• Adafruit IoT Monthly: Hack-Proof Garage Door Opener, The Internet of Things is Sending Us Back to the Middle Ages and More!

    IoT Projects

    How I Made My Heating Smart without Damaging or Replacing Anything

    Smart Heating

    Andy Bradford has been wanting to upgrade their home’s heating system for a some time – but their house is rented. Damaging the house would cause them to lose their security deposit, “so the whole system must do no damage, be made only of removable parts and be installed without modifying any of the existing infrastructure.” - AndyBradford.dev

    Temper, a compact temperature sensor based on ESP8266 and SHT30

    temper

    Temper is a compact, low power temperature (~30-40uA) sensor based on an ESP8266 and SHT30, with a large 13x7 pixel LED display. - GitHub

    Adafruit CLUE-based Bike-Mountable Computer

    Clue Bike

    The Adafruit Clue is “the bike-mountable commuter computer [Jose Castillo] has always dreamed of”. - @josecastillo

    MicroPython-powered Lightbulb

    UPy Bulb

    MicroPython on an ESP8266-based smart-bulb. Instead of a interacting with the bulb using a proprietary app, @goatchurch is running a MQTT client on the ESP8266 and an MQTT broker on their computer. - @goatchurch on Twitter

    BLE Cheerlights

    BLE Cheerlights

    Using an AirLift FeatherWing to get the current cheerlights color, then advertising the color over BLE to an ItsyBitsy nRF52840 and a Circuit Playground Bluefruit. CircuitPython code is available on GitHub . - @DavidGlaude

    Control Home Appliances with Google Assistant and Adafruit IO

    AIO Google Assistant

    Techmirtz is controlling a 60W (not smart!) bulb using the Google Assistant voice-based command service. Adafruit IO, our free IoT service, has built-in integration with services like IFTTT. - Hackster.io

    Building an ESP32-CAM Video Surveillance Robot

    ESP32-CAM Robot

    konsdor has designed and built a video surveillance robot, powered by the ESP32-CAM microcontroller board. The robot may be controlled by the operator over the internet, as the board has WiFi networking built-in. - Hackster.io

    PyPortal Planter with Adafruit IO

    Pet Planter

    Build a smart planter with an Adafruit PyPortal and CircuitPython. Monitor your plants vitals with an Adafruit STEMMA Soil Sensor and plot moisture and temperature data. Use Adafruit IO to create a visual dashboard with gauges of your plants water levels. - Adafruit Learning System

    IoT Cloud Enabled Alarm Clock

    IoT Cloud Alarm Clock

    Teaching a mid-2000’s clock some new tricks. MoritzDornseifer updated a Tivoli Audio radio clock to be set by the internet. They’ve redesigned the clock assembly and updated the hardware to run on a Arduino Nano 33 IoT. The alarm can be set via the snooze button and configured via the Arduino IoT Cloud Dashboard. - Hackster.io

    How to Build a Hack-Proof Garage Door Opener

    Garage Door Opener

    Pete Lewis built a new twist on an IoT garage door opener. He added an ATECC508A crypto co-processor board to provide end-to-end encryption when opening the door to his garage. - IEEE Spectrum

    Internet-Connected Conference Badge

    Cloud Badge

    Codensolder built a CloudBadge conference badge with the PyBadge, an internet-connected conference badge which communicates with Adafruit IO over MQTT. While the PyBadge doesn’t have built-in WiFi, codensolder attached an AirLift WiFi FeatherWing to the PyBadge’s Feather headers to add WiFi, all coded in CircuitPython. - CloudBadge on GitHub

    IoT News and More!

    A CEO’s Experience During the nCoV Crisis

    Espressif CEO

    Espressif is a company with their main offices in China. The recent nCoV virus outbreak has affected them, but they’ve taken some precautionary measures, such as working from home and having multiple offices outside of China. Espressif’s CEO Teo Swee Ann published two articles about running the company during this outbreak. - Part I: Safety First, and Part II: On the Ground.

