The Internet of Things certainly has potential – and for some applications it’s even currently performing. Smart farming is one of those fields (pun intended), where always-connected sensors can do better at crop monitoring than any human ever could. Watching moisture levels and other soil metrics is a perfect assignment for low-powered microcontrollers scattered throughout amber waves of grain. Building a Smart Farm with Arduino, Twilio and… Read More
In May, Twilio announced Twilio Functions, a serverless Node.js environment for spinning up functions without having to find hosting. Functions is an easy server replacement – but did you know we have other ways to rapidly build and iterate on your product serverless-ly? (Including a new visual communications tool, Twilio Studio, in developer preview). Today I’m thrilled to shine a light on TwiML Bins, an incredibly simple way… Read More
Sometimes a blank text editor window and that irritating blinking cursor are the biggest obstacles to starting your project. We here at Twilio most definitely agree – starting is the hardest part. That’s why we’re so excited today to announce TwilioQuest! TwilioQuest is an interactive, self-paced game to learn how to Twilio. You’ll master products like Twilio Voice and Messaging while earning experience points and loot. Read on to take the… Read More
If you’re anything like me, you’ve got an entire desk drawer full of hardware dev boards and sensors waiting patiently for a project. (Okay, fine, a garage storage rack.) That’s why I was so excited when we announced we’re bringing Twilio’s Sync to IoT devices. Sync is Twilio’s real-time state synchronization product, allowing you to persist, update, and check variable state from anywhere the internet is… Read More
“Code is Creative”. You showed us how true that statement really is at this year’s SIGNAL San Francisco. Your creativity was made readily visible on the 40 foot video wall (and interactive art display) we hosted upstairs at the show. We handed out Hackpacks, hackable hardware badges with a Particle Electron onboard, which had the ability to control that massive display via text messages. Poking, then Automating, then… Read More
After spending some quality time with Particle’s Electron product, I’m so excited to share some of the awesome things I’ve got it doing. Powerful, always connected, and perfectly priced for experimentation, it’s an incredible kick-start on your IoT journey. We’re going to give you an even bigger boost today by showing you how to receive messages with Twilio and do something useful… blink the onboard LED with… Read More
This year at SIGNAL, every attendee got their own Particle Electron powered HackPack. The HackPacks controlled a big screen display upstairs at the show, allowing attendees to wow us in a live exhibit of the intersection of code and artistic creativity. We were so impressed with all the creativity on display at the conference. Over 1,250 of you powered up your HackPack during the conference and accepted… Read More