Recent Discussions - Twine community

Twine maintenance

Alan Harney — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 16:24:43 +0000

I just received this email from you guys "Hello - been a while. You’re currently running a Twine (or Twines), and I wanted to warn you that we’ll be doing some server maintenance in the next week or so."
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE hold off on doing this until at least Nov20 or so... There is a hurricane coming to my location in Florida and I'd prefer to be able to monitor h2o and humidity/temp full time. Please do NOT take the risk of me not being able to see my twine unit

how do you know your twine is working?

Paul Moorhead — Wed, 27 May 2015 06:08:27 +0000

A couple of times I've asked if a rule could be added allowing the twine to send an alert based on time of day or similar. I've got a polite "not on the roadmap" response each time. But I'm baffled. I want to rely on the twine to monitor "stuff" (in my case a data center in my garage - temp, water, power, door open on server cabinet). But unless I know that the twine is working, I can't be sure that I'm protected.

I can of course poll the twine.cc page but that's a pain in the ass - what I want is a daily alert at noon saying "all is well" (or even hourly)

Recently I discovered that the twine had been off for some time - psu failure. doh!

I thought my requested feature was pretty fundamental but clearly not so how is anyone else dealing with this limitation?

My current plan is to take a Raspberry Pi and create my own twine equivalent but that seems such a waste of time when it's so close to be useful.

Bought a used Twine at an auction and now it tells me that it is claimed already.

s s — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 14:55:35 +0000

Hi.

There was a small auction at a local place and I manage to get my hands on a Twine. Awesome!

Now I went through the setup and created an account. Then it showed a page telling me: "I've already been claimed

This Twine is connected to another account. If you own that account, you can sign in now to finish the setup process."

Is there any way to just factory reset it or something so I can claim the Twine?

Cheers!

Twine Update 2.0: Battery life and more

Christina — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:34:52 +0000

Remember when we mentioned we were undertaking a major rework of Twine's radio firmware to improve battery life? It’s here, and it brought some friends! You can read about everything that is included in our blog (might want to have a snack handy, it's long).
You can start this update from your Account page. Under "Your Twines" you'll see a link to "Upgrade to 2.0 firmware" — tap on that and follow the instructions. The website has been updated as well so make sure you clear your browser’s cache too. Read on to understand all the implications.

Battery life
With the radio update, Twine will be able to run 2 months or more on 2 AAA batteries, depending on usage. Of course, if you don’t want to rely on batteries, that's why we gave Twine a micro USB port — you can use it to plug into the wall.
The update comes with a change that makes this extended life possible: your Twine’s dashboard will update every 20 minutes. This will not affect how you receive notifications — when your rules are triggered, Twine will notify you right away, same as before. If you’d like to keep your Twine updating every minute, you can ignore the update — you just won't get the battery life improvement.
Sharing the dashboard
You can now share your Twine’s dashboard, or just one sensor. Only the people you share the key with will be able to see the data. Don’t want to share anymore? Uncheck the box, and Twine’s data is private again.
Networking improvements and more
What else is included? Support for hidden networks (with the 2.0 radio update). Networking improvements for even better reliability. More accurate timekeeping. Quicker triggering of multiple actions. Celsius reporting in rules. And lots of smaller tweaks to make things better all over the place.
Last but not least, you'll notice that we've exchanged the formerly unwieldy address of Twine's web app for the svelte new https://twine.cc - update your bookmarks and homescreen icons accordingly.

Twine app is missing on the new iPhone 7?

antonios zannikos — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 01:48:47 +0000

Why is twine not available on ios app?

Open sourcing the backend

Simon S — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:13:54 +0000

Just an idea, but what about open sourcing the backend? There are a ton of feature requests and I suppose you guys are pretty busy so why not allow pull requests for features? Let the community help out?

You still need the physical Twine so Supermechanical can keep making profit of the hardware and have a more feature rich backend which in its turn will attract more buyers?

Twine for Sale with MagSwitch (best offer)

Scott Teger — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 21:01:44 +0000

I was an early adopter of twine, bought one while at work, set it up in my office, and then completely forgot about it. I moved on from my previous company and was just cleaning out some old boxes and found it! Unfortunately Ive moved on, so I'd love to sell it.

I have the magswitch as well which will be included, but lost the small magnet that goes with it (simple to replace).

I do not have any of the original packaging.

Will ship USPS Priority included to US/Canada, anywhere else I'll add on shipping.

Best offer before 2/13 gets it. I am willing to accept interesting barters (anything related to rasperry pi, insteon, or sonos preferred)

Thanks

Twine for sale

Jud Cairns — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 13:43:04 +0000

Early adopter, moving on to other technology. I have a single Twine with a moisture sensor. $45 for both via Paypal. Or make me an offer!

Thanks

Jud

Open Source the Twine Server

Joel Finkle — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:51:37 +0000

It appears that new features and other changes to the Twine are very slow in coming. Yes, we got a battery life update four months ago, but I'm seeing a lot of dissent here.

