The Adafruit IO team just released an update for Adafruit IO and the No-Code IoT Firmware, WipperSnapper. This update brings the ability to control the position of a servo motor from Adafruit IO, without writing a line of code. Servos may be used in any IoT projects where you need to physically display a value or to open a door/window/lock.

Combine Adafruit IO Actions with Servos for Rule-based IoT Projects

We also enabled control of a servo motor from an Adafruit IO Action. For example, the Action below tells a servo to write a pulse width of 2500uS if the temperature sensor (also connected to a WipperSnapper device) is greater than 70 degrees Celsius. The servo could be attached to a door, and open it if the temperature is too high.

How we implemented servos in Adafruit IO

The Adafruit Shop stocks many different types of servos that can rotate 180 degrees (90 degrees in each direction). While most (standard, non-continuous) servo motors generally adhere to “default” servo pulse widths provided by the Arduino library (1ms to 2ms), it’s possible that the defaults may not give you a full 180 degrees of motion. Instead of setting the angle of the servo, Adafruit IO’s servo support includes a “Generic Servo Component” that lets you set the minimum and maximum pulse width for your servo, in uS. Further - if your servo uses a non-standard frequency (anything other than 50Hz), it can be changed from here.

Read the Quickstart: Adafruit IO WipperSnapper guide to get started today for free »>

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

IoT Projects

Two Way Telegraph with Analog Feedback Servos

A fun way to communicate quietly (and wirelessly) within the same household or long distance to let someone know you’re thinking of them. These modern telegraphs use a combination of analog feedback servos and capacitive touch to create a two-way communication system. The emoji-clad dial is inspired by a ship’s mast. - Adafruit Learning System

cloudSmoker - BBQ Temperature Monitor

This is the last newsletter of summer, so we’ll include one last BBQ project. The cloudSmoker is a DIY temperature monitor for BBQ grills that can display time graphs of two temperature probes (pit and internal meat temperatures) and push notification alerts to a smartphone for when the meat is ready. -GitHub

E-Paper Price Tag Grid

E-Paper price tags are becoming ubiquitous at big-box stores in Europe (with slow adoption in the United States). After the tags were reverse-engineered, Aaron purchased a couple hundred of the tags and built them into a grid. Each display is controlled over ZigBee from a host PC. - YouTube

Using AWS IoT with the ESP8266

Brian took a deep dive to get AWS IoT working with his ESP8266 development board. This guide “should be treated like a recipe” and includes reproducible steps for using this board with the AWS IoT platform. - NetNinja

Modular Control System for a Garden Pond

Poseidon is a modular system for a garden pond. Leveraging a TICK stack (Telegraf, Influxdb, Chronograf, and Kapacitor), the system can control a fish feeder, water tap, the pond controller, and monitor the overall water quality. There’s also a web app to interact with the pond. - GitHub

MiniHelmetTracker - NFL Standings Tracker

As we proceed into American Football season in the States, Simon Schoar published their real-time NFL standings table robot. The MiniHelmetTracker “retrieves standings data - close to real-time - via WiFi and sorts mini helmets by the league, conference, division, and playoffs.” -schoar

CircuitPython on ESP32

The ESP32 is a great and very popular processor used on lots of development boards. However, its lack of native USB has kept it from getting a CircuitPython build… Until now! A new web workflow feature being added to CircuitPython 8 has brought the ESP32 back to the scene. This guide gets you started with CircuitPython on the ESP32. - Adafruit Learning System

IoT News and More!

The Engineer’s Guide to Matter

Ovyl has an excellent blog post up that cuts through the marketing details about the Matter IoT protocol and provides only the technical details. - ovyl

Azure Embedded Wireless Framework

Microsoft published information about their Azure Embedded Wireless Framework to GitHub. This is “a framework for writing applications and controlling wireless network adapters (cellular, WiFi, …) while abstracting a driver interface for hardware vendors to plug-in modules with self-developed drivers.” We’re all for abstracting driver interfaces! -Adafruit Blog

Another month, another Adafruit IO update! This time we’re bringing gorgeous default WipperSnapper component visualizations and the ability for users to customize them.

New! Configurable Component Visualizations

We’re pretty proud of our built-in visualizations:

…but we don’t require you to like them, so we’ve made them customizable.

Custom Labels

Maybe “On/Off” isn’t exciting enough for your IoT lights and you want to change it to something more provocative. Now you can!

Simply open the component settings (little gear icon in the top right of its panel) and you’ll see an “Appearance” section of the form. Type whatever text you want in the “On Label” and “Off Label” fields to see your changes reflected in the visualization live:

Custom Icons

What about those icons? I’m so glad you asked, because those are customizable as well! At launch, we have 2 sets of icons available:

• Font Awesome 6 (the same icons you see around the site)
• Emoji 😎

Changing icons is similar to editing labels, but you click the icon field to see a snazzy new icon picker:

New! Component Contributors Can Set Their Default Visualizations

In the last update, we talked about how our WipperSnapper-capable Components are now completely managed via JSON in a public GitHub repository. Now, that JSON can include visualization data, so folks contributing new Components to IO can make sure they are rendered beautifully by default. (At least until a user overrides those settings with their own idea of “beautiful”!)

Here’s a quick look at the JSON for the LED component:

{
  "displayName": "LED",
  "autoSelectString": "led",
  "mode": "DIGITAL",
  "direction": "OUTPUT",
  "visualization": {
    "type": "switch",
    "offLabel": "Off",
    "offIcon": "fa6:regular:lightbulb",
    "onLabel": "On",
    "onIcon": "fa6:solid:lightbulb-on"
  }
}

That visualization section is the new bit. It’s pretty straightforward, but you’ll still need a guide to explain the syntax and options available. Check out the Component Contribution Guide to learn how to add (and visualize) all those components you wish IO had.

