The Internet of Things (via the Tech Wiz)!

When I was a little kid, I wasn’t very good at putting together models. I hated the smell of the glue you had to use, and I wasn’t coordinated. That meant my models were often a bit off. The reason for this is I was playing with the Littlebits Droid kit on Saturday. It, the Droid kit allows you to build your droid. I love that kind of stuff, in part because it is the IoT integration between the art of the possible and the art of creating.  Littlebits is a really interesting company and one that I am happy to publicize and support. I’ve played with a couple of their build kits, and I find them to be professional, well built and fun. It reminds me of the days of old for me when I had the 100 in 1 Radio Shack electronics board. You could do or complete more than 100 different electronics experiments with that kit.

There are some vendors in the IoT creation space. They each start in a different part of the market. I spend time with the creators and developers of both the software and the hardware solutions I this space. Yes, it is a geeky thing for me, but it is something that I find incredibly interest right now. Today’s art of the possible in technology, is always what empowers the technology dreams of tomorrow. I used to do an IoT presentation for various high schools. A couple of times I had a drone in the back of the room, and as part of the presentation (the first time), I flew the drone over the crowd and then showed them the footage. A principal did tell me I couldn’t do that again (risky in case the drone crashed).

I did continue to fly and show the drone video, just flying the one on stage with me instead of over the audience. With stage lighting, it was less an image of the kids and more an image of the top of my head. It was a fun presentation; I should dust it off and offer to do it again. There is something incredible about presenting to interested kids (the reverse, angry and disinterested kids are really hard to reach).  There are many more things available now for this overall type of presentation than there was three years ago when I stopped. The Littlebits team continues to build interesting concepts. The Droid kit is one of the more recent releases, the software and hardware are well integrated. Always fun to see a new idea start to come alive!