    The Internet of Things is Sending Us Back to the Middle Ages

    IoT Middle Ages

    Joshua A.T. Fairfield discusses “the new digital serfdom” as we purchase more internet-enabled devices controlled by advertisers and large companies. - The Conversation, Pocket

    Arduino IoT Cloud Gets a New Dashboard with Historical Data Import, Greater Customization, and More

    IoT Cloud Arduino

    Arduino’s IoT Cloud was updated with a shiny new dashboard which can import and display historical data from multiple devices. - Hackster.io

    Raspberry Pi 4 v1.2 Fixes USP-C Power Delivery

    Pi 4 Rev 1.2

    The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a new revision of the Raspberry Pi 4 (identified by a c03112 model number) which fixes an identified issue with USB-C power delivery. - CNX-Software

    The Things Industries launches a Global Join Server to push secure LoRaWAN provisioning practices

    TTN Global Join Server

    The Things Industries announced the launch of a Global Join Server which allows activation of any LoRa network, anywhere in the world, as long as it uses LoRa standard interfaces. This new ecosystem’s role is to “store root keys, generate session keys, and send them securely to the network and application servers”. This new model replaces the need for manufacturers to generate secure keys. - Things Industries via LinkedIn Pulse

    Bluetera II, a full-stack dev board that uses protocol buffers

    BlueTerra II

    BlueTerra II is an open-source IoT development board which supports Google’s Protobuf and motion algorithms. This tiny board has “everything. From hardware to firmware to the software running on your mobile device or PC is strictly open-source”. They’re using a Madgwick-based motion fusion algorithm which is also open source, as opposed to other fusion algorithms supported by similar development boards. - CrowdSupply.

    Adafruit IO Stats and more!

    AIO Stats

    Adafruit IO has 311,441 total users! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

    • USERS ACTIVE (30 days): 16,831
    • TOTAL FEEDS: 458,270
    • FEEDS CREATED (last 30 days): 21,985
    • There are about 4,200+ 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.

  • State of IO 02.19.20

    Iostats

    adafruit.io has 308,729 total users, however! Here are the most recent stats from the last 30 days which is a pretty good picture!

    • USERS ACTIVE (last 30 days): 16,656
    • USERS ADDED (last 7 days): 1,989
    • FEEDS: 458,270
    • FEEDS CREATED (last 7 days): 5,535

    In the last 30 days adafruit.io inserted over 789 million records. There are about 18 million background jobs per day and about 4,200+ MQTT connections active 24/7. IFTTT, Adafruit’s week in review: February 10 – February 16

    • Service connections: +594, all-time 65,733
    • Applet runs: +1,340,267, all-time 201,663,200
    • Applets turned on: +1,627, all-time 151,161
  • Adafruit IoT Monthly: Physical Event Notifiers, Particle deprecates Particle Mesh and More!

    IoT Projects

    All-in-One MQTT Home Automation Remote

    MQTT Remote

    serverframework built a WiFi “MQTT remote” with an ESP8266. Pressing a button triggers a function to send a MQTT message to a Home Assistant listener. - serverframework blog

    Kinetic Courier, Physical Event Notifier

    Kinetic Courier

    Something happened? Ring a bell, wave a flag, light some lights! A physical notification platform for IoT events. - hackster.io

    Alexa-controlled Adam Savage Pumpkin with IFTTT and Adafruit IO

    Alexa Pumpkin

    minihannah built an Alexa-controlled pumpkin which uses a combination of Adafruit IO and IFTTT to trigger lights connected to an Adafruit Feather M0 WiFi. - adafruit blog

    Internet Monster

    Internet Monster A cute monster that repeats what the internet says. What could possibly go wrong! - instructables

    PyPortal MQTT Sensor Node/Control Pad for Home Assistant

    PyPortal MQTT

    Richard Albritton wrote a guide about how to take IoT to the next level with this MQTT powered Super Sensor with an Adafruit PyPortal. - Adafruit Learning System

    Physical Test Controller with TreeJS, Socket.io and CircuitPython

    MQTT Web Controller

    @makerschmitz is building a physical controller with a web interface. You can watch it in-action on Twitter.

    IoT News and More!

    Particle deprecates Particle Mesh, discontinuing Particle Xenon

    Particle CEO Note

    Particle has announced today that they are discontinuing development of Particle Mesh, their OpenThread-based mesh networking solution, and will no longer be manufacturing their associated Xenon development board.

    Particle states they ran into two barriers which kept them from delivering on the promise with Particle Mesh:

    • Mesh networking, while a compelling technology, is extremely complex, and trying to make it “just work” with zero configuration for all customers in all environments just wasn’t feasible. As a result, the experience of Particle Mesh doesn’t live up to the standard that we set for ourselves with our other products.
    • It turns out that, for most of our customers, 802.15.4 mesh networking seems to not have been the right technology in the first place; most customers would be better off using Bluetooth Low Energy (which we will continue to invest in) or a sub-GHz radio like LoRa (which can be added to Particle through third-party accessories).

    See Particle’s full announcement and learn How to use Xenon with CircuitPython.

