The Internet of RL: Home automation, the IoT, and location aware apps.

After the success of February's BathCamp we will be returning to The Guild in April for another one based around the internet of things and interacting with the real world.

Our speakers this month are...

Amazon's Alexa and the Smart HomeSam Machin (http://sammachin.com/) (@sammachin (http://twitter.com/sammachin))

The Echo is turning out to be Amazon's trojan horse device, currently only available in the US its rapidly becoming the hub of the smart home able to interface to a growing number of devices.Sam will be taking us through some of the integrations he has done with his imported Echo and what works well along with what doesn't. He'll also look at what the limitations are of using a US device in the UK and some of the hacks to get around this.Sam has spent way too much time (& money) over the last few months buying lots of smart home devices from various manufactures and he'll share with us the architecture of his home (no, not the kind f thing Kevin McCloud would be talking about on channel 4)

AWS IoT - a cloud platform for building IoT applicationsAndy Powell (https://about.me/andypowe11) (@andypowe11 (https://twitter.com/andypowe11))

As part of their suite of cloud tools, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offer an IoT platform that enables you to connect devices to AWS services and other devices, exchange and process data securely, and enable applications to interact with devices even when they are offline. This talk will provide an introduction to the IoT platform and will use a simple home-made healthcare 'reminder' device (built using a Raspberry Pi) to demonstrate its capabilities.

Creating Location Aware apps for the WOMAD festival with BeaconsThe Team from Blispa (http://blispa.com/)

Blispa has built a location driven festival guide for WOMAD. It uses beacons to trigger content in the app like the profile of the band you're listening to, or the timetable for the stage you're at. Beacons are better than GPS for this because they don't drain your phone's battery. We also use beacons to power a treasure-hunt around site, to allow parents to see where their children are, and to gather footfall information for the festival organisers & sponsors. We'll demo what we've built and talk about the problems with beacons we've encountered while developing this app.

We also have a potential fourth speaker in Terrance Eden (@edent) talking about his home automation hacks.

If you would like to give a 5 minute (or less) lightening talk, on any subject, please let us know. I'd like to have one or two quick talks in every BathCamp. It's a great way to try out a new idea or have a go at practicing your public speaking. Once again Storm are sponsoring the drinks. When you RSVP please let us know what your usual tipple is so we can get the right amounts.