Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Arduino Launches an Open-Source Apartment”.
Hey this is mike with make – and i am with massimo bonzi here at uh makercon in new york. Massimo just got off stage he’s talking about a few really interesting developments, but the one that i think is really cool. Is this uh this this open apartment project that you’re working on uh give us a run-through of what what’s involved with this? Well, first of all, um. We so we’re friends with bruce sterling who now lives in torino, which is where we have one of the offices. So we had a number of conversations about the future of these connected devices and the internet of things, and so we realized that it would be interesting to have a space where you can actually test and see what happens when you leave with that kind of technology. Every day and because again, a lot of these things are designed kind of top-down and and we need a place where people can actually live with that. So we, you know, our office is in a kind of an abandoned car factory, uh previously abandoned, and so now it’s it’s not abandoned, and so we’re going to take a piece of that office and turn it into an apartment which will have open source design. So the furniture that you see there will be open source and made on the spot, because the office also contains a fab lab and also it’s going to be open source hardware and software for the technology side. And the idea is that you will be able to rent the apartment on airbnb.
So if you want to experience what it means to live in the kind of environment that you can take part in this experiment by just coming over and living there for a few days, one of the things that you said on stage, i thought was really great – Was how these homes of the future that you have seen you know in every exposition everywhere, they’re, always fake homes and uh. You guys wanted to do something, that’s real. So this is your your response to that um. So you guys, i i know you said: there’s the open desk project for a lot of the furniture uh on the other on the hardware side, any other examples of uh things that will be inside of this open apartment.
Well, i mean arduino has a number of technologies that have enabled people to do connect the devices for a long time. I mean some of the early connected projects with arduino date back to 2005., so like the tweeting plant, botanicals is probably from 2005., so you know we’re looking at 10 years of people building connected devices with arduino, and so it’s going to be mostly arduino-based and also We’Ve asked people to you, know, participate, you know, other companies maybe have devices or have technologies or silicon vendors. So we said somebody wants to sponsor the project and help out we’re happy as long as everything is based on open protocols and open source implementation of this protocol, so that everything can interoperate not through these boxes that people have to buy now, and also that your Lamp can talk to your alarm clock. You need to buy a box that kind of translates everything, but really by having these open protocols that let all the devices talk to each other.
It’S an experiment yeah. So when does the? When is the apartment launch? When can people actually start renting this, so we’re going to be properly launching it with bruce at maker faire in rome? So in a couple of weeks, then, after that um we’re actually refurbishing the apartment right now, and so i guess later on in the year, we’ll have a proper kind of opening where people can start renting the space if they want to and then we’ll have a Blog, where bruce is going to be writing some comments about what’s going on, there, arduino is going to be publishing tutorials about the different things they built for the apartment, and so you know it’s going to be something that generates ideas and content in a way constantly. For maybe two years it sounds really interesting actually sounds like a lot of fun too. I hope that i get to check it out at some point uh, so you also mentioned um a little bit about uh an arduino cloud, an open cloud project.
How much of that can you share with everybody? So well, we again in the presentation i’ve shown that arduino has been working on this stuff for a long time. We simply never really had like a framework. That kind of looks at this whole thing as a as a set of tools that allow you to build this kind of device. There’S lots of products that you find also on kickstarter, for example, that start off as an arduino project. So we’re trying to organize all of that technology that we share with the community and provide this kind of open protocols that allow you to build your own cloud platform, so we’re also working with partners and in the next few weeks, we’ll probably have more announcement about This but we’re working with people saying great if you wan na, if you want us to use your service, then you need to provide an open source implementation of your service because you know we want to encourage people to use commercial services if they need to and Want to, but we also want to give people the options to use and open source versions of that, so they don’t feel completely trapped inside that platform. So this is kind of the philosophy we’re trying to do we’re, trying to gather people not in formal consortia but – and you know something – that’s kind of bottom-up and based on sharing code and ideas yeah. Well, i think it’s great. You know one of the things that we were talking about as we as we were getting set up here is just the importance of um staying true to some of the ethos that this maker movement has been founded on, and i i applaud you for being a Great spokesperson and a ambassador for a lot of the stuff, as this maker movement grows because it really has been uh considerably what what beyond the the cloud and the apartment anything that you’re looking forward to coming up in the future. Well, for us, this is a big task. You know trying to really provide a full-blown platform, that’s as easy to use as the classic arduino.
So that requires a lot of work and it’s going to take us several several months and maybe years you know and also the previous maker con we discussed about. Some of our development tools are going on the cloud. So there’s this html5 ide, that’s gon na run on the arduino track. It’S gon na run as a desktop application and also as an online tool so really trying to build a platform where people who are on the arduino website. They get all these tools. They can use, and without even installing too much so we’re trying to kind of follow in a way that that people want more and more of their services to be available through a browser.
I think it’s you know, for certain scenario is a great direction and that’s what we’re trying to pursue that’s great, very exciting, so i’ll see you in rome uh in a couple weeks. You want to tell everyone about when and where it is and how to get there how to get there. You know get a plane for most of the people now the um so between the third and the fifth of october, if i’m not mistaken, so it’s between the thursday and the sunday, because we have a conference on thursday, which is kind of like a maker con.
But not called makercon, it’s morgear for the general population. Uh we have a friday is the education day. So we have a lot of um. You know presenters talking about educations and makers, and then we have maker faire saturday and sunday and actually wednesday. We have the open source hardware summit showing up in europe for the first time. So i think this also is important.
The whole week in rome is called the innovation week, there’s a bunch of stuff going on people doing con. You know you know wearable technology fashion, stuff, opening, although happening all over the city, so it’s gon na be exciting. Yeah last year was a big success, and this year it looks like it’s even bigger uh.
I can’t wait to see it yeah. So i appreciate your time and i’ll see you in a couple weeks in rome yeah. Thank you, massimo. Thank you good stuff. Thanks, .