    Testing CircuitPython on Teensy 4.0 – IoT made easy IoTeensy

    IoTeensy

    CircuitPython has landed on the NXP iMX RT1062. We threw together a quick IoT project which uses the AirLift FeatherWing to fetch inspirational quotes from Adafruit’s quote service and displays them on an OLED FeatherWing. - Adafruit Blog

    The World’s First LoRa SoC: STM32WL

    LoRa STM32WL

    STMicroelectronics announced the launch of the STM32L, the world’s first integrated LoRa System-on-a-Chip (SoC). This is the first silicon which integrates a microcontroller and a sub-GHz radio, previously two separate modules. - CNX Software

    Arduino Portenta H7

    Arduino H7 Pro

    Arduino released a new Pro line at CES 2020 with a new flagship board - the Portenta H7. This board contains a STM32H747, Murata 1DX dual WiFi 802.11b/g/n 65 Mbps and Bluetooth 5.1 BR/EDR/LE, Secure Element (NXP SE0502), and a GPU (Chrom-ART graphical hardware Accelerator).

    Use-cases for this $99 board include “high-end industrial machinery, labratory equipement, computer vision”, and machine learning. - Arduino.cc

    WeMos W600-PICO

    WeMos W600

    WeMos released a new board for $2.10 USD plus shipping. The CPU is a Winner Micro W600 ARM Cortex-M3 WiSoC and the board is pre-loaded with MicroPython. - CNX Software

    OTA Device Firmware Updates for NRF52 Processors

    NRF52 OTA Firmware

    Mohammad Afaneh on NovelBits posts about updating the internal firmware on internet of things (IoT) devices via Bluetooth. - novelbits

    Pocket-Sized ESP32 with 300uW Display

    Pocket ESP32

    A pocket-sized ESP32 with a 300uW SHARP Memory LCD. - Hackaday.io

    ESP-AHT-10

    ESP-AHT 10

    A minimalist ESP temperature sensor which you can plug into your USB port. Designed with KiCAD, the board files are open source and available on GitHub

    Adafruit IoT Updates

    All the Internet of Things Episode 6: Digi-Key IoT Studio

    All the IoT Digi-Key

    Adafruit and Digi-Key have teamed up to present All the Internet of Things – a six-episode series covering everything you could ever want to know about the Internet of Things.

    We are very excited to release the final episode, which incorporates all the different subjects discussed in previous episodes, and shows off this incredible resource: Digi-Key IoT Studio.

    Unlike most other IoT platforms, Digi-Key IoT Studio is code-less — all sensor interaction and storage is done automatically by the drag-and-drop IDE. You don’t need to install toolchains, code editors or compile any code on your computer! Digi-Key Studio runs in your web browser, handles all aspects of developing an internet of things project, and even compiles your code remotely.

    Watch the full video or check out this guide to get started now.

    Free Year of Adafruit IO+ with the GitHub Student Developer Pack

    GitHub Education Great news for students! Adafruit is part of the GitHub Student Developer Pack!

    If you are a student and have joined (details here), all you need to do is log in to your adafruit.com account, click Services, then GitHub, and click connect! The discounts and free adafruit.io plus are waiting for you, it’s that simple!

    What is Adafruit IO?

    Adafruit.io has over 16,000+ active users in the last 30 days and 930+ Adafruit IO Plus subscribers. 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.

  • Adafruit IoT Monthly: Learning from IoT Projects, Adafruit Joins the LoRa Alliance, Ring Ransoms, and more!

    IoT Projects

    Face Tracking and Identification with Walle-ng

    OpenCV Robot

    Anton built a robot inspired by the Pixar Movie Wall-E. If a face is detected (using the OpenCV Facial Recognition Demo), activity is logged and a notification is sent to an Amazon Web Service API Gateway and distributed as an SMS by AWS’s Simple Notification Service. - Hackster.io

    Data Logging Zero to Hero with CircuitPython and MQTT

    CircuitPython MQTT

    Robin Cole published a tutorial which navigates through the basics of creating a CircuitPython temperature logging device. First, you use the Mu editor to plot your data and verify it’s correct. Then add WiFi Connectivity using a local MQTT broker and CircuitPython’s MiniMQTT module. Finally, add an MQTT sensor to Home Assistant so the data is graphed on a web dashboard. - Hackster.io

    ISS-Tracking Globe Lamp

    Globe

    This project uses an Open Notify API notification called ISS Location Now to track the International Space Station. A WeMos D1 grabs and parses the data. Then it tells a servo where to place a laser-pointer on a 3D-printed globe. - Instructables

    Disaster-Radio - an off-grid, solar-powered mesh network

    Disaster Flowchart

    disaster.radio is a work-in-progress long-range, low-bandwidth wireless disaster recovery mesh network powered by the sun.

