IoT Projects

No-Code Indoor Grow Monitor with PPFD and VPD Measurements

With temperatures falling in New England, the basil and heirloom tomatoes that you have been growing in your garden to top your dinner with are moving back inside the house for winter. But will they still grow?

I built this IoT project with the Ruiz Brothers this past month to calculate a plant’s photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD). Knowing these data points can help optimize the yield of indoor crops. - Adafruit Learning System

How to Interpret Environmental Sensor Data With Local “Edge” LLMs

Tim documents his experiments with using a small (but local) Large Language Model, running on a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB, to provide insights into data collected by an environmental sensor. - Adafruit Learning System

SplashFlag - Building an IoT Swimming Notification Device from Scratch

Bert wanted to build an IoT device from scratch and selected “something fun” to try it out. He built a device that alerts his neighbors when his kids go swimming, extending an invitation for their kids to join them. - Data with Bert

Hosting a Website on a Disposable Vape

Bogdan Ionescu had been collecting disposable vapes from friends and family and noticed they all had a tiny ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller inside. Why not run a web server on one? - bogdanthegeek

Turning a Billy Bass into a Voice Assistant

Keen on Tech turned a Billy Bass animatronic fish into a voice assistant. The first few seconds of the video demonstrates the fish moving its head and responding to a “Hey Billy” command in a hilarious manner. - HackADay

DIY Indoor Air Quality Monitor with Separate Display

This step‑by‑step guide will walk you through building a fully functional indoor air quality monitor. You’ll learn how to capture real‑time measurements — such as temperature, humidity, and particulate matter — and automatically send that data to an external display for easy viewing. The project also leverages Adafruit’s WipperSnapper firmware and Adafruit IO Actions, allowing you to set up powerful data collection, visualization, and automation features without writing a single line of code. - Adafruit Learning System

IoT News and More!

A New Chapter for Arduino with Qualcomm

Starting with the largest piece of news, Arduino has been acquired by Qualcomm for an undisclosed amount. This is a big deal for the maker community, Arduino has been a staple in DIY electronics and Open Source for years.

As part of this announcement, Arduino released a new board. The Uno Q has a Qualcomm Dragonwing microprocessor and a STM32U585 microcontroller. This board with a “dual brain design” is designed for advanced IoT applications that leverage Edge Impulse’s ML/AI platform (also recently acquired by Qualcomm).

The official press announcement is on the Arduino Blog, and our team has a post up about this on our blog.

ESP32 Bus Pirate

ESP32 Bus Pirate is an open-source firmware that turns your ESP32-S3 device into a multi-protocol hacker’s tool, inspired by the legendary Bus Pirate. - Adafruit Blog

Logitech POP Buttons Get Deprecated

A day after this newsletter hits your inbox, Logitech will shut down their services for users of the $100 USD POP Smart Button Kit. Logitech claims that these buttons will “lose all functionality” after the services are gone. - HackADay

IoT Projects

Streaming Audio over Bluetooth Low Energy from a Raspberry Pi

Thanks to recent advancements in BlueZ (the Linux Bluetooth stack), AK Experiments decided to try streaming audio over Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) using a Raspberry Pi. - AK Experiments

Engineering for Slow Internet in Antarctica

While working in Antarctica, brr “had access to the Internet only through an extremely limited series of satellite links provided by the United States Antarctic Program”. Modern websites often load up to 20 MB of Javascript, which makes connecting to the Internet in Antarctica a challenge. Brr’s exploration into engineering a faster, slow, internet is detailed in their blog post. - brr

Universal Sensors for Home Assistant

Two totally different options for a building sensor to communicate with Home Assistant. - GitHub

IoT News and More!

WiFi signals can measure heart rate

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz developed Pulse-Fi, technology that uses WiFi signals to measure a person’s heart rate. Pulse-Fi appears to be highly accurate, with clinical-grade accuracy. This system is unique because it does not require any wearable devices. - UC Santa Cruz

u-blox Sells for $1.3bn to Private Equity Firm

After exiting the cellular space this year, connectivity module manufacturer u-blox has been sold to Advent for $1.3bn. - RCRWirelessNews

Dual-Antenna Boards by Unexpected Maker

We got these unique new boards from Unexpected Maker in the shop last month. This is a very niche product to stock, hence why I’m including it in this newsletter. What makes them unique is these boards have both an antenna AND an u.FL connector for an external antenna, on the same board. You can switch which antenna to use via the RF switch on the fly from your code. These are perfect if you want to test different antenna variations while in the prototyping phase of a project, before you commit to a final design. - Adafruit Blog

KittenTTS is a state-of-the-art TTS model under 25MB

Kitten TTS is a new open-source realistic text-to-speech model with just 15 million parameters, designed for lightweight deployment and high-quality voice synthesis. Under 25MB and CPU optimization means its perfect for electronics projects. - Adafruit Blog

IoT Projects

Rain Sensing Umbrella Stand

A compact sized umbrella stand that lights up to warn you of incoming rainstorms. - Adafruit Learning System

Using ESP-NOW with CircuitPython

ESP-NOW is a connectionless communication protocol developed by Espressif that allows ESP32/ESP8266 devices to communicate directly with each other without needing a WiFi router or access point. It’s great for props, sensor-networks, remote controls, and mesh communications. Instead of spending spin-up and development time to see if ESP-NOW is the right fit for a project you’re working on, CircuitPython exposes an ESP-Now library that makes getting started super easy. - Adafruit Learning System

Ocean Sensor

An open-source buoy that monitors turbidity off the coast of Maui, Hawaii. The design is incredibly low-cost and uses an IMU sensor to read ocean waves. To do this, the author used ChatGPT to develop an Edge Impulse model for identifying wave height. Instructables

IoT News and More!

