The MESH DIY kit makes it easy to turn ordinary objects into connected devices. Real easy. With its drag-and-drop interface MESH is not a toy that playfully introduces you to the world of coding. Instead its create-smart-projects-in-minutes approach directs the focus to the the invention part of making: coming up with new ideas to IoT-ify your surroundings.

The basic kit comes with three wireless modules called MESH tags: a LED, a button and an acceleration tag which are controlled in the Canvas visual design app. And that's where the easy part comes in. To connect two tags you simply draw a line between them. Now when the accelerator moves the LED lights up. You can attach it to your garden gate and get an alert that somebody is about to ring your doorbell. Handy, right? Yeah, well, like I said the challenge of MESH is coming up with interesting projects.

MESH

The tags can also be connected to internet services, for instance sending you an email when somebody opens the cabinet door to help themselves to your whiskey collection.

For more advanced tinkerers there is the GPIO tag which has both digital and analog input/ouput to connect to other sensors and actuators and a MESH SDK to develop custom software tags.

MESH short for Make. Experience. SHare. is build by a team of Japanese engineers from Sony's in-house incubator, the Seed Acceleration Program. They're on Indiegogo right now to collect $50,000 from the crowd to fund MESH's mass production. You can support them by ordering a $105 basic kit or a $55 GPIO tag. However, at the moment MESH only complies with US and Japanese regulations and therefore won't ship to any other country. You'll have to contact that friend in Tokyo and call in a favor.