The PS Thermo is a smart thermostat project developed by me, consisting of a control hub (that also acts as a gateway) and various sub-GHz RF wireless sensors/actuators. In essence, it is a much more advanced version of the BBoilRF…
My front gate has joined the Internet of Things and is now controllable from my phone. The sliding door opener is a Beninca BULL 5M. The project is DIY, based on ESP8266 + MQTT and I can now open/close/read the…
I did a tech talk about my ESP32 based IoT control hub project on Feb 5th, 2019 at Work & Share Coworking Space Sofia. Over 100 people signed up for the event organized by DEV.BG, it was a pleasant surprise…
Performing Over-The-Air firmware update over a slow/unreliable internet connection may be challenging. I have had many cases, where the edge nodes to be updated are in a remote rural area with a 2G modem internet connection, and pushing a let’s…
Accurate time/date information is crucial for the correct operation of IoT nodes. From a security perspective, time/date information is necessary to perform SSL certificate validations. If your embedded device’s clock isn’t accurate, you can’t ensure the presented server certificate hasn’t…
Those of you that follow me on Twitter might already know that I’ve been working on an ESP32 based IoT control hub/gateway project with touch TFT lately. Let me describe what problems I am trying to address with this project.…
We have a 4.88m x 2.74m x 1.22m (13m³) Bestway swimming pool in the backyard. We only use the pool when the pool water temperature is > 25°C, but it only happens if there are intensive sunshine and high ambient…
Artificial Intelligence is quickly becoming an important ingredient for IoT projects’ success, a requirement for unlocking its full potential and providing a competitive edge to those that embrace it. AI naturally integrates into existing connected sensor/actuator networks and immediately adds…
We use a DIY air-to-water heat pump for climate control (heating/cooling) of our house with a combination of water underfloor heating and fan coils in the rooms. The fan coils are equipped with basic thermostats that allow for heat/cool mode setting,…
This project is an upgrade to a previous project of mine – the DIY IoT smoke alarm. It is a more advanced version that uses dedicated hardware rather than the generic “Funky” project + external components. In essence, the module…
This blog post is about a project I have been working on lately, the BBoilRF. It is a general purpose internet-connected relay actuator/gateway with support for low power, battery operated remote wireless sensor nodes. It was designed primarily for use…
We are close to that time of the year when Daylight Saving Time (DST) starts. It is intended to save on energy use, however, studies have found this to be questionable, even contrary – energy use increases in some cases. The change itself…
The Raspberry Pi, a $35 credit card sized computer, is a popular choice for home automation projects. I am running few of those at home myself. But what is the true cost of these, is the advertised cost of $35 really all…
I worked on creating a Internet connected humidistat last week using my open source WiFi relay project as platform. We observe quite dry air at our house, I suspect this is due to the fact that we use fan coils for heating/cooling. Humidity levels at home…
IFTTT (short for “If This Then That”) is a popular service which lets you trigger actions based on certain events that occur around the Internet. It is missing an important functionality (IMHO), namely WebHooks. A WebHook is an HTTP callback: an…