Acknowledgments

We learned the hard way that writing a book is not as trivial as it seems. “Oh, we’ll just refresh our PhD theses and we’re done in a few weeks” has gradually turned into “OK, well, I guess we’ll have to write these chapters from scratch over the next few months. What about the source code? Which source code? Let’s just rewrite this whole thing in Node.js!” Nevertheless, the many weekends and late nights we spent putting together this book have been a lot of fun and a unique challenge. Distilling all the knowledge we acquired over a decade of R&D into a single book and making sure that book is easy to use has been a tough and very motivating aspiration.

Obviously, many people helped us in this adventure, and this book wouldn’t have existed without their support and contributions, so it’s time to give credit where it’s due!

First and foremost, we’d like to thank the entire team at Manning. They’ve been both very demanding and incredibly encouraging, and their feedback on the content and form of this book throughout its evolution from some ideas to what you’re holding in your hands has been extremely valuable. Thanks to Michael Stephens for believing in the book and encouraging us to make it great. Thanks to Lesley Trites for her continuous support and constructive feedback and suggestions all along: by the last chapter, it was clear that she’d become an expert in this field! Thanks to Candace Gillhoolley for her energy in finding new ways of marketing the book. Finally, thanks to Melody Dolab, Kevin Sullivan, and everyone else at Manning involved in the production of the book.

We’d also like to thank all the reviewers of the book for their constructive and encouraging remarks, in particular Scott Chaussée, who offered suggestions on the overall technical content, and Valentin Crettaz, who gave all chapters a full technical proofread. Many others provided invaluable feedback throughout the process: Alain Couniot, Alvin Scudder, Brent Stains, Gonzalo Huerta-Canepa, Harald Kuhn, Joel Kotarski, Lance May, Kenneth Fricklas, Mayur S. Patil, Philip Arny, Rocio Chongtay, Roy Legaard, Jr., Sander Rossel, Sebastian Haehnel, Steve Grey-Wilson, Troi Eisler, and William Wade.

Next we’d like to thank all the people who supported our research and work on the Web of Things. We’ve had the chance to work with those who pioneered the IoT, such as Professor Sanjay Sarma at MIT and Professors Friedemann Mattern and Elgar Fleisch at ETH Zurich. A special thanks goes to Friedemann, who was also our PhD advisor. He has been an incredibly inspiring mentor, giving us the freedom to explore the Web of Things.

Thanks to all our colleagues at EVRYTHNG: to our cofounders Andy Hobsbawm and Niall Murphy, to our first readers Albert Zaragoza and Joel Vogt, to Laura Lilienthal for boosting the marketing of our book, but also to the rest of the dream team. They all contributed to this book in one way or another, and we’re very grateful for that! Building the Web of Things (WoT) with them for the last few years has been a blast, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of what it can do.

Thanks also to the entire WoT community and its pioneers. To the dozens of researchers we worked with over the years who graciously provided us their time, ideas, feedback, and pull requests—you are the Web of Things! We’re unable to thank you individually here, but you should know that we’re proud that you trusted and supported this vision from the beginning. Oh—and a big thanks to our detractors as well! The criticism we faced in the early days of our work was an essential ingredient and inspiration to making the WoT a reality. See, the web did make it to embedded devices after all!

Similarly, a big thank-you goes to many other communities who’ve helped us during the creation of this book, especially the Raspberry Pi and Node.js communities. In particular, thanks to Brian Cooke, Nick O’Leary, Matteo Collina, and Douglas Wilson.

For the logistics, we’d like to thank The Best Kebab at 233 Old Street in London, which provided us excellent halloumi and falafel wraps to fuel us through many long coding and writing sessions. It’s fair to say this temple of kebabs has become our little tradition every Sunday. Also, a big thank-you to the British Library at Kings Cross in London for providing the most inspiring place to study—this is where the majority of the book was written.

From Dominique

I would also like to send a big thank-you to my family for their limitless love. Thanks to Mireille, Véronique, and Léonie, who never quite understood what I was writing this book about and yet found it pretty awesome from the word go! Thank you to Jean-Pierre, my dad, whose out-of-this-world skills in electronics were really central to making sure Vlad and I did not blow up the entire building! Thanks also for his great reviews of the entire book and code. Finally, a huge thank-you to Rachel, who accepted sacrificing so many weekends and pushed me with incredible love and patience to tick one more box on my bucket list: writing a book.

From Vlad

I would like to send a huge thank-you to Mariana (my mom) and Aurel (my pops) for being pretty much the best parents anyone could ask for and allowing me to spend countless nights in front of computers as a teenager. Also, thanks to my sweet bunica for being the most caring grandma and doing the opposite when asking me all the time to stop “destroying my eyes” by staring at computers all day long. Thanks to all my friends for, well, being awesome and understanding why I’m spending my weekends at the British Library or at the office instead of hanging out with them. Finally, a warm thank-you to Flavia for being my best friend and partner in life. Her support, encouragement, and general awesomeness have been the vital ingredients that helped this book become a reality.