I’m a tiny bit sad to report the death of Pinoccio. Note that the missing “H” is deliberate. I’m not talking about Pinocchio the beloved character from children’s literature. I’m talking about “Pinoccio” (without the “H”) open-source semi-Arduino-compatible hardware and software platform. Actually to say that I’m reporting it is a bit of yesterday’s news. It was actually reported here in a blog post on their website dated March 30, 2015. The reason I didn’t see that blog post right away is that I had pretty much given up on the system several months earlier.

Here’s a bit of history… In late 2012 or early 2013 I became aware of this Indiegogo campaign titled “Pinoccio – A Complete Ecosystem Building of the Internet of Things” It was a small 1″ x 2″ Arduino compatible board using a chip similar to the one used by the Arduino Mega. This variety had a built in mesh radio such as used by the X-Bee system. It had a built-in LiPo battery, an RGB LED, a temperature sensor and a Wi-Fi backpack. You could connect to one of the units called a Lead Scout via Wi-Fi and then it would communicate to the other units over mesh radio which were known as Field Scouts. I quickly signed up at the $149 support level which would get me a Lead Scout and a Field Scout. Although the units were a bit pricey, if you added up what it would cost to buy an Arduino Mega, battery, charger circuit, X-Bee radio, and Wi-Fi module it seemed like a bargain at the time. They were seeking $60,000 in funding and end up raising over $105,000. Put this in proper context note that this was several months before Spark Core appeared on Kickstarter. Note that Spark Core has recently rebranded as Particle.io.

Had Pinoccio made its original delivery date of July 2013 they would’ve beaten everyone to market and would’ve been a major player in the Internet of Things movement. There were plans for a smaller version without the battery and sensors that would’ve been easier to embed into production products. There were plans for a variety of backpacks or shields including the one I was most anxious to see… infrared LED and receiver. My goal was to use it to create an Internet capable IR remote. I wanted to create an inexpensive alternative to the RedEye IR Remote from ThinkFlood. And it was a good thing I was planning such because ThinkFlood was shutting down as seen here.

The folks from Pinoccio quickly learned the hard lessons of crowd sourced funding. Lesson number one is inevitably “If you’ve got a great idea it’s easier to raise money then it is to bring a product to market.” I won’t bother to recount the litany of things that caused multiple delays but the bottom line is that backers did not get their units until April 2014 a full 10 months past the initial estimated delivery. The reasons were the usual things: finding suppliers, finding someone to make the boards, setting up the business itself. It seemed that the main reason/excuse for delays was that “We want to get the software right.” Here is my blog post which gave my initial positive reaction to the devices when they finally arrived.

The software that we waited so long to finally get was indeed quite extensive. There was an Internet portal called hq.pinocc.io that allowed you to do many things without even writing any code. And it included an extensive script language that you could write small programs directly from the HQ application without having to use the Arduino IDE or do any C++ coding. They wanted you to be able to plug the thing in and do something with it right away. That ability is one of the key things that led to the success of the original Arduino. With a built in RGB LED and temperature sensor, you could do more than just blank the LED on pin 13 like you can with Arduino out-of-the-box.

However if you wanted to write your own applications, the learning curve at least for me was very steep. I had no experience in connecting devices to the web. I did know quite a bit of JavaScript programming, CSS, and DOM HTML programming which was useful. I had a little bit of experience with PHP however that did not apply in this case. What I did not have any idea how to do what is called “asynchronous communication” with Web servers.

I was taught as a programmer from day one that execution of a program started at the top of the main module and went step-by-step through the module sequentially unless modified by the if/then/else or some sort of loop structure. But asynchronous coding is something significantly different. You make a request to a Web server and within that request, you send it the code that you want to execute when it finishes the job. That seems simple enough. I figured it would call the code when it was ready and then move on to the next step. But it doesn’t work that way. You move on to the next step immediately after making the request and you have no idea when it’s going to complete that request and invoke your callback function. I would make a request from the server for a piece of information. My callback function would tell the server where to put that information in my program. Then I would try to display that information on the webpage. But it was never there. When I would insert debugging code to see why it wasn’t there, it was there. It reminded me of the paranoid poem about the little man on the stair.

