Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects by Tom Igoe Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects
Book Review: A must for physical computing...
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enjoyed this book. It makes creating cool devices as simple as making a recipe from a cook book.Book Review: Hands-on into to computer networking
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a well-written and perfectly illustrated book on practical wireless networking. It is apparent, that the author's goal was teaching (thankfully, no surprise here -- he teaches networking at New York University), not simply showing how something can be slapped together: for every project, he lays a brief but vivid description of the underlying technology, and then shows how to make it work in the real world.
The book is a perfect example of how to enable a reader to try things without much guessing: in addition to code listing and excellent pictures, in the chapter "Where to Get Stuff" the author lists manufacturers of necessary components, including the contact info, like phone numbers.
Book Review: Fun, fun, fun
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is awesome. It goes with the attitude that everything with a circuit is a tiny computer, so therefore, you should be able to program it. The author then proceeds to show how you can talk various items from around your house--combined with the right circuitry--turn into entirely new creations.
The book begins with the tools of the trade--soldering irons, breadboards, and lots and lots of circuit parts. The author then shows how these simple items can be used to create fun and useful items you can use around the house.
In one of the first projects, the authors show how to create a replacement mouse using one of your favorite stuffed animals. Once you get the basics down, they show how to do the same thing over Bluetooth. Other projects include a network interface so your cat can send email, a wireless RSS component that you can hook up to your TV, a cymbal monkey toxic chemical sensor, and a lot of fun stuff with RFID tags.
The projects in this book are fun to read, easy to follow, fun to build, and a great all around introduction to circuitry and circuit programming. The programs in this book will be easy for anyone with a familiarity with Java or a C-based language.
Finally, the book shows where to get all the stuff you'll need to build these projects. The book lists addresses of hardware manufactures, listing of the software used in the book, and full listings of all the programs used.
This is a great book, and a lot of fun for people who like to get their hands dirty with technology. It's well written, fun to read, and the final projects will impress your family and friends.
Book Review: Bridging the gap from "virtually" to "physically"...
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't think I've ever seen a book on "networking" devices be quite this much fun (as well as practical and hands-on)... Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects by Tom Igoe. Once you're done with this book, you'll know more about communication protocols and networking than you thought possible, and you'll know it well. And Spanky will be able to play pong, too...
Contents:
The Tools; The Simplest Network; A More Complex Network; Look Ma! No Computer; Communicating in (Near) Real Time; Wireless Communication; The Tools; How to Locate (Almost) Anything; Identification; And Another Thing; Where to Get Stuff; Program Listings; Index
Making Things Talk does an outstanding job of blending two different approaches. Books on communication and networking are common, but they are often dry as dirt and deal in how things work "virtually". How-to books, like the Make magazines from O'Reilly, show how to build really cool off-beat stuff, but there's only so much background you can get in a single article. Igoe is able to take the best of both those worlds and create a tutorial on how communications and networking protocols work, as well as how to build stuff that takes advantage of it. Through projects such as the networked CatCam, the Toxic Chemical Alarm, and my favorite, Monski Pong (a stuffed pong-playing monkey), you learn hardware, software, programming, protocols, troubleshooting, you name it. You could also make a course from this material, it's that complete.
While you'll do best with a bit of background in hardware and software design skills, he is very clear on what items are needed. Instead of just saying you need to get a certain capacitor, he tells you the part number as listed on a few different sites. Couple that with very clear pictures and detailed code listings, and your chances of success are pretty good. Surprisingly, the detail doesn't come across as handholding, either. It's just solid information, clearly written for someone who is interested in the subject, with fun outcomes along the way from serial wired communications to wireless, bluetooth, RFID, etc...
If you're looking to learn theory with hands-on reality, this is it.
Book Review: Incredible fun
Summary: 5 Stars
I love this book. I just *won* it at a Linux User's Group meeting and it is fun and smart and interesting. It introduces you to microcontrollers, RFID, GPS, BlueTooth, X10 and ZigBee along with network negotiation, addressing, modules, feedback, topology, location and identification. And its fun because all that learning is secondary to the fact that you get to build things that are really kind of amazing. You gotta love the internet connection that fits into an Altoid box and talks to your TV, the quick and concise intro to web scraping, and the GPS necklace that tells you the distance from home.
These things so cool that there's even discussions about how to build famously neat art works like Joo Youn Paek's zipper orchestra, Jin-Yo Mok's music box and so-called Zygotes that are, I swear, straight out of Diamond Age. No more mystery! Just good information, well-packaged and fun to learn.
If you're a programmer then the Processing language (built on Java) is easy. Also, the breadboarding is simple. This book speaks to the artist and inventor in every engineer's soul and, man, it's great.
Oh, oh, and I almost forgot - there are these great lists of companies to go to, and URLs, for buying all these nifty little gadgets.
Anyway, now I have to go get an RFID chip to tag my boyfriend so that when he comes home the house will recognize him and tell the X10 controllers what to do. Hmmm...