New! I2C Sensors Display Their Appropriate SI Units

Those incredible little I2C components can sure sense a lot of different stuff! From temperature to acceleration to air quality, we know it’s important to be clear about what exactly we’re tracking. With this update we’ve added the appropriate SI Units to each kind of sensor, so you always know exactly what the numbers mean.

Here’s an example using an upcoming component (the LC709203F Battery Monitor):

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

IoT Projects

IoT Geiger Counter

With increasing discussions about nuclear war, g3gg0 felt “people got into thinking about radioactive exposure again”. However, most Geiger counters, a small instrument to detect radiation, available on the internet do not send their measurements to the internet. In the link, G3gg0 built their own internet-connected Geiger counter from start to end. - g3gg0

Machine Learning Hungry Baby Monitor

Caleb built a warning system for when his baby gets hungry. The baby monitor’s camera, interfaced with Google MediaPipe, can now detect behaviors like lip smacking, pacifier rejection, and fist rejection. - HackaDay

Tracking Satellites with a Low-Cost Base Station

Alberto Nunez built a base station for $40 capable of tracking satellites as they pass overhead. This project sends data to TinyGS, an “open network of Ground Stations distributed worldwide to receive and operate LoRa satellites, weather probes, and other flying objects. - HackaDay

Trials of Building an Internet-Enabled Vaccine Fridge

Charlie is building an internet-enabled fridge for a local veterinarian’s vaccine storage. The previous design used a Particle board and a cellular network to send a fridge’s configurable temperature reading to the internet. The latest post in this series attempts to “live the IoT dream” by connecting the fridge to an Arduino Opla and Arduino Cloud. -molecularist

IoT Pet Food Scale with Azure and CircuitPython

Liz Clark built a pet food scale using CircuitPython and a strain gauge. Measurements are sent to Microsoft Azure to ensure your pet doesn’t go hungry. - Adafruit Blog

LoRa Water Tank Level and Pump Controller

Renzo Mischianti is building a solar-powered controller for a water tank. This tank sits 1.5km away from home, with no power. The controller sends the water tank sensor readings over LoRa. The water pump activates when the tank’s water is too low. - HackaDay

A Simple Garage Door Opener with the Raspberry Pi Pico W

Core Electronics wired a garage door controller to the new Raspberry Pi Pico W. With some MicroPython code, the Pico W hosts its own web server which can be accessed to control the garage door. - core-electronics

IoT News and More!

Adafruit WipperSnapper - Updates & More!

The Adafruit IO team recently pushed a shiny new “getting started” experience for WipperSnapper that’s perfect for folks building their first IoT project. In addition to us blogging about the new onboarding process and design changes, we’ve also swept through existing product documentation to update the WipperSnapper firmware setup and Adafruit IO Usage process for each board.

Blecon - Network Infrastructure for BLE

BLEcon attempts to be the “missing network infrastructure for BLE” by using smartphones as Internet access points. - blecon

IoT Projects

A Nautical Barometer for Precise Weather Forecasts

Debinix is a sailor who built a nautical barometer with environmental sensors to measure short-term changes in the weather, and also fetch long-term forecasts to display future weather on the sea. - instructables

Check your Mailbox with a fake Apple AirTag

Dakhnod developed FakeTag, a custom firmware for nRF51 chips that is compatible with Apple’s “Find My” ecosystem. With an nRF51 running FakeTag and a vibration sensor, dakhnod monitors if their mailbox has been opened. - GitHub

Building a Smarter Kitty Litter Tray

Andy Bradford‘s cat, Ellie, is hard to pick up and place on a scale. Unfortunately, this means that Ellie is weighed only once a year at the vet. He “wanted to build something that would fit into her life to track her weight automatically, without any intervention”. - Adafruit Blog

ESP32 TikTok Watch

A wearable device to stream TikTok videos to your wrist. - HackADay

LIDAR-based Letterbox Notifier

A mailbox notifier using a LIDAR distance sensor instead of the standard vibration sensor we usually see in these types of projects. - inspectmygadgets

Beehappy, an IoT Beehive

An internet-enabled beehive for beekeepers to track honey quantity, quality, and alerts for if the beehive was tampered with. - instructables

$10 Automated Blinds

An inexpensive automatic blind setup (around $10 per blind) that can be controlled automatically by the open-source Home Assistant software. -HackADay

Cellular-Enabled Power Outage Detector w/ SMS Notifications

Building a cellular power outage detector with Twilio and a Cellular Notecard from Blues Wireless. - Hackster

IoT News and More!

Raspberry Pi Pico W: $6 IoT platform

The brand-new Raspberry Pi Pico W features a powerful chip, the RP2040, and all the fixin’s to get started with IoT embedded electronics projects at a stress-free price of $6. - Adafruit Shop

ESP32-C5: Espressif’s first Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 MCU

Espressif announced the ESP32-C5, a dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) microcontroller with WiFi 6! - Espressif

Expired Certificate Causes German Card Payment Systems Outage

The Verifone H5000 had a security certificate stored on the card reader expire. While this hardware is no longer produced by Verifone, it is still in use across Germany. When building a device that connects to the internet, it’s important to consider how many years the certificates stored on the device are active for and provide a way to update them. - HackADay

Custom Web-Based UI for IoT devices with Golioth

Golioth published a blog about designing a custom, web-based UI project, using their firmware and web console. - Adafruit Blog

Adafruit.io, the IoT Platform for Everyone

Sign up for our IoT Platform, Adafruit IO (for free!) by clicking this link. 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.