Transform Your House Into a Smart Home With This DIY Kit
We might not all currently have houses and apartments filled with automated devices, but from IoT tech like Signul to smart bulbs like Stack, our lives and homes can easily become interweaved with wires, metal and coding — meaning our home sweet homes are practically our own personal Batcaves. Of course, as superhero makers, we naturally want to personalize our Batcaves. Maybe you want a smart home gadget to make your Monday mornings feel less… Monday-y. Or maybe you need a device to remind you to water the plants. With Mesh, you can create your own smart inventions and start automating your life, the way you want.
Currently backed by Sony, Mesh is a DIY kit that allows you to “smartify” anything around you without any coding knowledge. Each kit comes with four tags — button, LED, acceleration and GPIO.
So let’s say you want to make a unique wakeup call where you have to pick up your toothbrush in order for your alarm to turn off. Just drag the timer software tag and link it to the acceleration tag within the accompanying Mesh Canvas app. Now that the programming is done (yup, just like that) attach the physical acceleration tag onto your toothbrush, set your alarm and you’ll wake up to your brand new smart alarm the next morning.
The great thing about Mesh is that once you program something, you can “unprogram” it too. Basically, you’re just assigning your tags to different purposes whenever you need. So if you need your acceleration tag to trigger something else, you can take it off your toothbrush, reprogram its software within the app and create something entirely new again. Just consider these tags the LEGO of DIY smart projects.
Oh and for all your super Python-Javascript-savvy peeps, you can program your own software tags using Mesh SDK within the app. If you don’t know how to code, but want to learn how, there are countless apps and websites that teach all the basics of coding. Sure, they’re made for kids, but who says adults can’t use them too? With Mesh, it looks like the only limit is going to be your imagination.
You can cop your own Mesh kit on Indiegogo for $105. Be sure to hurry before their early bird special packages sell out. The Mesh Canvas app will be released for free on iOS, but will require at least an iPad 3rd gen or iPad mini.
What smart device do you need in your Batcave? What smart ideas for smart gadgets are floating around in your mind? Share your ideas with us!
