Tinkering in London
I have just arrived at the end of a few weeks in TinkerLondon helping on, and observing the beginnings of a project called ‘HomeSense‘. This is an open research project, enabling user led innovation in the Smart Home sphere. It is a collaboration between TinkerLondon and EDF. Why? This is where my PhD seems to be directing itself to and as such I have been observing a more industrially focused attitude towards this type of approach to innovation. My findings have been interesting and somewhat surprising to say the least.
Homesense brings the open collaboration methods of online communities to physical infrastructures in the home. Instead of having products forced on them through a top-down design process, selected households will create their own smart homes and live with the technologies that they have developed themselves without any prior technical expertise. My role in this has been to consider the toolkit design.
I’ve had a lovely time with the Tinker team, they really are the people to watch. Thank you!
Go follow @TinkerLondon and @Home_Sense now!
Design your own smart home?
Hello!
I’ve been observing the beginnings of a project by TinkerLondon involving DIY smart homes which will run over autumn of this year, and I wondered if you might be interested (or know other folks who would be)?
The project involves giving 6 homes across Europe a research kit of the latest open hardware tech, and training in how to use them. They then have up to 3 months in the autumn to play with the tech, make interesting things, and share their experiences through blogs and videos. Each household will also be partnered with some local technology experts who will help them throughout the autumn and provide support where-ever’s needed.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about technology – all of the kit and the training is designed so that folks with any amount (or not) of tech know-how. We’re actually really interested to see what kind of things non-techy people would make and how they make it. There’s no constraints on what toys people can build: people could track their cats, their plants, measure how often the fridge door opens, and anything else they fancy.
There’s more information here - www.homesenseproject.com – and do give me a yell if you need to know more. We’re on a pretty tight deadline to find our final round of households so do let us know soon if you fancy it, and please please do pass this on to anyone else who might be interested!
Cheers,
Natasha
Details available here:
http://www.homesenseproject.com/about/
Sign up here:
_Households
http://www.homesenseproject.com/make-me-a-smart-home/
_Experts
http://www.homesenseproject.com/become-an-expert/
Tag Cloud
Blog Directory
Our sponsors