    What I Learned Building an Indoor Air Quality Monitor with Adafruit IO

    AQ Monitor

    There are lessons to learn from every electronics project. Even a sensor node can quickly become complicated. Andy Bradford wrote up his experience (and provided free, open source code on GitHub) in building a logging platform. - Andy Bradford

    PyPortal Voice Controlled Smart Switch and Time Display

    PyPortal Smart Switch

    We’ve written about this project in a previous IoT Monthly before, but it was only a sneak preview. The PyPortal Voice Controlled Smart Switch and Time Display is now on the Adafruit Learning System as a guide - Adafruit Learning System

    Sending Arduino Data to Google Sheets using the Google Cloud Platform

    Arduino Google IoT

    Building an Arduino sketch to send data to Google Sheets using the Google Cloud Platform. - DZone

    IoT News and More!

    Adafruit joins the LoRa Alliance

    Adafruit LoRa Alliance

    Adafruit is thrilled to announce that we have joined the LoRa Alliance! I asked Ladyada why we joined this alliance…

    “Humans have done a great job of connecting people in dense populations like cities or buildings – WiFi and Cellular are ubiquitous technologies that connect people, machines and sensors. The future is to connect people wherever they are, and that’s where LoRa has so much promise. We think LoRa and LoRaWAN are the best way to solve last-mile connectivity for Industrial and Agricultural IoT” – Limor “Ladyada” Fried.

    Read the full blog post here…

    Ring Cameras are Ransomed

    Ring Camera

    December 2019 was the month of Ring insecurity. First, videos appeared where hackers spoke to families through their Ring cameras: “We would like to notify you that your account has been terminated by a hacker.” The voice then says, “Pay this 50 bitcoin ransom…”.  Ring asserted that their investigation found that the family used an email/password combination which was exposed in an unrelated data breach. @fs0c131y on Twitter did a deep-dive into Ring’s iOS/Android application. They found the application to leak geographic details of cameras through their API, Ring does not require authentication for video/photo alerts and the application does not implement rate-limiting for logging in. It’s likely that hackers are running automatic bots against the login with exposed usernames/passwords from previous breaches.

    FBI releases a statement for building a digital defense for the Internet of Things

    FBI Press Release

    The FBI has suggested network security measurements for those with IoT devices on their network. In short: change factory settings/passwords, isolate IoT devices to their own network, and update your devices regularly. - FBI

    LoRaWAN and Wi-Fi: Made for Each Other

    WiFi and LoRaWAN

    Remi Lorrain wrote that “WiFi and LoRaWAN work well together as an end-to-end solution in IoT applications and more.” - EETimes

    Project Connected Home over IP: an Open Standard for Smart Home Devices

    Project Connected Home

    Amazon, Apple, Google, Zigbee Alliance and board members form a working group to develop an open standard for smart home devices - Project Connected Home

    Ikea’s 2020 Smart Home Lineup is Unveiled

    Ikea Smart Home App

    Ikea is planning on barreling into the smart-home area in 2020 with new bulbs, products and even a ZigBee gateway. - TheVerge

    DZone’s IoT Predictions for 2020

    DZone IoT 2020 Stock Photo

    Dzone published their 2020 IoT predictions, among them are: the edge gets smarter, evolving networks and protocols, AI Smart Homes connected to ISPs, increases in DIY Home Security installations, more hard-lined policies for BYOD, and new flexible electronic materials. - Part 1 and Part 2

    The 2019 State of Responsible IoT Report

    Responsible IoT Report

    “With ThingsCon, we have devoted ourselves to working towards a ‘responsible IoT’. But what does that look like in the light of Surveillance Capitalism? With this years ‘responsible IoT Report’ – RioT for short – we wanted to find out.” - ThingsCon

    HackADay SuperConference Talk on YouTube: Basic Device Security for Basic Needs

    HackADay Talk Screenshot from Youtube

    Kerry Sharfglass remarks that “In our IoT-ified world, device security is more important than ever, but not every hardware product needs to be secured like an ATM inside a missile. I will discuss basic design practices and implementation tricks which are easy to incorporate into your product and provide a solid baseline of security against casual adversaries.” - YouTube

    Five Reasons to Upgrade to MQTT 5

    MQTT 5 Spec Screenshot

    The latest version of the IoT’s favorite stateless protocol has been out for a while. Here are five reasons to upgrade to it - IoTforAll

    Actinus Environmental Sensor FeatherWing Released

    Sensor Featherwing

    Actinius’ Environmental Sensor FeatherWing measures temperature, humidity, pressure, and air quality. The Feather-compatible environmental sensor add-on also includes a Grove connector for use with any I2C-compatible microcontroller. It’s available for purchase from the actinius website and is in-stock at the time of writing.

