IoT Projects

Boston Bus and Train Prediction Board

All aboard! Dufus2506 built an LED matrix display that shows a prediction for when the next Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) subway, bus, or commuter rail train will be leaving a stop. An internet-connected MatrixPortal M4 pulls data from the MBTA’s official API. - Adafruit Playground

A mmWave Presence Detector Blends Seamlessly with an Old Home

Modern home presence detection sensors look too futuristic when mounted in an older home. Chris built a presence detector using the newest mmWave technology that matches and preserves his home’s aesthetics. - renaissance-design

The Many Possibilities of Adafruit IO Actions and an Arcade Button

Tyler Cooper was inspired by the new Adafruit IO Actions feature to create multiple IoT projects using only a glowing arcade button and no programming. The projects range from a Pomodoro timer to a way to visualize the weather. - Adafruit Playground

A Quantum Number Generator

This project is too interesting to not include in this issue! This is a quantum True Random Number Generator. It publishes the number it generates over an MQTT channel so an API can be built on top of it. - GitHub

IKEA Death Star Lamp gets an Upgrade

Every time I go to IKEA, I find myself staring at the PS 2014 lamp. It looks like the Death Star from Star Wars and opens to disperse light in a room. Sephalon’s project takes the PS 2014 and motorizes it so it can open and close when the sun rises or sets. - GitLab

IoT News and More!

Bringing back an Internet-connected Kid’s Toy

The Jooki was a screen-free audio player that let kids listen to music and stories by placing specific tokens on top of it. When the company went out of business, the Jooki device could no longer connect to its cloud-based services. Security researcher “nuit” is working on bringing this product back from the dead. - hackaday

Internet-in-a-Box Learning Hotspots

Internet-in-a-Box hotspots are a way to bring the “Best of the Internet” to regions without Internet. Websites like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Khan Academy, etc, are locally hosted and distributed to community members as they connect to the hotspot. - internet in a box

IoT Projects

ChatGPT for Rotary Phones

Pollux Labs transformed a rotary phone into a novel way to interface with ChatGPT. Dialing “1” will activate OpenAI’s Whisper API. The phone interacts with you through its handset. - hackster.io

Moon Phase Lamp

An internet-connected Moon Phase clock displaying the current moon cycle on a 3D printed topographical relief of the lunar surface! - learn.adafruit.com

No-Code Easy Ambient Smart Lights

Tyler Cooper’s project focuses on “a super easy smart ambient lighting system that you can stick to the back of your computer monitor”. The ambient lighting system can be configured to notify you of events (virtual or physical!). - Adafruit Playground

Monitor Indoor Air Quality with Blue and a Hue LED Strip

Rob Lauer posted about building a cloud-connected air quality system with LTE connectivity. - adafruit-playground.com

A blazing-fast IoT data pipeline

This project uses the AMG8833 infrared thermal imaging sensor to send an array of values (corresponding to the thermal grid) to the cloud. The camera sends 470 bytes of streaming data at a frequency of 10 Hz. That’s a lot of data! This project discusses how they got their data pipeline costs down to around $2 per month. - s2.dev blog

IoT News and More!

Espressif’s Response to Claimed Backdoor and Undocumented Commands in ESP32 Bluetooth Stack

This past month, the media reported on a blog post from Tarlogic claiming to have a “backdoor” for ESP32 chips. Espressif clarifies this matter and provides a commitment to product security. - Espressif

I Won’t Connect my Dishwasher to Your Stupid Cloud

Jeff Geerling purchased a cloud-connected Bosch 500 series dishwasher and writes about their post-purchase frustration of a dishwasher with a cloud requirement. - Edge Impulse

Edge Impulse joins Qualcomm

Edge Impulse, the popular “end-to-end platform that streamlines the edge AI workflow”, was acquired by Qualcomm Technologies. - Edge Impulse

Thingino - Open-Source IP Camera Firmware

Thingino is an open-source firmware for Ingenic’s line of SoC IP cameras. - thingino

IoT Projects

Wearables for Diabetes Monitoring

Andrew Childs designed and built a wearable for his 9 y.o. son. His son has Type 1 diabetes and an off-the-shelf monitoring system like the Apple Watch provides too many distractions for a kid - it’s just too complex. So, he built his own! The blog post details the entire build process, from requirements to prototypes to custom glass fabrication. - andrewchilds.com

Espresso Machine Water Tank Monitor

John Park’s espresso machine has a “water reservoir that’s inconvenient to check on”. To solve this, he built a “contactless remote water level meter that harnesses the power of “The INTERNET” to keep us informed without having to move all the cups, lift the lid, and peer into it like some kind of luddite!” - Adafruit Learning System

Low Power Rain Gauge

A pair of AA batteries power this low-power rain gauge. The circuitry is relatively simple, using an nRF52832 module and the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol to send rainfall data to an Android application. -HackADay

Train Tracker, Tide Tracker, and Much More!

Brian Benchoff wanted “a device that will ping the city’s API for all the bus stops near my house, and condense that into a list I can put on a small display somewhere”. The result is a small e-ink display that not only shows the next bus arrival times but also the current tide schedule, and the current weather. Like the smartwatch above, this is another really great build guide. It goes into depth, detailing the difficulties of scraping a city’s bus schedule API and digesting it with a microcontroller. - bbenchoff

IoT News and More!

