Tag Archives

Thingful, search engine for data

By Thursday, November 13, 2014 Resources, Sciences & Technology Tags: 0067, Data, Mapping, Mining, Tools Permalink 0

Note: Thingful is a “search engine” (beta version) for data and artifacts/sensors that produce data (the coming “Internet of Things” so to say, but also and mainly weather stations, aircrafts and Rastracks at this day). Already quite loaded, the content of the search engine and its map will with no doubt explode in the close future. It is a project by former creators of Pachube (in particular Usman Haque), which was an open webservice to “store, share and discover” data from realtime sensors, now sold and therefore private… It was sold to LogMeIn in 2011 (which is somehow a sad destiny for an open data project, but this is a different story) and became then Xively.

 

thingful

Continue Reading…

Toward OwnCloud Core Processing Library

By Monday, November 3, 2014 Cookbooks, Projects, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0059, B, Library, Programming, Software, Tools Permalink 0

The purpose of the OwnCloud Core Processing Library is to give the possibility to program “cloud functionalities” within a well known and simplified designer oriented programming language (and community): Processing.

 

Therefore, the OwnCloud Core Processing Library linked with our personal cloud merges the Open Collaboration Service (OCS) Share API with higher level functions in order to implement seamlessly “search&share files” applications written in the well known designers oriented Processing programming language. This will soon become available to everyone on the I&IC website. The workshops we are currently running / will run during the coming weeks are helping/will help us fine tune its functionalities.

 

The OwnCloud Core Processing Library allows the automation of the action of sharing files and the action of file tagging within an open source OwnCloud environment. Search&Sharing tasks can be threaded and/or interdependent, everything depending on the kind of results expected from one application to another. Thus, these actions can be driven by unmanned processes, decision-making (copy, delete, share one or several files) based on related metadata (i.e. metadata relation/link) or based on external data, dug from the Internet or networked/connected items/things.

Continue Reading…

Setting up our own (small size) personal cloud infrastructure. Part #2, components

By Monday, November 3, 2014 Projects, Resources, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0058, A, C, Cabinets, Climate, Clouds, Datacenter, Domestic, Hardware, Infrastructure, Monitoring, Standards, Tools Permalink 0

While setting up our own small size data center and cloud infrastructure, we’ve tried to exemplify the key constitutive ingredients of this type of computing infrastructure, as of November 2014. But we’ve also tried to maintain them as much open as we could, for further questioning, developments and transformations.

The first key ingredients are software parts and we’ve described them in the previous post about the same topic.

Continue Reading…

Comments on: Setting up our own (small size) personal cloud infrastructure. Part #1, components

By Monday, November 3, 2014 Projects, Resources, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0057, B, C, Clouds, Data, Datacenter, Infrastructure, Sharing, Software, Tools Permalink 0

Following Patrick’s post about our different options for choosing a “Cloud” software and the one that we finally made by choosing ownCloud. Here are a few related comments that develop our point of view and technical choices.

ArkOs, Openstack and RiakCS all take the hand over an entire server/system/computer, offering a kind of embedded linux system within a human-friendly interface, the kind of mechanism one can find on ready-to-use NAS (Network Attached Storage) hardware.

Basically, it transforms any regular computer into a NAS device. One of the key points about the structure we are trying to setup is to be able to host anything we would like/need or may appear interesting to probe. That includes our own website(s), web services in order to feed projects with data and any kind of applications that may be useful to try and develop within the frame of this research.

We do need therefore to keep the research server as generic as possible by using a normal linux distribution, which we can then enhance by any set of additional services. While ArkOS, Openstack and RiakCS are of course interesting projects, at some point, it may become already too specific for our goals.

 

iic_server_05m

 

Owncloud appears to be a simple web site structure dedicated to file sharing. As mentioned in my previous post, Owncloud proposes a set of APIs that allow the access to Owncloud features while being able to develop our own applications. Thus, these applications can rely on Owncloud while being hosted on a heterogeneous set of devices, network connected.

