The New Pachube (Cosm)

Pachube is now Cosm!

Today is a significant one in our history, because today is the day that Pachube grows up. You might have noticed already: Pachube is now Cosm!

We haven't exactly been silent over the last few months since being acquired by LogMeIn but we also haven't spoken much about the biggest task that's been occupying us almost round the clock: building out and relaunching the service under a new (pronounceable! spellable!! memorable!!!) name, with a completely new (cleaner! easier!! functional!!!) design, that brings with it a whole host of features and attributes that help you build Internet of Things products, applications and services more quickly, scalably and collaboratively. Pachube.com has evolved into Cosm.com. And we mean business.

One of the key lessons we've learned over the years – apart from the fact that few people could spell or pronounce 'Pachube'! – is that we should be focusing on helping people connect with each other as well as their devices. We aren't just building behind-the-scenes infrastructure. The idea of the internet of things needing a piece of equipment (a 'patch-bay') has become less useful than the concept of it involving shared 'workspaces' and 'environments' ('microcosms' and 'macrocosms'). Cosm has an even bigger vision than Pachube: we want it to help people, teams, companies & cities build, share and make sense of their own 'cosms': devices, environments, communities.

There may be some hiccups. After all, a design/brand/name change is of course the biggest outward change we've made in more than 4 years. But we're working to make the transition as seamless as possible. All Pachube URLs will continue to function without a hitch (if you're logged in,this works just like this), your Pachube login details, username and password, as well as API keys remain the same, and you can still email us on the old email addresses. In pretty much every case, however, you should really replace anything that used to be ‘pachube.com’ with ‘cosm.com’.

Now, here's what we're super excited about:

You now have a console. Here's mine. It's for monitoring your own feeds in real-time and also other people's. You might follow feeds created by fellow team members; or your family; or friends; or you might follow feeds created by people you don't know, just because their data is important to you. This is where we expect you'll spend most of your time, because it's where all the action happens.

You can now add devices and create feeds much more easily. Got anArduino? Just type in a title, and include some tags if you like. Plugging in a Current Cost Netsmart/Bridge? Just need your serial number. Twitter Stats feed? Piece of cake. Expect this to fill out over the next few months with more plug-and-play devices as we firm up agreements with the companies that have contacted us about our Commercial Provisioning Service. Interested to be part of this? Drop us a line.

The site is more real time. There is an activity panel that will let you know when a trigger has fired, or one of your feeds has received a comment, or someone is following you. You can use a more legible 'debug' panel to see, in real-time, how many API calls you're making and what the individual HTTP requests were – in full detail. You can zoom down to 5 minute graphs. Our alpha testers have asked for grids: that makes sense, they're coming soon.



Commenting is more integrated. You can follow other users, as well as just their feeds. You'll be notified when significant things occur in your console. You can now create and manage OAuth 2.0 compliant apps directly from your console. Individual feed pages are more useful: you canmouseover graphs to read individual datapoints ('Graph Builder' still exists of course); see values at a glance; and set up twitter & HTTP triggers with just a few clicks.


The map is back! We lost it for a while, but there is now a global map that shows the location of the last 1000 public devices to update Cosm. In practice, given the millions of datapoints we handle per day, this means you're only seeing a snapshot of the last few moments, but we'll be building this out so that you can find all public feeds. More importantly, you can search it!



Building things and getting support is much easier. We've already had great feedback on our relaunched documentation, but we've also improved the libraries and examples listings. We've tried to make it easier to get help when you're stuck. And if you're logged in you can evenassemble and test your API queries in browser.

Managing hundreds or thousands of devices? Our Commercial Provisioning Service just got a whole lot more sophisticated: work with serial numbers, device keys and activations directly from your console. Please contact us to enable this functionality.

Keep tabs on what the community is building. Apart from the forum, which remains in its current form, we now also have case studies of things that are 'Built on Cosm'. Got something to add? Please drop us a line and let us know so that we can tell the world! If you want to find us in person at upcoming events, keep an eye on the Cosm events page.

We know too well that there will be some issues with the new name and the new site. Given its popularity, we're already starting to see the effects of increased traffic and real-time interactivity. We're pretty sure also that some of the things we thought were great, will not prove to be so once they're in your hands; or that we missed something crucial. Please take the time to let us know what you love or hate about Cosm. You can either write to feedback@cosm.com or you can use the little feedback panel on the right side of your console.

For now, please join me in congratulating the Pachube... uh... Cosm (!) dev team for all their work in getting this out. Ben, Kevin and I have put enormous pressure on Levent, Paul, Simon, Sam, Owen, Pete and Ilya and, to my mind, they've done a stellar job. We can also thank Emi who, meanwhile, has been planning our office move next week – but that's for a future blog post!

Finally, thanks always to you, the community, as well: innovators at first, then early adopters and now becoming the early majority, you're why we're here, you're why we've made it this far, and you'll be why we continue to exist, I hope, for many years to come.