BLAST - Block Applications For Things

Try out BLAST at https://wintechis.github.io/blast/

This is a monorepo with five packages:

• @blast/core is a library enabling usage of Web of Things (WoT) Thing Descriptions (TDs) for Bluetooth devices in Node.js.
• @blast/node bundle for Node.js, using node-ble-host and node-hid.
• @blast/browser BLAST browser bundle utilizing Web Bluetooth and WebHID.
• @blast/browser-demo a programming and execution environment for applications interacting with WoT devices from within the web-browser
• @blast/tds Collection of WoT Thing Descriptions tested with BLAST

For more detailed descriptions navigate to one of the packages (@blast/core or @blast/web)

Quick start

In order to use the BLAST web demo open a Terminal and enter the following commands:

1. Clone this repository with git clone https://github.com/wintechis/blast
2. Install dependencies: yarn install
3. Build BLAST: yarn build
4. Start BLAST web: yarn start
5. Open your Browser and navigate to https://localhost:3000

Note

You might have to set yarn version using yarn set version berry before installing

Installing individual packages

Yarn 2+ supports installing packages from a private git monorepo. To set packages of BLAST as dependecies in your project follow the steps below:

1. Set yarn version using yarn set version berry (or any verion newer than 2.0.0)
2. Disable pnp: yarn config set nodeLinker node-modules (because of this bug)
3. Add the following lines to your package.json and replace @blast/node and @blast/tds with the desired package.

  "dependencies": {
    "@blast/node": "git+https://github.com/wintechis/blast.git#workspace=@blast/node",
    "@blast/tds": "git+https://github.com/wintechis/blast.git#workspace=@blast/tds"
  },
  "resolutions": {
    "@blast/core": "git+https://github.com/wintechis/blast.git#workspace=@blast/core"
  },
  "type": "module"

Now, you can import the packages in your project code, i.e.:

import {createThing} from '@blast/node';
import {BleRgbController} from '@blast/tds';

Don't forget to execute sudo setcap cap_net_admin=ep $(eval readlink -f `which node`) to allow Node.js to access Bluetooth devices.

Publications

• Wehr, T., Freund, M., & Harth, A. (2024). Taking Control of Your Health Data: A Solid-Based Mobile App for Wearable Data Collection and RDF Visualization. In European Semantic Web Conference (pp. 336-339). (DBLP)
• Freund, M., Fries, J., Wehr, T., & Harth, A. (2023). Generating Visual Programming Blocks based on Semantics in W3C Thing Descriptions. In SWoCoT@ESWC (pp. 1-15). (DBLP)
• Freund, M., Wehr, T., & Harth, A. (2022). BLAST: Block Applications for Things. In European Semantic Web Conference (pp. 68-72). (DBLP)