Some of my problems have been things such as the Twine server not sending out my messages -- especially if I'm generating a lot of them, which is when I most need to see the messages. Hosting my own server seems like a solution to that.

Can we get the source for the twine server daemon, and a way to train the twine to use that one (is there a .hosts file we can tweak?)?

What I'd really like are some smarter rules, e.g. "Did the elapsed time since the previous trigger increase or decrease significantly?"

Add TWINE channel to IFTTT.com

YoYo Pete — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:36:14 +0000

I have a suggestion to the developers. IFTTT (if you are not aware) is a site that allows for Rule Based Processing of web enabled events(devices). They have channels that connect to services and with the channel, you can create rules the same way you can on the twine site.

The benefit of leveraging such a service is that twine would not have to develop / support the mechanisms of alerting. IFTTT handles all of that. They have true SMS alerting (even to google voice) and even autonomous phone calls where a rule can fire off a phone call to a number and a computer will talk the desired output to the recipiant. Plus it hooks into many different services and continues to grow. I'm looking forward to leveraging IFTTT with the pebble watch platform.

If TWINE created a channel to get the sensor output to IFTTT, and leverage their 'fast' triggers. You could use the IFTTT platform to 'do stuff' (such as texting or calling or whatever) in near real time. Likewise it would allow TWINE developers to focus on the device and the channel, instead of the myriad of items that come with the RBS and notification layers.

It's just my suggestion. I think IFTTT is doing a great job with their service and it would be a great enhancement to the TWINE product to have a IFTTT channel created.

Thank you for the read. Please 'Up Vote' this if you agree and would like the same.

Toggle rule set on or off

Todd L — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 20:17:09 +0000

I'd like to be able to toggle my rule sets on or off so I can create several rules and toggle the ones on I want to use for that deployment. A centralized rule repository or library might be fun for the community for quick creation and inspiration

How do i use http request?

Benjamin Khoo — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 19:29:49 +0000

hi

i am trying to get my twine to call my own custom URL in order to log its activity. something like http://192.168.1.1/log.php?value=test
however, whenever i click on test URL, it always returns an error. I have tested the URL manually and it works fine.

what do i need to do to make twine call the URL correctly?

thanks lots

Another Product that Works with Twine

m sweaton — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 11:12:57 +0000

As an early user of Twine for a project that I was developing, I'm
offering those that have Twines a free upgrade for your Twine. My
product is a HVAC filter monitor which you can read more about on our
website (www.airflow1.com). The CFM-GM Clogged Filter Monitor has an
option to connect directly to the breakout board for Twine, you then set
rules to send yourself a text message when the switch closes to check
your air filter.

I've had this running now for over a year and it works great!

Sorry
for informing everyone about it here and on other discussion channels
but hope you take the time to at least see what else the Twine can do!

Another Product that Works with Twine

m sweaton — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 11:12:36 +0000

Another Product that Works with Twine

m sweaton — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 11:12:08 +0000

Another Product that Works with Twine

m sweaton — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 11:10:44 +0000

As an early user of Twine for a project that I was developing, I'm offering those that have Twines a free upgrade for your Twine. My product is a HVAC filter monitor which you can read more about on our website (www.airflow1.com). The CFM-GM Clogged Filter Monitor has an option to connect directly to the breakout board for Twine, you then set rules to send yourself a text message when the switch closes to check your air filter.

I've had this running now for over a year and it works great!

Sorry for informing everyone about it here and on other discussion channels but hope you take the time to at least see what else the Twine can do!

Idea for Temperature Monitoring App

Gary Rowe — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:01:19 +0000

I'm keen to see the temperature to monitor an environment at a quick glance.

How about an app that has a badge on it. Much like the iOS Messages and Mail apps that have a badge number displaying how many unread messages there are in the app.

The Twine Temperature app could have a badge that is a live view of the current temperature of your Twine. No need to ever go into the app.

If you did go into the app perhaps it could allow you to select which Twine you're monitoring should you have more than one.

Just an idea. As I don't have any of the abilities to make that happen.

2 years in from KS & over a year since unit in hand - Promised analog ever coming to breakout board?

Sean McPherson — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 13:03:09 +0000

Is Analog support *ever* coming?

From the original KS: "breakout board --- provides analog or digital input, power and ground
(allows you to easily wire up other sensors that you think up — no
soldering required!)"

From the store website for over a year: "Connect the Twine breakout board to your Twine's external sensor port
and instantly get the ability to measure anything with your own digital
input (analog coming soon)."

Really, this was *the* biggest reason I bought the twine. Everything else I can do thru existing arduinos and such, but I KS'd this because the analog functionality was going to make it useful. As it is, it's been floating around my house for a year as I try to find anything serious to use it for to recoup my costs.

