This contest is called the Internet of Useful Things, and I’m going to take that title to heart. In order to be optimally useful, an Internet of Things Thing must connect to the internet in the best-suited way possible. If you’ve been on HackPretty, you know I like to talk through concepts in case beginners are listening, so feel free to skip this log if you’re already an expert!

Connected microcontrollers are tools. They come in several shapes and varieties: bluetooth, cellular, Wi-Fi, and more. If you’re prototyping in a hurry, you’re likely to use whatever’s available. (I have like 20 Particle Photons in a drawer, so I'm often using those.) But if you’ve got a little time, you should try to use the tool that is fit to the job at hand. You wouldn’t use a pair of pliers to hammer in a nail, unless you were really in a bind. If you’ve got a choice between Wi-Fi and bluetooth, you want to pick the right one.

In general, I think of this as:

• Wi-Fi: Power consumptive, range-restricted to router. (Photon, ESP8266, etc.)
  
  • Smart Home devices
  • Lamps and Clocks
  • Stuff plugged into the wall
• Bluetooth/BLE: Power-light, range-restricted to phone. (Bluno Beetle, Redbear Duo, etc.)
  
  • Wearables
  • Accessories
• Cellular: Power-light, range-restricted to cell towers (usually very wide range) (Particle Electron, etc.)
  • Asset Trackers
  • Remote data-gathering tools
  • Easy-onboarding devices (while Wi-Fi and bluetooth need to be set up to your router or device, cellular stuff can turn on, connect, and work.)

Sotto is a chorded keyset for input on the go. So this means we’re either going to want either bluetooth or cellular. I’m a fan of Sotto running on BLE, since I expect that it will always be in range of your phone and sometimes working directly with your phone apps.

Bluetooth has a bunch of different protocols for communication. Since Sotto is a chorded keyset, I’m going to need one mode to be through an HID (human input device) profile-- the standard profile you see used for bluetooth keyboards. The Adafruit Bluefruit has a built-in keyboard example, which we’re going to hack for the first prototype of Sotto.

More to be posted soon here. I'll also try to cross-post fundamental basic concepts to HackPretty when they come up-- I have a nice outline for a simple post about gyros I need to get working on!