Nearness helps you stay connected with friends and family, through the magical powers of connected objects.
The app helps you set up geofences in your iOS device, and then updates your approximate location in our cloud storage. You can then let different devices access the location information.
We use it to build little physical avatars to show who is nearby, you might call them "glanceable interfaces" or presence indicators. Its a great way to see who is home and who is at work, without taking your phone out of your pocket. Its an app icon you very rarely tap, as everything works in the background.
To use Nearness to its potential, you need to set up a physical visualization of the data feed. If you know a thing or two about micro-controllers such as Arduino, its a fairly simple process to set up your own physical avatar.
Here are some ideas for things you can make;
* A light that pulsates when youre nearby
* A cuckoo clock that shows a little person with a briefcase when youre at work, and a little person in his/her pajamas when youre at home
* A small repurposed analog dial can show where you are on a scale between "Here" and "There"
We aim to provide some simple code snippets to use for retrieving the data and presenting it. Check out the website for more info.