We made some changes last week to the API but didn't get round to making a full announcement although the API documentation was edited to reflect these changes. Essentially, we're aiming to make searching much more powerful and straightforward. We have removed the "/search" method, so now you simply use "/feeds", along with any of the following parameters:

• page: Integer indicating which page of results you are requesting. e.g. http://www.pachube.com/api/feeds?page=2
• per_page: Integer defining how many results to return per page (1 to 1000), e.g. http://www.pachube.com/api/feeds?per_page=5
... read more »

Pachube is officially open! It has been a couple of years in the making and we're still in 'beta', which is our way of saying that we're doing everything we can to build and test all the features people are asking for, but the pressure for invitation codes has been so great, we figured it's high time we just let everyone in who wants in!.

We’re always working hard behind the scenes to improve things for our users and we’ve got a great new feature to announce:

Better graphs! You can now select a timescale for your graphs. Rather than just show 24 hours worth of data you can now select from 3 months, 4 days, 24 hours and the last hour. You will find links on every feed page above each datastream:

1 hour, resolution 1 minute

24 hours, resolution 15 minutes

4 days, resolution 1 hour

3 months, resolution 1 day

A new update has been rolled out, which restores the old behaviour of accepting a faked HTTP PUT (actually a POST), when it is specified as a parameter attached to the feed's API url like this:

http://www.pachube.com/api/feeds/[feed_id].csv?_method=put.

This should allow all the apps updating Pachube using this format to continue as before, without requiring any code changes.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused by this issue.

Pachube Support

Later today, we will be rolling out some system upgrades, so there might be some occasional system instability while the update deploys. Normal service shouldn't be disrupted significantly. The update includes a lot of changes, most of which will hopefully be invisible to users, but will help performance and stability on the back end.

There will be an exciting new feature (which will be followed in a few weeks by others) and the search API format will change slightly - details to come shortly.

As normal, the community site and the blog will be unaffected by the update, and you can also follow us on Twitter for updates: @pachube and @pachube_dev.

We've been absolutely inundated with requests for Pachube signup invitations and accounts since the Data Logger iPhone app went live last week, so we've had a pretty chunky intake of new members recently.

We're dealing with requests as fast as we can but since there are hundreds of them we have to pace our outgoing emails – we don't want to be identified as spammers!

We weren't planning to move out of beta in the near future, hence the need still for the signup request, but be assured they're all responded to on average within 5 to 10 hours.

So, if you're looking for an invitation code quickest you might try searching twitter for Pachube and for other Pachube users and asking there.

Data Logger, the official Pachube iPhone app is now available in the App Store! Data Logger enables you to create Pachube feeds and update them as you move around your city, storing whatever data you choose to:

Data Logger website: http://apps.pachube.com/datalogger
Direct link to App Store: itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/data-logger/id348891655?mt=8

Pachube.com will be unavailable for approx 30 mins at 02:00 GMT on Monday 4th January 2010. This is because we are migrating our database system to some new hardware. The community site, and blog will be unaffected by the maintenance, and you can also follow us on Twitter for updates.

Community Site: http://community.pachube.com/
Blog: http://blog.pachube.com
Twitter: @pachube, @pachube_dev

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

ReadWriteWeb has Pachube right at the top of its list of the "Top 10 Internet of Things Products of 2009". As one of the world's most prominent blogs analyzing web products and trends, RWW says "2009 has been a turning point for the Internet of Things, when real world objects (such as lights, cars and packages) get connected to the Internet. This trend has added a significant amount of new data to the Web, so for that reason alone it is an important development".

Thanks, RWW!

This is a simple tutorial for using triggers to get Pachube to send a Twitter tweet when specific datastream conditions are satisfied.

You might use this, for example, to tweet only when your electricity consumption has exceeded a certain amount. Or, you might use it to tweet every time your doorbell rings. Or you might use it to tweet every time a new avatar approaches your Second Life prim. Or you might use it to tweet every time your car unexpectedly changes location.... The possibilities are endless - feel free to drop some suggestions below!

As promised a few weeks ago, we're going to be rolling out a whole host of new features that take Pachube to a whole new level. The Pachube dev team has been hard at work the past few weeks and we're delighted to announce the first of these new features, something we've been planning for months: triggers.