“Last night I saw on the stair
The little man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
Oh how I wish he’d go away.”

I was being haunted by the returned data that wasn’t there 🙂

What I didn’t understand was that this callback function wasn’t a normal subroutine where you call it, it executes, and when it returns you carry on. You have to carry on immediately after the request and you don’t know how long it’s going to take for the Web server to return your data. So you have to put something in the callback function that tells your main program “Hey he finally got what you asked for. You can use it now. It’s really here.”

When you are collecting several pieces of data in a row and you don’t want to proceed until you’ve got them all, the nested callback functions can get pretty hairy. It took me a long time to figure out what I was doing wrong. It also took a lot of patience on the part of the people from Pinoccio in their support forums to walk me through my inadequacies is particular area of programming. I owe them a tremendous debt of thanks. (Humorous note here… When I dictated the previous sentence using my dictation software, it misunderstood me and said “I/O them…”. How appropriate for a “.io” system). Anyway they were most gracious and patient with me.

I did my best to pay back their kindness. I blogged everything I could about the device. I showed it off on the Adafruit Google+ Hangout Show-and-Tell. I blogged about how to get around some SSL certificate problems that cropped up along the way. And I did my best to educate them in the hardware requirements necessary to make an infrared backpack for the Pinoccio system. And ultimately I did get a working Internet-of-Things infrared remote that I used to operate my TV and cable box.

My cable box is located in the living room but I have an HDMI cable that runs into my adjacent office so that I can watch the same thing my dad is watching and living room. I can get on a webpage in the office and control the cable box in the living room. I used it every day for several months and it was a real godsend. I succeeded in replacing my defunct and unsupported RedEye remote.

I included Pinoccio support in my next public release of my infrared library IRLib. I began cleaning up my asynchronous webpage code and preparing to publish it to share with the world everything I have learned so that the next novice who came along would have a clear and simple tutorial to follow I would not have to bother the people in the support forum to learn the things I have learned the hard way.

One of the things that bothered me about the entire system was that it was totally dependent upon the website hq.pinocc.io servers were maintained by the Pinoccio organization. On occasion, their server would crash and I would be stuck with a useless system. I asked them what do we do to remove that dependence. The old RedEye remote system was accessed directly to the local IP address of the device itself. It also included its own Web server in the device. In contrast the Pinoccio system required me to make my own webpage to control the device (as great as HQ was it wasn’t sufficient). That meant I had to install a Web server on my PC. I can only control the system from that PC unless I uploaded the webpage to cyborg5.com which I didn’t want to do. Setting up WampServer on my PC was much easier than I anticipated. That allowed me to host my controlling webpage with no problem.

Furthermore my webpage could not communicate with the device directly. It had to go through their servers. My controlling webpage went to a URL on their server and their server connected back to the device itself. The whole point of Pinoccio, for me at least, was to replace the defunct out of business RedEye Remote. What was I going to do if Pinoccio ever folded? They assured me that they were working on a system that would allow direct connections without going through their server system. And in the end they did so.. They developed a system where you could plug one Scout into a PC and have it communicate directly with the other Scouts using the mesh radio. You didn’t need the Wi-Fi at all. They called it a “Bridge Scout”. While that was of suited my purpose, still wouldn’t have given me all of the capabilities the device should have had. There supposedly is a way to set up one’s own server that would duplicate their part of the infrastructure. I believe them when they tell me that. However doing that myself would required another steep learning curve that I didn’t really feel like attempting. It would require more than I can get out of WampServer. It involved node.JS and a variety of other things that were beyond me.

