Finished Dryer Will Text You

December 9, 2017 by 35 Comments

Here’s a slightly different way to check on the status of your laundry. Instead of checking if the machine is vibrating, or listening for sound, or pulling everything apart and hacking an ESP8266 into it, check the power that the machine is drawing. This is what [Scrand] did in his IoT dryer build.

The secret behind the hack is the Sonoff POW, a small device that sits in between the wall and the dryer. It has a relay in it that controls it, but, importantly for this hack, it’s able to measure the power consumption used by what’s plugged into it. By installing the ESPurna firmware on it, he can now use all the power of the firmware to control and monitor what’s connected to the POW. He wrote a PowerShell script to monitor the http server now running on the POW checking on how much power is being drawn by the dryer. When that power drops, the laundry is done, and in the case of [Scrand], a text is sent saying so.

When you’re sitting on the couch relaxing, why get up every five minutes to check your laundry when you can have it text you when you know it’s done? Then you can decide whether to get up and deal with it or just leave it until later. The whole reason ESPurna exists to begin with is to check on the status of the laundry.  Or, you can go a bit overboard with this laundry room monitor.

Pogo Pins Make Light Work Of IoT Switches

December 9, 2017 by 7 Comments

Living in a condo with inadequate opportunity for fresh light wiring presented a problem for [Raphael Luckom], which he solved by taking a few off-the-shelf ESP8266-based IoT mains switches. That in itself is nothing particularly new these days, but what makes his switches special is that when faced with fiddly soldering to reprogram them, instead he fabricated a pogo pin jig to make the required contacts.

He took inspiration for his work from a Hackaday.io project hacking some Chinese switched outlets. They contain a standard ESP-12 module, so identifying the correct pins to program them was easy enough. He simply had to create a jig for his pogo pins, which he did with his 3D printer. Of course, “simply” is not an appropriate word, because along the way he had to pass through many iterations of the print, but eventually he had his jig secured to the boards with a clamp.

The result: a successful relay, and without the tricky soldering. We know many of our readers will have no problems with a bit of solder, but for those of you that don’t there might be a bit of interest here.

We’ve shown you many ESP8266 switches over the years. This all-in-one socket system was rather clever, but we’ve had some simple switches too.

Ask Hackaday: Prove Santa Exists

December 9, 2017 by 63 Comments

There is no question, that Santa Claus exists. He’s real, with the sleigh, the beard, and the reindeer and everything. He distributes gifts to billions of children in an evening, squeezes down a billion chimneys without getting that stylish red outfit dirty, and gets back home to the North Pole before sunrise. What more proof do you need, after all the missile defence folks track his progress over the icy wastes every Christmas Eve!

Well, the previous paragraph is the story you’ll get from the average youngster in countries where St. Nick is a cultural fixture, and who are we to disabuse them of this notion. Certainly not [Dave Barrett], who has the task of coming up with some ideas for a Santa Proof Of Existence for a kids’ Christmas party. In a previous year he’s thrilled them with a view of the sleigh taking off (in reality a remote-controlled model rocket launch complete with fake air traffic control clearance for Santa via CB radio), but this year the party isn’t somewhere with the space to do that trick. Instead he has the task of maintaining the illusion in those young minds for another year, with only a modest suburban plot in which to do it.

How would you prove Santa’s existence for the credulous young party-goers, using the finest technological marvels available to the Hackaday community? Perhaps you might create the illusion of boots crunching in the snow outside, or maybe the not-so-distant sound of reindeer. We suggest a Santa-Pede won’t cut it, and neither will hiring the beardy member of your hackspace as a stand-in. Kids aren’t that stupid!

What do you think? Go nuts in the comments.

Santa image: Jonathan Lindberg [Public domain].

Feed Your Cat The Modern Way

December 9, 2017 by 17 Comments

Feeding the cat should be a moment of magic, in which you bond with your adorable pet as she rubs seductively against your ankles. As you place the saucer of tender and moist meaty chunks on the floor, she bounds the length of your kitchen, excited expression on her little kitty face, and tail in the air.