Humane’s AI Pin

The main story in February was the demise of Humane’s AI pin. This has been a poor rollout for one of the first consumer-focused AIoT hardware. After a large number of bad reviews spelled danger for the AI Pin - reports of units being returned more than they are sold and battery fire concerns made headlines. This all culminated in HP acquiring Humane in February for $116 million. As part of the acquisition, AI Pins stopped functioning at February 28, 2025. If you own one of these $699 devices, there is still hope! A recent WIRED article details a group working to keep the devices online.

IoT Projects

Holiday IoT Switch

Even though we are past the holidays, you can build this project for next year! This switch uses a massive 10mm diameter arcade button to wirelessly send a message to a smart outlet to turn on the holiday lighting. -Adafruit Learning System

Bike Web Server

Jelle Reith’s bike doubles as a mobile web server. -HackADay

Distance Running Training with an IoT Pet Feeder

Dan purchased an IoT pet feeder, filled it with their favorite candy, and had it dispense a piece of candy if they ran far enough. It ended up being an effective training program, they recently completed a half marathon. -mayer.cool

IoT News and More!

Adafruit IO in 2025 – We Want Your Feedback!

The developers and designers on the Adafruit IO team are requesting feedback (from you!) to help guide our development of Adafruit IO in 2025. If you’re a current Adafruit Free IO user, an Adafruit IO Plus (paid) user, or have previously used Adafruit IO in the last year, we want to hear from you! - Adafruit Blog

u-blox Phases Out its Cellular IoT Modules

u-blox, a provider of connectivity modules, announced that is phasing out its cellular business in 2025. They are re-focusing on short-range radio modules such as WiFi and Bluetooth. - ublox

Matter will be better in 2025 — say the people who make it

An interview with the Connectivity Standards Alliance about current concerns and the future of the Matter protocol in 2025. - The Verge

6GHz Frequency Band Opens in the US

The FCC announced the 6GHz band would be opened to “very low power devices”. As to what qualifies as a low-power device - we’re not sure yet. - HackaDay

Editor’s Note - Happy Holidays!

Hello readers,

I’m Brent. I’m an engineer! I work for Adafruit on all kinds of things, including writing the newsletter you are currently reading. The IOT Monthly is a newsletter different from what you may be used to reading. This newsletter is distributed only once per month, giving us enough time to gather information from around the internet for you. This isn’t an industry newsletter, nor a newsletter covering every IoT project or news item. Instead, it’s a carefully curated collection of projects and news that we find genuinely interesting.

As a tradition, I typically start the new year with a newsletter that recaps our favorite things from the previous year. This lets me reflect on the past year and share with you some of the interesting projects and news that I’ve come across. I’d also like to extend a “hug report” (Adafruit’s parlance for “thank you”) to our copyeditor, Anne, for her behind-the-scenes editing work on these newsletters for the past 4 years.

If you have feedback for improving this newsletter, please let me know. I’m always looking for ways to make it better. Also, if you want to submit your project directly to this newsletter, please email us at iotnews @ adafruit.com (remove the spaces!).

I hope you had a wonderful and restful holiday season,

Brent

2024 IoT Projects, in Recap

IKEA Vindriktning Air Quality Sensor Hacks

The IKEA Vindriktning is an inexpensive air-quality monitor that’s readily available online (from Ikea’s website) or at a retail IKEA store. We published two guides on hacking these devices to add additional sensors and connect them to the internet for logging measurements. – Adafruit Learning System

Industrial Network Playground

This is a smorgasbord of industrial network components, including PLCs, connected to a network. The playground helps a beginner learn and experiment with industrial control systems, without physically being in a factory. - HackADay.io

Adorable CO2 Gauge

An adorable internet-connected sensor that is unobtrusive and passively displays CO2 information. I really like these gauges and would like to see more thought put into projects like this! While internet-connected, the gauge does not require a mobile website or app. The information it presents can be interpreted by a child. But they also log data to the Internet for observing long-term trends and alerting. - kuenzi.dev

AI Image Description Camera

2024 was a year filled to the brim with AI announcements. This is a great project from Adafruit’s Liz Clark to illustrate the capabilities of OpenAI’s image description model. Images taken with the Adafruit MEMENTO camera are sent to OpenAI “to request a description of the image with various prompts”. The OpenAI response is visible on the camera’s display. – [Adafruit Learning System]((https://learn.adafruit.com/openai-image-descriptors-with-memento)

News, in Recap

I’ve enjoyed reading and learning about the following news articles in 2024…

• The Open Home Foundation, comprised of popular open-source projects like Home Assistant, ESPHome, Zigpy, Piper, Improv Wi-Fi, and Wyoming, was founded to work against “surveillance capitalism, the risk of a buyout, and open-source projects becoming abandonware”. - Open Home Foundation

• Tennessee Tech developed a way to power sensors in a field by transmitting electric power through the soil. – IEEE Spectrum

• A solar storm in May 2024 had impacts that were felt by millions of IoT devices. Memfault dives into their databases to find out how many of their monitored devices were impacted. – Memfault Blog

• Consumer Report’s Stacey Higginbotham wrote about why manufacturers should embrace vulnerability disclosure programs for IoT devices. – Consumer Reports

• WiLo is a new hybrid protocol that combines WiFi and LoRa. The result is a new approach for sending data (larger packet sizes than LoRa) over long distances, perfect for industrial IoT or agriculture IoT applications. – [IEEE Spectrum]