Wireless Weather Station Obsessively Reports The Temperature

March 15, 2011 by Mike Nathan 11 Comments

obsessive_weather_station

[nuumio] has been hard at work building a Tweeting weather station, which he recently got up and running. The weather station is built from three major components, a Linux PC for data storage and Tweeting, a main weather sensor unit, and a remote unit.

The remote unit sits outside and includes includes both a pressure and humidity/temperature sensor. The sensors are polled every 20 seconds, reporting the data back to the main unit via a 434 MHz RF transceiver. The remote sensor also records the ambient light level and the remaining battery voltage, sending that data to the main unit for good measure.

The main unit sits inside his house and records the same temperature and humidity data as the external unit. The main unit adds its data to the packets sent by the remote unit and transmits them to the PC via USB. The PC calculates the minimum and maximum temperatures for the last 12-hour and 24 -hour periods before sending that data back to the main unit to be displayed on its LCD panel. Every 10 minutes, the computer also posts the weather data on Twitter.

If you are looking to build your own weather station, [nuumio] has provided all of the source code for his project on his web page. However, he does admit that he was too lazy to draw up a schematic, so you are on your own in that department.

Control Your Home Theater From Anywhere In The World

March 14, 2011 by Mike Nathan 21 Comments

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Using IR repeaters for larger home theater setups is not uncommon, but they usually are quite simple. A series of IR receivers are placed throughout a home, all wired to repeat the signals in a central closet where all of the AV equipment is located. [Bill] constructed a solution that works much like a standard IR repeater setup, however his requires no receivers, and it can be used anywhere in the world, provided you have Internet access.

His project, called Ether IR, is an Internet-enabled IR repeater. It consists of an Ethernet-connected module with an IR LED mounted on it, capable of controlling your AV equipment. The board is hooked up to your LAN, and relays commands to your home theater via a simple web page. The equipment can then be controlled from any Internet-connected device, such as a mobile phone or tablet PC.

The entire project is open-source, so [Bill] has included schematics, instructions, and a bill of materials so that you can construct your own. The only issue at this point is the software portion of the project. The software is free, but the distribution method is in question – once things are sorted out, he will ensure that you can obtain the software for your Either-IR from him or directly from the Ethernet chip’s manufacturer.

Shedding Some Light On Your Kitchen Chores

March 8, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

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[Garret] over at Macetech wanted to supplement the lighting over his kitchen sink, which is always too dark at night. He says his house is a “geek house”, so a standard light socket just wouldn’t do – he would have to construct a LED bar for over the sink instead.

Since nobody wants to use a light switch with wet or messy hands, he did what anyone would do and rigged up a motion detection circuit to automatically turn the lights on and off for him. 16 bright white 10mm LEDs were mounted in some foam core board, along with a PIR motion sensor. He used an ATiny84 to handle the PWM fade-in and fade-out of the lights, as well as to keep track of the activity (or lack thereof) at the sink.

He does admit that the ATiny84 is way overpowered for this project, but he lacked anything smaller, and says that 555 timers wouldn’t give him the smooth light fading that he desired. Regardless, it works as advertised, and now nobody has to peel potatoes in the dark any more.

Continue reading to check out a quick video demo of the motion-sensing light system.

Continue reading “Shedding Some Light On Your Kitchen Chores” →

Bathroom Mirror HUD Displays Time And Weather

March 2, 2011 by Mike Nathan 18 Comments

By and large, the standard household mirror is one item that has not made much real progress over the years. They hang on the wall reflecting light, and that’s about it.

A few years back, some students studying in the Department of Interaction Design at Chalmers University sought to enhance their morning routine with an interactive mirror. Their project was constructed using a two-way mirror with several Arduino-driven LED displays embedded behind the glass. Once a hand is swiped past the pair of embedded light dependent resistors, the display is activated. Subsequent hand swipes trigger the mirror to toggle between the different modes, providing the user with the current time, weather information as well as a toothbrush timer.

The project writeup is quite thorough, including plenty of source code and information on some of the components they used. You can take a look at their work here (PDF).

Check out the interactive mirror we featured that served as inspiration for their project.

[Thanks Emil]

Continue reading “Bathroom Mirror HUD Displays Time And Weather” →

Automated Window Curtain Hits The Road

March 1, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Niklas Roy] upgraded his privacy curtain and is taking it on the road. Regular readers will remember the first version that resided in his shop window and used video processing in conjunction with a motor to keep the small bit of curtain in front of any passersby. We’ve embedded the original demo video after the break and it’s not to be missed.

But now he’s decided to make some upgrades to the system because it’s going to be shown as an art display. He looked around for a motor upgrade but found that the best motor at the most reasonable price could be pulled from a Makita power drill. The track itself is modular, making the installation scalable up to ten meters in total length. He even built a clean-looking laptop dock that handles the video processing end of things. But there’s something here for you as well. He’s released all of his source code, schematics, board design, and even the SketchUp files for the motor mounts and other parts. Dig out that old power drill and build one of your own.

Continue reading “Automated Window Curtain Hits The Road” →

IPhone-based Universal IR Remote

March 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 29 Comments

If you have a reasonable home theater setup in your living room, odds are you have up to half a dozen remotes sitting around. Short of trying to get your cable receiver’s remote to control everything or laying down some cash for a Harmony remote, what’s a hacker to do?

[Andrey] decided he wanted to use his iPhone as a universal IR remote, but he didn’t want to pay very much to do so. Instead of buying a dongle at the store, he soldered some IR LEDs to an old headphone plug, creating a mini IR dongle to control his equipment. After studying IR signaling a bit, he got to work encoding IR remote commands into wav files using Python. The files are then played on his iPhone, allowing him to submit certain commands to his TV set.

Unfortunately, the process of manually converting IR codes to audio files doesn’t quite seem like the most efficient way of doing things. There are other IR dongles currently on the market that utilize the headphone jack, most of which provide pretty robust software for free. These might make a good alternative to manually creating audio files for each IR command. We honestly haven’t seen any teardowns of these retail IR dongles posted online, but it would be interesting to see how they compare to what [Andrey] has put together.

Quick And Easy DIY Kegerator

February 28, 2011 by Mike Nathan 17 Comments

diy_kegerator

I think we can all agree, there are few things that go better with ~~hacking~~ everything than beer. [Tom] has taken his love for beer and building things, fusing them together in a DIY kegerator. Using an off the shelf mini fridge and some easy to find beer serving components, he walks us through the conversion step by step. When everything is said and done, the kegerator should hold two 5-gallon kegs along with the CO2 tank required to serve the beer.

The process is admittedly pretty easy, but it’s probably the quickest way to go from zero to kegerator. [Tom] has this down to a science, knowing exactly what needs to be altered and removed, so following his tutorial should save you time and headaches, should you attempt this conversion yourself.

It would be great to see this project expanded to include precision temperature controls, a method of determining how much beer remains in the kegs.