Tag: consumer

Review of 3 Recent Internet of Thing (IoT) Announcements

Working in the big data and analytics space, I’m always interested in parts of the Internet of Things (IoT) that will produce more data, require more backend systems, and help users/customers get on with their day better.

The past week has shown a few interesting announcements relating to Internet of Things topics.  Here are just a few that jumped out to me, either because they inspired me or because I was left wondering what it would really mean.

TL;DR?  Summary: While IBM is “getting started” (oops, I meant “getting serious”) and Facebook has big plans to “take over”, Amazon comes out with a consumer focused solution.

Facebook – Easing developer integration

Plans are awesome, big plans are big awesome!

This is really an announcement for app developers to drool over as it allows us to connect new things to the web easily.  “Parse for IoT, a new line of SDKs for connected devices…”

Their platform looks like it will take care of so much of the backend work that developers can focus on building out the user side of the app instead, which ultimately can connect to new devices.

Target: developers, manufacturers

IBM – Getting Serious about something

The logic behind the wording eludes me.  Are they getting serious because they weren’t before and are playing catchup?  Either way is fine, but it’s still a little confusing.  After all, other companies are still figuring out how to sell into this new market, develop products for it and, seemingly most difficult of all, trying to figure out how make announcements that are more engaging than this one.

Either I’m skim reading too fast, have an ultra low attention span, or missed something behind the headlines – because after all that I read, I’m left with this understanding:

“Yeah we can get into this too, just watch us, we’re spending lotsa cash!  And doing something with weather related energy disruption.  Watch us!”

I think I owe it to them to re-read some of the copy I saw because I may have read it before I had my morning tea.

Target audience: business, gov?

Amazon – Buying Things at the Right Time

https://plus.google.com/+TylerMitchell1/posts/ZnrdaW5ETYX

Here I’m mentioning the Dash Buttons concept – both the sort of magic wand thingy, but also the button tags to hang from appliances.

All supply chain difficulties disappear in the wake of Amazon bulk goods delivery, or does it?  I can honestly say I’ve never ordered toilet paper or laundry detergent from Amazon, though this has certainly got my thinking.  Oddly enough, refills are a mere 400m down the street from me and that’s only marginally harder than answering the door for the courier.  But I digress…

This announcement hits all the right buttons for me (sorry couldn’t resist) even though I’m not an everyday Amazon user, nor even using Prime.  They are talking about things that every person understands and deals with – the magic behind the scenes is nicely hidden away, yet we know their entire supply chain infrastructure has been around a long time and this is just optimising the “when” factor – making it possible to not postpone placing an order, but doing on impulse/necessity.

Most of us will just use a mobile app instead but think a bit longer term.  With the largest aging population in the history of the multiverse (read: transgenerational design), the younger generations aren’t going to be able to keep up with their needs without some help.  Granted, many seniors can already operate their own apps today, but for everyone else, a button on the washing machine or soap dispenser could really fill in the gaps.  Couple that with some moderation-style smart apps for caretakers (oops, granny ordered detergent three times by mistake) and I think you’ve got some really interesting future elder care provisioning.

Target: consumers and manufacturers who are ready to sell.  Today!

Who wins for best announcement this week in your books? Tweet me!

Amazon Dash Button – Concept and Article re: IoT use

I like this concept: “Just press and never run out”.   It’s the Amazon Dash Button: http://amazon.com/… – intended to be stuck onto appliances, basically retrofitting ones that don’t have them built in (in the future).  Pressing a button orders refills of products, just like Amazon one click ordering online.

Also read this Fortune.com article about how this fits into their overview vision for Internet of Things (IoT) at Amazon: http://fortune.com/…

What would you put a button on?  Scary or useful?

Amazon announces Dash Buttons
Amazon announces Dash Buttons

 

Kafka Consumer – Simple Python Script and Tips

[UPDATE: Check out the Kafka Web Console that allows you to manage topics and see traffic going through your topics – all in a browser!]

 

When you’re pushing data into a Kafka topic, it’s always helpful to monitor the traffic using a simple Kafka consumer script.  Here’s a simple script I’ve been using that subscribes to a given topic and outputs the results.  It depends on the kafka-python module and takes a single argument for the topic name.  Modify the script to point to the right server IP.

from kafka import KafkaClient, SimpleConsumer
from sys import argv
kafka = KafkaClient("10.0.1.100:6667")
consumer = SimpleConsumer(kafka, "my-group", argv[1])
consumer.max_buffer_size=0
consumer.seek(0,2)
for message in consumer:
 print("OFFSET: "+str(message[0])+"\t MSG: "+str(message[1][3]))

Max Buffer Size

There are two lines I wanted to focus on in particular.  The first is the “max_buffer_size” setting:

consumer.max_buffer_size=0

When subscribing to a topic with a high level of messages that have not been received before, the consumer/client can max out and fail.  Setting an infinite buffer size (zero) allows it to take everything that is available.

If you kill and restart the script it will continue where it last left off, at the last offset that was received.  This is pretty cool but in some environments it has some trouble, so I changed the default by adding another line.

Offset Out of Range Error

As I regularly kill the servers running Kafka and the producers feeding it (yes, just for fun), things sometimes go a bit crazy, not entirely sure why but I got the error:

kafka.common.OffsetOutOfRangeError: FetchResponse(topic='my_messages', partition=0, error=1, highwaterMark=-1, messages=)

To fix it I added the “seek” setting:

consumer.seek(0,2)

If you set it to (0,0) it will restart scanning from the first message.  Setting it to (0,2) allows it to start from the most recent offset – so letting you tap back into the stream at the latest moment.

Removing this line forces it back to the context mentioned earlier, where it will pick up from the last message it previously received.  But if/when that gets broke, then you’ll want to have a line like this to save the day.

For more about Kafka on Hadoop – see Hortonworks excellent overview page from which the screenshot above is taken.

WordPress Appliance - Powered by TurnKey Linux