Popular - Twine community

Can I haz longer URL?

Joel Finkle — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 20:43:58 +0000

Please increase the max URL length.

Google Apps' scripts when registered as an app have a URL of length exactly three fewer than your mechanism.

This means I can't do

?Vibrate=On

and

?Vibrate=Off

I can only do

?ON

?OF

Please?

Thank you

Joel

Feature Request: Tilt Angle Rule needed.

Mark Engelhardt — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:45:57 +0000

Robert Savage posted a nice article about a garage door application... http://community.supermechanical.com/index.php?p=/discussion/109/using-twine-to-monitor-garage-door-and-send-reminder-notifications#Item_2 which is almost what I need... But...

My garage door gets stuck when it its almost all the way down... So the feature I need is to have twine detect a small change in the orientation.. I need a rule that says if the the angle of the twine on one axis is between 85 and 0 the door is open (send a message every 1/2 hour) if the angle is 86-90, then the door is closed (send nothing)

Sorry to post this twice, but I wanted to get this registered as a Feature Request, not just a comment.

How to connect to wifi network not broadcasting SSID

Christopher Wolf — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:48:03 +0000

My home Wifi network does not broadcast its SSID, to make it harder for the average user to find. How do I enter the SSID manually so Twine can connect to it? It only shows me the Wifi networks in the area that broadcast their SSID, and I see nowhere to manually enter a Wifi network name.

Enormous battery comsumption?

Marc Fleischer — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 06:04:06 +0000

Hi folks,

I received my twine last week. As I wanted to use it with the vibrating sensor to signal the end of the washing machine run, I have to play a bit until the update.
Now it only lay on the table with a simple flip-over rule set up, the batteries are signaling low-battery after only 4 days! That is much to heavy! I think the problem is, that my WiFi-network is powered down during the night. So the twine is trying to connect all the time and this drains the power.
A rule for setting the twine to sleep-mode for a period of time would solve this.

Regards, Marc

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.

HOWTO: Accessing your twine status programmatically from your (Android) phone

Paul Clip — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 22:58:37 +0000

My twine is setup to email me if the garage door has been open for more than 30min. After some initial email delivery hiccups this is now working well.

I also wanted to write a program for my Android phone so that I could query the garage door's status directly. Yes, I know I can bookmark the twine's page but that's not as fun as writing a program that pops up a simple "OPEN" or "CLOSED" alert panel :-)

If you're interested in doing the same thing, here are some tips...

On my Android 4.1 Jellybean phone (Nexus S) StartCom, the CA for twine.supermechanical.com, isn't trusted. When I hit my twine's page with a browser I get a certificate error. It's easy enough to hit "Continue" in the browser, but more annoying to deal with this programmatically.

So I downloaded the following certs to root directory my phone and then imported them with System Settings -> Security ->Install from storage:
https://www.startssl.com/certs/ca.cer
https://www.startssl.com/certs/sub.class1.client.ca.crt
(You may only need the second one but I loaded both to be sure)

Once completed you should no longer get certificate errors in your browser.

The next step is getting your twine's status. I used Firefox + Live HTTP Headers to watch the http traffic when I load the twine's page and isolate the call the retrieves the JSON-encoded twine status.

My JSON status URL looks something like this:
https://twine.supermechanical.com/rt/<1>?cached=1&_=<2>;
<1> is the twine's id # (long number that's in your twine's status page URL
<2> is another long number, I assume a timestamp, I haven't played with this, just grabbed it verbatim from the HTTP request. Maybe one of the Twine team members can comment?

The other item you want from that request is your user_id cookie. You'll need to supply it when your program makes a GET request.

Parsing the JSON is easy, I just look for a substring of "top" or "front" which, on my twine, maps to the garage door being "CLOSED" or "OPEN".

I used Tasker to write the program itself. A very handy tool for quick prototyping, writing productivity apps, or customizing your phone's behavior. If you have an Android phone and have read this far, my guess is that you'll find it useful! :-)

http://tasker.dinglisch.net/

Hope this helps, have fun!

-Paul.

3.5mm jack pinout?

Gary Oberbrunner — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 17:15:09 +0000

It would be nice to publish the jack pinout, so hackers like me can make their own sensors. (I know there will be a breakout box, but it's easier and cheaper to just connect a sensor to a 3.5mm plug.)

Using my Twine to tell me when to water a plant

Kevin Murphy — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:56:13 +0000

This is a multipart question...

A.) If I stick the moisture sensor into the moist dirt in a potted plant, it reads "wet." I'm just curious how dry it will need to be for it to read "dry." This sensor seems very sensitive. Just holding it in my hand reads "wet." I'm guessing anything that conducts electricity is going to cause it to read "wet," right? So will dry dirt still read "wet" because it probably still conducts electricity a tiny bit? Or is that not how it works?

