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.

IoT Projects

AI-powered E-Ink Newspaper

Hyepaper is an “automatic newspaper in a frame, intended as a decorative piece”. The project scrapes popular websites, has OpenAI’s ChatGPT API summarize the articles, and delivers a “front page” newspaper view to an E-Ink display. - Hackaday.io

Robotic AI Bear using ChatGPT

Inspired by “a popular toy in the 1980s called Teddy Ruxpin that would tell stories while making prerecorded robotic gestures and movements”, this project upgrades an off-the-shelf robotic teddy bear to utilize OpenAI’s ChatGPT API to add prompts and tell bedtime stories. Click through the link for a video of this project in action. - Adafruit

14-Segment Display + Boredom = IoT Message Board

Floating.io was bored and “had a Raspberry Pi, a bunch of 14-segment displays, and way too much time on my hands”. The result is a 12-character, 14-segment display acting as a message board that can be modified by the Internet. - floating.io

Italian Espresso Robot with Live Flow Data

The Gaggia Pro is an excellent espresso machine, except it requires a lot of manual tweaking to perform the functions of a more expensive espresso machine. Nicholas DiPatri modified an Italian espresso machine to execute the steps of an expensive espresso machine (things like modulating brew pressure, dual PID control, auto-shutoff, and more). - Adafruit Blog

IoT News and More!

Over 2,000 devices running WipperSnapper have connected to the Adafruit.io No-Code IoT Platform

Over two thousand microcontroller boards have successfully connected and sent data to Adafruit.io using our Open-Source WipperSnapper firmware! WipperSnapper is a firmware designed to turn any WiFi-capable board into an Internet-of-Things device without programming a single line of code. WipperSnapper connects to Adafruit IO, a web platform designed (by Adafruit!) to display, respond, and interact with your project’s data. WipperSnapper’s open-source firmware currently supports 22 development boards and 46 components (including various sensors, actuators, LEDs, buttons, and switches)! - Adafruit Blog

The Uninvited Guest: IDORs, Garage Doors, and Stolen Secrets

Sam Sabetan writes about discovering vulnerabilities in Nexx’s smart garage door openers leading to anyone being to open a garage door “belonging to others from anywhere in the world”. - Medium

Designing Accessible IoT Experiences

Smart devices should make everyone’s lives easier. This article dives into how engineers and product designers can build better “smart devices” with accessibility for users with disabilities in mind. - Staceyoniot

Hands-On: Matter beta for Home Assistant

A hands-on review of the Home Assistant project’s Matter support which is currently in beta. - Staceyoniot

IoT Projects

Star Fragment IoT Lamp

Inspired by Star Fragments from video games such as Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this fully 3D printed star-shaped lamp uses a QT Py ESP32-S2 and NeoPixel LEDs to turn on when the sun rises and off when it sets. - Adafruit Learning System

IoT Powered Tide Clock and Water Level Display

Ever wanted to know what the local tide was doing? Here’s an IoT device that uses an NOAA API to tell you all about it. It displays how long it is until the next high or low tide and shows the current water level. - HackADay.io

Mini Weather Station

Is the weather outside delightful or frightful? A mini weather monitor using the OpenWeatherMap API to extract and display information - Adafruit Learning System

A fully custom mailbox alert system with LoRa

TreasureDev posts on Mastodon their fabulous multimedia project, a take on a notification system when something arrives in one’s mailbox. - Mastodon

Conversion of a defective flip clock to NTP

Converting a lovely flip clock from 1960 to use a stepper motor and obtain the current time from the Internet. - Wolfgang Jung

Self-Watering Plant System

James Black shared their self-watering plant system “Calm Station” which provides users with real-time room conditions. - Adafruit Blog

Wrist-mounted Air Quality Monitor

A wearable take on an internet-connected air quality monitor. - Adafruit Learn

Grafana on a Fish Farm

Details of using Grafana to monitor a fish farm. - Grafana Blog

IoT News and More!

Amazon opens its Sidewalk network to developers

Four years ago, Amazon announced their low-bandwidth long-range wireless network named Sidewalk. This week, Amazon announced that the private network is now open to developers using AWS IoT. - Techcrunch

28% of US Internet Households Have 3+ Smart Home Devices

First-time homebuyers are leading the charge in expanding the connected device market. While smart home purchases are generally down from 2022, “robotic vacuum cleaners, smart cameras, video doorbells, and smart thermostats experienced higher purchase rates than in 2021. - PRNewsWire

Hello IO community! We’ve released a new Power-Up to Adafruit IO that should be fun to use and is included with existing IO+ subscriptions (see below for location details).

Inbound Messaging Service

The inbound messaging feature allows you to send a message to IO directly from a text on your phone.

For example, you can send a message to update the Lamp feed with the value of ‘off’ by sending lamp, off, and IO will respond with an “OK” if the operation was successful. Similarly, you can send a message of lamp to receive the current value of the Lamp feed.

We also support sending location data, such as feed, value, latitude, longitued, elevation.

The rate limit for this feature is the same rate limit that is in place for the SMS Actions, and currently allows up to 25 messages per day.

You can set this up in your account via the Messaging Power-Up

Locations support to start

Similar to our SMS Actions update, we’re currently supporting USA and Canada.

The reasons for this are mostly around the high variability of the cost of SMS messaging. Our plan is to gradually add more locations.

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

IoT Projects

Buying, Programming, and Testing Capacitance Soil Moisture Sensors

A video of a maker’s exploration into capacitive-type soil moisture sensors. These sensors are frequently used by DIY soil monitoring projects (including some the Author of this newsletter has published). In the video, Modest Maker explains why “I don’t think you can just put these sensors in the ground and walk away”. - YouTube

Microsoft Teams/Webcam On-Air Light

A visual indicator for when you’re in a virtual meeting. - nothans.com

PyLeap ESP32-S2 TFT Boxing Glove Tracker w/ Adafruit IO

Building a boxing glove tracker to measure the force of a punch. - Adafruit Learning System

Water Meter Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico W

Using a Raspberry Pi Pico W and a magnetometer to monitor a home’s water consumption in real time. - HackADay.io

Another Sensor Hub

An ESP32-based environmental sensor hub with a multi-use physical interface. - GitHub

VOC Monitor for a Print Shop

Clint Wolf built a monitor for their print shop because “print shops are concerned about indoor humidity as it can affect the transfer of, and drying characteristics, of ink and the media it is being applied to”. They cited another concern of working in a print shop is the air quality the staff is exposed to during the day. - Adafruit Blog

Room Temperature Circuit Sculpture

A sculpture made from brass rods, an Arduino, a temperature sensor, and a block of walnut. Editor’s note: While this project is not connected to the internet, it’s a really beautiful example of circuit art and I wanted to include it. - HackADay.io

IoT News and More!

Customers disconnecting from Connected Appliances

LG and Whirlpool are noticing that customers with Connected Appliances are not registering them with the Internet. - WSJ.com

Twitter Ends Free API Access

On February 9, Twitter stopped allowing free access to their API. This ends the era for fun IoT projects (including one built by the Author of this newsletter) connecting to a “bot” Twitter account. - Twitter

Printable Batteries for IoT Nodes

Imprint Energy is developing a printable battery to create batteries in any shape imaginable. - Bloomberg

State of Home Assistant: Matter and Thread

The massively popular open-source home automation project, Home Assistant, posted a long update on their upcoming support of Matter and Thread protocols. - Home Assistant Blog