approach is Paying Dividends for Patients and Staff. (2012). Nursing Standard, 27(2), 20-21.

Rydeen, J., Erickson, P., & Lange, J (2008). Built for Brains. Industrial Engineer: IE, 40(3), 32.

Joye, Y. (2007). Architectural Lessons from Environmental Psychology: The Case of Biophilic Architecture. Review of General Psychology, 11(4), 305-328. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.11.4.305

Read, M., & Upington, D. (2009). Young Children’s Color Preferences in the Interior Environment. Early Childhood Education Journal, 36(6), 491-496. doi:10.1007/s10643-009-0311-6

Moore, G. Architecture and Human Behavior: The Place of Environment-Behavior Studies in Architecture. http://sydney.edu.au/architecture/documents/staff/garymoore/...

Cummings, N. Fostering Sustainable Behavior Through Design: A Study Of The Social, Psychological, And Physical Influences Of The Built Environment. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=20...

Esmaili, Y. Consideration Of Human Behavior In Designing A Green Office Space For Environmentalists A Simulation Study. http://architecture.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/faculty_...

I'm very interested in the studies on how people interact with their workspace. Thank you.

But you admit, the data can only inform our intuition. Perhaps with more datapoints, and a rigorous platform for testing, we could use stair data to improve the workplace. But just giving us stair data doesn't make us any smarter. I'd say it makes us dumber. It creates a distraction. It makes us think we know more than we really do. It tempts us to see the problem in terms of stairs, when maybe the problem lies elsewhere (or maybe the stair steps are meaningless).

Such is the innate aspect of data gathering and analysis. The more (relevant) data, the better. (What determines relevancy is not discussed here for brevity.)

Partial data will only serve as a distraction if you allow it to. EDIT: If you falsely present partial data as important, yes, then it very well probably is distraction because by you are facilitating it to be a distraction by virtue of presenting thusly. As consciousness, you should try to be aware of inappropriately disproportionately presented data expressed by others in your environment and to not let it serve as a distraction to you as an observer. For example, Fox News and how it goes about its interactions displaying information (true information, false information, incomplete information, etc.) with the masses is a popular subject for case study in this type of scenario.

If you are aware that it is an incomplete picture, then you should be fine. Again, the more data, the better. Be aware of limitations and incomplete pictures. Be aware of context. Same old story of much everything in life. Always be exploring further. Always keep on questioning what's happening in the environment and the universe. Ignorance is bad. Of course, balance is needed. Pros are something that exist. Cons are something that exist. Things exist. Actions exist. Interactions between things and other things with actions exist. Systems of interaction exist. It's turtles all the way down. But yes, based on history, most humans fail at comprehending their own basic existence, their interactions with others, and anything else contained within their neck of the universe. Rather depressing actually. Nothing new here.

EDIT: As far as what belongs or doesn't belong on a dashboard, that would take a long time for me to discuss. In this particular example provided in the original posting, yes, it has various flaws. Not discussing that.

Also, with regard to "the more data, the better", yes, irrelevant data has negative consequences and must be dealt with accordingly. Of course, the a perspective exists where you should try to identify irrelevant data and not gather it to begin with. Conversely, there is a perspective where you should gather it all so as not to presumptuously exclude and that the data itself will tell you what is relevant and irrelevant during analysis. Both approaches express certain positive merits and also negative qualities. Identifying what is irrelevant and what is relevant has its own intricacies which are not discussed here in any relatively significant capacity.

Partial data will serve as a distraction if you present it as important. I'm saying this doesn't belong on a dashboard. Granted, they just did this for fun.

The more data the better - That's not true. Some data is better than others. Some data is poor quality. Some is unimportant.

> Partial data will serve as a distraction if you present it as important.

If you ascribe to the importance of its display, then you are allowing it to be a distraction as an observer of the display. But, yes, in practice I agree that most humans are foolish and will allow it to serve as a distraction.

> I'm saying this doesn't belong on a dashboard. Granted, they just did this for fun.

Maybe or maybe not. There are definitely good reasons for removing it from the dashboard. I agree that it is not presented well. Outright permanent removal of the vague notion and concept of this particular data and its relevancy is a different matter. Exploring alternative presentations, getting more sensors and more relevant data, etc. (This is of course stating the obvious.) But I'm not really commenting on that at this time.

