We were really pleased to be announced as one of the winners of the Citizen Scientist challenge - thanks Hackaday! We're in the process of getting some cases 3D printed using some of the prize money, photos to follow.

We think the MyComm could be really useful for accessing remote data. "Internet of Things" and "Big data” have been super hyped but the truth is that all kind of data is being used to make intelligent decisions and that makes data valuable. For example, you have set-up a MyComm to get remote access to some exciting data, what if someone else would be willing to pay to access your data or you want to provide access to the data but want to cover the cost of the satellite communication?

21Inc is a company that has a vision to build a Machine-Payable web, built on Bitcoin. Their 21 Bitcoin Library is a Python library that makes it easy to make micropayments between a sender and recipient. Payments are made using Bitcoin and there are no transaction fees. The sender/recipients can be human to machine or even machine to machine and there is a marketplace where you can buy and sell bitcoin-payable APIs.

The idea of using micropayments to access remote data via a MyComm device sounds interesting so I followed this 21inc tutorial to build a Django project hosted on Heroku that can accept bitcoin-payable HTTP requests using the 21 and it works! Using the 21 CLI tool a “customer" can buy MyComm data by accessing an HTTP endpoint. The Django server confirms the micropayment then sends a message via the Iridium link to the MyComm which queries the sensor and sends the data back to the server, finally the server replies to the customer with the data value.

An interesting learning experience with lots of potential, please drop us a comment if you have any thoughts.

JG