Some weeks ago we went to a open house at Stockholms Makerspace. For those of you not aware of these communities, a makerspace is a physical location where people gather to share resources, knowledge, work on projects, network and build. The concept emerges from the technology-driven ”maker culture” a.k.a. hackerspace.
We met with Andreas who gave us a tour. They have their pretty large lab (283m2) at Wallingatan 12, so it’s situated very central. They have built up a pretty impressive collection of tools, a 40W lasercutter, 3D-printer, CNC-router, CNC-lathe, some sewing machines and an assortment of smaller powertools. Perfect for people living in the city in apartments in need of a “garage” for tinkering and using loud machines!
While in there I chatted up Vincent who was debugging his weather station, I briefly presented my idea and got valuable feedback.
My idea was a WIFI-enabled blinds motor/mount, where you exchange one of your existing blind mounts with my unit. The unit comes with adapters to fit most systems on the market (“Tupplur” from IKEA is my main target). The unit will be able to parse your alarm clock in your phone to automatically pull it up in the morning or connect to the IFTTT portal (https://ifttt.com/wtf)
He gave me feedback about my choice of communication. Commercial wireless home automation systems used today are mostly using Zigbee, Nexa or Z-wave. He thought I should look into compability with those systems that are widely used. I have thought about that and think that the learning/interest curve is quite steep for the cheap systems and too expensive for the easier ones for most people. I am trying to use the WIFI-router most people have in their homes, thus lowering the entry-barrier and hopefully gaining more interest. Although he has a very important point and I am going to research alternative wireless implementations for future reference.
If you become a member, Stockholm Makerspace is available 24/7 for only 300SEK per month. You are then free to use the equipment (after a small introduction) for our own projects.
You should all go and check out Stockholm Makerspace, it should be a great place for you with a little more technical idea!
// CRR
Very exiting stuff you talk about here David, I love the Makerspace community and attended Maker Faire in Trondheim, Norway where my home university is located. For my summer job we made a 2 day course for high-schoolers to give them insight into programming and what it’s all about. We had a stand and represented NTNU, check out kodeloypa.wordpress.com for more info. Anyways, I think the arduino platform has a whole lot of potential and I like your idea. I believe the internet of things is something that will be a big part of our daily lives, exciting!