ICYMI (In case you missed it) – the IoT Monthly Newsletter from AdafruitDaily.com went out this morning!
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IoT Projects
Buying, Programming, and Testing Capacitance Soil Moisture Sensors
A video of a maker’s exploration into capacitive-type soil moisture sensors. These sensors are frequently used by DIY soil monitoring projects (including some the Author of this newsletter has published). In the video, Modest Maker explains why “I don’t think you can just put these sensors in the ground and walk away”. – YouTube
Microsoft Teams/Webcam On-Air Light
A visual indicator for when you’re in a virtual meeting. – nothans.com
PyLeap ESP32-S2 TFT Boxing Glove Tracker w/ Adafruit IO
Building a boxing glove tracker to measure the force of a punch. – Adafruit Learning System
Water Meter Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico W
Using a Raspberry Pi Pico W and a magnetometer to monitor a home’s water consumption in real time. – HackADay.io
Another Sensor Hub
An ESP32-based environmental sensor hub with a multi-use physical interface. – GitHub
VOC Monitor for a Print Shop
Clint Wolf built a monitor for their print shop because “print shops are concerned about indoor humidity as it can affect the transfer of, and drying characteristics, of ink and the media it is being applied to”. They cited another concern of working in a print shop is the air quality the staff is exposed to during the day. – Adafruit Blog
Room Temperature Circuit Sculpture
A sculpture made from brass rods, an Arduino, a temperature sensor, and a block of walnut. Editor’s note: While this project is not connected to the internet, it’s a really beautiful example of circuit art and I wanted to include it. – HackADay.io
IoT News and More!
Customers disconnecting from Connected Appliances
LG and Whirlpool are noticing that customers with Connected Appliances are not registering them with the Internet. – WSJ.com
Twitter Ends Free API Access
On February 9, Twitter stopped allowing free access to their API. This ends the era for fun IoT projects (including one built by the Author of this newsletter) connecting to a “bot” Twitter account. – Twitter
Printable Batteries for IoT Nodes
Imprint Energy is developing a printable battery to create batteries in any shape imaginable. – Bloomberg
State of Home Assistant: Matter and Thread
The massively popular open-source home automation project, Home Assistant, posted a long update on their upcoming support of Matter and Thread protocols. – Home Assistant Blog
Support Adafruit
Here at Adafruit, we sell all of these amazing components, but we couldn’t find a good way to interact with them over the Internet. So, we decided to create our own IoT platform, and that’s Adafruit IO. It’s built from the ground up to be easy to use and platform agnostic (connect any development board or device!). For those who want to get a project off the ground without programming – Adafruit IO offers a No-Code interface for building IoT electronics projects using WipperSnapper, our open-source IoT firmware. Support Adafruit’s open-source development by subscribing to Adafruit IO Plus, the upgraded, all-systems-go version of the Adafruit IO service.