I am trying to create an app using Powerapps where I need to interact with beacons ( their brand is Minew).
I want to start with something basic, like get a notification when the beacon is detected. Is it possible? If so, how?
As #davidgyoung mentioned, the simple answer is no. The most complex answer is it depends on whether the beacon can be exposed to the world (Internet) as a custom connector - there's currently no way to use bluetooth, for example, for communication between PowerApps and the external world.
If the beacon is Internet-connected, then it may be possible to use whatever the beacon is detecting (time, temperature, etc.) as a trigger in the custom connector. Once that is done, then you could create a flow that is started based on that trigger, and the flow can send a push notification to PowerApps (or the flow can store the notification in some data source, and PowerApps can poll for new notifications). You'll also need to manage subscriptions (which apps / users can listen to which notifications from the beacons).
So, this may technically be possible (depending on the capability of the Minew, which I don't know), but it will involve some work to get it done.
It's always hard to authoritatively say something is not possible (somebody can always build a way later and then prove you wrong!) but in years of professional beacon work, I have never heard of anybody using the Powerapps platform to build beacon apps. While I highly suspect that "no" is the simple answer to this question, I would welcome anyone knowing otherwise to provide another answer.
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I'm aware of Etherscan's capability for interactions with smart contracts on the Ethereum network, but I wonder if there is any other way to read and write from smart contracts.
I'd expect an improved UI/UX usability, allowing input validation, adding documentation on top of the contract etc, yet I couldn't find any other service providing it.
You could use https://remix.ethereum.org/
There is no service that I know that can provide documentation on top of the contract.
But, it's possible to develop one. Are you interested in how it can be done?
The only one I know of is Remix. This is a great tool for smart contract testing and interaction
And if you are planning to develop your own UI with an API. This is not the exact solution but check out drizzle. It has some good built in features which will get you started on the front-end parts and showing blockchain data
Both tools presented below load the ABI automatically from the contract address.
eth95.dev
There is one that looks like old Windows 95 app. Pretty cool.
https://eth95.dev/
mycrypto.com
https://app.mycrypto.com/interact-with-contracts
I have a Google Home Mini and I'm trying to use it as a speech-to-text device. The way I intend to do so is by having the device listening to what is said and publishing that input to an MQTT broker in order to my application to listen to it.
I have found this, that returns the input as text, but all it gives me is the certainty I can get this data. I have little to no clue on how to make it publish this data as an MQTT message.
Also found this, but can't make it work, because it states "There’s a very easy way to recognize custom phrases in Google Assistant,[...] I won’t cover it here". And even the Google's instructions (open "Create an Applet") seems to be out-dated in relation to IFTTT, because the steps simply aren't followable in IFTTT's interface.
Here is a quick sketch of the architecture:
There're 5 arrows. The first one is, obviously, a physical process. Arrows "Audio" and "Text" are automatically done by the hardware. The right "MQTT Message" is working already. So what I wanted help with is the "MQTT Message" arrow from "Google Home" to "MQTT Broker".
Thanks in advance.
The short answer to this is you don't (as you've described it).
The slightly longer answer is that you first have to move the arrow you are interested into to the cloud and it's not a MQTT message.
The Action box needs to be hosted on a publicly accessable machine (e.g. AWS/GCP/Azure/IBM Cloud) so that the Google platform knows where to find it.
Google have 2 different types of actions, one for conversational type interactions and one for controlling smart homes devices. You've not mentioned what you are trying to do so I can't say which one you really want.
Google have recently announced the Local SDK for interacting with smart home devices that is slightly closer to the diagram you have included. This can only be used for device control and still can't send MQTT messages, it supports HTTP, raw UDP or TCP (you might be able to implement a MQTT client using the raw TCP, but it would be a lot of work and I'm not convinced the keep alive would work)
I think I got what you need:
Configure the Google assistant to parse your speech, then connect it to ifttt (as I already did it in the past, it's very easy) to send HTTP requests.
NOW create a local web server that understands these requests from ifttt, and publish them to your broker.
And that's all!
