What is this?

Exobrain is a collection of agents which collect, classify, and act upon data. They share a common bus for communication. Think of it as IFTTT, but free, open source, and you keep control of your privacy.

Examples of things that exobrain can currently do:

• Give you XP in HabitRPG when you update your beeminder goals
• Let others add items to your RememberTheMilk TODO lists via twitter
• Update beeminder by checking your inbox sizes using IMAP
• Reward you for responding to email
• Automatically log life events to idonethis

You can find pre-built actions in the bin/actions directory.

Exobrain is designed to make it very easy to write and trigger events using standard interfaces.

Technology

The core of exobrain is written in Perl, but uses a shared message bus (0MQ) and packet format (JSON) to make it easy to connect components from other languages.

Writing an action is a very simple affair. @pjf has notifications configured to go to his pebble watch, and uses this code to send all tweets directed at him to said watch:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use Exobrain;

my $exobrain = Exobrain->new;

$exobrain->watch_loop(
    class  => 'Measurement::Tweet',
    filter => sub { $_->to_me },
    then   => sub {
        $exobrain->notify( $_->summary );
    },
);

Installation

Step 1: Install exobrain

Firstly, make sure you've got all the dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install libzmq-dev libexpat-dev libnet-ssleay-perl \
    libnet-libidn-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl cpanminus make \
    liblocal-lib-perl

Configure local::lib if you haven't already done so:

$ perl -Mlocal::lib >> ~/.bashrc
$ eval $(perl -Mlocal::lib)

If installing from git, you can then use:

$ dzil authordeps | cpanm
$ dzil listdeps | cpanm
$ dzil install

If installing from CPAN:

$ cpanm Exobrain

Note that Exobrain has many dependencies. If you're feeling hungry, this would be a good time to go out for a meal or find a snack.

When you return, you'll find that you have exobrain installed! However to use it properly, you'll want to manage it with ubic.

Step 2: Configure ubic

Set up ubic (if you haven't already done so):

ubic-admin setup

Copy the exobrain file into your ubic services:

cp `which exobrain` ~/ubic/service

Step 3: Add configuration

Exobrain uses a ~/.exobrainrc file. You can copy the example.exobrainrc file from the docs/ directory to get started.

For RememberTheMilk integration, you'll need a valid ~/.rtmagent file.

You can now start your exobrain. Start with the core:

ubic start exobrain.core

To get some data flowing through your exobrain, you can try starting the end-points:

ubic start exobrain.source
ubic start exobrain.sink

And to get intelligence, you can bring on-line the classifers:

ubic start exobrain.classify

Of course, you can get EVERYTHING online in one go with just:

ubic start exobrain

You probably won't use all the components, though, so it's recommended that you only configure and switch on the ones you need.

GLOSSARY

An exobrain source is a data provider. It integrates with some external service, and produces Measurements. These can be events on social media, inbox counts, check-ins, call-backs, or anything else which is bringing data into the system.

An exobrain sink is a data consumer. It listens for intents and makes them happen. This may be sending a tweet, recording a TODO item, sending a notification, updating a data-point, etc.

An exobrain action bridges sources and sinks. It listens for measurements, and produces intents. These are the most common components, and also the easiest to write.

BUGS

Heaps. Report and/or fix them at https://github.com/pjf/exobrain/issues/

SUPPORTING EXOBRAIN DEVELOPMENT

If you like my work, you can tip me on gittip.

If you wish to see Exobrain features implemented more quickly, you can place bounties on Bountysource.

All code contributions, tests, bug reports, feature ideas, documentation, and anything else are extremely welcome! Exobrain is free and open source software, please use it to make the world a better place.

LICENSE

Same as Perl 5 itself.