Editor’s Note

Hello readers! I hope you are warm and cozy, and reading this issue in the new year. This is the last newsletter I’ll be writing in 2022. This issue will read a little differently. Below, I’ll be listing my favorite things posted in the Adafruit IoT Monthly during 2022.

If you’re one of the 1,000+ new subscribers in 2022 - welcome! My name is Brent and I’m an engineer at Adafruit Industries who works on all sorts of things, including this newsletter. The IoT Monthly was previously known as the Adafruit.io newsletter and only contained news and projects about our Adafruit.io IoT Platform. In 2019, we expanded this newsletter to the broader topic of the Internet of Things. Unlike Adafruit’s other newsletters which are sent on a frequent basis, this newsletter is distributed only once a month, giving me time to gather information from across the ‘net and giving you time to breathe.

This past year, I’ve been working with the team on Adafruit’s IoT offerings. Specifically, I’ve been working on enhancing and improving Adafruit.io and WipperSnapper, our (beta) no-code IoT firmware. In a year, we’ve seen thousands of people try this platform out for the first time. We’ve added support for more I2C sensors, OneWire sensors, PWM outputs (such as buzzers, and switches), and even servos.

The WipperSnapper firmware is now more stable and we’ve redesigned the onboarding process to help folks create their connected electronics project even faster. We’ve also added platform support for the ESP32-C3, ESP8266, and Raspberry Pi RP2040. And there’s still more to come in 2023, including power-saving sleep modes, displays, new transport types, offline logging, more projects, increased board support, and increased component support.

Thank (over 5,000+ of) you for subscribing to this newsletter. Next month’s issue will return to regular programming.

Cheers,

Brent

p.s.: If you have any feedback about this newsletter, or want to submit something you’re working on, send an email to iotnews@adafruit.com.

Favorite 2022 Projects

TurtleSense Disguises a Sensor Package as a Loggerhead Egg

Whole-home circadian lighting

These beautiful WiFi jellyfish lanterns

A CO2 sensing canary

Comic Strips generated by the Air Quality Index

e-Ink postcard frame can receive images over-the-air

A nautical barometer for perfect forecasting

Water pollution monitor using AI/ML

Connected bird-feeder

Prototypes for future homes

This weather forecasting diorama

IoT henhouse

IoT Projects

TurtleSense Disguises a Sensor Package as a Loggerhead Egg

Researchers hid an accelerometer in a fake turtle egg [a ping pong ball] to send data via SMS. With this data, people will be able to understand more about the nesting/hatching process and deploy effective protection for the turtles. - Adafruit Learning System

No-Code IoT Pool Monitor

You can build your own IoT Pool Monitor (without code!) using Adafruit IO and WipperSnapper. This can help you keep track of water temperatures by logging and plotting data to a dashboard! All of the electronics are housed in a clear sealed enclosure that is also water resistant. - Adafruit Learning System

Pico W HTTP Server with CircuitPython

Set up an HTTP (web) server with a Pico W running CircuitPython. HTTP servers are handy for creating custom web interfaces to monitor and control IoT projects. - Adafruit Learning System

BLE Soil Sensor

b-parasite is an open-source Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) soil moisture and ambient temperature/humidity/light sensor. - GitHub

Home Buttons

An open-source device for locally controlling your smart home. While this is a purchasable project, the technical overview on the build log is informative for anyone looking to build a smart panel. - Hackaday.io

Circadian Lighting a Home

Light messes with Tyler’s head, so they built a way to auto-adjust the lights in their home according to circadian lighting. This is a self-hosted solution, replacing something which would be commercially offered by a vendor such as Philips. - tylercipriani.com

Turbidity Sensor

An open-source, low-cost, in-situ turbidity sensor for river network monitoring. Results and data from this sensor were published in Scientific Reports. - GitHub

Solar/Wind Power Self-Sustained IoT System

Research and attempts to use a renewable energy source (solar or wind) to power a sensor node. - Hackster.io

IoT News and More!

Make Noise with Adafruit IO WipperSnapper!

You can now connect analog output components such as Piezo buzzers and dimmable LEDs to a development board running Adafruit’s no-code IoT firmware, WipperSnapper. We’ve made it super easy to configure a PWM output component on a development board and immediately start using it. - Adafruit Blog

The HTTP crash course nobody asked for

A whirlwind tour of HTTP, with Rust! - fasterthanlime

SpaceX now advertising Swarm satellite IoT connectivity on its Starlink network

SpaceX bought satellite data start-up Swarm, in a rare acquisition by Elon Musk’s space company over a year ago. SpaceX is now advertising Swarm satellite Internet of Things connectivity on its Starlink website, with IoT service at $5 per month. - Adafruit Blog

Starting today, November 15th, 2022, all new Power-Ups in IO for the weather service will be using Apple’s WeatherKit weather service.

