"...Taapi is gamification at its best" Wired.com

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For Developers!

Managing Lights and Plugs Made Easy for Developers With Taapi’s API

We believe that users should be able to control their light and wall sockets from their favorite applications and that app developers and game builders should be able to incorporate light and wall socket controls into their applications.
Managing lights and plugs has typically been an expensive, proprietary domain using closed source systems. Producers of light and wallsocket controllers do not allow wide developer access to their products in the home or integration of their in-home products with third-party applications.

How Taapi Works
We build wallsocket adapters and smart lightbulbs that operate using a commercial-grade protocol and low-energy WiFi chipset.
Through our smart bulbs and wall socket adpaters we create secure communication between lights and wall sockets to power lights and sockets on and turn them off.
The Taapi systems handle authentication of users devices, auth of user ID’s in your apps via OAuth and creating a completely masked identity for a user’s devices for security.
Taapi also maintains a constant record of state that recalls the state a socket or light was in when it was acted upon by Taapi. Maintaining states ensures that the light or wall socket can be returned to it’s original state when a user wants to regain full control of their lights or wall sockets.

Taapi employs commercial-grade standards in it’s open-source APIs.

Multiple devices can be run off of a Taapi wallsocket.  Lightbulbs can be used for hardwired lights, like overheads.

Taapi creates local WiFi communication between sockets and bulbs by using a hub that connects to your router. The hub communicates securely with the Taapi service and the light’s owner. The Taapi service exposes REST services to developers.

Easy Integration for iOS, Android and OUYA Enabled Games
Integration with Taapi is optimized for speed and ease of set-up.
Libraries for iOS, Android and a rapid-setup, special build set of classes for OUYA will be available to developers. Integration with Taapi is optimized for speed and ease of set-up.

The Taapi Social Game
The Taapi API is now used to power a social game where unused lights are added to a pool of anonymous lights waiting to be turned off. Players race to turn off lights as they are added to the pool. This game leverages many parts of the API such as session establishment, auth and lights and plug management.
The first Taapi game is available on iOS, Android and the OUYA game console.

The Taapi Social Game

What will the Taapi API offer developers?

Taapi manages the heavy lifting that devs typically associate with environmental controls: hardware, normalization, security, WiFi protocols and local network authentication
We manage those pain points and provide the dev with a manageable API that they can leverage as the dev, and their users, see fit.
Taapi has tools to provide access to a range of game and app developers by providing a full REST API with hooks that can programmatically act on Taapi’s services from your app or service.
The Taapi API will provide access for app and game devs to features such as:

• Adding new players
• Authenticating players
• Calling player stats
• Calling general country, energy, and date stats
• Initiating a race session
• Obtaining the stats for a unique race session
• Polling for available races

Taapi has selected Atlassian (http://atlassian.com) products for community support, Mashery (http://mashery.com) for API hosting and Taapi has built-in an OpenSocial container for developers to write gadgets for Taapi using the OpenSocial (http://opensocial.org) standard.

Taapi’s OpenSocial container support will allow developers to quickly and easily write OpenSocial compliant gadgets that can call and serve a number of Taapi features like public Taapi use statistics, aggregated stats, individual users stats and game session availability.

The Taapi OpenSocial container will support gadget authentication via OAuth to enable personalized, contextual player information and interaction as well.  Players will be able to add approved gadgets to their instances of the Taapi game and extend Taapi’s functionality.
For example, a developer could write a ‘My Country’ Taapi gadget to alert a player when a session in a specific country is available, authenticate them, opt them into the game session and tweet about their participation, all in that country’s native language(s).

Taapi founder Carol Glennon states, “Support for an accelerated development process was one of our top goals for the Taapi platform. Enabling gadgets through our OpenSocial container makes it easy for developers to gain fast access to our API while writing cool gadgets that users can use in Taapi right away.”

Access to the Taapi API will also be available on Zapier, a service that syncs many different web apps. A developer can use Taapi and Zapier to initiate a number of web actions for example, setting a block of time that lights should be turned off for a user when they schedule a calendar event in the devs application.