Setting up our own (small size) personal cloud infrastructure. Part #1, components

By Sunday, November 2, 2014 Projects, Resources, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0056, A, C, Clouds, Data, Datacenter, Infrastructure, Software, Tools Permalink 0

On the way to the development of different artifacts for the design research (Inhabiting & Interfacing the Cloud(s)), we’ll need to work with our own “personal cloud”. The first obvious reason is that we’ll need a common personal platform to exchange research documents, thoughts and work together between the different (geographically distributed) partners involved in the project. We are thus our own first case study. The second one is to exemplify the key components about how a small data center / cloud infrastructure might be assembled today and learn from it.

But then, more importantly, this will become necessary for two other main objectives: first one is that we would like to give access to “cloud” tools to the design, architecture and makers communities, so that they can start play and transform a dedicated infrastructure (and this won’t of course be possible with all type of systems); second one will possibly be for the “hands on” and “prototyping” parts of our research, for which we’ll need an accessible cloud based architecture to modify or customize (this includes both the software and hardware), around which some open developments, networked objects, new interfaces, apps, etc. could be developed.

Continue Reading…

The Home & Personal Data(-Mining) Center

By Monday, September 8, 2014 Architecture, Resources, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0016, A, Data, Datacenter, Domestic, Farming, Hack, Infrastructure, Makers, Mining, Research, Tools Permalink 0
bitcoin_farming_13 home_dc bitcoin_farming_12 bitcoin_farming_11 bitcoin_farming_09 bitcoin_farming_10 bitcoin_farming_07 bitcoin_farming_08 bitcoin_farming_06 bitcoin_farming_04 bitcoin_farming_05 bitcoin_farming_03 bitcoin_farming_01 bitcoin_farming_02

Interestingly, when it comes to experimentation with hardware and The Cloud (or more generally with servers), the most interesting and almost crazy examples are made by the hobbyists and makers who are building and customizing their own data (Bitcoin) mining farms.

It happens in their houses, caves, bathrooms, bedrooms, closets, etc., it seems their are no limits to experimentation. A “house miner” even hacked his own swimming pool to cool down his servers (Portrait of a Bitcoin Miner, link below).

It is almost a subculture of home-brewed personal data-centers, built at home (or at the small office).

 

A few notable examples in pictures above (where we can verify that the questions of cooling and cables organization are for real…)

…

More insane rigs:

https://99bitcoins.com/20-insane-bitcoin-mining-rigs/

http://www.thinkcomputers.org/insane-crypto-currency-mining-rigs/

 

A portrait of “Eric”, a Bitcoin miner:

bitcoin_farming_14

“Eric built a custom cooling system using water from his swimming pool.”

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043985/portrait-of-a-bitcoin-miner-how-one-man-made-192k-in-virtual-currency.html

 

And more “mining rigs” of all sorts on Google Image…

Note about “Cookbooks”

By Monday, September 8, 2014 Cookbooks, Design, Sciences & Technology, X-Posts Tags: 0011, ABCD, Books, Craft, Customization, Tools Permalink 0

“Cookbooks” will mostly consist of (technical) tips and advises in the form of “recipes” dedicated to designers, student-researchers and/or makers.

The main purpose of these guidelines will be to help the design community gain access to open cloud technologies and grasp the tools, so to develop their own projects. We’ll select a few of these technologies during our project and try to share what we’ll learn.

“Recipes” will also consist in descriptions about the ways to use libraries, APIs and/or other artifacts that will be developed or used in the context of this research project.

 

dome_cookbook_stevebaer_1968-69

Any desire to build your own dome in the manner of Buckminster Fuller and start your commune? A “Dome Cookbook” in DIY mode by Steve Baer, directly coming out from the Drop City experience, Trinidad USA, 1969.

 

So to say, we simply envision the I&IC “Cookbooks” as an “Access to tools“ and as an obvious tribute to these historical references, so as the ones who followed.

It could lead to some kind of manual of best “open procedures” at the end of the research, or to some kind of kit.