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Enhancing your Parallax project with REST API’s — Parallax Forums

Enhancing your Parallax project with REST API’s

Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
edited 2014-08-12 10:20 in General Discussion
Web API’s are a very hot topic now. There are over 50,000 known web API’s and the programmable web (URL below) is a website with a list of over 11,000 API’s that can be used as a reference..I’ve been using web based API’s lately ( a few projects) with my Android , Window’s (I can do it for iOS as well) projects and the more I use them the more interesting they become.Because the API’s are based on JSON, REST , XML etc they are language independent and cross platform.

Does Parallax need web API’s? If so what would you do with them? What API’s would you like for them to provide?


For example;

A web API for the Parallax store would allow dealers to customize the info they receive in real time. They could select only the product info they are interested in and present it any way they want.

Enhancing the Parallax website:


Searching for topics:


Example API IEEE (Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/ieee

.

Customizing the Parallax web store experience:

Example Store API


BestBuy Example:

https://developer.bestbuy.com/blog



Adding API's to Projects (Food for thought):

1. Is it practical to add computer vision to a robotics project via WiFi and a web API?

2. Is anyone using a web based API as part of their Parallax project?


A Few Robotics ideas:
MyRobots API

http://www.myrobots.com/
Computer vision api for facial recognition :A computer vision api for facial recognition and facial detection that is a perfect face.com replacement. We currently have a free api for face detection.


https://www.mashape.com/lambda/face#!documentation




What’s required to experiment?

If we were to use the Propeller chip as an example (Spinneret or a Propeller chip with a Wifi/Ethernet add on) Someone ( Hi Mike G LOL) would need to write some Asm/Spin REST and JSON objects to be used as a base starting point.


References:
REST


Programmable web- API news, references and info:
http://www.programmableweb.com/

JSON
http://json.org/

REST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer


http://blog.mashape.com/list-of-50-face-detection-recognition-apis/

Interesting read:
A cloud robotics architecture for an emergency management and
monitoring service in a smart city environment

List of 50+ Face Detection / Recognition APIs, libraries, and software
http:// http://roboearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/final-1.pdf

Comments

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-08-12 09:43
    Bob,

    Sounds like you are catching up with technology initiated in 2005 :)

    Recently there has been some work going on with having a Spin IDE (Like the Prop Tool or Propeller IDE) running in your browser and programming a Propeller attached somewhere else on the net. Which for sure needs a "WEB API".

    You are of course free to design your own API for anything. Just write the server to handle it.
  • Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
    edited 2014-08-12 10:02
    Heater. wrote: »
    Bob,

    Sounds like you are catching up with technology initiated in 2005 :)

    Recently there has been some work going on with having a Spin IDE (Like the Prop Tool or Propeller IDE) running in your browser and programming a Propeller attached somewhere else on the net. Which for sure needs a "WEB API".

    You are of course free to design your own API for anything. Just write the server to handle it.

    I meant to specifically talk about the proliferation of REST API's and would like to know if anyone is using them in a Propeller chip project. Care to share a link?(I modified the heading)
  • Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
    edited 2014-08-12 10:12
    I Googled for a JSON Propeller chip object and checked the object exchange again but I don't see any available objects. You would need that first to allow something like the Spinneret parses the response.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-08-12 10:14
    Well it's an interesting idea Bob. Once you have the capability to connect your Propeller to the internet, by whatever means, then you have an ocean of possibilities.

    We are basically talking about the "Internet of Things" as the young ones like to call it now a days. Formerly it was known as "Machine to Machine" or "M2M".

    Sparkfun has recently launched a WEB API to allow your MCU to publish data to the net. Might be useful for those remote data logging or home automation apps.

    Then there is the Electric Imp that connects your MCU to the WEB with very small and simple hardware and APIs

    Efforts like MQTT, whilst not WEB based exactly offer a lot of potential.

    It's a rapidly expanding field right now.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-08-12 10:20
    JSON is a very nice and simple data exchange format. Especially if you are using JavaScript on your embedded app.

    However it's possible that even a simple JSON parser is too much for a Propeller.

    It could however be handled by that 20 dollar Linux running machine that interfaces your Propeller, via a serial port, to the net, via WIFI or whatever.

    I guess if your JSON is very simple it could be done on the Propeller. After all something like: 
    {"x"="22.3", "y"="100", "x"="0"}
    is valid JSON that you could easily parse and use on the Propeller itself.
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