> The more data the better - That's not true. Some data is better than others. Some data is poor quality. Some is unimportant.

This is often debated with vigor on both sides (okay, there's actually a gradient of n-dimensional in-betweens, not explicit sides) of the argument. (Collect it all and figure out relevancy from analysis, then scale back data collection where it was determined to be irrelevant. Be presumptuous based on experience and collect only what you believe is relevant. Expand and contract collection periodically as something in-between. The list goes on and on and on and on of possible configurations and approaches.) Of course some data is better than others. Some data is more relevant than other data for a given operational context. And, yes of course, besides just relevancy, fundamental things like accuracy, precision, and error are all aspects of data collection and analysis. But, back on topic, both sides of the argument have merit. The reality is, like all things in life, there is a pragmatic balance point. (Not necessarily a point, though. In reality, usually an n-dimensional volume, but that's another topic.)

Just to clarify: this dashboard was made as a sort of a joke :) The data is real but our idea was to make something completely uninteresting fun to watch. We don't use any of the data in a business or cost reduction perspective (although I have to say that the number of printouts makes me realize we could be more eco-friendly). Nothing here is a technological achievement per se, the fact that we brought all this together is what makes it fun.

While well done, this illustrates the pointlessness of the current focus of IoT applications. Getting a metric on how many times a door is opened, or how many times the toilet has been flushed has extremely limited usefulness for most people.

I know you guys are simply using this for illustrative purposes, but I believe there is an army of developers out there looking to make all this happen...for what purpose, I do not know!

This design is excellent though, good job.

There IS an army of developers waiting to make this happen.

https://www.myvessyl.com/

Look. It's a cup that tells you what you're drinking and records it. Why? I don't know. To lose weight? Why not just drink water? I don't know!

And it gets stupider from there. We have an obsession here with recording every little thing. That's great, if that data changes behavior. But some data just tells you what you already know, and stresses you out.

People in the 1st world have enough data. What we need is clarity! I want to retreat to a monastery sometimes.

Don't forget paper [1] and pencil [2] to go with your cup!

[1] http://www.fiftythree.com/paper

[2] http://www.fiftythree.com/pencil

Maybe this tech could be extended to create anti-drug cups en-masse for bars, or maybe use it for simple safe-water testing? Or what if diabetics could use it to test for sugar levels? Just speculating, I have no idea how it works though.

These questions were asked when Vessyl made the front page months ago.

1. It can't detect date rape drugs. 2. It can't tell if your water is clean. 3. After detecting what you're drinking, it will tell you on average, how much sugar that drink has. Maybe that's useful for diabetics. Not sure. But it's not being marketed to diabetics. It's being marketed to tech people who like tracking things.

BTW, Love "Pencil". Especially this quote: "An artisanally crafted tool. The body is milled from a solid piece of premium-grade walnut that has met rigorous standards for sustainability. Each Pencil has a unique character that will subtly change with years of use."

Ha. Artisinally crafted. Walnut. Stylus.

You've made Ed Tufte cry... The concept is cool, but the display is terrible. Black and white, seriously? There is no organization, no drawing attention to the relevant data (is anything recently changed? Out of the usual range?). Just a bunch of data thrown at the screen.

Don't give up, but you got some ways to go.

I love things like these, but I'm worried about the security implications (even though they're hosted on my own server). I've been thinking about encrypting the values (I only do TLS now), but you can probably get a lot of information from traffic analysis alone.

A bigger question is how to send the control signals (e.g. lights/AC on/off) in a secure manner, so I've devised a protocol that uses ECC keys to sign each request. The keys are exchanged during an initial pairing process, and then the client (the thing that controls the lights) knows to trust the controller (the mobile phone or PC). If you don't have the private key, which is only ever generated and stored on the device, you can't control anything, so it's even safe in the clear.

Hi StavrosK, you're right to be worried. We had someone playing with the API this week and sending wrong events. Security wasn't a primary concern for us, we started this as an internal joke (first version didn't even have a token system). Just to be clear, the light switch doesn't trigger a real light, but the way we handle sending sending the events from the browser is pretty dirty :)

Yep, you need at least a shared secret that isn't published anywhere for sending the events (reading them is fine if you're public).

