IoT Projects

CO2 Cuckoo Clock

Andreas Spiess published a video building a unique CO2 sensor design. He presents a case why eCO2 sensors may not always be a good idea for an environmental sensing project and builds a cuckoo clock to detect aerosols. - YouTube

IoT Twitter Listener Party Parrot

Throw a party every time someone sends you a tweet. This project uses the Twitter API v2 to query tweets and displays them as a sprite animation on a RGB LED Matrix. - Adafruit Learning System

Irrigator: Smart Sprinkler Controller

This smart sprinkler controller allows you to setup your own custom sprinkler system using a Raspbery Pi, a 4+ channel relay, and 24V AC Power Supply. If you have an existing sprinkler controller, it’s likely you can swap in this project relatively easily, utilizing the existing power supply - Github

IoT Air Quality Sensor with Adafruit IO

Breathe easy, knowing that you can track and sense the quality of the air (and environment!) around you with an IoT Air Quality Sensor. This sensor measures PM2.5 (particles that are 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter) dust concentrations, temperature and humidity - Adafruit Learning System

WaterAid

WaterAid is an affordable DIY IoT smart water quality monitoring device which allows scientists and authorities to identify polluted bodies of water - Hackaday.io

Smart Ping Pong LED Lamp

This LED lamp is a quick project that can be done within a day. Only a few cheap components are needed to create a nice looking ambient lamp. No programming is needed, the WLED firmware is uploaded to a microcontroller via a simple tool - Youtube

IoT News and More!

Threat modeling your IoT Projects

While building a pollution-monitor, @dcuthbert wrote an excellent twitter thread about threat modeling their IoT sensor - Twitter

TP-Link KL50 Smart Bulb Teardown

Tearing down an inexpensive LED filament WiFi bulb - ElectroBob

NEW IoT Hardware: Adafruit Metro ESP32-S2

The first Adafruit board using the new ESP32-S2 240MHz Tensilica processor is out! This board is perfect for adding low-cost WiFi to your CircuitPython (with Native USB) or Arduino projects.

Check out the ESP32S2 in the Adafruit Shop

NEW IoT Hardware: FeatherS2

The full-featured ESP32-S2 based development board in a Feather format from Unexpected Maker. The FeatherS2 is a power house, fully souped up with 16 MB of Flash memory (for firmware and file storage) and 8 MB of QSPI-based external PSRAM so you can have massive storage buffers.

Check out the FeatherS2 in the Adafruit Shop

Adafruit IO

Adafruit IO Wippersnapper

We’re working on a new way for you to interact with Adafruit IO called Wippersnapper. While Wippersnapper is not public (yet!), we’ll be sharing details, features, development progress and updates every Wednesday on the Adafruit Blog as we work on this new service.

Adafruit IO Stats

Adafruit IO has 353,825 total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• Total Feeds: 562,833 (and counting!).
• There are over 201,06 feeds online as of time of writing (October 29, 2020).
• There are an average of 7,500+ MQTT connections active 24/7.

Sign up for Adafruit IO (for free!) by clicking this link. Ready to upgrade? Click here to read more about Adafruit IO+, our subscription-based service. We don’t have investors and we’re not going to sell your data. When you sign up for Adafruit IO+, you’re supporting the same Adafruit Industries whose hardware and software you already know and love! You help make sure we’re not going anywhere by letting us know we’re on the right track.

NEW IoT Hardware: Adafruit Matrix Portal - CircuitPython Powered Internet Display

Folks love Adafruit’s wide selection of RGB matrices and accessories for making custom colorful LED displays… and Adafruit RGB Matrix Shields and FeatherWings can be quickly soldered together to make the wiring much easier.

But what if we made it even easier than that? Like, no solder, no wiring, just instant plug-and-play? Dream no more - with the Adafruit Matrix Portal add-on for RGB Matrices, there has never been an easier way to create powerful internet-connected LED displays.

To celebrate its release - we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite Matrix Portal guides in this newsletter.

