Heavily revised my old battery operated wireless temperature sensor node code, achieved 15% lower current consumption footprint.. #IoT
Battery operated wireless temperature sensor node code
Ultra low power status display for battery operated
Working on ultra low power status display for battery operated wireless temperature sensor #IoT
I2C retrofit
I2C retrofit 😉
Recording of my IoT startup tech talk at ISTA conference
Recording of my "#IoT startup" tech talk at ISTA conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHo0Sgn_E7o
proSmart
I have been busy starting up an exciting new project the last few months, a joint effort with a team of highly enthusiastic, hands-on, broadly skilled contributors with the goal to design and develop IoT home/industrial automation solutions. Together, we established…
Auto DST adjustment
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…
FOTA update without external flash for Atmega32U4 + RFM69
I’ve blogged before why firmware-over-the-air (FOTA) updates are a must-have nowadays, however, my old AVR+RFM based projects were incapable of that due to the lack of external flash to temporary store the new firmware before it is flashed on the chip.…
ESP32
I’m one of the lucky 200 that got their hands on the early beta of Espressif’s new ESP32 chip evaluation board. It is the “big brother” to the popular ESP8266, Espressif has though noted that it should not be treated…
Spectrum analysis with RFM12B
The comments to my last blog post got me thinking if I had chosen the right RFM channel at home, obviously if the channel is noisy that directly affects reception and increases the error rates. I use the default 868Mhz setting…
RFM69 to MQTT gateway using ESP8266
I’ve mentioned my plans for this project during the IoT hangout session few months ago, it has finally materialized as working prototype. The blocker so far was the lack of ESP8266 RFM69 driver and free time on my end, so I’ve…
Local hostname for connected devices
Now that we have connected our project to the local network, we are immediately faced with another challenge: how can we reach it? Using WPS/SmartConfig means we force the unit into DHCP settings mode, IP address is auto assigned by the router in…
The initial setup problem
The typical end-user of your IoT products wants them up and running fast, with minimum hassle once they bring them home. They don’t want to be presented with initial configuration mechanisms/options they don’t understand, and their enthusiasm quickly diminishes if…
My own cloud based version control tool
There is no second opinion about the importance of version control, it is a must-have for any software project. The option for reversibility, concurrency and history of code edits is what makes it so crucial. I’ve been using mostly GitHub for…
Free signed SSL certificate for my blog
As soon as I blogged about IoT and security few weeks ago, my blog got hit by a massive DDoS attack combined with daily hack attempts via WordPress’ backend and SSH. I’m dealing with both issues pretty successfully for now, but this is…
DDoS attack on my blog
An intensive Distributed Denial of Service attack is currently undergoing on my blog, with HTTP request rates hitting thousands per minute. It all started few days ago when I received a message from my hosting service provider stating that my…
Tweeting silicon
Here is a fun project for I did couple days ago: a tweeting ESP8266. The typical approach when dealing with such task (and probably the better) is to use a proxy service like ThingSpeak’s ThingTweet, PushingBox or by building proxy yourself with Node-RED or mqttwarn. It…
Some thoughts on security in terms of IoT
Connected devices and sensors are the fastest growing sources of data. Billions of records are being generated daily around the globe and data transported across networks to be consumed where needed. Security of data in transit or at still in that…
Firmware Over The Air (FOTA) for ESP8266 SoC
With the IoT booming nowadays, the number of connected devices grows exponentially and so does the related software that drives them. There is no doubt that Firmware Over The Air (FOTA) is a highly desirable – if not required –…
Physical vs Virtual
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…
Funky v3 with RFM69CW using LowPowerLab’s RF69 library
I’ve already blogged about using Funky v3 and RFM-2-Pi with the HopeRF RFM69CW module, only I used it with JCW’s Jeelib as I wanted to keep compatibility with my existing RFM12B based sensor network. JCW has done great job in providing…
Using DS18B20/DHT22 temperature sensor with internal pull-up resistors rather than external ones
I’ve been meaning to try Josh’s 4-line change to the OneWire Arduino library that enables using the popular DS18B20 temperature sensor without the otherwise required external 4.7K pull-up resistor on the DQ line for quite some time now. It is sometimes…
Using RFM69CW instead of RFM12B
The rumors for RFM12B’s end-of-life two years ago seem to have been highly exaggerated now and the popular RF module is still available in abundance. HopeRF has introduced a pin-compatible upgrade, the RFM69CW. The module itself offers improved sensitivity and range compared…
Speech generation with Node-RED
I am flooded with all sorts of notifications on my phone and that gets a bit annoying after time. Email, calendar, SMS, social apps, instant messengers, all sorts of push notification alerts and so forth mean I physically pick my…
DIY Internet connected smart humidifier
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…
Making IFTTT (If This Then That) talk to Node-RED
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…
WiFi Thermostat with weekly scheduler
Edit: The project is now available for sale in my shop, you can grab one here: The WiFi SSR board project changed a bit and I use classical relays instead of SSRs now. The reason is that SSRs tend to…
IoT tech talk recording
Thanks to all that participated in the IoT tech talk session that was held late yesterday, as promised I am adding a recording of the session It was suggested that the topic of the next hangout will be the ESP8266,…
Google video tech-talk hangout anyone?
I’ve been meaning to hold a video Google hangout session on IoT topics for some time now, how about giving it a try? I imagine it as informal 1 hr tech-talk with the following structure 35 min presentation of a…
WiFi IoT 3 channel relay board with MQTT and HTTP API using ESP8266
The ESP8266 DHT22/LED blinker project grew into an M2M relay board project with the following features in mind: Relatively small (10x5cm) PCB Powered via the onboard power supply or externally via a micro-USB plug Has three 2A Sharp Solid State…
ESP8266 powered web server + LED control + DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor reading
[Edit] Make sure to check my much more advanced example here The ESP8266 System-on-chip (SoC) has recently came out of nowhere and has been taking by storm the IoT DIY world. It is a $4.50 Wi-Fi capable chip that has remarkable specs, obsoleting…
Exposing Raspberry Pi’s network setting files to /boot so that they are visible on a PC
I needed to clone my current Raspberry Pi SD card image to use for another headless project (on another network), but then realized the network settings were my home ones. I had access to a PC only, so could not…
MQTT topic tree structure improvements
I’ve been unhappy with my old MQTT topic tree structure for quite some time now and did some thinking/research on how to improve it. Google pointed me to Tinkerman’s article on a similar subject, and I started planning on improvements. I will repeat…