Unfortunately somewhere along the way the device got a bit glitchy. There were constant software updates some of which I kept up with and some I did not. After not doing updates for several months, I finally decided to do an update in hopes of fixing the glitches. The end result was my device quit working altogether. I spent a couple of weeks presuming that the problem was an adverse interaction between my infrared code and their systems software. It involved going onto GitHub and figuring out which version of the software I had been using that was working somewhat well and then individually applying each and every update that had occurred over the period of several months. I finally found the patch that was causing my code to crash. In the end it was not an adverse reaction between my infrared code and their system. I was able to whittle it down to an example that did not include my IR code at all.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, I ended up “bricking” my lead scout. Somehow during a crash, the boot loader was overwritten. They talked me through a system wherein you could use one Scout as an ISP to restore the boot loader on a broken Scout. Initially that process did not work because I tried to do it with the Wi-Fi backpack still installed. Somewhere along the way while adding and removing the Wi-Fi backpack without disconnecting the power, I permanently damaged the Wi-Fi backpack. That meant that the so-called “Ecosystem for the Internet of Things” was no longer Internet capable. A replacement Wi-Fi backpack would cost $79. I was able to get the system running somewhat using the bridge Scout they described where you had to keep one unit plugged into a PC to communicate with another unit. However I had become frustrated with the whole thing and needed to get away from it for a while.

I ended up ordering an Arduino Yun from Adafruit.com. I immediately fell in love with the device. It consists of a powerful microprocessor running a minimal version of Linux and an Arduino Leonardo in one device. The communication between the Leonardo and the Linux was well defined and easy to use. The Linux portion did include its own Web server. You could also update the onboard Arduino sketch and the associated webpage using the latest Arduino IDE and do so wirelessly for Wi-Fi. That ability to update wirelessly was something that Pinoccio had promised from the beginning but never did fully implement at least from a users perspective. They did allow you to update system software wirelessly but not user programs at the Arduino level.

Although I did have the Pinoccio experience under my belt along with the experience of doing asynchronous callbacks to Web servers, setting up my IR remote on the Arduino Yun took me only a day and a half rather than the weeks and weeks of frustration that I had with Pinoccio. One of the things that was probably the nail in the coffin of Pinoccio for me personally was the fact that I could buy an Arduino Yun with its embedded Linux, Wi-Fi, Arduino Leonardo, and built-in Web server with no external infrastructure needed for about $75. That was four dollars less than the Wi-Fi backpack alone for Pinoccio.

With the success of modules like the CC3000, Particle a.k.a. Spark Core, and the amazing new and inexpensive ESP8266 there was no hope for Pinoccio. They might have salvaged it by ditching their own Wi-Fi backpack and making a backpack using the ESP8266.

My intent had been to take a break from Pinoccio after I got the other system up and running. I still felt like I owed them those tutorial blogs to help other Pinoccio users not have to go through the blood sweat and tears that I’ve been through. But I got distracted with other projects and never was able to do it. Now of course there is no more Pinoccio. Their servers are shutting down at the end of the month and anyone who hasn’t figured out how to launch their own server or who is content with using bridge mode is going to be out of luck.

Ironically my old RedEye Remote has in some ways outlasted the Pinoccio. Even ThinkFlood shut down over two years ago, you could still use their device as long as you didn’t need to update the software. I’ve been using mine as an Internet remote to control my bedroom TV and cable box in the same way I’m using the Arduino Yun for the living room. However I recently purchased a new TV in the bedroom and I cannot update the RedEye with the new codes. I had to order another Arduino Yun.

I had a bit of a scare because the Yun has been out of stock at Adafruit for a couple of months now. Fortunately I found one at my second favorite supplier SparkFun.com. I’m pretty sure that the shortage is a consequence of the trademark disputes between Arduino.cc and their previous hardware manufacturing company which has now rebranded itself as Arduino.org. Is my belief that Arduino.cc should and will win the dispute. And I’m absolutely ecstatic over the new announcement that Adafruit will become the US manufacturer for Arduino.cc. I’m confident that both Arduino and Adafruit will be around for a very long time.

In the end I think I’m going to miss Pinoccio. I was quite fond of the little fellow and a bit disappointed he never really achieved his full potential. I don’t regret any of it however. I learned a lot of useful programming. And I learned some lessons about crowd source funding. And it serves as a cautionary tale about Internet of Things systems that are too closely linked to their infrastructure. I think that as IoT continues to grow that’s going to be an important lesson for everyone.

