Happy December from the Adafruit IO team!

Today I’m bringing news of not one but two big improvements to WipperSnapper: our no-code IoT platform interface.

More Components, Better Picker

As I write this, WipperSnapper now supports 82 unique components! From servos to NeoPixels, I2C to UART, analog, digital, PWM… how can we keep it all organized???

Behold, our redesigned component picker:

Faster, Searchable, and More Detail

This picker update performs much better than before, with numerous optimizations under the hood. But by far the biggest addition is search! Knock yourself out searching for various keywords, like:

• component names: aht20, servo, buzzer, button, etc
• sensor types: light, temperature, pressure, humidity, etc
• interface: i2c, uart, ds18x20, etc
• even I2C addresses: 0x77, or just 77
• vendor: Adafruit, ASAIR, Infineon, Bosch, etc

We’ve also add product and documentation links to every component. The documentation links will often a lead to one of our high quality Learn Guides, terrific! And for folks browsing for components to buy, the product links are a handy shortcut to the Adafruit Shop or wherever the component is sold.

If you’d like to see a video of the new component picker in action, you can see me walking through it on a recent episode of Show & Tell!

Working in the Sun

At Adafruit, we’re dedicated to open source. All of our WipperSnapper-compatible components are created and maintained in the Wippersnapper_Components open-source JSON repository. We’re proud to be able to work in the open. In fact, the work for this update was iterated openly on this Pull Request!

If there’s a component you’d like to see supported by WipperSnapper, head over and check the Request Issues page to see if it’s already in the works. If not, feel free to open an issue requesting your favorite component! And, if you’re handy with code, you could even get involved and contribute to the project. After all, the microcontroller code that drives WipperSnapper is open-source as well.

Magic Configuration

Not to be outdone, we’ve also made some updates on the board side of things. With WipperSnapper up to 21 compatible boards (and counting!), and thousands of user boards active right now (and growing!), we knew it was time to make it easier to configure them.

Export, Import, Magic

The next time you take a look at one of your devices you might notice a new button at the top of the screen labeled “Auto-Config”:

Upon clicking it, you’ll be presented with various auto-configuration options:

Quick overview of each:

Export: Got a device configuration you’d like to recreate later? This will let you save a file that does just that. Maybe you want to delete and recreate this device? Or perhaps a friend wants to clone a setup of yours? Use export to get a file that can be imported later, instantly re-configuring the device exactly as you have it, now.

Import: The opposite of export! This is where you take export files you’ve created, or received from a friend. Uploading a valid file here will provide an interface for rapidly creating a fully-configured device. Each component can be selected/deselected for import, individually. Any possible import errors will also be shown.

Magic: Finally, the best part: MAGIC! For supported boards, Magic Config will jump straight to the import interface mentioned above with every built-in component on this board configured for import. That’s right, even boards with truly insane numbers of components onboard are ready to go in a one click (I’m looking at you, Funhouse!)

To see a video of the Funhouse getting configured (almost instantly!), check out this clip from Show & Tell. Here’s an image of the Funhouse’s Magic Config import screen: so many components!

More Open Source

Of course, we also built the board additions in the open, here’s some quick links for the curious:

• WipperSnapper_Boards repository: open source repository for WipperSnapper-compatible boards
• Magic Config Pull Request: the work we did to get set up for export/import/magic features
• New Board Request Issues: where to go to request a new microcontroller for WipperSnapper to support

As always, if you have any suggestions or bugs to report about these new features, please let us know in the forums.

IoT Projects

Internet of Skull: An Internet Status Monitor

Maker Emily Velasco is known for her unique projects and the Internet of Skull is no different: “I live in a neighborhood with an internet provider of so-so quality. When the service works, it works well, but it goes down more often than it seems like it should for the $75 a month I have to pay for it.” This project monitors Emily’s home network status and displays it using an RGB LED for visual feedback. The project is mounted inside a fake skull, giving it a unique, biological, look. -MLE-Online

Text to update this RGB LED Matrix

Send text messages that magically scroll across a RGB LED matrix in bright colors. Update the sign from anywhere, or give the control to your employees or family members, since there’s no coding or computer needed to update your sign. -Adafruit Learning System

CAN Bus Sniffing with ESP32

The CAN bus, accessible through your car’s OBD-II port, is a channel holding real-time data from your car. EQMod developed an ESP32-powered dongle that plugs into an OBD-II port and can be used to sniff CAN bus data. Data is displayed on a self-hosted webpage. -HackADay

Antique (Internet) Radio

Craig Lindley built a vintage-style radio that plays music from an internet radio station. The enclosure is made from 1/8” baltic birch and the radio itself is powered by an ESP32 WROOM. -HackADay

IoT News and More!

