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

IoT Projects

The Ultimate Guide to Waterproofing your Electronics Project

The Cave Pearl Project has been deploying undersea data loggers since 2013 and knows a thing or two about waterproofing electronics. This post is a summary of the techniques used by the project in waterproofing their data loggers. - The Cave Pearl Project

Smart Powermeter

J.G.Aguado’s power meter “provides real-time data on your energy consumption, giving you a quick overview of your grid’s status whenever you need it.” The power meter features a 2.9” e-paper display and is powered by an ESP32-S2 (which can be used with your favorite diy-smart-home application). - HackADay

Keep the Internet Online with a DIY Automatic Transfer Switch

Geekabit’s friend was “looking for an automated transfer switch (ATS) so his PC and modem do not lose power when the circuit breaker trips.” Their DIY project switches the power over from a wall outlet to an uninterruptible power supply, keeping a PC and modem online. - geekabit

Ikea Vindriktning: Hacked for IoT!

The Ikea Vindriktning is a small and affordable air quality monitor that measures PM2.5 particulates for an AQI reading. The light bar on the front changes from green, yellow or red depending on the reading. It’s a fun little device, but it would be great to make it Internet of Things capable and this guide shows you how to do just that. - Adafruit Learning System

Jellyfish Umbrella with Easy WiFi Control

Make a jellyfish umbrella with animated lights, with no coding required. It looks beautiful in the evening! Make your jellyfish dance and flow with lights, tentacles, and iridescence. This is an intermediate project that gives you advanced results. The software is simple to load and use. Hundreds of animations and color combinations are available right through your fingertips, using any web browser or the free WLED app on your phone. - Adafruit Learning System

OMOTE: DIY Universal Remote

Frustrated by Logitech’s discontinuation of their Harmony Smart Remote, Max K. built their own universal smart remote. Focused on ergonomic design and graphics, the OMOTE features a capacitive 2.8” touchscreen and infrared, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. - HackaDay.io

IoT News and More!

The White House Debuts IoT Cybersecurity Labels

The White House unveiled its plan for a U.S. Cyber Trust Mark that will certify that the IoT device marked with the label has met a set of security criteria developed to protect consumers’ networks and device data. The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark will be a voluntary program administered by the Federal Communications Commission, and the label should start appearing on devices in 2024. - Stacy on IoT

Adafruit IO WipperSnapper Now Supports 20 Boards!

We’re thrilled to announce that WipperSnapper, our no-code IoT firmware, now offers support for twenty (20!) development boards, and there are more in the pipeline! WipperSnapper firmware is portable, as it can seamlessly integrate with boards from any manufacturer, not limited to Adafruit alone. You can use WipperSnapper on a range of platforms and microcontrollers, including ESP32, ESP32-S2, ESP32-S3, ESP32-C3, ESP8266, RP2040, and ATMEL SAMD+ WiFi Co-Processor. - Adafruit Blog

IoT Projects

Building the Ultimate Garage Door Control

Stephen Carey’s store-bought Insteon garage door controller did not work properly and failed to integrate with Alexa. Instead of relying on Insteon, he built his own system complete with a way to visually check the door’s position. - HackADay

Internet-Connected Rain Gauge

This 3D-printed rain gauge records rainfall and runs for a year on four AA batteries. -HackADay

Ventbot, a DIY HVAC Vent Booster

Do you have rooms in your house that are colder than other rooms in the winter? If you have air conditioning, are those same rooms warmer than other rooms in the summer? The Ventbot project is a DIY solution for making register boosters with intelligent temperature control. - HackADay.io

LoRa-to-Signal Bridge

A way to chat with a friend on Signal, over ultra-long distances. - Adafruit Learning System

IoT News and More!

Adafruit.IO WipperSnapper now works with (some) TFT Displays!

We’ve released a new beta (beta 64) of our no-code IoT firmware, WipperSnapper, which includes support for the Adafruit ESP32-S2 FunHouse’s 1.14″ 240×135 Color TFT Display. If you’ve been using WipperSnapper on FunHouse, simply upgrade to the latest version (details below) of WipperSnapper and you’ll be greeted with a whole new user experience! - Adafruit Blog

Asus Routers Get Knocked Offline Due to a bad update

On May 16, 2023, Asus pushed a security update to all of their routers. The problem? A corrupted file was distributed, causing routers worldwide to go offline. - Bleeping Computer

Ethernet Turns 50 Years Old!

On May 22, 1973, Robert Metcalfe wrote a memo to management at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center explaining how Ethernet could work. This article from all about circuits lists the steps in Metcalfe’s career leading up to Ethernet. - All About Circuits

ESP32-C3 Wireless Adventure: A Comprehensive Guide to IoT (PDF!)

