Yesterday a Roomware Devhouse was held at the Ex Machina office in Amsterdam. Here are some pictures:

To summarize briefly: Roomware is a piece of middleware to facilitate the running of software in a physical space. This most directly involves Bluetooth and RFID like applications which by their nature are limited to a specific area.

You set up a Roomware server and it handles the communication to and from the devices. My small project for the afternoon (we had some ideas for projects which would have been hard to finish) was making a badge clubs can put on their website to show who are in the club at a given moment. With the messaging functionality that was developed the same afternoon, it would even be possible to send your friends at a club messages.

Technically simple, the concept demonstrates how close physical computing has become. The Roomware server does a great job removes the heavy lifting in interfacing with libraries for Bluetooth and RFID.

A great next step would be to add an XMPP layer on top of the roomware server. This way you could theoretically connect your Adium to some clubs of your choice, and see people entering and leaving in your buddy list and even message them.

The only problem is what to use as a unique identifier as your Bluetooth name. I’m a proponent of using a URL but a lot of people do something like their Hyves username or their Twitter name. Fortunately this distinction is mostly blurred using Google’s new Social Graph service.

I like the vibe of devhouses and building something in a strict time limit, but working solo puts limits on your reach. Next time it would be great to work in a team and build something as a group.