    OpenMV Cam H7 Plus

    OpenMV Cam H7 Plus

    The OpenMV Cam is a small, low power, microcontroller board which allows you to easily implement applications using machine vision in the real-world. You program the OpenMV Cam in high level Python scripts (courtesy of the MicroPython Operating System) instead of C/C++. It’s currently in-production and will be in stock by March 2020. - OpenMV

    Adafruit IoT Updates

    New Adafruit IO Feature: Kiosk Mode for Dashboards

    Kiosk Mode

    Adafruit IO Dashboards have a new “kiosk mode” URL that will launch the dashboard in a “no browsing mode” without any of the surrounding page. This is super-handy if you’re designing an exhibit or would like to use a Raspberry Pi + HDMI Display to monitor your Adafruit IO Feeds. Read our blog post to learn how to enable this feature on your dashboard right now…

    New PyPortal Sizes: Meet the PyPortal Pynt and the PyPortal Titano

    PyPortal Family Picture

    The PyPortal is our easy-to-use IoT device that allows you to create all the things for the “Internet of Things” in minutes. Adafruit has released the PyPortal Pynt, the little sister to our popular PyPortal - zapped with a shink ray to take the design from a 3.2” diagonal down to 2.4” diagonal screen. We’ve also released the PyPortal Titano, with an ATMEL (Microchip) ATSAMD51J20 plus an Espressif ESP32 Wi-Fi coprocessor with TLS/SSL support built-in. PyPortal Titano has a bigger 3.5″ diagonal 320 x 480 color TFT with resistive touch screen. Compare that to the original PyPortal’s 3.2” 240x320, there are twice the number of pixels! Also, Adafruit has updated the connector to be a reverse-friendly USB C connector.

    Build a Mini Smart Home with the Smart Home Kit for Digi-Key IoT Studio

    DigiKey Home Kit

    Automate your own adorable, IoT-enabled papier-mâché house. The small size of this build lets one explore wiring, user interaction, and firmware deployment without having to get a ladder out. After building this project, you can re-purpose it for your home or apartment. We’ve specifically selected components and sensors which are common in real-world IoT projects. You can also go further with this project, adding sensors to monitor different rooms in your home. Visit the product page for this kit on the Adafruit Website…

    What is Adafruit IO?

    Adafruit.io has over 14,000+ active users in the last 30 days and 880+ Adafruit IO Plus subscribers. 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.

  • Adafruit IoT Monthly: Machine Learning 101, PWNing the ESP32, and more!

    IoT Projects

    Running ML on Particle Hardware, ML 101

    Tensorflow Lite now runs on newer Particle devices! Brandon Satrom published a very detailed tutorial about running TFLite on Particle devices. - Particle

    Do your chores or else I’ll cut off the internet!

    AccidentalRebel is creating a device “that monitors and logs if my kids have done their chores and daily tasks. If not, their devices won’t have access to the internet.”. When their chores for the day are complete, their device will automatically re-connect them to the internet. - Hackaday.io

    ESPRing Clock

    ESPRing is a NeoPixel ring with an onboard ESP module. The ESP connects to WiFi and fetches the NTP time. - Hackaday.io

    AutoHome - Universal Home Automation with Raspberry Pi

    rirozizo is building a home automation system powered by a Raspberry Pi “to remotely control any possible home appliances without the use of proprietary hardware and apps”. They’re using the (free) Adafruit IO service as the MQTT broker and for data visualization. - Github

    Voice-Controlled PyPortal Smart Switch

    Dan the Geek is improving their PyPortal-based Smart Switch. They connected it to Adafruit IO’s IFTTT integration so they can turn a light on or off using voice commands over Alexa or Google Assistant. - Twitter

    Evaluating Motion Sensors, Microwave v.s. PIR

    Akarush wrote a detailed log of his evaluation for two motion sensors - a RCWL-0516 and a PIR motion sensor. The results? Each sensor has unique advantages and disadvantages. - Hackaday.io

    Bluetooth-based Costume Props using Arduino and ESP32

    Juan Carlos Jiménez hosted a costume party and integrated their costume with the house decorations. This BLE-powered costume prop is spooky. - JCJC-Dev

    RGB Weather Strip

    This RGB LED Strip changes color based on the weather forecast outside. - Hackaday

    Code-less IoT Projects with Node-RED on Raspberry Pi

    Les Pounder posted a tutorial about using the Node-RED development tool…

    Node-RED is an awesome tool and anyone, yes anyone can make something with it. All you need is a web browser and a device with Node-RED. Node-RED uses JavaScript syntax, but we do not have to write any code, rather we link nodes together.