A free book/resource from Espressif detailing a journey through IoT. Chapters range from hardware design to power optimizations to getting a wireless project off the ground. - Espressif

A look at DeviceScript, Microsoft’s modern IoT coding language

Kevin Tofel takes a tour around DeviceScript, a new IoT coding language from Microsoft. - Stacey on IoT

New functionality: Bluetooth for Pico with RP2040 W

The $6 Raspberry Pi Pico W launched last year with WiFi. But one thing has been missing: Bluetooth support. Now that’s been fixed – and you don’t need to buy a new Pico W. The new functionality is available as a free software update for all Pico W boards. - Raspberry Pi Blog

IoT Projects

Weather Wise WiFi Umbrella Stand

Looking for a fun and functional DIY project that can brighten up even the gloomiest of days? This WiFi-enabled umbrella stand checks the weather for you and glows if you are going to need your umbrella. Step-by-step instructions, easy to make, and stylish to boot. - Adafruit Learning System

Smart Home Guardian Robot

A DIY version of the Amazon Astro for home surveillance. - HackADay

Canary Nightlight

Wouldn’t it be great to have a nightlight that changes color based on the time to help with sleep and waking up? Even better, what if it lets you know when your internet is down so you’re not wondering? Build your own red and blue canary to put in the outlet by the light switch where it can watch over you! - Adafruit Learning System

ChatGPT for the Smart Home

Using ChatGPT, atomic14 was able to generate a Python script to control specific pins on a Raspberry Pi. After generation, they “added on a bunch of bells and whistles afterwards, but the core of the API was generated by ChatGPT”. -atomic14

PiPyPirate Radio

Make a low-power FM transmission radio station with a Raspberry Pi or other single-board Linux computer. -Adafruit Learning System

IoT News and More!

Adafruit IO WipperSnapper gets a Web-Installer Update

We’re excited to show you the improved Adafruit IO firmware installer that makes it easier than ever to get started on IO with a WipperSnapper-compatible device. - Adafruit Blog

Flipper Zero Gets a 1-Month Battery Firmware Update

The Flipper Zero team details how a firmware update they rolled out increases the device’s battery life from one week to one month. - Flipper Zero Blog

What’s Next for the Smart Home?

An analysis of Jabil’s 2023 Smart Home Report finds that consumers are still overwhelmed by choice, fragmentation, and concern about their privacy. - StacyonIoT

A warm hello from the Adafruit IO team!

Today we’re excited to show you the improved Adafruit IO firmware installer that makes it easier than ever to get started on IO with a WipperSnapper-compatible device.

Here’s a short video if you prefer to watch, and a detailed blog post follows.

The Story Thus Far…

Last year, we added a firmware installer to IO that walked users step-by-step through the process of flashing the WipperSnapper firmware to their boards. It was great!

But, it only worked for boards with UF2 bootloader support, what about boards without?

Browsers + Tools = Browser Tools

We try make things surprisingly simple for WipperSnapper, so we reached for the new Web Serial API and Adafruit’s own @makermelissa ported some key firmware tools to JavaScript (details). In what seemed like no time, we had an experimental web page (source) that could flash the WipperSnapper firmware onto these boards. Hurray!

For folks who can’t (or prefered not to) use the web-based tool, we added an option to download the firmware as a file that can be flashed in the traditional manner at the command line.

How Did It Go?

There were a few reasonably concerning things about this experiment:

• Redirecting users a stand-alone site might be jarring.
• Connecting to USB ports from a website is new and surprising.
• No design or UX pass: it’s function over form.

But it turns out it’s pretty good! Measuring by the sheer quantity of these boards we’ve seen connect, it must be working out well for our users.

So we did the natural thing: we built it into IO!

The New, Improved Firmware Installer

Let’s take a quick look at it here.

We select our board and enter our WiFi credentials. In this flow, the credentials (including our AIO Key) are written to the board automatically, along with the firmware.

Web Serial Installer

If the board is compatible with the Web Serial flow (and we’re using a compatible browser), we’ll get step-by-step instructions that guide us straight through the process of installing WipperSnapper: no code or command lines required!

MergeBin Installer

And if we don’t want to use the Web Serial flow for any reason, the MergeBin-based download flow is also built in, with nice instructions and snappy performance.

Guides, Guides, Guides

What would a new feature be without some Learn Guide content to go with it? Here’s the guides for the 5 boards we currently support with this flow:

• ESP32 Feather V2
• QT Py ESP32-C3 WiFi Dev Board
• HUZZAH32 ESP32 Feather
• Feather HUZZAH ESP8266
• QT Py ESP32 Pico

That’s It (For Now!)

With these updates and lots more to come, we hope to see your project built on WipperSnapper soon!

Technical Footnote:

These are the firmware tools that were ported to JavaScript (and open sourced!) in the creation of this feature:

• LittleFS -> LittleFS in JS
• ESPTool.py -> ESPTool in JS
• ESPTool merge_bin -> MergeBin in JS

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