IoT Projects

Buying, Programming, and Testing Capacitance Soil Moisture Sensors

A video of a maker’s exploration into capacitive-type soil moisture sensors. These sensors are frequently used by DIY soil monitoring projects (including some the Author of this newsletter has published). In the video, Modest Maker explains why “I don’t think you can just put these sensors in the ground and walk away”. - YouTube

Microsoft Teams/Webcam On-Air Light

A visual indicator for when you’re in a virtual meeting. - nothans.com

PyLeap ESP32-S2 TFT Boxing Glove Tracker w/ Adafruit IO

Building a boxing glove tracker to measure the force of a punch. - Adafruit Learning System

Water Meter Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico W

Using a Raspberry Pi Pico W and a magnetometer to monitor a home’s water consumption in real time. - HackADay.io

Another Sensor Hub

An ESP32-based environmental sensor hub with a multi-use physical interface. - GitHub

VOC Monitor for a Print Shop

Clint Wolf built a monitor for their print shop because “print shops are concerned about indoor humidity as it can affect the transfer of, and drying characteristics, of ink and the media it is being applied to”. They cited another concern of working in a print shop is the air quality the staff is exposed to during the day. - Adafruit Blog

Room Temperature Circuit Sculpture

A sculpture made from brass rods, an Arduino, a temperature sensor, and a block of walnut. Editor’s note: While this project is not connected to the internet, it’s a really beautiful example of circuit art and I wanted to include it. - HackADay.io

IoT News and More!

Customers disconnecting from Connected Appliances

LG and Whirlpool are noticing that customers with Connected Appliances are not registering them with the Internet. - WSJ.com

Twitter Ends Free API Access

On February 9, Twitter stopped allowing free access to their API. This ends the era for fun IoT projects (including one built by the Author of this newsletter) connecting to a “bot” Twitter account. - Twitter

Printable Batteries for IoT Nodes

Imprint Energy is developing a printable battery to create batteries in any shape imaginable. - Bloomberg

State of Home Assistant: Matter and Thread

The massively popular open-source home automation project, Home Assistant, posted a long update on their upcoming support of Matter and Thread protocols. - Home Assistant Blog

Support Adafruit

Here at Adafruit, we sell all of these amazing components, but we couldn’t find a good way to interact with them over the Internet. So, we decided to create our own IoT platform, and that’s Adafruit IO. It’s built from the ground up to be easy to use and platform agnostic (connect any development board or device!). For those who want to get a project off the ground without programming - Adafruit IO offers a No-Code interface for building IoT electronics projects using WipperSnapper, our open-source IoT firmware. Support Adafruit’s open-source development by subscribing to Adafruit IO Plus, the upgraded, all-systems-go version of the Adafruit IO service.