Not reading Temp. correctly

James Boutin — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:58:15 +0000

I setup my Twine this morning and it seem to be working correctly. When I moved it to another location, approx. 100yrds away into another building on another wireless network it is not now reading temp. correctly as displayed on my dashboard. Does Twine need to be configured for that network and if so how do I accomplish it?

How can I make Twine work together with my Pebble watch?

Chris Tan — Sat, 24 Jan 2015 05:21:16 +0000

I read in a blog that was dated two years ago supermechanical.tumblr.com/post/22786227275/string-and-stone that Twine can be made to integrate with Pebble. What's become of the development?

Can't Get Passed - 80 Seconds Looking for Twine

Michael Kenney — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 06:47:05 +0000

I get all the way thru the setup and through the 80 seconds screen but I can't seem to get the unit recognized. It's a brand new unit and batteries. Any ideas are appreciated

Twine, a gadget for monitoring, not action.

Tyler Ludlow — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 17:35:16 +0000

So I received my breakout board after more than a year of not being able to thing of anything to be used with Twine. I think my stumbling block is that this toy is for the 'monitoring' side of home automation, not the actual doing part.

Has anything had any luck with working within IFTT?

Has anyone found any sensor scripts that actually do something for them in a meaningful way?

Im trying to think of something more practical than sending myself a message when my home is too dry, etc. I really have no need for break in monitoring, flood insurance, or anything of the things Supermechanical has posted. I got the Twine as a gift, and was welcome to return it, but now I just feel guilty not doing anything real with it, and Supermechanical isnt really doing anything at all to grow this community.

Twine is on USB power, but dashboard reports its on battery

Tom Isenbarger — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 21:12:36 +0000

I have two Twines both plugged into the wall. One reports that it is on external power. The other reports that it is on battery power. Is this a known issue with some Twines? Can I fix it?

Transfer a Twine?

Andrew Boutin — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 10:12:37 +0000

i want to give a Twine to a friend, but set it up and tested on my system first. When give it to them, do I need to transfer the unit off my dashboard or will they just be able to set it up new? Can I then delete it from my dashboard?

Need Help On Using iPhone Hotspot as an WAP

m sweaton — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 08:30:18 +0000

Has anyone tried to tether to a smart phone? Trying to tether to an iPhone and cannot get a connection, any suggestions?

Problem with Temperature Monitoring

Javier Rapoport — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 12:19:41 +0000

Is it me or the last change in twine pretty much broke the de-facto temperature monitoring logic?

The logic used to read like this:

TWINE RULE:

WHEN temperature rises above 0...

Trigger after 0 seconds...

Reset 900 seconds after this has been triggered... (900 seconds is 15 minutes, adjust as required.)

The instructions in the webpage support this logic:

How rules work

A rule triggers only at the point when a value is crossed — for example, at the moment that the temperature goes from below 80ºF to above 80ºF.

The "trigger after X seconds" is the amount of time that the condition has to be met (the temperature must stay above 80ºF for X seconds) before it runs the actions.

The "reset" value is the minimum amount of time to wait after the rule has been triggered before it's checked again (remember, it won't trigger until the value is crossed again). It's useful for avoiding multiple notifications within a short amount of time (for example, when you're opening a door a lot).

But...

Now, with the change from "reset" to "untrigger", I tried it and I only got the first report... The problem seems to be with the "untriggering" logic... Since the temperature never falls below 0, it never untriggers so, of course, it never re-triggers either...

So...

Is there a potential workaround for this? I would really like to have an easy way to get an hourly-report of temperature, not just when it goes through a threshold...

API

Jay Martin — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:37:28 +0000

We talked briefly last year about an API. My company develops the Indigo home automation software for the Mac. We would love to see an Indigo plugin for the Twine. We would prefer some way to directly catch status updates whenever something changes on the Twine. Is that going to be possible?

Twines aren't communicating

Michael Driscoll — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:42:48 +0000

I can't get the computer Windows 7 pro wireless to see the twines. They had been working on a different WiFi network and now I can't see them to change the network settings.

Breakout board only high/low?

Katsu Tanda — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 08:59:24 +0000

Is the breakout board only for measuring high and low? According to the description "Connect the Twine breakout board to your Twine's external sensor port and instantly get the ability to measure anything with your own analog or digital input"

Essentially I want to be able to monitor two doors and be able to identify which door is being opened (by using different resistances when the circuit is closed) and only use one Twine

I have Twines in Two locations. All are listed in the dashboard as "Hasn't been heard from."

Steven Deutsch — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 19:39:23 +0000

Is anyone else having problems with Twines updating the Twine Dashboard?

Because my Twines are at two very separate locations, I tend to think it is a server issue on Supermechanical's side. But if other people are up and running, I will have to come up with another theory.

[Edit] Based on the discussion below on "Twine won't connect or go into setup mode," it looks like I am not alone. I went ahead and sent a Tweet and created a support case.