Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

January 2022

Redis scripts do not expire keys atomically

This short post by a member of Ably's engineering team describes how we resolved a problem that is typical of the challenges we face each week. We thrive on solving hard distributed system problems that are mostly platform agnostic and theoretical in nature, and this is the first post in a long-term series of articles about things we've learned recently.

The realtime web: evolution of the user experience

Over the last few years, companies have used realtime updates to add new experiences and features and increase their market share, It’s now standard to expect a page within an app or browser to update parts of itself without forcing it to refresh. For example, a news page of live sports scores updates with the latest goal scored, or an app shows a change as you track your taxi on a map.

Vue.js and Node.js tutorial: a realtime collaboration app hosted in Azure Static Web Apps

This post describes how I built a realtime collaboration app that scrum teams can use for planning poker. Planning poker, also known as Scrum poker, is a gamified technique for estimating the size of user stories. This helps in deciding how many stories can be put into a sprint. Usually story points in the Fibonacci scale is used as a metric, but T-shirt sizing, like small, medium, and large, is also used.

The WebSocket Handbook: learn about the technology behind the realtime web

Standardized a decade ago through RFC 6455, WebSocket has since matured into one of the main technologies powering the modern web. Designed to be event-driven and full-duplex, and optimized for minimum overhead and low latency, WebSockets have become a preferred choice for many organizations and developers seeking to build interactive, realtime digital experiences that provide delightful user experiences.

Make an IoT wearable t-shirt that sparkles with data using MQTT and Ably

Make an internet connected t-shirt with LEDs that respond to realtime data In summary: We will make a wearable, flexible LED array which will change colour in realtime as users draw on an app. It uses the Ably MQTT broker and the Ably Javascript SDK along with addressible RGB LEDs and an Adafruit wifi enabled microprocessor. We change the colour of individual LEDs sewn on the t-shirt, by sending realtime updates data with Ably's messaging platform to an Arduino via MQTT.