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IoT Projects
Helping Harry’s Heart
Adam Taylor built a remote monitoring system to monitor his dog’s respiration rate to help the vet to adjust his heart medication. They used a X4M200 respiration sensor fitted to Harry’s (the dog) harness. Adam chose to use the free Adafruit IO service to send the dog’s heart rate to, since “along with [the] graphical view, I can also see the time stamped data” to share with “the cardiac specialist at Harry’s next appointment. – Hackster.io
CircuitPython BLE Remote Control On/Off Switch
rdagger has “multiple computers around the house, and sometimes they need to be rebooted remotely.”. Instead of manually opening the locked closet and rebooting their NAS, rdagger opted for a different approach. They built a BLE peripheral which “attaches to the front so the server can be turned on remotely from outside the closet”. – Read the guide on the Adafruit Learning System
Hacking the Sonos Ikea Symfonisk into a High-Quality Amplifier
Ikea released a $99 SONOS-compatible speaker, but a plastic enclosure can’t hold a candle to a pair of high-quality wooden speakers. Ben Hobby grabbed some tools and (literally) hacked one apart to connect it to his bookshelf speakers so you don’t have to. – Read the writeup on Make Magazine.
PyPortal IoT Plant Monitor with AWS IoT and CircuitPython
This smart-planter monitors your plant’s vitals on the PyPortal’s screen, logs data to Amazon AWS IoT, and sends an email to your inbox when your plant needs to be watered! Using Amazon AWS IoT with CircuitPython allows you to prototype internet-of-things projects faster than ever before. With CircuitPython, you’re able to instantly provision your device for AWS IoT by dragging and dropping certificates/keys. – Read the guide on the Adafruit Learning System
Mini Smart Home with Huzzah, HASSio and Crickit
The Mini Smart Home is a test bed that can let you move one step closer to making a truly smart Smart Home. When finished, you will have a completely independent system that hosts a customizable browser based User Interface, a device management system, usage and data logging, advanced automation tools, and user account security. This is all done with a Smart Home server OS called Home Assistant. – Adafruit Learning System
Around the Internet – IoT News and Links
Tearing Down Quirky’s Egg-Minder
A teardown of the (now defunct) Quirky’s Egg-Minder reveals a well-designed IoT product before the ESP8266 was “a thing” – HackADay
Debugging the ESP32 ESP-IDF with a Segger JLink
Using the ESP32 as a WiFi Co-Processor (like our AirLift boards running the excellent nina-fw firmware) is becoming more popular. Instead of printf()’ing your way through ESP-IDF and mbed – this post details a method of using the Eclipse IDE using a JLink debugger. – via dzone
Amazon’s Quest to put Alexa everywhere
Aside from the usual smart-speaker, Amazon released a bevy of new hardware supporting their Alexa voice assistant earlier this month. This hardware ranges from a wearable wing to Alexa-compatible eyeglasses. But what’s the goal of releasing all this hardware so quickly? – via VentureBeat
Why Engineering Teams Are Shutting Down Industrial IoT Projects
Despite the previous accomplishments of their profession, engineering teams are unexpectedly shutting down industrial IoT projects at an alarming rate. But why now? It seems like IoT, as an industry, is evolving daily with new hardware advances. – via DZone
MCCI Catena 4618 is a Cortex M0+ LoRaWan + sensors in a Feather footprint
MCCI has released the Catena 4618, a complete single-board IoT device and sensors for LoRaWAN projects.
Based on the Murata CMWX1ZZABZ-078, and designed to be compatible with the MCCI Catena 44xx and 46xx family and the Adafruit Feather family of development boards and accessories, the Catena 4618 is a great platform for LoRaWAN investigation and deployment. It works well with The Things Network, or any LoRaWAN 1.0 or 1.1 network in the 865 to 923 MHz range.
The board is available from the MCCI online store and more information is available on the MCCI website.
NoCAN – a new type of wireless sensor network
ESP32 and Raspberry Pi Zero W in Space
The main board included two ESP32s and a Raspberry Pi Zero W, running resinOS / balenaOS, an operating system designed to run parallel Docker containers and optimized for IoT fleet management.
MQTT Security 101
The ESP32MX-E is a robust ESP32 platform
Scientists tracking eagle’s migration patterns rack up roaming charges
Russian scientists tracking the migration patterns of eagles suddenly ran out of money when they found the Eagles were migrating hundreds of miles away to Pakistan and Iran, racking up thousands of dollars of roaming charges. While this is funny – it’s also a scenario one should consider when building mobile IoT projects. – via BBC News
Track Ocean Currents with the Maker Buoy Kit
The Maker Buoy Project’s Arduino-based drifting buoy is “Internet of Things applied to the ocean”. If you’re an oceanographer or marine biologist looking for a robust, open-source, buoy system – look no further than the Maker Buoy’s prebuilt kits. Maker Buoy now offers pre-populated PCBs, complete kits and bare-PCB hardware on their store.
Adafruit IOT Updates
New Adafruit IO Block – Multi-line text block
If you have an Adafruit IO Feed containing a lot of text (tweets, packed data from one sensor, etc), you can now format and display your feeds on your Adafruit IO dashboard using a multi-line text block. – Visit your Adafruit IO Dashboard to try it out now
SmartiPi Touch 2 – Stand for Raspberry Pi 7″ Touchscreen Display
If you’re running a smart-home setup and want to build an inexpensive central monitoring display, the SmartiPi Touch 2 is a well-designed stand for the Raspberry Pi 7″ touchscreen display. Run Chromium in kiosk mode with the page set to Home Assistant or your Adafruit IO dashboard and you’ll have a touch-enabled smart-thing display – visit the Product Page here.
Coming Soon – Adafruit Feather STM32F405 Express
The new STM32F405 Feather (video) that we designed runs CircuitPython at a blistering 168MHz – our fastest CircuitPython board ever! We’ve tried it out with an AirLift Breakout and it’s incredibly quick. This may be the CircuitPython Feather you want powering your IoT project. The Feather SM32F405 Express is not yet available – sign up to be notified of when we put it in stock.
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