As those of you know that follow my brickinthecloud.com blog, i love using API’s in the cloud to connect not only applications, but devices. Salesforce themselves also share this passion, just take a look at their Internet of Things page to see how it can improve your business and the work Reid Carlberg is doing.

When Salesforce sent me a LittleBits Cloud Starter Kit as Christmas present i once again set about connecting it to my favourite cloud platform! This blog introduces two new GitHub repos and a brand new installable package to allow you to take full advantage of the snap-not-solder that LittleBits electronics brings with the Salesforce clicks-not-code design model! So if your not an electronics whiz or coder, you really don’t have any excuses for not getting involved! LittleBits provides over 60 snap together components, to build automated fish feeders, to home security systems and practically anything else you can imagine!

The heart of the kit is a small computer module, powered by a USB cable (i plugged mine into my external phone battery pack!). It boots from an SD card and uses an onboard USB Wifi adapter to connect itself to the internet (once you’ve connected it to your wifi). After that you send commands to connected outputs to it via a mobile site or set of LittleBits Cloud API’s provided. So far i have focused on sending commands to the outputs (in my case i connected the servo motor), however as i write this i’m teaming up with Cory Cowgill who has also starting working with his kit from an inputs perspective (e.g. pressing on a button on the device).

Everyone in the Salesforce MVP community was lucky enough to get one of these kits and i wanted to make sure everyone could experience it with the cloud platform we love so much! Sadly right now the clicks-not-code solution IFTTT  (If-This-Then-That) used for controlling LittleBits devices does not fully support Salesforce (there is only a Salesforce Chatter plugin). Borrowing an approach i’ve been using for my Declarative Rollup Summary Tool, i set about building a declarative based tool that would allow the Salesforce admin to connect updates to any standard or custom object record to a LittleBits device!

The result is the LittleBits Connector!

Once you have assembled and connected your LittleBits device, go to the Settings page under LittleBits Cloud Control and take note of your Access Token and Device ID. As you can see in the screenshot above enter these in the LittleBits Device section or in the LittleBits API custom setting.

The Trigger section needs only the Record ID of the record you want to monitor and have your device respond to when changes are made. Simply list the field API names (separated by a comma) of those you want the tool to monitor. Next fill in the LittleBits Output section with either literal values (on the left) and/or dynamic values driven by values from the record itself. This gives you quite a lot of flexibility to use Formula Fields for example to calculate the percentage.

Controlling a LittleBits cloud device is quite simple, define the duration of the output (how long to apply a voltage) and the amount of voltage as a percentage. Depending on the output module you’ve fitted, light or motor, the effects differ but the principle is the same. In the motor case, i set mine to Turn mode (see below). Then by applying a duration of 100,000 and a percent the motor turns to a specific point each time. Making it ideal for building pointing devices!

With the help of my wifes crafting skills we set about on a joint Christmas project to build a pointing device that would show the Probability of a given Opportunity in realtime. Though the tool I ended up building can effectively be used with any standard or custom object. I also wanted to use only the modules in the LittleBits Cloud Start Kit. So with Salesforce Org and the tool the Internet of Things is in your hands!

Here is a video of our creation in action…

If you want to have a go yourself follow these steps…

Building your own Opportunity Probability Indicator Device #clicksnotcode

If clicks are more your thing than coding, fear not and follow these simple steps!

1. Purchase a LittleBits Cloud Connector and follow the onscreen instructions once you have created your LittleBits account here. Complete the tutorial to confirm its connected.
2. Build the device modules configuration as shown in the picture below. On the servo module, there is a tiny switch, use the small screw driver provided to push it to the down position, to put the servo in “turn” mode.
   
3. Next the fun bit, construct your pointing device! I’d love to see tweets of everyones crafting skills!
   
4. Install the latest LittleBits Connector either via clicking the package install links or as code, see GitHub README. The first time you go to the LittleBits Trigger tab, you maybe asked to complete the post install step to configure the Metadata API needed by the tool to deploy the Apex Triggers, complete this step as instructed on screen.
5. Click New on the LittleBits Trigger tab, complete the LittleBits Trigger record as described above, but of course using a record Id from an Opportunity record in your org then click Save.
6. Click the Manage Object Trigger button to automatically deploy a small Apex Trigger to pass on updates made to the records to the LittleBits Connector engine.
7. In Salesforce or Salesforce1 Mobile for that matter, update your Opportunity Stage (which updates the Probability). This results in an Apex Job which typically fires fairly promptly and you should see your device respond! If you don’t see anything change on your device confirm its working via the LittleBits Cloud Control test page, next go to the Setup menu check the jobs are completing without error via the Apex Jobs page.

Using the LittleBits Cloud API from Apex

The above tool was built around an Apex wrapper i have started to build around the LittleBits Cloud API, which is a REST API. With a little more time and help from fellow LittleBits fan Cory, we will update it to support not only controlling devices, but also allow them to feedback to Salesforce. In the meantime if you want to code your own solution directly you can install the library here.

The code is quite simply for now, you can read more about it in the README file.

new LittleBits().getDevice().output(80, 10000);

Whats next?

Well i’m quite addicted to this new device, my Lego EV3 robot might be justified in feeling a little left out, but fear not, i’ll find a way to combine them i’m sure! Next up for the LittleBits Connector is subscribing to output from the device back to Salesforce, possibly calling out to a headless Flow, to keep that clicks not code feel going!