We are pleased to announce that IRLib has been updated to version 1.5. IRLib is a library for Arduino-based microcontrollers that allows for the receiving, decoding, and sending of infrared signals. These new changes are a step forward in making the library less hardware platform dependent so that it can be more easily used by a variety of microcontrollers. These changes include…

• New bit-bang option for PWM output frequency setting. Now can use any output pin with no hardware timers. Note:bit-bang output not as accurate as timer-based frequency selection.
• Major rewrite of IRLibTimer.h to facilitate bit-bang. Separated hardware timer selection and specification into sending and receiving sections in order to implement bit-bang.
• New IRfrequency class for detecting input frequencies. Previously was a stand-alone special sketch but now is a class including a DumpResults method.
• New IRfreq and IRrecvDumpFreq illustrate simultaneous detection of frequency and pattern with both an IR learner and IR receiver is connected.
• New #define USE_IRRECV define can be commented out to completely remove the interrupt driven IRrecv receiver class from the library. This resolves ISR conflicts with other libraries such as Tone() when not using IRrecv class.
• New #define USE_DUMP define can be commented out to disable DumpResults methods. Saves code space when these methods are not needed.
• Revised user manuals to document new features and correct previous documentation problems.

Note: The included user manual update is not yet available on the website at http://tech.cyborg5.com/irlib/docs/ but it will be updated shortly. New user manual is available with the library itself as a Microsoft Word .docx file as well as PDF and EPUB versions.
This library is available on GitHub at . For more information on this library see http://tech.cyborg5.com/irlib/

Here is a YouTube video demonstrating how I created an internet of infrared remote using the new Pinoccio platform. The Pinoccio is an Arduino compatible board based on the ATmega256RFR2 chip. It uses a Wi-Fi backpacked and built-in 802.15.4 mesh radio.

As mentioned in the video I have not yet released my source code for the Pinoccio port of my IRLib but I will do so very soon. The source code is now available on GitHub here. Read more about Pinoccio (and yes it really is spelled without an “h”) at https://pinocc.io. And my IRLib at http://tech.cyborg5.com/irlib/

Update: I also did a live demonstration of this project on the Adafruit Industries Google+ Hangout weekly Show-and-Tell which you can see here…

At some point I will post an extensive tutorial on this project.

My Pinocchio boards arrived today in the mail. By the way I’m going to continue to call them Pinocchio rather than it to spelling Pinoccio simply because it’s easier to dictate using my voice control software wherein I do not need to go back and delete the “h” each time I type the word. For an explanation of the name you can see their FAQ here.

This board started out as a crowdsource funded project on indiegogo.com. It was billed as “A Complete Eco-System for Building the Internet of Things”. It consists of an ATmega256RFr2 microprocessor, a USB interface, a temperature sensor, an RGB LED, and a LiPo battery. The mesh radio built into the chip is a 2.4 GHz transceiver supposedly capable of ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4 transmission although I’ve not yet seen anything about how to communicate with X-Bee or ZigBee modules from other manufacturers.

The package I ordered as part of my funding sent me two modules, one of them with a Wi-Fi shield or backpack as they call them. They call the boards “Scouts” so the one with the Wi-Fi shield is the “Lead Scout” and those without Wi-Fi are called “Field Scouts”. As a milestone perk I also got a prototyping shield and a small USB cable for charging and configuring. Here are some photos of the devices as shipped. (Click the images for larger view.)

The units use a micro USB cable. The first one I tried was a mini USB with an adapter on it. The adapter was too large because it got in the way of the Wi-Fi shield. I finally found a cable in my pile of cables. I wanted to be able to plug in both of them at once but as it turns out that may be a bad idea.