Dark Sky has been deprecated and will be shut down on March 31st, 2023. All existing weather integrations will continue to work until that time.

We recommend that prior to that deadline you migrate your existing weather integrations to the new WeatherKit weather service.

The steps to create the integration are the same, and we will automatically default to the new service for you.

If you need help migrating your client code, Apple has a Transitioning from Dark Sky section that provides field mapping data from Dark Sky to WeatherKit.

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

IoT Projects

WiFi Jellyfish Lanterns with WLED

Create your own luminescent jellyfish out of iridescent vinyl and NeoPixel LEDs. Easily add endless light patterns with the free, and easy-to-use WLED software, with no coding required. You can even make multiple jellyfish and sync them up over your WiFi network. - Adafruit Learning System

Using Plumbing Valves as Heavy Duty Analog Inputs

Alistair Aitchison of Playful Technology shows how to repurpose plumbing valves for use as inexpensive, heavy-duty, analog inputs. - Arduino

ESP32 Thin Client

A DIY thin client with a tiny keyboard and a 320×240px touchscreen display. - HackaDay

No-Code IoT Soil Sensor

A soil stake that monitors plant vitals using Adafruit’s No-Code WipperSnapper firmware. - Adafruit Learning System

Pothole Detection with Sony Spresense Camera

A project that uses the Sony Spresense module to detect and log the GPS location of potholes. - Hackster

IoT News and More!

Matter 1.0 is finally finalized — so what’s next?

Matter, the latest smart home standard, opened for certification last month. Jennifer Tuohy writes about “what’s next” for this standard. - TheVerge

Home Assistant’s SkyConnect Dongle Offers Plug-and-Play Zigbee, Matter, and Soon Thread Support

SkyConnect, a $29.99 dongle designed to add Zigbee, Matter, and Thread support to a server running Home Assistant OS. - Hackster

Everything we know about the White House’s IoT security labeling effort

The White House is working towards a “national cybersecurity certification and labeling authority” for all electronics, including IoT devices. - arstechnica

IoT Projects

No-Code IoT CO2 “Canary In a Coalmine”

Much like the canaries that were kept in coal mines to detect gases, this build uses a CO2 sensor to detect indoor air quality. When the air quality is poor, the bird will drop, until you open your windows and bring it back to life! - Adafruit Learning System

AQI Funnies

The “AQI Funnies” project by extrasleepy combines air quality readings from sensors with comic strips. The comic strip’s content changes depending on the day’s air quality index. - ExtraSleepy

FloWat - Sustainably Powered Water Flow Analyzer

A “sustainable way to analyze flow rates in irrigation pipes for agriculturists without needing to worry about changing the battery every day”. An F50 Hydroelectric Generator charges and powers the FloWat’s sensor node. Data about the water flow (in mL and Water flow per revolution) is logged to the internet over WiFi. - FloWat

Tiny LED WiFi Companion Cube

This tiny LED cube scrolls messages from the internet. - Adafruit Learning System

WiFi Mailbox Notifier

Inconsistent US Postal Service delivery times led Kattni towards building a notifier “that tells you when your mailbox has been opened.” - Adafruit Learning System

Water Detector with Home Assistant

Andres Leon’s indoor air conditioner’s condensation pipe clogged and caused a small flood. In lieu of purchasing an off-the-shelf solution, they “decided to spend an inordinate amount of time, money, and effort into creating a water alarm device.” If a flood is detected, their device emits a high-pitched alarm and sends an email and text message. The 2500mAh LiPO battery runs for about 2439 hours. - GitHub

Affordable Solar-Powered Weather Station

The fourth revision of Debasish Dutta’s weather station is designed to be placed in remote areas which lack data-driven weather predictions. The “Solar Powered WiFi Weather Station V4.0” is solar-powered and transmits data using a LoRa module to a base receiver. - HackADay.io

IoT News and More!

Community-led Flood Monitoring with NYC FloodNet and FieldKit

The FloodNet cooperative is a group of researchers and NYC agencies that seek to reduce the risk of flooding in NYC. FloodNet has collaborated with FieldKit and created an online portal to allow NYC residents to visualize flood data, submit feedback, and assess their flood risk. - FieldKit

Building Dynamic Grafana Dashboards

Golioth published a blog post about making Grafana IoT dashboards more dynamic. - Golioth Blog