A Summary of All the Tools Used in This Project

Tabletop.js

Tabletop.js is a javascript library to help people connect their javascript code to data inputted from or outputted to google spreadhseets. To use it the only requirement is a spreadsheet that has been published on google and has link sharing turned on. Read more about tabletop.js or use it by visiting the github repo or the npm package page.

Tabletop.js does have its limitations, however. For more information about that, here is a blog post and accompanying debate about using tabletop in production.

Github

Github is, according to Github.com, a web-based hosting service for version control using git. What, then, is Git? Git is a version control system used for tracking changes and updating code in software developemnt. This question on quora.com is a good introduction to what Git and Github are all about. I used Github throughout the capstone project to share and keep track of my website, my demos, and my blog posts. For this documentation process blog, I used Github pagesand jekyll to create the blog website.

Node.js

Node is, according to their own website, an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment. The answers on this question provide more information and discussion.

Heroku

Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/what) “is a cloud platform that lets companies build, deliver, monitor and scale apps … the fastest way to go from idea to URL, bypassing all those infrastructure headaches”. Read more about my research in deciding to deploy my node.js app demo on heroku in my previous post.

Inkscape

I used the freely available and open source vector images editing software Inkscape to create my logo and my wireframes. Inkscape exports to many file formats, including svg.

Grove Sensors and Wio Link

To read more about the sensors and physical computing tools that I used for Plant Friend, please see this previous blog post