Also known as webhooks ("User-defined HTTP callbacks for push, pipes and plugins") and notifications, we're calling them triggers because we want to make clear that they enable Pachube datastreams actually to plug into and provoke (i.e. trigger) remote actuators, devices, scripts, buildings, etc. Skip here for a short tutorial on using triggers or read on for why you should be using them!

It's pretty easy to use Pachube's new trigger feature (also known as notifications and webhooks, etc). You might use the API to create a trigger, but the easiest way to get going is to use the web interface.

This has been a long time coming and, although the site still needs a complete design overhaul to highlight and build upon all the backend features we've rolled out since we first launched a year and a half ago (yes, there are still a lot of undocumented features...), we've just deployed some design changes (a) to make the site more useful/understandable/navigable and (b) to prepare for some major features that will be rolled out in the next few weeks. Stay tuned...!

Here's what has changed:

• Global map: upgraded to show terrain, and markers are now classified according to various categories (agriculture, building, device, energy, environment, transport, other). When Pachube starts using more sophisticated EEML 0.6 we'll make use of tags rather than titles to categorise.

We're developing Pachube as a platform that helps people to build applications that bridge physical and networked worlds. To that end, we are going to be releasing demo apps more frequently, and where possible all necessary code for building your own, to show off the kind of things that you can do once your data is Pachube-connected.

To start off with a bang, see this augmented reality demo where 3D Pachube visualisation data is overlayed in realtime 'on top' of Arduino sensor boxes that we have around the office:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxr8oaRUq6k

This kind of application could provide an easy way to inspect rooms (or streets) full of sensor and environment data via a camera (e.g. iPhone)... or even AR goggles!

We now have Pachube feeds and users from every continent on the planet - but we've been wondering just how much cross-planet traffic we're generating. We know we're getting many 10s of thousands of API requests per hour, but are Pachube feeds localised (requesting each other from geographically close neighbourhoods)? Or are we really doing what we set out to do: facilitate "patching the planet"?

As of a few days ago, Pachube has started archiving historical data from each datastream. While this doesn't provide the high resolution we're aiming for in the longer term, for now it's a quick fix for those who want longer historical records of their feeds.

Archive data is extracted from each datastream's history feed and so it is limited to 15-minute intervals; unlike the history feed, the archive feed will more usefully include a timestamp. The archive is retrieved by swapping "history" with "archive" in each datastream's history URL. For example, see: http://www.pachube.com/feeds/1233/datastreams/1/archive.csv

This now enables the Pachube Viz app to display up to one month's history:

Mobile feeds are going to become more important on Pachube as geospatial tracking systems become more prevalent. We already have a few mobile feeds so we're delighted to announce a new mapping app, Trails, that displays a mobile feed's geolocation data for the last 24 hours, fading away as it recedes in time.

If the feed includes a datastream for some other value that you would like to display, it includes a 3d effect corresponding to the value at that particular time, at that particular location, scaled to the maximum of the 24-hour time series.

Pachube makes it easier to web-enable your devices, gadgets, sensors, products and environments. Once a physical entity is connected to Pachube (which can usually be done in just a few lines of code), apart from simplifying sending that data on to other physical entities, it's also quick to make use of the data in other web applications, as is done in Pachube.apps, graphing gadgets and embeddable configurable graphs.

Adding to the roster of Pachube.apps we're pleased to announce the Pachube.com iGoogle Feeds Gadget, with which you can now create a dashboard of Pachube feeds, containing graphs, maps, values and descriptions.

This is a simple PHP (v5) library for accessing Pachube's create/retrieve/update/delete functions, returning feed information and realtime datastream values, easily creating configurable graphs in your webpages and Google maps of individual feeds, text-based searching for feeds, etc.

Available here: http://community.pachube.com/files/Pachube_PHP_library.zip - contains "pachube_functions.php" for all feed functions and "example.php" which demonstrates the functions (and generates the documentation found below).

Error reporting is pretty basic at the moment - in most cases functions return blank rather than bad values in the event that something goes wrong - but should be improved over time. If you would be interested to contribute to the library the code is hosted here for community-based collaborative development: http://github.com/uh/pachube_php/