Taapi Partners and Community Services for Developers

We Are Counting on YOU

We need your support as a backer now to produce the lightbulbs and wallsockets that will be used in thousands of your users homes and offices.
Enabling us to produce our home kits provides you as a developer with an ever-widing pool of users that are ready to use Taapi with your app and games.

Please come and back us today and pick a great reward. It’s inexpensive, fast and will benefit your app or game greatly.

In depth information?

Taapi creates local WiFi communication between sockets and bulbs by using a hub that connects to your router. The hub communicates securely with the Taapi service and the light’s owner.

Taapi acknowledges when a light owner wants the game to manage their lights. Unused lights are added to a pool of anonymous lights waiting to be turned off. Players race to turn off lights as they are added to the pool. 

A light’s owner can also use Taapi as a private light management app and control only their lights, right from their mobile phone.

The idea?

Gamers around the globe race to turn real lights off and actually save energy while they play.

Taapi is a game that controls power outlets, it's also an API for game developers that want their players to be able to control opted-in outlets from their games.

Taapi is the IFTTT of the home energy management world. 

Why Taapi?

If you love games, leave the lights on all the time or love to turn lights off (hey, we won’t tell anyone you are obsessed!) then Taapi is for you.

ABOUT TAAPI

Taapi is a global social game that uses the power of players to save energy. Taapi makes turning lights off fun!

Taapi is the first mobile gaming platform that will have a significant impact on the real-world.

We believe that gamers can change the world, one lightbulb at a time.

Gamers around the globe race to turn lights off and actually save real energy while they play. Available via iOS for iPhones, iPods and iPads, Android, OUYA and the web, Tappi awards players points for being the first to shut a waiting light off. Fun yes. Satisfying? Oh yeah.

Illuminate us!

Taapi is a collection of thousands of gamers around the world who race to turn off lights as they become available in the pool.  

So, how does it work?:

• People plug Taapi into wallsockets and swap out the bulbs they would like to control with Taapi.
• Light owners then use the mobile phone app to let Taapi systems know when their lights are available to the game for shut off.
• When a home is tapped in, it’s lights are added to a ‘pool’ of other lights that are waiting to be turned off.
• Meanwhile, players are racing to solve matching games and be the fastest to turn off lights from the pool as they become available.
• Players get the satisfaction of knowing that they are turning off lights all over the world that are not being used. All with just a tap.
• Every light and every location is completely secure. Lights in the pool are not identifiable in any way.  In fact, we do not collect any location-specific information from Taapi lights or wallsockets.
• The Taapi hub packages the lights on its local network into an anonymous block of serial numbers before submitting them to the Taapi systems.

Taapi uses crowdsourced players to act on lights that are available in the pool for shut-off and rewards both players and the households that use taapi.

By being on Taapi, homes will benefit from saving money on their energy bills and also get points for every minute their lights are available to the game.

If some players want to keep their home’s lights all to themselves-that’s OK with us. They still get points (but not as many) and a nifty home control panel in the app. It’s full control for your home's lights right on your phone. 

What Sparked the Idea?

Carol Glennon is the founder of Synap Media, a mobile development group, and the brains behind Taapi. She has worked on mobile technology for over a dozen years for consumer-facing companies like Time Inc., The State of California, NatGeo and Coca-Cola. She lives, breathes and eats new concepts and ideas.

The idea behind Taapi is one that we’re sure is familiar to couples and families around the world: Carol leaves the lights on all the time, even when she is not home. Her husband, John, continuously shuts them off. While they thought that the lights on and lights off dance was “their thing,” they realized they weren’t alone when joking about it with friends and family.

The lights on, lights off battle that happens in homes between couples, parents, kids and roommates has been raging on for years, but with the proliferation of social gaming, the explosion of mobile connectivity and the ever-growing global carbon footprint - now is the time for Taapi.

Will Taapi really make a difference?

While eco-issues are a mainstay in the news and consumers are becoming more and more aware of their impact on the world, it’s still difficult to make an impact beyond recycling household items such as bottles, cans and paper goods. How can we, as a global community, make a difference beyond our own homes? That was the question that Carol asked herself. As an engineer, Carol looks at the world differently than most. When looking at the home lighting challenge, she turned the problem on its head asking,"What about tapping into the time consumers spend gaming on mobile devices or computers and use it to save electricity? Can we harness 'fun' and use it to serve a real purpose?" Research indicates that about 11 percent of U.S. household electricity consumption goes into lighting and up to one-third of all lighting in the U.S. is wasted, according to "The International Dark-Sky Association." The annual cost? Roughly $2 billion. The oil required to produce the energy equates to 30 million barrels and 8.2 million tons of coal, which generates 14.1 million tons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere.

