First DDiMIT Workshop – Twittering Infrastructure for Making Basic Internet of Things (TIMBITs)

The first workshop in a new digital media consortium was held on Friday, Nov. 20. The Faculty of Information/KMDI-led group, which includes members from four local universities, eight digital media content companies, and the Ontario trade organization Interactive Ontario has been organized to address the movement from screen-based digital media to more environmental and embodied forms of digital interactions. Relying on a ‘hands-on’ approach, members of the Designing Digital Media for the Internet of Things (DDiMIT) consortium met Friday to explore the notion of digitally-enabled ‘things’. Together, they constructed simple sensors that used Twitter to send and receive information as to their current status. The workshop highlighted new open source hardware and software tools that encourage experimentation by people from a range of different technical backgrounds. Despite a lack of familiarity with physical computing by most workshop participants, all groups successfully assembled a ‘tweeting’ digital device.

Hard at work on the Internet of Things

The circuit diagrams used in the workshop included simple led and sensor circuits. We also used the tutorials created by Limor Fried and those made by Tod E. Kurt.