B.) Will leaving the sensor tip in damp soil for an extended period of time (days, months, decades) be bad for it? Do I need to worry about it corroding or anything like that?

Thanks in advance for any advice!
And thanks to Supermechanical guys for making this awesome gizmo.

Using a photo-cell to trigger Twine (two ways)

Bill Spencer — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:32:21 +0000

1) I connected a simple photo cell to the contacts of the moisture sensor, and it accurately responds to light shinning on it, showing "wet" when the light is on.
2) The same experiment worked when the photo cell was connected to the GND and IN points on the Breakout Board. Light will cause the switch to close.

This should make it easy to extend the uses of Twine.

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.

One way to get iPhone Push Notifications from Twine

Fabian Raygosa — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 16:35:42 +0000

You can use Prowl. Look for them at:
http://www.prowlapp.com

You install the app on your iphone. Then use their API to send pushes and you get the notification on your iphone.
What I did was create a simple php web app that used prowl API. So when a twine rule was triggered, I called this web page, the web page called the API with my custom message and prowl pushes the message to my iphone as a notification. Give it a try.

Example Image in notification center:
http://i.imgur.com/KBBYT.png

I'm sure there are other ways, but this one seemed good for now. I am just trying to avoid text to my phone

Do twine developers read and respond in this forum?

Mark Simons — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:16:41 +0000

Id like to know if twine developers read and maybe answer in this forum- I read many cool suggestions and bug reports here here and ask myself if they reach the twine staff...

LED Rhythm and duration

Dan Bodenstein — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:28:29 +0000

It would be nice to have the ability to set a blink rhythm for the LED.

For example. You can set the duration by milliseconds, then enter something like 10100010
If duration is 5ms, then the LED would blink L
on for 5ms
off for 5ms
on for 5ms
off for 15ms
on for 1ms.
(Not adding a 0 at the end would leave the LED on.)

This could adapt to TWINE 2 where perhaps there would be a multi-color LED, so G0R0B could be used

Rechargeable Battery for TWINE2

Paul Freeman — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 01:35:15 +0000

It seems that with most products going to Li-ion or Li-po batteries, it would be wise to integrate it with TWINE too. After all, a perfectly good charge socket is already there (Micro USB), and there's still plenty of room on the PCB to include a charge chip. A Li-ion battery of a similar size to 2xAAA's would have oodles of power to run it for a considerable length of time.

Whether to have the battery permanent or changeable is the question though. Permanent is simpler, cheaper and could be more powerful for its size, but it has the difficulty that you will need to charge it where it's located which could be awkward for some people. However changeable allows a user to go and swap the battery at an instant when it's getting low.

I might have a look at testing the idea anyway, a simple charge circuit would be easy to incorporate into it from the USB socket, and as long as TWINE doesn't get upset at having 4.2v at its battery terminals, it should work just fine.

[Edit] Just found out recently that most of the chips are rated up to 3.6v, so there may be issues going up to 4.2 at full charge.

New rule - Power input

keith McNaught — Sat, 11 May 2013 02:01:46 +0000

Can you add a new rule set?.

When power input change to power then ......

When power input change to battery then ......

Is a waterproof case for use outdoors being developed?

Jason Kody — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:43:01 +0000

The video on the twine website shows a solid rubbery "twine" that looked a lot more weather resistant than the final shipping product. This severely limits uses outside to know if someone opens a gate, try's to open a door, etc. I will put my twine in a waterproof bag to see if this works while waiting for an official solution... On another note regarding how not to launch a product... the one function I wanted, vibration, is not actually working on the shipping product. not good.

Twine datasheets ?

Bernard Tourancheau — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 16:24:04 +0000

Generally, I wonder about the hardware and software datasheets of the twine motes ...

Using Twine to indicate trapped animal

Jim Carpenter — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 21:49:16 +0000

Using a hav-a-heart trap to round up some annoying criiters. When the trap is tripped, the vibration sensor alerts my phone. This way the scared critter can be on his way to relocation in a short amount of time.

Battery Life

Robert Pettengill — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 10:54:36 +0000

The battery life needs to be much improved or the case needs to be redesigned so that it is easy to change the batter.

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.

Update 1/28/2013

Christina — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 18:22:15 +0000

Hi Everyone,

The day we've all been waiting for has finally arrived. We've released firmware update 1.2.

Here's what's included in the release:
1. Vibration sensor functionality.
2. Several small reductions in power consumption.
3. Celsius functioning, for all our international friends.
4. UI improvements, including Wi-Fi signal and battery life bars and an improved fast mode switch.

Save your rules, and you'll get the update!