Infographic on how much energy it takes to power one light bulb for one year



Background

Our core executive team have been working on projects together for the last four years and have experienced amazing success in that time. Together, they have a fantastic history of ability with the proven results to deliver this project in a timely manner. Examples of previous work includes delivering mobile apps, games as well as cutting edge and complex 3D animations and solutions for Fortune 500 companies including Time Warner, Intel, CBS, California Tourism, Delta Airlines and National Geographic.

We have been recognized and received over a dozen National and International awards for our work and have been at the cutting edge of technology for a combined four decades.

Examples:

2012 National Geographic Kids Almanac

2011 Visit California iPad application

2011 San Francisco Giants and Safeway 2011

2011 MLB, 7Eleven and Frito Lay

2010 Stevie award - Most Innovative Company  of the Year

2010 World Cup through FIFA backed 1Goal

2004 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire U.K. (mBlox)

The Team:
Carol Glennon - Founder, Lead Engineer
Don Martelli Founder, Chief Marketing Officer
Frank Dellario Founder, VP of Animation Production
John Glennon, Advisor and Founding Board Member

Advisors:
Nirvana Tikku - originally from Hong Kong, Nirvana graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University in 2008. He has been passionate about technology, particularly software from an early age. An experienced web and mobile engineer, Nirvana enjoys realizing ideas and building impactful products with experiences that maximize value for the end user. In his free time he contributes towards building free or open source software most notably with the music realm.

Jeff Paradiso - With a formal background in graphic design, Jeff Paradiso discovered his love for programming later in life. He has worked in disciplines as diverse as app development, programming, print, web, photography, and videography, and he brings a multi-dimensional approach to each challenge. This lets him think more about the big picture but with an understanding of details. His experiences include working with brands such as Pepsi, Campbell Soup, General Mills, Proctor & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Comedy Central, Jim Henson Productions, and Staples. Jeff's most recent endeavors include making apps sold in the iTunes store for both iPhones and iPads.

Arun Nagarajan is a Developer Advocate at Google working closely with the developer community on Google Apps. Prior to joining Google, Arun led software teams and was the Chief Product Architect with a Boston area enterprise mobility company for over 9 years. Arun is a developer at heart and loves meeting and improving lives of other like minded developers!  Arun has a BS in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and currently resides in New York City.

Amit Vyawahare  - Amit is one of those programmer types, ("You know, the ones who are always right") who believes that, 'If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in'. Amit Vyawahare has been a software developer since 2001. His languages and technologies include:  Objective C, C, C++, Java, SQL, as well as basic shell scripting (Unix flavors).

Current Status
So where are we in this process?
We have:

• Created the concept and identified the vendors that will be the backbone of the supply
• Formed a core team and built a dedicated group of advisors
• Built and tested our prototypes
• Turned lights off using Taapi hundreds of times!
• Written and optimized prototype code
• Our core team is in place and already moving to the next phase of the project and we have identified additional candidates to bring the project to commercial launch

Roadmap
So where do we go from here? Our timeline:

• Indiegogo launch 10/3
• Indiegogo closes 11/14
• Final contracts executed with vendors 11/19
• Beta test production starts 12/19
• Delivery of beta test models 1/28
• Finalization of Beta testing 2/8
• Start of full production 2/18
• Delivery of first production models 3/15

Light Dawns on FAQs

Q. What do the Taapi / Cry Wolf T Shirts look like?
A. Here you go! Exclusive first peek at the design by the talented team @crywolfclothing:

Q. Will this be limited to lights?
A. Not necessarily. The starter pack includes bulbs and low-profile wall socket adapters, so you can choose to plug in whatever you want to have controlled through Taapi!