I am working on a family networking app for Android that enables family members to share their location and track location of others simultaneously. You can suppose that this app is similar with Life360 or Sygic Family Locator. At first, I determined to use a MBaaS and then I completed its coding by using Parse. However, I realized that although a user read and write geolocation data per minute (of course, in some cases geolocation data is sent less frequently), the request traffic exceeds my forward-looking expectations. For this reason, I want to develop a well-grounded system but I have some doubts about whether Parse can still do its duty if number of users increases to 100-500k.
Considering all these, I am looking for an alternative method/service to set such a system. I think using a backend service like Parse is a moderate solution but not the best one. What are the possible ways to achieve this from bad to good? To exemplify, one of my friends say that I can use Sinch which is an instant messaging service in background between users that set the price considering number of active users. Nevertheless, it sounds weird to me, I have never seen such a usage of an instant messaging service as he said.
Your comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Well sinch wouldn't handle location updates or storing of location data, that would be parse you are asking about.
And since you implied that the requests would be to much for your username maybe I wrongly assumed price was the problem with parse.
But to answer your question about sending location data I would probably throttle it if I where you to aile or so. No need for family members to know down to the feet in realtime. if there is a need for that I would probably inement a request method instead and ask the user for location when someone is interested.
I am looking for a realtime hosted push/socket service (paid is fine) which will handle many connections/channels from many clients (JS) and server api which can subscribe/publish to those channels from a PHP script.
Here is an example:
The client UI has a fleet of 100 trucks rendered, when a truck is modified its data is pushed to channel (eg. /updates/truck/34) to server (PHP subscriber), DB is updated and receipt/data is sent back to the single truck channel.
We have a prototype working in Firebase.io but we don't need the firebase database, we just need the realtime transmission. One of the great features of firebase.io is that its light and we can subscribe to many small channels at once. This helps reduce payload as only that object data that has changed is transmitted.
Correct me if I am wrong but I think pusher and pubnub will allow me to create 100 truck pub/subs (in this example) for each client that opens the site?
Can anyone offer a recommendation?
I can confirm that you can use Pusher to achieve this - I work for Pusher.
PubNub previously counted each channel as a connection, but they now seem to have introduced multiplexing. This FAQ states you can support 100 channels over the multiplexed connection.
So, both of these services will be able to achieve what you are looking for. There will also be more options available via this Realtime Web Tech guide which I maintain.
[I work for Firebase]
Firebase should continue to work well for you even if you don't need the persistence features. We're not aware of any case where our persistence actually makes things harder, and in many cases it actually makes your life a lot easier. For example, you probably want to be able to ask "what is the current position of a truck" without needing to wait for the next time an update is sent.
If you've encountered a situation where persistence is actually a negative for you, we'd love to hear about it. That certainly isn't our intention.
Also - we're not Firebase.io -- we're just Firebase (though we do own the firebase.io domain name).
I have a client who wants a solution to allow delivery people to text (SMS messaging) in that they have completed a pick up at a particular location. What I'm looking for is Code to read an imbound SMS message or a SMS component if appropiate. This would allow me to create a windows service to read the message and update a SQL record accordingly.
Probably not quite what you're looking for but one approach is to use a gateway like iTagg which provides a number of interfaces for developers to send and receive SMS/MMS etc. Depending on your location, iTagg may be no use but I'm sure there'll be an equivalent for your region.
Sometime ago I implemented something similar using a GSM modem. I think most of the GSM modems offer AT commands that can be used for receiving and sending SMS messages. At the time, I used a library in Java that provided a easy to use API. The commands to read and send SMS are really easy but I bet there is something in .Net for that purpose that can make the task even easier.
I made a little search and I found this article with an example of using AT commands to interact with a GSM phone. I looked into the supplied source and it includes a library with operations related to SMS.
In my previous project I used a Siemens GSM modem with a RS232 interface. It wasn't very expensive and was able to manage all the messages sent by onboard units placed in vehicles. But if you have a unused phone it can work as well.
Thanks Luke, I am thinking more of a GSM modem which would be connected to the server. I think this would give more control rather than go through a third party, but I take your point and will investigate further.