Read more about the Adafruit Matrix Portal

IoT Projects

Moon Phase Clock for Adafruit Matrix Portal

The only way to get a correct Moon phase for your time and location is with math and science. Our Matrix Portal Moon phase clock lets you know where things stand right here and now, portraying the Moon’s phase more accurately than a printed calendar, and whether it’s currently in the sky or has set. - Adafruit Learning System

IoT Power Outlet with CircuitPython and Adafruit IO

Control fans, lights, or any appliance using a microcontroller and Adafruit IO - Adafruit Learning System

CircuitPython Support for ESP32-S2

ESP32-S2 boards from Espressif, GravitechG, UnexpectedMaker and Electronicats all running CircuitPython 6.0.0-alpha.3 as CircuitPython 6.0 moves closer to an official release (currently in beta!). - Twitter

Solar Powered IoT Lawn Sprinkler

A DIY WiFi lawn sprinkler powered by the sun. - movingelectrons

RGB Matrix Automatic Youtube ON AIR Sign

Everyone’s streaming, from Zoom to Twitch to YouTube and more. This sign will let people know not to knock on your door when you’re ON AIR! - Adafruit Learning System

Air Quality Sensor with Sensor.Community and Home Assistant

Build an air quality sensor to read your air quality and connect it to the open source air quality sensor map sensor.community. - savjee

IoT News and More!

TensorFlow Lite Micro Support on ESP32

Google’s Tensorflow blog announced TensorFlow Lite Micro support on Espressif’s flagship SoC, the ESP32. - EspressIf

Sensor Community is an Open Environmental Sensor Data Network

Sensor.Community is a new contributor driven global sensor network for Open Environmental Data. Their map currently supports sensors which monitor air quality (PM2.5, PM10) and noise. - Sensor.Community

This is what a Hacked IoT Coffee Machine Looks Like

A researcher at security company Avast reverse engineered a Smarter Coffee Maker v2. While watching it aimlessly execute code to grind beans and drip water is fun, we can’t help but wonder what if this was a different, necessary, internet-connected device. - ArsTechnica

Amazon Details Sidewalk, a new range- extension for Echo and Tile devices

There was not much information available last time this newsletter covered Amazon Sidewalk. Last week at Amazon’s hardware event, they provided some details about the new service. Sidewalk “uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), the 900 MHz spectrum and other frequencies to simplify new device setup, extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices and help devices stay online and up-to-date, even if they are outside the range of home WiFi.” New Echo devices are capable of acting as a Sidewalk Bridge to extend the working range of connected IoT devices - Amazon Developer Blog

Adafruit IO

NEW GUIDE: Adafruit IO Basics: Schedule Triggers

We’ve released a new guide in the Adafruit IO Basics Series for using Adafruit IO’s scheduled triggers. Build an internet-controlled lamp and connect it to Adafruit IO to schedule turning the lamp on or off during the week. The project in this guide may be adapted to control any AC (mains) appliance or device. - Adafruit Learning System

Adafruit IO Stats

Adafruit IO has 348,252 total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• Total Feeds: 550,390 (and counting!).
• There are over 18,434 feeds online as of time of writing (July 30 2020).
• There are an average of 7,000+ MQTT connections active 24/7.

Sign up for Adafruit IO (for free!) by clicking this link. Ready to upgrade? Click here to read more about Adafruit IO+, our subscription-based service. We don’t have investors and we’re not going to sell your data. When you sign up for Adafruit IO+, you’re supporting the same Adafruit Industries whose hardware and software you already know and love! You help make sure we’re not going anywhere by letting us know we’re on the right track.

IoT Projects

Evaluating Strategies for Climate Change in Arizona using Adafruit IO

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is using Adafruit.io to evaluate “how applying mulch might reduce demand for irrigation”. The experiment demonstrated that a thin layer of mulch can lower soil temperatures by 12 degrees Fahrenheit, thus reducing soil-water evaporation. - Adafruit

Little Bluetooth Media Controller

@ketszim built a small one-off Bluetooth media controller to change the volume, play, or pause a movie. - Twitter

Tracking how long a freezer stays frozen with no power

This summer brought a few blackouts in the U.S. This experiment used a Raspberry Pi and temperature sensor to determine how long your food will stay frozen. - Woodgears

