IoT Projects

Keep Track of Critter Visitors with Birb Cam

Everett “had no idea how many critters visited (his) balcony planter box until (he) started working from home last March”. To capture these critters before they scurry away, Everett built an IP webcam aided by machine learning and computer vision to detect birds. - EverettsProjects

AIoT Water Meter

A single ESP32-CAM is used in conjunction with a neural network to read an analog water meter. This system snaps a picture of the water meter and uses a convolutional neural network to perform image recognition on the network and determines the reading. The system publishes readings to a graphical interface, also hosted by the same ESP32-CAM. - Github

Raspberry Pi 2040 meets LoRaWAN

Add LoRaWAN support to the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s new RP2040 chip. - LeMaRivaTech

DIY Home Assistant Sensor with CircuitPython

Build and program a sensor for Home Assistant using MQTT and CircuitPython. - Adafruit Learning System

Speaker Snitch spies on your Smart Speaker

Your smart speaker may be spying on you. Spy back by building a speaker snitch, a small box that monitors network traffic and flashes a LED whenever your smart speaker is sending data to the cloud. - Hackster.io

IoT News and More!

Results of 2020 MBed Developer Survey

ARM MBed published the results of their 2020 developer survey. Some interesting IoT findings are:

• BLE and cellular are popular among professionals while WiFi is popular among hobbyists.
• 50% of companies are increasing their BOM cost to protect against loss control over an IoT device
• Non-professional developers feel the largest challenge is setting up a development environment

Read the full survey results here…

Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect, a RP2040-based board with WiFi

The Raspberry Pi Pico’s RP2040 SoC is getting a dedicated board from Arduino - the Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect. This board packs the RP2040 SoC, WiFi, Bluetooth ,and an IMU into a small form factor. - Tom’s Hardware

Hands-on with the RISC-V ESP32-C3

HackADay got their hands on pre-samples of the ESP32-C3 SoC. This new SoC intends to be an ESP8266 replacement with a faster CPU (160MHz RISC-V) and more RAM (400kB). - Tom’s Hardware

Adafruit IO News

What IS Adafruit IO Wippersnapper?

Adafruit IO Wippersnapper is a new way to create robust Internet of Things Projects without writing code. Wippersnapper is in early development and it’s not out yet. BUT, we will be publishing content about Wippersnapper whenever we have exciting new things to show you!

Watch the first demo of Wippersnapper on Youtube »>

Adafruit IO Stats

Adafruit IO has 370,000+ total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• Total Feeds: 612,000+ (and counting!).
• There are over 21,700+ feeds online as of time of writing.
• There are an average of 5,00+ MQTT connections over the last 30 days.

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

A Thermostat for your Window

A Raspberry Pi project which integrates with your thermostat to display the perfect time to open your windows. - GitHub

Continuous Integration Test Status Light

Visually display the result of continuous integration tests with this cellular IoT status light. - Hackster

Google Calendar Event Display

Keep an eye on your schedule with this MagTag Google Calendar Event Viewer. This CircuitPython project uses the Google Calendar API to retrieve a list of the latest events from your Google Calendar and displays them on the MagTag’s e-Ink screen. - Adafruit Blog

The Internet of Christmas Trees

Prepare yourself for next years holiday season by building an internet-connected Christmas tree to send alerts when the tree needs watering. This detailed project writeup even dives into creating a parallel plate capacitor for monitoring the water level. - SpuriousEmissions

AI Freezer Monitor

A freezer monitor that uses machine learning to provide alerts if a freezer is about to fail. - Adafruit Learning System

Hoodie of Community Interacts with Tweets

This hoodie responds to emotive tweets by displaying a light show. - Hackster

IoT News and More!

A review of Blues Wireless - Cellular IoT at a Flat Rate

Blues Wireless is a new IoT company that offers a System-on-Module with GPS and Cellular, a cloud platform for managing cellular device fleets, and a flat $49 fee for 10 years of IoT cellular service. - Dev.to

Is the Amazon Echo Flex Mute Button Real?

Amazon’s new Echo Flex includes a button to mute the microphone. While most of us remain suspicious, electronupdate decided to reverse engineer the Echo Flex’s mute button to determine if it does more than turn on a red LED. - electronupdate

Samsung’s Galaxy Upcycling Program repurposes old phones as IoT devices

Samsung introduced a new recycling initiative at CES 2021 to convert your old Galaxy smartphone into an IoT device. - Adafruit Blog

Adafruit IO News

Adafruit IO Stats

Adafruit IO has 359,125 total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• Total Feeds: 601,201 (and counting!).
• There are over 20,000 feeds online as of time of writing (Nov 23, 2020).
• There are an average of 4,700+ 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.

3,000 Thanks

Thanks to everyone reading this newsletter. We’re excited to have hit over 3,000 subscribers! We started this newsletter in May 2019 to highlight the latest projects and news for Adafruit’s IoT platform, Adafruit IO (io.adafruit.com). Since then, we’ve expanded this newsletter to not only focus on our offerings, but also include the best internet of things projects, news, and hardware from around the internet. Since then, we’ve published 29 issues - Adafruit Blog.