You can read more about it here: http://supermechanical.tumblr.com/post/41735615422/update-1-2

-Christina

How I got my Twine to report the Temperature to me via email with actual value

Gary Rowe — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:40:58 +0000

I wanted to monitor the temperature of my Twine live by having it post a live temperature to a server that could be displayed on a page designed for display on a mobile device. That was the end goal but before I had time to do that I went for the device to notify me every 15 minutes (excessive) of its temperature.

Essentially this is a very simple PHP emailer script modified to calculate the Fahrenheit value into Celsius and report both values to me via email.

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.)

THEN http request
http://yourdomain.com/twine/twine_temp.php?f=[temperature]

Obviously you need somewhere to host the PHP script which is below and modify it as required to send messages to you.

PHP CODE OF twine_temp.php

//Read the Fahrenheit value from the URL
$f=$_GET['f'];

//Convert Fahrenheit into Celsius
$c=intval((5/9)*($f-32));

//Email address to send notification to
$to = 'youremail@address.com';

//Subject of the Email
$subject = 'Twine Temperature is: '.$f.'f / '.$c.'c';

//Message body of the Email
$message = 'Hello from your Twine. I am currently sitting on '.$f.'f or '.$c.'c.';

//Who you want the Email to appear from (make sure it is not blocked by SPAM filter)
$from = 'no-reply@your.twine';

//Usual PHP Email Code
$headers = 'From:' . $from;
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

//Display a message to anyone viewing the page that a message with values has been sent
echo 'Update Twine Temperature Mail Sent with values F='.$f.' and C='.$c.'.';
?>

The conversion of Fahrenheit into Celsius is required as it seems even though my Twine was set to Celsius it would only post Fahrenheit values.

This was very simple to get up and running and having tested it seems to work fine.

Now I'm onto making it post a real temperature value every 5 minutes to a page.

Hope this has helped people. I've found the information people are posting on here really really great.

Using Twine to monitor garage door and send reminder notifications

Robert Savage — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 17:41:42 +0000

Using Twine to monitor garage door and send reminder notifications if the door is left open for an extended period or time.

Read full article at:
http://www.savagehomeautomation.com/projects/twine-garage-door-monitor.html

Twine kills my local wireless network

John Watson — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 15:42:16 +0000

As soon as I put the batteries in my twine, my local wireless network gets extremely flaky. None of the laptops in my house can hold on to a wireless connection for very long, and general internet responsiveness goes in the toilet. As soon as I take the batteries out again, everything returns to normal. I do have the twine configured to connect to my wireless network, and I do see updates from it on the web site.

Anyone else having this problem? It makes the twine completely unusable for me.

Thanks!

Reset Twine

Nick Bazemore — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:41:04 +0000

Is there anyway to reset twine to factory settings to delete a rule, or anyway to delete a rule without a factory reset?

Schematics / Datasheets

John Amschler — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:36:44 +0000

Hello,

Is there a Schematic available for Twine? I'd like to save time by using your source documentation rather than do a tear down and create my own document.

Having this info will help me understand the fundamental capabilities of the design and allow me to think of experiments where this will be useful and potentially tweak some of the settings so I can make my experiments more intricate.

Thank you!

John

Vibration readings?

Ian Danforth — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 11:33:29 +0000

According to the website "Right out of the box, Twine has an internal temperature sensor and accelerometer for vibration and orientation detection."

The raw accelerometer output is the primary reason I backed/ordered a Twine. If I want to know if a door is being knocked on or opened or if a dryer is active or not the orientation output doesn't help much.

Ideally I want to be able to subscribe to an API endpoint that will stream accelerometer values. Is there a way to access this information today?

Automatic Firmware-Update

Mark Simons — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 02:14:48 +0000

I received my twine yesterday and already knew that a friend of mines twine had a faulty firmware. So i searched for my firmware and after some topics i found out how to check the own version. Some users asked how to get new or just actual firmware and the answer was: "Send a mail to supermechanical and the send you the new firmware". What a chaotic system. Users that dont think of firmware would never get the new version. Why dont supermechanical send new firmware automatically to all twines?

Going back to default settings?

M W — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 14:42:46 +0000

Hi,
I'm going to give my Twine to a friend, but don't want my information linked to it. How do I clear all the account information linked to my Twine, so it is basically a clean slate for a new owner?

Thanks!

MW

iOS7 app available

Jim Bacus — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 17:21:09 +0000

I just wanted to make other Twine users aware that there is an iOS7 app available to monitor your Twine(s).

Supports up to 20 Twines.
Faster than using the web dashboard, and allows viewing for more than 4 Twines at a time.
Utilizes iOS7 background fetch technology to gather data from your Twine(s).
View a data log and a temperature chart from each Twine.
Provides notification if the Twine hasn't been heard from for two or more hours.
Can display the current temp in the icon badge.

http://www.mobileapps1.com/twine/