So you’ve built out your complete home automation setup, with little network-connected “things” scattered all around your home. You’ve got net-connected TVs, weather stations, security cameras, and whatever else. More devices means more chances for failure. How do you know that they’re all online and doing what they should?
[WTH]’s solution is pretty simple: take a Raspberry Pi Zero, ping all the things, log, and display the status on an RGB LED strip. (And if that one-sentence summary was too many words for you, there’s a video embedded below the break.)
Before you go screaming “NOTAHACK!”, we should let you know that [WTH] already described it as such. This is just a good idea that helps him keep track of his hacks. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t opportunities for hacking. He uses the IFTTT service and Google Drive to save the ping logs in a spreadsheet, but we can think of about a billion other ways to handle the logging side of things.
For many of us, this is a junk-box build. We’re sure that we have some extra RGB LEDs lying around somewhere, and spare cycles on a single-board-computer aren’t hard to come by either. We really like the simple visual display of the current network status, and implementing something like this would be a cheap and cheerful afternoon project that could make our life easier and (even more) filled with shiny LEDs. So thanks for the idea, [WTH]!
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/63087095.jpg
Doesn’t really seem like something I’d use an extra piece of hardware for……….. router mod maybe
Windows secured? Internet connection available? Power status. Complex plausibility checks on sensor data. Status of backup PI for redundancy. And so on
“Before you go screaming “NOTAHACK!”” I would never do that on something like that.
I had the idea of using RGB LEDs for status information already myself as well as probably many others. But in combination with a PI Zero, it is very powerful and easy to utilize for complex tasks, yet small and cheap. Could also make custom PCBs with the meaning for each LED printed on silk screen or solder mask (looks good in case of ENIG)
how about a simple device that will shout fire and murder if it detects a new or duplicate MAC addr on my LAN. With the options to immediately white-list it, or take the entire network offline ..
Ok. I can do that. :) See: http://www.whiskeytangohotel.com/2013/05/speech-synthesis-on-raspberry-pi.html
mine doesn’t sound as good, but it can sing :
http://labs.thygate.com/formant-synthesizer-reverse-engineered-from-appleII-sam/
i meant to clean it up some time, but i got bored..
What the hell was that!?
I like it!
Daisy daisy…..
Can I make it say I can’t do that dave?
also check the IP’s for ARP poisoning. I wrote a few bash scripts to do all this ages ago (before the 2.5 kernel), needless to say this box has been retired for quite some time, but it seems like a fun idea to re-implement on a Rapsberry Pi Zero. Add a big airhorn and a relay to cut power to the switches..
LOL
+1 for the airhorn
… or an airhorn that sounds like Foghorn Leghorn! ;-)
I say, I say, I say boy, your danged thing has gone deaded.
Sounds like a new feature????
would require router notification
Do they even…
.. respond to ping when in super low power state? Or you need to send a wake up packet first.
Elliot – thanks again for another interesting article. I look forward to each one of your new entries on Hackaday.
And who check that the raspberry pi is connected to the network ?
Easy….
just use another RasPI Zero to check in on the RasPI Zero
What’s that little converter being used to convert USB-A to microUSB?
Ebay (and other places) It’s so tiny I carry one in my wallet in case I want to plug a full size USB device into my phone. Like a USB stick, hard drive, etc.
They are called “Ultra Mini DM Micro USB 5pin OTG Adapter Connectors”. Search that on Amazon, etc. A little over $1 per.