Given your description I think this is the kind of thing that Client Side Certs are intended for. At least from the PC to server. on the server to IoT device side there are things like Z-Wave that do something like you describe (though proprietary and not well known how secure it is, to me at least). The big issue with signing alone though is that it can leave you vulnerable to replay attacks if you don't have some method to validate that it's a new request and not an old one. Typical methods i think are time based, e.g. command is only valid for 1 minute but this requires synced clocks on all devices. Or using an always incrementing number for each command and remembering which one was last sent which is easier on the device side but only allows a single master controller unless you get fancy on the master side.

The problem with client-side certs is that things go through a queue, yeah. CSC are only secure to the server, not to the other device. You're right about the replay attacks, that's why I include a timestamp. Since commands usually take less than a second, it works well enough, but sequence numbers work too, yep.

Killjoy :(. I thought the whole point of IoT was to be able to flicker your neighbour's lights, turn on music on your crush's radio and flush random toilets remotely.

(I'm only partially joking. Security and fun seem to be mutually exclusive.)

Unfortunately, some people have a different concept of fun from ours :P

That's a good point, since i'm no expert in security things, I'm struggling finding an adequate solution.

We have a private token, that the arduinos post along with the measure. It seems enough for our use case, but not at all for sensitive data.

Security in IoT is a big concern, an I need to know more about it.

There are things you can do, the problem is that the Arduino isn't powerful enough to do any sort of crypto on the chip. I use it as a peripheral to a computer, which just reads the Arduino and posts the data to the server. Signing/encryption happens there, but a Raspberry Pi would also be a good solution for that.

This is a clean looking dashboard! Nicely done. Is it a live demonstration? If so, what hardware do you use or do you have any blogposts about it?

I'm curious about a lot of things, like how did you integrate this with common hardware? (eg. the widget with footballs used)

Seems like a lot of nifty Arduino implementations. At the bottom they give credit to the work of "Arduino and Server." Edit: ...and at the top it states "Real time data with Arduino."

Yep, 7 arduino ethernet (thanks to all the rj45+poe sockets on the walls in the agency), 2 spark cores (wifi), around 50 electronical parts (sensors and stuff), and some programs running on the internal network (cmd+z and printed sheets measures)

Click many times on the switch button in the bottom left, you could get a reward.

In the Arduino source, it seems that each sensor has a token that has been hardcoded into the query to send data to the API.

Wouldn't this make it way too easy for somebody to fudge your data by sending fake API requests?

yes, that was a stupid move, i just removed them

What a fantastic tinker tool! You're clearly using a lot of different sensors for a lot of goofy reasons, but that is the very basis for curiosity!

Well done and thanks for sharing your code!

> Sorry, we were too lazy to optimize this site for your current browser. Please download Chrome for the best viewing experience.

Sorry I am too lazy to care about browser specific web sites.

Fair enough :) Do you mind sharing what's your browser? Trust me, it's been hard enough to work on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, iOS and Android for a first try!

Works absolutely fine for me in Firefox. Top job.

It shows the banner in IE but then it is actually very slow.

Isn't IE 10/11 still the most popular browser?

http://gs.statcounter.com/

Firefox ESR 31.3.0

I had the same message on my Windows Phone 8.

It actually doesn't show too bad. So I would anyway rewrite this message.

- First, why absolutely say Chrome ? Especially if it actually works in Firefox.

- Second, well, even if I wanted, I can't download Chrome on Windows Phone, so I would say that you should detect when it's a smartphone and show a different message then.

- Third, I can understand that it's a lot of work to support all of those platforms, so I don't necessarily expect that you fix the issues with Windows Phone, but that really irritates me when people always advise to download Chrome. This is not IE 6 times anymore, we should all learn from it :)

You're right. We'll change the message as soon as I come back to my desk. To be honest, the fact is that for the specific widgets and animations we're using, Chrome gets the best performance (at least on my MacBook Air). Firefox also has troubles with the dotted attribute for border css that we use for the lux widget. But Safari works ok, just as any WebKit browser! And for the record I use safari as my primary browser :)

New message is up, linking to browsehappy.com :)

Yes, saw the commit on your project, thanks ! :)

Ha and to not be totally negative, because I like it a lot, is the code open source somewhere ?

