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

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.