Designing a LoRaWAN Monitored Garden

czuvich on the Adafruit Forums demonstrates their Greenclay LoRaWAN Smart Garden project. It is able to monitor and manage an outdoor garden using LoRaWAN with an Arduino programmed microcontroller. It is a complete package which includes a dev kit, garden controller, and mobile app. - Adafruit Forums

Turn a Rotary Phone Receiver into a World-Wide Radio

This rotary phone maps the the rotary encoder to radiooooo, a website which lets you tune into any radio station int he world. The receiver was also modified to pipe audio from radiooooo to the rotary phone’s handset. - Hackster

Office Bell Ringer with Slack

Alex’s company rings a bell when they sign a customer, release a new feature, or if anything positive happens. But, remote employees are “left out of this experience”. He built a servo which physically rings a bell in the office via a slack command. - Alex Meub

IoT News and More!

Alphabet’s Loon Balloons Cover 11,000 sq. Km of Kenya with Internet

Alphabet’s bet on sending balloons into near-space to connect people in internet-less blank spots has paid off. Their balloons have started lasting longer (from days to over half a year) and now cover 11,000 sq. km of Kenya with internet. - Medium

simdjson: Parsing gigabytes of JSON per second

JSON is everywhere on the internet. The SIMDJSON library uses SIMD instructions and micro-parallel algorithms to parse JSON 2.5x faster than anything else out there. - GitHub

Fitbit Study Suggests Wearables Might Be Able To Detect Covid-19 Before Symptoms Appear

Fitbit and similar wearables can track a wide array of vitals. A new study shows that subtle changes in things like breathing and heart rate could help with earlier detection. - FitBit

An Industrial IoT Platform Built on Battery-Free Sensors

Everactive has developed industrial sensors that run around the clock, require minimal maintenance, and can last over 20 years. The company created the sensors not by redesigning its batteries, but by eliminating them altogether. - MIT

You, Me, and IoT Two Microconference Accepted into 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference

The Linux Plumbers Conference (which just completed) accepted an IoT “microconference” into their conference tracks this year. We’ll hand-select a talk or two for the next issue of this newsletter. - Linux Plumbers Conference

Adafruit IO

Webhook Response Templates for Slack, Discord and More!

We’ve updated Adafruit IO’s webhooks in triggers (both scheduled and reactive) to allow custom response templating. This feature now allows webhooks to properly post to many more endpoints, such as Slack or Discord. We’ve included a couple of basic templates to build from. Read more about all the changes here…

Adafruit IO Stats

Adafruit IO has 338,708 total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• Total Feeds: 538,877 (and counting!).
• There are over 18,035 feeds online as of time of writing (July 30 2020).
• There are an average of 4,500+ MQTT connections active 24/7.

Sign up for Adafruit IO (for free!) by clicking this link. Ready to upgrade? Click here to read more about Adafruit IO+, our subscription-based service. We don’t have investors and we’re not going to sell your data. When you sign up for Adafruit IO+, you’re supporting the same Adafruit Industries whose hardware and software you already know and love! You help make sure we’re not going anywhere by letting us know we’re on the right track.

Webhook response templates

We’ve updated webhooks in triggers (both scheduled and reactive) to allow custom response templating. This feature now allows webhooks to properly post to many more endpoints, such as slack or discord. We’ve included a couple of basic templates to build from.

The templates need to be valid json in order to work, and allow a few values to passed in such as {{feed_id}}, or {{feed_name}}.

As an example, you could do something like this now:

{

  "content": "The value: {{value}} for the feed:{{feed_name}} is too low."

}

Get in touch with us on the Adafruit IO forums or on Discord if you have any questions.