Yep. https://github.com/SidLeeParis/sidLeeAgenceConnectee

Thanks, I'm especially interested in the dashboard part since I have a personal project with a "dashboard" view ! :)

You lucky bastard, all I got was a blank black page.

Seems fairly mutual then.

I believe the tone of the message is to take the onus to the developer - if they had more time, or if your browser respected standards moar, you would be able to visit the website without caring about which browser you use.

Front-end development, with the variety of form factors and browsers can be a thankless task which not many people respect - I think their message could be far worse personally.

People are leaving at 2/3AM? Hope this was an office event!

I find it crazy that people leave/come in to the office at 4AM/5AM in the mornings. Also note the peak in CMD-Z at 12am... :/

Yep. Unfortunately, it happens that we work late. We had a pitch presentation this morning, creative team working all night :S

All I see on this page in my browser is a pulsing white circle in the middle of the screen.

HN'ers do you see something else? Is it just me?

We experienced a server crash a few minutes ago, I think your problem is related. Can you please refresh the page?

This is totally what IOT NEEDED!~!!!!! Ive always though this. incredible work guys! how can I contribute?

Impressive. What kind of sensor was used to determine the goals for table-football?

Arduino + IR beams https://www.dropbox.com/s/yyof9imgl6ps1aq/2015-01-22%2022.32...

2-3 degrees lower would be great for savings and the environment (+ health) :D

And for people working there! To be honest, the sensor is near a radiator, ambient temperature is hot, but not that much ;)

This crashes chrome on iOS. Seems like a cool project though.

A prime example of why dashboards are useless. Information that nobody needs (toilet flushes? ctrl, excuse me, apple-z's?) shown in a shiny way.

A prime example of why comments are useless :) Opinions that nobody needs shown in a shiny website.

Information that nobody needs

Wow.

Toilet flushes: a significant change in the frequency of toilet flushes may indicate the spread of communicable diseases such as gastroenteritis, or community health problems like food poisoning.

Apple-z: Clearly someone is having a lot of problems with whatever software they are using. There is a UX optimisation opportunity there.

> Toilet flushes: a significant change in the frequency of toilet flushes may indicate the spread of communicable diseases such as gastroenteritis, or community health problems like food poisoning.

Well, you can't learn anything from just a number of today's flushes. With a proper chart graphing frequency over time and emphasizing changes, sure. But that's not what you get on the dashboard, at least without clicking. The lone number is useless.

> Apple-z: Clearly someone is having a lot of problems with whatever software they are using. There is a UX optimisation opportunity there.

Well, maybe. You can't tell from a lone number. Again, the graphs you can find when you click around could be useful, but not what you get by default.

Information is useless if it doesn't help you make decisions.

Hover over that tile and you get a (+). Click on that, and you can graph by day/month/year.

I know. But some (most?) of this data should be shown by default if you want to be able to just glance at the dashboard and learn anything useful.

If there is ONE thing that we are really interested in knowing: what side of the table football is statistically the best. That's a REAL insight.

I think you'd know if everyone in the office had food poisoning. Because everyone would be shitting their brains out.

I agree. Now, it looks cute, I must say, but I think it's mostly useless. The industry now seems to be in the phase of cargo-culting measurements - all going "we have to put EVERYTHING on graphs!" without stopping for a moment and asking "what am I planning to do with this data?".

Graphs, tables and other ways of representing data should be there to help you make decisions, not to just look cool. So yeah, go ahead and collect toilet flushing data; maybe you'll find something interesting there. But the way it's presented now, most of that data is useless. The number of toilet flushes since today morning doesn't really tell you anything without context. Even "x% above/below average of last week", or better, a sparkline of previous week's worth of data would give you some baseline that could let you interpret that flush count in a useful way.

Basically, my gripe with people in IoT and Quantified Self is that they totally cargo-cult graphs and dashboards.

It's just a fun experiment for an agency to get into IoT and then be able to provide nice IoT stuff to their clients, data is presented as "Real-time [un]interesting data". No cult here, just fun experiment.

Sure, but I used it to make a general point. A lot of "serious" IoT and QS startups seem to make that mistake.

Dynamic infographics.. Excellent.

Nicely done. Excellent !

Just amazing idea !

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