Q. How does it work?
A. Each light is wifi connected to the base unit in a closed circuit. The base unit is controlled by the homeowner from their mobile phone and they decide when to make their lights available to the game. Once in the game, our platform gives each light an anonymous serial number and adds them to a pool of lights waiting to be turned off. Gamers then race to turn the lights off first either against opponents or on their own. Turning lights off earns points!

Q. What does the installation entail?
A. It couldn’t be simpler – plug in the base station first and it will recognize the lights. You confirm them from your mobile phone or website access and then turn them on and off to confirm!

Q. What are your plans for international backers?
A. We welcome them with open arms! Taapi is a global game, so we are very excited to bring on new countries – just bear in mind two things – the first is that there will be an additional charge for mailing you the starter pack and 2nd is that you will probably need an electrial adapter to fit your plug and voltage, such as you would for any other US electrical product. After initial launch, we will respond to demand for power supplies relating to other countries.

** Please add $20 to any reward which requires shipping of a product overseas! **

Q. What platforms will the application be available on?
A. iOS (iPhone, iPod and iPad), Android and mainstream computer browsers

Q. Can I buy multiple packs?
A. Of course! There is a “Baller” package for you to buy for friends and family. Plus as soon as we go over our Indiegogo fundraising, we will launch the eCommerce page where you can buy individual base stations, bulbs, socket adapters and packs to suit your needs.

Q. Can I buy more Taapi Bulbs and adapters?
A. Definitely! As soon as we go over our Indiegogo fundraising target, we will launch the eCommerce page where you can buy individual base stations, bulbs, adapters and packs to suit your needs.

Q. How do I know my location and other personal data will be secure?
A. We take privacy and security very seriously, so we have devised a system with several “safe zones” between critical data.
Payment and fulfillment is made through Amazon, which means that we do not take your address directly for either payment processing or shipping. Amazon take care of that and do not pass that on to us at any stage.
You do not register your address with us to set up Taapi - we assign a unique and non-identifying ID relating to each device, which allows us to see it go on grid and to ensure that control is specific to it.
The platform that manages alerts from Taapi base stations that they are “on Taapi” is completely separate from the one that manages the game portion where users turn lights off. We anonymously batch the Taapi ID’s into groups and pass them from one system to the other, which means that the only data that the game platform sees is completely generic.

Q. Will the mobile application support multiple Taapi base units?
A. Absolutely! You can manage up to four

Q. How many Bulbs can an individual base unit support?
A. Literally hundreds – because of the way we connect to WiFi, we do not lose strength in volume and the system is engineered to manage as many as you can plug in

Q. What are the monthly fees?
A. There are no monthly fees - once you buy the base package you need spend no more money again until you want more bulbs on Taapi!

Q. What is the range of the Base unit?
A. Up to 300 feet, but each light extends the range, so technically, it can be a lot more tha that

Q. Will Taapi work with any game consoles?
A. OUYA - I mean oh yeah! We are also onboarding several other game developers that operate games cross-console.

Q. Will you support Near-Field Communications (NFC)?
A. Managing NFC on your phone to turn your home “On Taapi” or off will be fully supported based on your mobile phone functionality.

Q. What do you use for a wireless protocol?
A. Our initial protocol support will be for the JenNet stack, a standard used globally for commercial light and appliance communication. It is safe, reliable, demonstrated in-field and great chip-makers like NXP are building for it regularly. See below URL for more information:

http://www.nxp.com/campaigns/greenchip/smartlig...

Q. I’m a blogger or journalist, and I want to write more about what you’re doing. Who can I talk to?
A. You can email Don@Taapi.com with an outline of what you need and he will get you tapped in!

What's next?

Share the Idea
Want to do even more to make the world smarter? Share the Taapi story.
Not everyone can spare a few bucks to help us out, but what you can do is share this concept with your social networks. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell your co-workers. Let’s game our way to a better environment and have some fun while we’re doing it.
If you believe in our vision, please "Like" this Indiegogo page, Tweet about us, and email all your friends.
While you're at it, visit Taapi on the web or on Facebook and "Like" us there too! :)

Ooh - and we believe in keeping people motivated, so you can go here for a free Taapi sticker!

http://www.taapi.com/sticker

Our fans:
http://www.vimeo.com/taapi/fans