Modular-Things: Plug-and-Play with Virtualized Hardware
Jake Robert Read, Leo Mcelroy, Quentin Bolsée, B Smith, Neil Gershenfeld · 2023
We present a collection of tools for building plug-and-play modular physical computing systems that we call Modular-Things. Our tools consist of a set of single purpose embedded devices, a link layer agnostic message passing system for communication between devices, and a web-based programming environment. The devices are dynamically discovered and virtualized into software objects that can be programmed in the web IDE. We tested Modular-Things in a classroom setting where groups of novice machine builders constructed custom machines that integrated embedded systems modules with high-level responsive interfaces built with web and computer vision technologies. Users also extended our system by constructing new customized devices.