    Around the Internet - IoT News

    PWNing MBEDTLS on ESP32

    LimitedResults found vulnerabilities with the ESP32 which allows an attacker to compromise the cryptographic library on the ESP32, MbedTLS. It’s important to note that an adversary will need physical access to the ESP32 module as it’s been compromised using a voltage-glitching attack. While this doesn’t impact hobbyists, it is a an attack on the hardware module (you can not roll out new software to patch it). If you have an ESP32 module in the field, it is potentially vulnerable to this type of attack, given an attacker’s resources and time. It looks like Espressif is following this report. They tweeted after ESP32 was pwned a couple of months ago: “We have upgraded the hardware; stay tuned for ESP32v3 with improved security and performance!”. We are unsure if this impacts the ESP8266 or the upcoming ESP32-S2 module.

    Adafruit joins the Zephyr Project

    The Zephyr Project is a scalable real-time operating system (RTOS) supporting multiple hardware architectures, optimized for resource constrained devices, and built with safety and security in mind, and we’re thrilled to announced we’ve joined the project. - Adafruit

    Mozilla is building a “Web of Things”

    Mozilla is building an “open platform for monitoring and controlling devices over the web”.

    The idea of the Web of Things is to create a decentralized Internet of Things by giving things URLs on the web to make them linkable and discoverable, and defining a standard data model and APIs to make them interoperable.

    Read more on Mozilla IoT…

    Amazon’s long-term plan for Alexa

    An interview with Rohit Prasad, Alexa’s head scientist, revealed details about where Amazon wants to head with their powerful voice assistant. - TechnologyReview

    Hackable Smart Watch powered by Espruino

    Bangle.js is a hackable, open-source smartwatch that can be easily customized. It’s currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter and may fill the space on our wrists from Pebble’s acquisition by Fitbit. The bangle packs more of a punch than a pebble with a nRF52832, 64kB RAM, heart rate monitor, accelerometer, magnetometer and a 350mAh battery. - Kickstarter

    Best Buy discontinues Insignia IoT Products

    Insignia, Best Buy’s generic hardware brand, has shut down every product which replies on their app (including a freezer). Each time this happens, we think about how many products in our lives rely on “other peoples servers”. Do you have a contingency plan for the IoT devices in your life? - Hackaday

    Recognizing AI Snake Oil

    AI has been intertwined with IoT (AIOT). But, “Much of what’s being sold as ‘AI’ today is snake oil — it does not and cannot work.”. This paper addresses the important questions of “Why is this happening? How can we recognize flawed AI claims and push back?” - Princeton

    Analyzing NB-IoT and LoRaWAN Sensor Battery Life

    Low power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies like NB-IoT and LoRaWAN are perfect for your projects requiring small packets, long battery life, and long distances. But how long will the batteries in your IoT project really last? - Semtech Developer Journal

    Adafruit IoT Updates

    Promotion: 1 Year of Adafruit IO Plus Free with $250 Adafruit Purchase

    We’re running a special promotion! As of November 20th, 2019 5:30pm, if you place an order of $250 or more at Adafruit, you’ll receive a 1 year subscription to Adafruit IO+. You’ll receive a minimal yet elegant Adafruit IO+ Subscription Card! This card comes with a code on the back and when typed into your Adafruit IO account, will activate a full year of Adafruit IO+ service for all the IoT projects you can dream up.

    Promotion: Google AIY Voice Kit for Black Girls CODE

    For a limited time, whenever you buy a Google AIY Voice Full Kit the regular price of $59.95 here, on this page, Google will automatically donate one to Black Girls CODE. Black Girls CODE goal is to empower young women of color ages 7-17 to embrace the current tech marketplace as builders + creators. Check out the bundle on Adafruit’s website.

    What is Adafruit.IO?

    Adafruit.io has over 14,000+ active users in the last 30 days and 850+ Adafruit IO Plus subscribers. 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.