How Raspberry Pis Were Used to Protect NASA Telescope Data

The Register explains how scientists used the power of Raspberry Pis saved data from the Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope. - Adafruit Blog

Ethernet is still going strong after 50 years

Ethernet has become the standard wired local area network around the world, and it is widely used in businesses and homes. It was honored this year as an IEEE Milestone, a half-century after it was born. - IEEE Spectrum

IoT Projects

PeggyBoard: An Interactive Climbing Wall

The PeggyBoard is “a Raspberry Pi project developed to be paired with your home “woody”/climbing wall. It features an easy-to-use web app that anyone on your network can open up and begin setting a custom route that will then light up the respective holds on your wall. These routes can also be saved so they can be revisited later.” - GitHub

A Loud Phone Ringer for the Elderly

Giovanni Aggiustatutto built a custom base for an elderly friend. The cordless landline phone’s base contains a loud ringer and flashing lights to alert the friend of an incoming call. - HackADay

HydroCleaner: River Cleaning Robot

A low-cost, ML-powered, robot that attempts to capture trash in small waterways. - HackADay.io

Using Meshtastic and OwnTracks to Kick A Google Location Habit

Jonathan Bennet was searching for an alternative way to share location data with their wife and business travel. They combine Meshtastic, a LoRa-based mesh network, and OwnTracks, a GPS location tracker, to create a private (self-hosted) location-sharing service. - HackADay

Screen Time Monitoring with Adafruit IO

Using an HLK-LD2410B human detection sensor and Adafruit IO to monitor the amount of time an engineer spends staring at their computer screen. - Hackster.io

LoRaWAN Birdhouse

A birdhouse with a weight scale inside to detect a bird. The birdhouse is powered by solar energy and can transmit the scale’s data via LoRaWAN to the Internet. - HackADay.io

IoT News and More!

Millions of UK Smart Meters will Brick

Millions of smart meters in the UK will become “bricked” as 2G and 3G mobile networks are turned off across the country. - The Register

IoT Projects

Bright Block: A Bike Gizmo for Urban Science

Kelsey’s bike light does a bit more than we’d expect from a standard bike light. It’s also a climate monitor “built to capture and characterize several aspects of biking in the city”. As the cyclist rides, it measures and maps environmental data around the city, including temperature, humidity, and air quality. - HackADay

LED Matrix Sports Scoreboard

If you’ve ever wanted to see all of your sports stats in one spot, this project is for you. You can build a large RGB LED matrix display to monitor your favorite s teams. A Matrix Portal S3 running CircuitPython requests data from the ESPN API to show your teams’ gameplay data alongside team logos that are resized and gamma-corrected to look crisp and bright on the matrices. - Adafruit Learning System

A Cheap but Precise Weather Station

JP Gleyzes built a long-range weather station for their RC flying club. “These (wind) conditions are locally changing quite fast and the weather forecast is not accurate enough for our hobby”. The weather station’s feed can be accessed via this link. - HackADay

Hot Tub Monitoring Machine

Stephen’s hot tub monitoring system uses commercial sensors to track their hot tub’s water quality measurements. The system uses an ESP32 to read the sensors and send out the data to Home Assistant. They’ve included a “calibration mode” that verifies their sensor reads against a hot tub with a known good buffer solution. - HackADay

IoT News and More!

Adafruit.io and WipperSnapper Updates

This past month, a lot has been going on with our Adafruit.io platform and WipperSnapper firmware – Support for UART components, device auto-configuration, and new sensors. - Adafruit Blog

Philips Hue will force users to upload their data to Hue Cloud

Philips Hue is a fantastic IoT product that the author of this newsletter has written software for. Soon, they will soon require you to sign into their application and share data with the Hue Cloud. Home Assistant’s article covers the privacy implications of this change, and as of October 2nd, they have already reverted some of these changes. - Home Assistant

Sony energy harvesting module generates power from electromagnetic wave noise

Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation (SSS) has developed an energy harvesting module that uses electromagnetic wave noise energy to power IoT devices. - CNX Software Blog

Your Car is a Privacy Nightmare

Jenny List writes about the transition of the personal vehicle from a machine to a software product. - CNX Software Blog

IoT Projects

Smart Plant Monitor with E-Ink Display

This plant monitor is neat because it “takes advantage of the ESP32-S3’s touchpad feature which has all the circuitry needed to monitor (soil) capacitance”. - HackADay.io

BirdNETPi - a real-time acoustic bird classification system

BirdNET is an audio analyzer built around TensorFlow Lite. It runs on a Raspberry Pi and “is able to recognize bird sounds from a USB microphone or sound card in real-time and share its data with the rest of the world” - GitHub

OpenMower - DIY Smart Mowing Robot

The OpenMower project alleges that inexpensive off-the-shelf robotic mowers aren’t great! They “drive in a random direction until they hit the border of the lawn, rotate for a randomized duration, and repeat”. Instead of this basic operation, OpenMower is improving its mowers through open-source, community-built, software. - GitHub

Album Art for Turntables

Paul Cutler built an RGB matrix that can display the album art of whatever is spinning on a turntable. From a website, he picks the album he’s listening to, a script converts the image into a bitmap, and the bitmap is sent over MQTT to an RGB matrix that’s sitting on his desk. - prcutler on Mastodon

Open-Source Heat Pump Controller

ThermTerm is an open-source heat pump controller and home automation terminal, built on ESP32, by Danilo Campos. - Adafruit Blog

IoT News and More!

Adafruit.io and WipperSnapper Updates

This past August, a lot has been going on with our Adafruit.io platform and WipperSnapper firmware. It’s hard to keep track of everything! To address this, we, the Adafruit IO team, will publish bi-monthly (or monthly if we do not have enough news) “WipperSnapper Updates Wednesday” posts on the Adafruit Blog. This will help you stay informed about all the activities on this platform. - Adafruit Blog

Results from the 2023 Blues IoT Survey

Blues Wireless conducted a developer survey for users of their IoT platform and shared their insights. - Blues.io

Smart Garbage Trucks

Lewin Day writes about an Australian city testing smart garbage trucks to identify street-level maintenance issues. - HackaDay