Our Favorite IoT Projects in 2020

We’ve dug into archives and sifted through everything published in 2020. Here are a few of our favorite projects from the 2020 IoT Monthly newsletter.

How to Pull your Own Covid-19 Data

We saw a large amount of IoT projects which track Covid-19 numbers, from the case count to amount of vaccines administered. HackADay published a guide back in April for scraping raw data about COVID19 from multiple data sources. If you’re building a way to monitor the total number of cases in your state or country, this guide provides reputable data sources along with Python code snippets - HackADay.

ISS-Tracking Globe Lamp

A 3D printed globe which uses a servo and laser-pointer to display where on Earth the International Space Station is hovering over - Instructables.

The Internet Monster

A cute monster which repeats what the Internet says. What could possibly go wrong? - Instructables.

Connected Weather Cloud Lamp

This is a fun project that plays with how to visualize information using only light and sound. What better way to have some fun with this than to make an Internet connected cloud that connects to an open source weather API? - Adafruit.

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.

UnifiedWater

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

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.

Adafruit IO Stats

Adafruit IO has over 367,000 total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• Total Feeds: 589,324 (and counting!).
• There are over 19,000 feeds online as of time of writing (Dec. 28, 2020).
• There are an average of 4,800+ 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

The Ultimate Birdfeeder

An internet-connected bird feeder system with a temperature-controlled bird bath. - HackADay.io

IoT Air Quality Sensor Enclosure

An IoT air quality sensor with a weatherproof enclosure modeled after a silo-home. - Adafruit Learning System

Microsoft Teams Presence LED Panel for Raspberry Pi

When looking at your teammates through little boxes on your screen, it’s nice to be able to know who’s available and who’s not. Here’s a project that will display your Microsoft Teams presence on an LED panel. - Adafruit Blog

Easy IoT Logging Options for the Beginner

HackADay published a list of IoT logging services for absolute beginners. - Hackaday

Integrating The Things Network with Azure IoT Central

A full guide on connecting LoRaWAN devices to the Microsoft Azure IoT service. - Hackster

DIY Google Assistant with the Raspberry Pi BrainCraft HAT

Build your own open-source Google Assistant device - Adafruit Learning System

Blinds Controller with HomeBridge MQTT

A retrofit ESP-powered controller for home-blinds compatible with Apple HomeKit. - Hackster

IoT News and More!

TinyML and IoT for Conservation Efforts

Developing an IoT solution to monitor threatened mammals using machine learning - Hackster

10 Reasons for ripping out a £6k lighting system

Rob Dobson ripped out a home lighting system he installed in 2012 in favor of a new WiFi based system. The post provides a breakdown of converting a large Z-Wave IoT system to WiFi. - Adafruit Blog

New Adafruit IoT Hardware: MagTag - 2.9” Grayscale E-Ink WiFi Display

The Adafruit MagTag combines the new ESP32-S2 wireless module and a 2.9” grayscale E-Ink display to make a low-power IoT display that can show data on its screen even when power is removed! The ESP32-S2 is great because it builds on the years of code and support for the ESP32 and also adds native USB support so you can use this board with Arduino or CircuitPython! You can attach this display to a metallic shelf, fridge, or workbench. - Adafruit Shop

SDRPlay offers free course on “Understanding Radio Communications”

SDRPlay is offering a free 12-hour course for those interested in “understanding radio communications - using SDRs”. If you’re looking to pick up new skills while staying at home due to COVID-19, this is a university-level course “for all students that have basic knowledge of signal theory and signal processing”. - SDRPlay

IoT Unravelled Part 1: It’s a Mess… But Then There’s Home Assistant

Troy Hunt is blogging his experience of “heading down the rabbit hole into a world of soldering, custom firmware and community-driven home automation kits”. This post discusses integration with different IoT hubs, automations, and the “initial layers of complexity” for getting started with Home Assistant - Troy Hunt

Adafruit IO News

Adafruit IO UI Refresh

A refreshed Adafruit IO interface is now live on io.adafruit.com! We’ve been working on refreshing our user interface for Adafruit IO over the past few months. The focus on this update has been on making IO easier to use (larger fonts, less digging into menus) and with more options. You can watch this video tour of the refreshed user interface or visit Adafruit IO right now to get started.

Adafruit IO Stats

Adafruit IO has 359,125 total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• Total Feeds: 574,381 (and counting!).
• There are over 20,029 feeds online as of time of writing (Nov 23, 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.

User Interface Updates

We’ve been working on refreshing our user interface for Adafruit IO. We’re hoping to have this released shortly, and are in the final stages of testing now.

The focus on this update has been on making IO easier to use (larger fonts, less digging into menus) and with more options.

Light and Dark Mode in Dashboards

We’ll soon have support for both light and dark mode dashboards. You can easily toggle between them. See below for a sneak peek at the new layouts.

Light Mode:

Dark Mode:

Let us know what you think on the Adafruit IO forums or if you have any questions.