If Hackaday made television adverts for cat food, we’d have it nailed. But our everyday reality involves the cute-as-heck Hackaday moggy turning into a persistent little pest when she decides it’s feeding time. [ThinkSilicon]’s friends had exactly this problem, with their furry friend’s preferred timing coming early in the morning. His solution? An automated cat feeder (translated) that dispenses kibbles from a hopper into the lucky mouser’s feeding dish.

The mechanical part of this endeavour is pretty straightforward, a servo moves a sliding piece of plywood with a hole cut in it across the bottom of a hopper full of cat food. Move the slide, dispense food down a chute to the waiting happy cat. Behind the scenes is an ESP8266 and a NodeMCU web service, through which feeding time can be either scheduled, or dispensed at will.

A happy cat means a happy owner, especially in the very early morning. Until that is the newly-sated creature decides to spread the love, jumping onto the owner’s bed in thanks and breathing cat-food-breath into their face. You really do have to love ’em!

We’ve shown you many cat food related projects in the past, including this Arduino take on the same idea. But why take the effort to trigger it yourself, when the cat can do it for you.

Never Let Your Christmas Tree Run Dry, With Added Ultrasound

December 9, 2017 by 10 Comments

Winter in the parts of the Northern Hemisphere for which observing Christmas includes bringing half a forest into the house should really be divided into two seasons. No-spruce-needles-in-the-carpet season, and spruce-needles-doggedly-clinging-to-the-carpet season. Evergreen trees were not designed for indoor use, and for a hapless householder to stand any chance of keeping those needles on the branches there has to be a significant amount of attention paid to the level of the water keeping the tree hydrated.

[Evan] has paid that attention to the problem of Christmas tree hydration, and to address the shortcomings of earlier designs has come up with a low water warning using an ultrasonic rangefinder. Where previous sensor attempts based on conductive probes succumbed to corrosion or dirt build-up, this one has no contact between sensor and water.

Behind the rangefinder is a CHIP board, whose software sends a text message to his phone when the water level gets a bit low. All the software is available in the linked GitHub page, so should you wish to make your tree safe from thirst, you too can give it a try.

SMS texts are a good way to alert a tree owner, but we quite like the sensor that used the tree lights instead.

Bluetooth Speaker In A Bag

December 8, 2017 by 10 Comments

[VanTourist] — irked by what he sees as complicated project videos — has demonstrated that you can build a high quality, multi-function Bluetooth speaker inside three hours.

Using simple hand tools — primarily a crimper, wire stripper, razor cutter and some glue — he’s packed this repurposed GoPro accessory bag with quite a bit of tech. The main components are a Bluetooth amplifier with a spiffy knob, and a pair of 15W speakers, but he’s also added a 1W LED flashlight, 1A and 2.1A charging ports, a battery charge monitor display, and pilot cover toggle switches for style points. Despite all that crammed into the bag, there’s still a bit of room left to pack in a few possessions! You can check out the build pictures here, or the video after the break.

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A Wireless Webcam Without A Cumbersome Cloud Service

December 8, 2017 by 42 Comments

After a friend bought a nannycam that required the use of a cloud service to make the device useful,  [Martin Caarels] thought to himself — as he puts it — ”I can probably do this with a Raspberry Pi!”

Altogether, [Caarels] gathered together a 4000mAh battery, a Raspberry Pi 3 with a micro SD card for storage, a Logitech c270 webcam, and the critical component to bind this project together: an elastic band. Once he had downloaded and set up Raspbian Stretch Lite on the SD card, he popped it into the Pi and connected it to the network via a cable. From there, he had to ssh into the Pi to get its IP so he could have it hop onto the WiFi.

Now that he effectively had a wireless webcam, it was time to turn it into a proper security camera.

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