There was a card included that says to get started I should open a chrome browser and go to hq.pinocc.io and download their chrome app. I thought about browsing around the website and reading a bunch of documentation but one of the things the designers have said is that it ought to be easy to get started. They spent a lot of time working on the software and the front end for this thing rather than just creating the hardware and sending them out. In fact the original deadline for shipping was last July and here is the following April. So I thought I would give it the acid test and play dumb and see what I can find.

The app loaded just fine and I got a screen that told me to click to add a Scout control panel. They call the control panel “HQ” The first thing it said I had to do was to downloading Windows driver and install it. They tell you to plug in the device first and then it would tell me that no driver was available. Then it suggested I go to Device Manager via Control Panel in Windows and then I would find the device under “Ports (COM & LPT)”. It was not there it was under “Other devices” which is no big deal. I downloaded the driver and unzipped it into a folder. I would’ve preferred a self extracting installer but that was no big deal. When I tried to install the driver, Windows for bid me because it was not signed. No mention of that fact in any of their documentation so minus a few points for that problem as well. This was a Windows 8.1 64 bit machine. I had had trouble loading Arduino drivers on my laptop for the same reason and I found a website that explains how to permanently turn off that feature. I don’t know why I had not had the similar problem with Arduino drivers on my desktop Windows 8.1 PC. If you are interested… here is the website that tells you how to do it. That went relatively well.

Then I went to the process of configuring the lead scout. It took me several attempts and some email exchanges with their technical support people. Eventually it did start working but I’m not really sure what we did to fix it. It seemed to me that the steps they outline history followed in an exact precise manner.

Scouts in a mesh are configured together in something called a “troop”. So the first thing you have to do is give it a troop name. I chose “The Collective” (as an homage to Star Trek’s Borg). Then you name your lead Scout. I chose “Picard”. It then searches for Wi-Fi signals and asks you which Wi-Fi it should try to connect to. You are the Wi-Fi from the list and enter your password. There’s also a manual option if it cannot detect your Wi-Fi. When you completed that a screen pops up telling you that it succeeded adding your lead Scout to the Scout HQ. It then tells you to unplug the device so that it will reset and reconnect to your Wi-Fi. After that you click on the button that says “Done”. Apparently they are very picky about the order. You cannot click done until you’ve unplug the device and give it time to reset. Even then I had difficulty getting it to work right. In the end the only reliable way I could configure it was to unplug it and turn its power switch off and on. Then wait a few seconds before clicking done. Oh by the way when you first plug it in, the HQ searches for it and tells you that he could not find the device and that you probably forgot to turn it on. But it doesn’t tell you where the switch is. It’s not obvious. Anyway after unplugging, cycling the power switch, waiting a few seconds, and then clicking the done button it seemed to work okay.

You go to the same process for the field Scout although it does not prompt you for Wi-Fi information since it doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

The HQ app gives you the ability to turn on the RGB LED and change colors. It tells you the percent your battery is charged any gives you the temperature from the temperature sensor. I took my field Scout outside to see what the outside temperature was. Unfortunately it was raining so we had to put it in a plastic bag when sitting it out on the back porch. I don’t know how accurate the temperature was but it did change to a reasonable value. There are also controls for configuring the several I/O pins. There’s also a command line for sending for sending script commands. Here are some screen grabs showing the two scouts.

There are variety of script commands that you can use on the command line. Here is a link to the reference page.

The next thing I tried to do was use the Arduino IDE. You have to download a beta version because the current IDE does not support that chip. Again is a zip file rather than an installer. I already had the current production Arduino IDE installed on this machine. I took a chance and just copied the new files over the old ones. Apparently that was not the right thing to do because when I tried to compile an example sketch I get a “compiler error” with no error message whatsoever. I will probably go back and uninstall original Arduino IDE and delete all the files and try to reinstall the beta version from scratch. But that’s a task for tomorrow.

It’s going to be a steep learning curve to do anything really useful with this. Of course my ultimate goal is to port my IRLib and use it to make an “Internet-of-Things” infrared remote. Let’s going to take lots of time with data sheets and schematics. It looks like as powerful system but are not a long way to go in order to get it to do what I wanted to do.