Making Things Talk: Using Sensors, Networks, and Arduino to See, Hear, and Feel Your World

The cover makes it look like a children's book It is not, it is a Maker Technicians book for Arduino projects. You'll love it if you would like to get your Arduino's to reach out with sensors.

If you want to do micro controllers that use the internet you need to get this!

Recently updated to a third edition, "Making Things Talk" is *not* about creating objects that make vocal sounds or music. This well-written and heavily illustrated how-to book is focused on making interactive devices that can connect and send data to--or receive data from--servers and transform data into useful actions or reactions. It shows how to use an inexpensive Arduino microcontroller and some senors and networks to "see, hear, and feel your world."Take, for example, the problem of leaving a cat at home alone all day while you are at work. A connected cat mat can send you an email each time your cat steps onto that mat. And the homemade, network-connected mat also can cause a photo to be sent from your computer's camera, so you can see what the cat is doing. Other projects in the book include a digital compass, an ultrasonic distance ranger, a toxic vapor sensor (with unique alert), doing barcode recognition using a webcam, plus more. Importantly, the author, Tom Igoe, also devotes a lot of text and illustrations to explaining "the concepts that underlie networked objects," and he provides "recipes to illustrate each set of concepts. Each chapter contains instructions for building working projects that make use of the new ideas introduced in that chapter."The author does not have a cavalier attitude about "the network of things" and the constant collection of consumer data now becoming more pervasive. Indeed, "[T]he Internet has become a less innocent place....", he cautions. And he emphasizes that we need to know more about "who the custodians of [our] data are, what they are collecting, and what the terms of our relationship with those custodians include. Unfortunately, that level of transparency has not yet been realized in the devices and services we're enthusiastically inviting into our lives."Igoe also contends that it is "now necessary that anyone using the internet must have a basic understanding of the security tools that make it a safer place to conduct our activities." He adds: "I want you to know how these devices [in "Making Things Talk" and beyond] convert your actions into data, how they transmit that data to servers, and where they send those readings. For that reason, I haven't used many of the cloud-based data services for connected devices in this book. The internet and Worldwide Web are built on a number of open and collaboratively derived standards like the Internet Protocol (IP) and the Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP), and there is value in knowing those standards before you start using cloud-based services that rely on them."The projects in the book require a number of tools, devices and electronics parts. But none of them individually are expensive. You also will use "a number of different software tools and programming languages," including Processing (based on Java), and JavaScript.If you want to work with microcontroller electronics, digital sensors and networking devices, you can find plenty to like and plenty to learn from in "Making Things Talk, 3rd Edition."(My thanks to O'Reilly Media for sending an advance reading copy for review.)

This is a book by Make, and in case you're unfamiliar with who or what that is - Make is a lot of things. They publish a magazine, publish books, put on events, have workshops, and a whole lot more. My introduction to them was years ago, when the magazine first came out. It was an interesting compilation of odd technological home-built projects and the people who built them. The publication is pretty high quality, with color photographs and illustrations. I've got a shelve full of the first couple years of the magazines that I've purchased over the years. This new book is of the same high publication standard - glossy pages, color images, and well written text.Back in the day this would have been called a 'Cookbook', mainly because the projects detailed in it are presented sort of the same as recipes in a cookbook. You're given a list of ingredients (components) you need to complete a project and the step-by-step instructions on how they go together.IMO, this is not meant to be an introductory book, you probably need at least a minimum of knowledge and experience to successfully follow along with the instructions. BUT, I would imagine that you could attempt to do many of these projects while also working through some more basic workbooks / tutorials. One of the things like especially like about this book is that the authors take time to explain not only what to do, but why you're doing it. Yeah, you could just complete one or more of these projects and have an interesting gadget or project - but, if you look at what you are doing with each of these projects as a learning experience and skill building exercises, they are then building blocks for the foundation to go on and build bigger and more complex things that talk to other things.Most of the projects are built with some specific components, but if you have one or more of the intermediate Arduino / Raspberry pi learning kits with a lot of the sensor components you probably have what you need to do some of the projects. The other specialty can be found pretty easily, the book even gives you the website information for some of the suppliers that carry such things (you can probably find some of what you might need here on Amazon). There is some programming code that is associated with some projects, so you will need access to a computer. A basic set of tools for electronics work is also something that you will need. The book pretty much details everything along those lines.I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn to build some interesting projects and learn a lot from doing that.

Un libro molto interessante per chi è alle prime armi con circuiti elettrici. Nel libro presenta dei progetti molto interessanti. Spedizione buona, com'è usuale da Amazon

There is a real pretty big error on page 9. A paragraph that's out of step. Maybe a cut/paste error from the previous version of the book? The first book one came quite damaged and looked like it had got damp? The packaging ripped. The replacement was a little better but also damaged. The packaging was OK. I assume it's the stock before it's parceled up. Who knows. The content isn't easy on the eye being cluttered. There seem to be lots of assumptions about what you know in terms of software/hardware and even what I assume are supplier part codes. This looks like the writer knows his stuff, but it's not been proof read properly.