IoT Projects

BLE-based Crowd Indicator for Small Stores

Smaller shops may not be able to hire extra employees to enforce or monitor social distancing. This solution by Ian Mercer tracks every Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) device nearby to figure out when the store is busy. - Hackster

PyPortal Home Office Busy Display

Diana Perkins (@diana_perkins) built a display using a PyPortal to show when someone in their home offices is busy. It’s controlled using a “rails app running on a machine on our local network so we can trigger it even if we already sat down for a meeting” - Twitter

Mesh WiFi Music-Reactive Light System

GlowFly is a WiFi connected, programmable and music reactive light system. When multiple nodes are combined, it is possible to span a mesh of WiFi connected devices which are synchronously reacting to music. - HackaDay

Electronic Security Lock using AWS Serverless

A small security lock you can text, powered by Amazon AWS Serverless. - Amazon

Vision Alert System with Azure IoT Edge and Jetson Nano

Build a vision system using a NVIDIA Jetson Nano with a webcam and the Azure Custom Vision service. This project sends an email alert to your inbox if an image has been identified. - henkboelman

Aquarium Automation with nRF52840

Aquarium automation system using a Feather nRF52840 and four extra FeatherWings. There’s an automatic fish-feeder and Raspbery Pi based fishpi monitors for temperature and lights. Scripts used in this project are open-source and on GitHub -Twitter

This Blog is Now Running on Solar Power

Lou Wrentius’ blog is now running on one solar panel and an old car battery. There’s a solar panel on his balcony “which is connected to a solar charge controller”. Clicking through to their blog, you can see a sidebar which shows the solar panel’s status. This widget runs on the same solar-powered Raspberry Pi which hosts the blog. If the weather is favorable, “the solar panel provides way more power than is required to keep the battery charged and run the Raspberry Pi”. -louwrentius

Dawn and Dusk Porch Lights

WiFi-enabled Wemo switch to turn off a porch-light at dawn and dusk. This switch includes an intelligent scheduler which obtains the location-specific sunset and sunrise times from the internet. - HackaDay

Wirelessly monitor G-Force from high-contact sports

Monitoring G-Force with a device attached to an ice-hockey helmet. Data is logged from the device to Adafruit IO. -Maker.io

Solar Powered Weather Station

Mark Komus built a solar-powered weather station that reports its recorded data to Adafruit IO, our easy-to-use IoT platform for everyone. A BME280 sensor monitors temperature, pressure and humidity. Sparkfun’s weather gauges are mounted at the top of the metal pole. - Adafruit

IoT News and More!

Use intent parsers to program your first voice AI

Programming a voice assistant for open-source home automation projects using the Mycroft voice assistant API. - OpenSource

New “Works with Google” program is Similar to Apple HomeKit

StaceyOnIoT points out that the new “Works with Google” program for smart-home devices is similar to Apple HomeKit, both services rope users into an vendor-specific ecosystem. - StaceyOnIoT

Alexa Connect Kit (ACK) Chipset Released

Amazon detailed a new Espressif-powered chipset which enables “WiFi, Bluetooth LE and all the software needed for Alexa control”. - Amazon

Adafruit IO

Adafruit IO Update: New Trigger Functionality

The Adafruit IO team has released some changes to Adafruit IO, our easy-to-use-internet of things platform. First is an update to Scheduled Triggers. Scheduled triggers now have a much more robust option to scheduling. If you’re familiar with cron scheduling, you’ll be familiar with this new system. You can schedule based on a number of new time and date options.

We’ve also added the ability for reactive triggers to email a value based on the feed that is being acted on, or now you can also update the value of any of your feeds from that trigger. For example, if the ‘humidity’ in your house is > 50%, you could update another, ‘dehumidifier’ feed to set the value to “ON”.

Finally, we’ve made further system changes that should improve the performance of Adafruit IO for all users.

Read more about all the changes here…

Adafruit IO Stats

Adafruit IO has 338,708 total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• Total Feeds: 529,571 (and counting!).
• There are over 17,000 feeds online as of time of writing (July 30 2020).
• There are an average of 4,000+ MQTT connections active 24/7.

Sign up for Adafruit IO (for free!) by clicking this link. Ready to upgrade? Click here to read more about Adafruit IO+, our subscription-based service. We don’t have investors and we’re not going to sell your data. When you sign up for Adafruit IO+, you’re supporting the same Adafruit Industries whose hardware and software you already know and love! You help make sure we’re not going anywhere by letting us know we’re on the right track.