Ikea Relaunches Entire Smart Home Product Line

Ikea is re-launching its smart home product line. Smart devices will use the Matter-Over-Thread standard instead of Zigbee. The smart audio product line is also re-launching with inexpensive Bluetooth and Spotify, rather than Sonos. - The Verge

Belkin Bricks Wemo Smart Plugs

Belkin is ending support for Wemo smart plugs in 2026. The plugs will not be controllable via the Wemo app or the Internet. While Belkin is also offering a partial refund for this product line, I [the author of this newsletter] feel for the many users who have invested in these plugs for their home. I am not sure if a partial refund is “fair compensation” for effectively bricking a product that’s physically installed in a home unless the partial refund can cover a replacement for its functionality. Belkin Support

Espressif RainMaker MCP Server

ESP RainMaker now supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling natural language interactions with your IoT devices via tools like Claude, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, etc. - Espressif Developer Portal

Insights on Teufel’s Open-Source Speaker

The MYND speaker by Teufel Audio is a portable speaker that “can be rebuilt from publicly available data”. The industrial designer and electrical engineer responsible for this project discuss their design ethos on the Teufel blog. - Teufel Blog

IoT Projects

An $8 smart outlet to avoid brainrot

Neil Chen used an $8 smart outlet to avoid “brain rot”. When plugged in, a script blocks websites like X, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit, allowing him to focus and not get distracted by the Internet. - Neil Chen

AI Study Lamp

Makestreme built a study lamp that “gets angry” when it sees a smartphone. As soon as this lamp’s AI camera spots a smartphone on the desk, the lamp’s color shifts to red, making it harder to look at the phone. Once the smartphone is removed from the desk, the lamp’s bulb shifts back to a warm white color. - HackaDay.io

Color e-paper Weather Display

A full-color DIY weather map showing the current forecast for the British Isles. - Gray Malik

Monitoring a Compost Heap

This sensor node monitors the heat of a compost heap, which is a task that I wasn’t aware of. What I really like here is the node’s custom-machined soil stake, which fits a temperature sensor inside it. - HackaDay.io

IoT News and More!

A Block-based Action Engine comes to Adafruit.IO

In Adafruit IO, Actions are a way to do something when a certain situation occurs. We’ve built a custom Blockly App to allow easy creation and editing of Actions on Adafruit IO. Lots of new projects for this engine are being developed as its capabilities increase. Stay tuned for more! - Adafruit Learning System

How to Test OTA Updates Without Bricking Devices

A post on the Memfault blog about introducing over-the-air (OTA) updates to the embedded device development process. - Memfault Blog

Why “Start Ugly” Beats Perfect in the AI Age

This blog post brings a new perspective to hardware MVP’s: “Building a connected product? Start Ugly”. - Golioth Blog

Walter, an Open-Source Cellular, GPS and WiFi/BLE Module

A new module named Walter that combines every connectivity option you could possibly want with an ESP32-S3 SoC. As a huge bonus for reducing development spend while developing a Walter-based product, the module is already certified by the FCC, CE, UKCA, IC, and RCM. - DPTechnics

IoT Projects

How To Build A Smartwatch: Picking A Chip

Eric Migicovsky is writing a series of blog posts on how to build a smartwatch in 2025. He breaks down the high-level decisions that go into the low-level details of selecting a microcontroller for the watch. - Eric Migi

Replacing the Philips Hue Ambiance’s “Brain”

Wejn’s neighbor messes with their Bluetooth lights. The solution? Recreating the Hue Ambiance’s controller and replacing it with a locally-controlled version. - HackADay

Simple, web-based, Garage Door Opener

jjsch-dev created a garage door controller with a simple web interface, without modifying the system. - GitHub

Smart Terrarium

A basic self-contained terrarium that constantly monitors and controls the environment for plants. - HackADay

$30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener

An inexpensive solution to “open the blinds very gradually (and silently!) in the morning”. - Sifter

Water Flow Controller With HTTP Control

A straightforward, practical build from 406JEM for monitoring/watering a flower garden. - Sifter

IoT News and More!

How to Balance a Full-Time Tech Job and Learning Advanced IoT Skills

Shawn Hymel’s blog post about balancing a full-time job in tech with a strategy for learning advanced IoT skills like edge ML, AI, and real-world deployment. - Shawn Hymel