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/

In this tutorial we will explain how to connect pachube to an object in Google SketchUp so that the object is scaled according to a live pachube feed.

1. Software installation

1.1. Installing Google SketchUp

For this tutorial you will need Google SketchUp installed. This is free from: http://sketchup.google.com/download/
(the pachube plugin has been tested on versions 6 and 7 for Mac and PC)

Introduction

Pachube provides most of its functionality via its Application Programming Interface (API), rather than via the website itself.

Below is the reference documentation for that functionality which will aid developers, designers and makers in building tools, applications, devices and environments that use Pachube.

Tish Shute of Ugotrade has been conducting a lengthy interview with Pachube founder, Usman Haque, over the last couple of weeks and the results have just been published:

Pachube, Patching the Planet: Interview with Usman Haque

The interview describes how Pachube was founded in response to current predicaments within the field of ubiquitous computing and how "an ethically driven business model [will] allow a diverse group of companies and individuals to transition to the internet of things":

Our new carbon footprint calculation app makes it very easy to take any Pachube feed that measures electricity consumption in watts or kilowatts and convert it into a Pachube feed that shows a realtime estimated carbon footprint for the last 15 minutes, the last hour and the last 24 hours.

The app makes use of international data provided by 'AMEE - The world's energy meter'. AMEE provides figures that are specific to electricity suppliers in UK & Ireland and specific to country in the rest of the world.

This app, combined with the Current Cost app makes it simple to monitor your carbon footprint on a day to day basis!

From today, the creation of Pachube-enabled mashups and applications should be a whole lot easier. You can now retrieve feeds in JSON format and also retrieve lists of feeds in a number of new ways.

You will find the JSON url for an environment under the EEML and CSV links on each feed page. The shortcut is just to use .json instead of .xml (or.csv) for any API call.

Which brings us to the other bag of tricks, which we're positively gleeful about....

1. You can retrieve lists of feeds in RSS or Atom format, which can be viewed with your usual news or feedreader. We actually made a small announcement of this before, but forgot to give explicit examples at that time and we've also tweaked it a little since then... So, for example...

   http://www.pachube.com/feeds.rss
   ... will return an RSS list of the last 30 environments published to Pachube.

   Meanwhile....

   http://www.pachube.com/tag/celsius.rss
   ... will return an RSS list of environments that have datastreams tagged "temperature".

2. If you want to retrieve a list of all of Pachube's feeds then you can use the API. For example:

   http://www.pachube.com/api/feeds.xml
   returns the first page of feeds in EEML format. (Swap .json for JSON format of course).

We're excited to announce Pachube.Apps, a repository available at http://apps.pachube.com/ of Pachube applications, and feed 'plugins' & 'plugouts' that can be used either as Pachube input feeds, or to modulate and generate Pachube output feeds - no coding necessary!

So, following last week's post about using Pachube to create remote presence applications in preparation for Valentine's day, the first new Pachube app to be released there is Status2Pachube: this app enables easy conversion of the online status of one or more AIM, MSN Messenger, Skype or Yahoo Messenger users into a Pachube feed - no coding or passwords necessary - though of course you do need a Pachube account!

In preparation for Valentine's Day this year (and in honour of everyone involved in a long-distance relationship) we're going to be demonstrating some of the ways that Pachube makes it easy to develop remote presence applications, devices and spaces.

For many of us these days, "home" is an idea constructed from several places: we live in environments composited from networked fragments that often bridge huge geographical distances. Families, friends and lovers live far away, so we find new ways to keep in touch. One way is to use telepresence tools, like video, audio or text chat, and these days a lot of people leave connections open permanently, but sometimes it's nice just to know someone's "there" rather than having to communicate directly.

What I show you is how to manually update data streams from python.

What you need is

• one Arduino with some sensor
• python-eeml

Below are a couple of sketches for Arduino Ethernet: the first can be used to share sensor data with Pachube and grab remote sensor data, so you can effectively have both "local" and "remote" sensors; and the second enables you to control Arduino Ethernet via a web page.

These sketches should make Arduino-based web-controlled home automation, and remote-responsive spaces a lot easier. The advantage of working with an ethernet shield is that you no longer need to tether the Arduino to a computer in order to access Pachube and other network services!

We're happy to announce a range of useful new features!

Configurable Graphs

Graphs now work correctly! But even better, the dynamic realtime embeddable graphs are now totally configurable - you can set the title, size, colour, legend and strokewidth, and specify detailed grid and axes. So you can now scale and format them for your own particular use: website, smart phone application, etc.

This is done by adding parameters to the URL. So for example, to embed this graph...

... use this HTML:

And for these...

Usman gave an overview of Pachube at Homecamp08 this weekend, during which he outlined a number of features that will be coming in the next few months (including privacy & group settings; meta-feed "aggregates" with a number of statistical functions, permanent history and greater graphing user-configurability).

Chris Burman also gave a sneak-preview of "Pachup", a soon-to-be released plugin for Google Sketchup, which will enable you to have realtime Pachube data generate or modulate 3d geometries in Sketchup (and, ultimately, in Google Earth).

To see more, have a look at this presentation:

Pachube is mentioned in New York Times article 'You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy?':

A couple of interesting projects recently making use of Pachube for sensor-logging and monitoring a controllable electricity meter:

• Dan Hill and his UTS Masters students, along with colleagues at CRIN, the Centre for Real-Time Information Networks in the Engineering deptartment, are developing a project around 'The street as platform'. They will be using Pachube to log a number of the sensor devices they've placed around an area of Sidney, Australia:
  • http://www.pachube.com/users/crinlab/
  • http://www.pachube.com/feeds/1182