A note from the editor - We’ll make it together

Phil and Ladyada here, we usually do the newsletter each week, this week are diverting all our attention to efforts in NYC and awhile the world to help combat the COVID-19 outbreak. Thank you community for keeping us strong, and thank you Adafruit team for running the newsletter for now.

Adafruit was deemed an essential manufacturing, service and business in NYC by – Executive Order 202.6. We have a blog post with an overview and things are changing quick, stay tuned for updates on everywhere Adafruit is on social media - Read more.

We are Shipping a limited number of orders for health care professionals / urgent needs only. All other orders are being held for now.

Adafruit is a 100% woman-owned, loan-free, VC-free. profitable, USA Manufacturing company. Please see our about page and press page to read about us. Our founder and lead engineer is Limor Fried, a MIT Electrical Engineer.

We have paused some operations in NYC due to COVID-19, we are paying all team members, contractors, and more.

There are no layoffs for 130+ Adafruit team members. Adafruit was deemed an essential service to distribute/make some PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) such as face shields, and manufacturer electronics for essential life-saving/preserving equipment and development which is needed in New York and beyond.

Adafruit Industries located at 150 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013 by Executive Order 202.6, “Essential Business” by New York State: https://esd.ny.gov/guidance-executive-order-2026

Adafruit provides the following services:

Medical equipment/instruments including: Warehouse/distribution and fulfillment

Essential manufacturing including: Microelectronics/semi-conductor

Essential health care operations including: Medical supplies and equipment manufacturers and providers

We are maintaining some, but not all, business operations to assist in providing these valuable services to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.

If you are working on COVID-19 related efforts, we are shipping.

IoT Projects

AvoRipe – Check your Avocado’s Ripeness

Eden Bar-Tov built a device to check an avocado’s ripeness twice a day. If an avocado is ripe (AvoRipe checks both color and softness), a push notification will be sent to your phone notifying you that the avocado is ready to eat. - Adafruit

Stay Informed: How to Pull your Own COVID-19 Data

Tom Nardi wrote a guide on hackaday for pulling and 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

Upcycled Cassette IoT Display

Martin Mander, aka Old Tech. New Spec, gives life to obsolete technologies, usually by sticking a computer in them and connecting them to the internet. In this example of the upcycler’s craft, he’s turned a cassette (an ancient, rubbish way of recording music) into an IoT notification reader. - Adafruit

Space Station Grow Box Replica

m1st3r_c is building a replica of the plant grow-box used on the Internal Space Station for the Natural History Museum of London. - Adafruit

Pushup Counter

Stay fit even if you have to stay inside! Use a proximity sensor to count your push-ups. - Hackster

Ethernet for CircuitPython with Wiznet5K

Wireless is wonderful, but sometimes you want the strong reliability of a wired connection. If your CircuitPython project is going to be part of a permanent installation, you’ll want to add ethernet networking to your project. - Adafruit Learning System

IoT News and More!

Are All Edge Devices “Servers”?

A discussion broke out on Twitter between leading experts in the field of servers, IoT, gateways and single-board computers over the future of “edge computing.” This post is meant to summarize what was talked about for a broader audience because it is relevant to how we, as an industry, think and talk about “The Edge.” - Adafruit

Eye on NPI - ESP32-S2

First off, we are kicking off “EYE on NPI” video series with the Espressif ESP32-S2 SoC. These chips come with a great core, lots of RAM, proven TLS+TCPIP stack, a complete development platform, and lots of code examples. If you’ve used the ESP8266 or ESP32 many elements will be familiar to you! The best new peripheral for this chip is the new USB OTG system. Yes finally native USB comes to ESP! - Adafruit

NEW VIDEO: What is Adafruit IO?

Build IOT projects with Adafruit IO! Control your projects over the internet and create a dashboard to visually see your sensor data - YouTube

Watchy, an ESP32-powered Open Source e-Ink Smartwatch

Squarofumi designed a beautiful open source smartwatch with Arduino and Python Support. This watch has a “200×200 E-ink display, WiFi + BLE (Powered by ESP32), BMA423 Accelerometer, 4 Buttons + Vibration Motor, DS3231 RTC for accurate time keeping, and a 2 Week Battery Life”. Schematics and code are available on GitHub. You can also purchase one for $55. - SquaroFumi

IoT Design Week - Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Ladyada and PT talked about Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence with Microchip Technology. - YouTube

Espressif ESP32-S2 Sample Boards Shipping

We’re seeing some ESP32-S2 samples appearing in the hands of more developers. We’re looking forward to TinyUSB, and then CircuitPython on this module. - TinyUSB

How Nordic Semiconductor Built ThingyWorld for Embedded World 2020

Nordic Semiconductor built an impressive asset tracking demo for their booth at the Embedded World 2020 conference. Their Thingy:9’s are distributed all over the world and tracked using AWS IoT core. - Nordic DevZone

Adafruit IO Stats and more!

Adafruit IO has 318,457 total users as of March 27, 2020! Here are the interesting stats from the last 30 days:

• USERS ACTIVE (30 days): 16,697
• TOTAL FEEDS: 482,240
• FEEDS CREATED (last 30 days): 21,104
• There are about 4,330+ 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

How I Made My Heating Smart without Damaging or Replacing Anything

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 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

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

MicroPython-powered Lightbulb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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 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!

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.

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

IoT Projects

All-in-One MQTT Home Automation 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

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

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

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

PyPortal MQTT Sensor Node/Control Pad for Home Assistant

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

@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 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

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

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 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 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

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

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

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

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

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.

IoT Projects

Face Tracking and Identification with Walle-ng

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

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

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.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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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 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 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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.