It Turns Out Parrots Love Videoconferencing

A recent experiment showed that parrots seem considerably enriched by the ability to video call other parrots. It’s important that the activity be done in a healthy and ethical way, so researchers do not recommend bird caretakers immediately slap a spare tablet in front of every bird — but the results are as heartwarming as they are encouraging.

Parrots are intelligent creatures known to require and benefit from intellectual and emotional stimulation, and their eyesight is such that they are able to use a display like a tablet screen much like a human would. They are also social creatures, and that led to researchers designing a pilot study to explore a parrot-to-parrot videoconferencing system.

The three-month study showed that when given the opportunity to initiate and receive video calls, every single parrot in the test group did so and all bird caretakers reported perceived benefits. Birds made friends, seemed highly motivated, and even learned behaviors by watching others.

Curious about the details? The published results (a PDF and two brief videos) covers all the bases. Parrot pals may also remember another time that technology enriched a feathered friend with a motorized buggy complete with beak-compatible joystick for steering.

Ultimate Garage Door Control Does The Job Brilliantly

[Stephen Carey] had previously relied on an Insteon garage door controller, only to have it perform poorly and fail at integrating with Alexa properly. Thus, he did what any good hacker would do, and built his own system instead.

The garage door was first outfitted with a pair of reed switches to sense when it was fully open or fully closed. The drive sprocket of the garage door was also set up to be monitored with magnets and Hall effect sensors, essentially creating a rotary encoder. This allows a ESP32 to monitor the door’s direction of travel, it’s position, and when it has hit the end stop in either direction. Using Micropython, [Stephen] whipped up some code to tie the garage door controls in with Home Assistant, complete with a neat visual display of the current door position.

There are millions of home automation products out there, many of which make annoying compromises that frustrate the end user. Sometimes, doing it your own way is the only way to get satisfaction!

DIY 3D Printed Rain Gauge Connects To Home Assistant

Measuring local rainfall has real practical uses, especially in agriculture, but most of us will have to admit that it’s at least partly about drawing cool graphs on a screen. Whatever your motivation, you can build this open source electronic rain gauge designed by [Sebastian] of Smart Solutions for Home, and integrate it with Home Assistant.

This 3D printed rain gauge is of the ubiquitous tipping bucket type and uses a magnet and hall effect sensor to detect every time the bucket tips out. The sensor is soldered to a custom PCB with ESP32 configured using ESP Home. By keeping it in deep sleep most of the time and only waking up when the tip of the bucket, [Sebastian] estimates it can run about a year on four AA batteries, depending on rainfall. The hinge mechanism is adjustable to ensure that both buckets will tip with the same volume of water.

FDM 3D printed enclosures are not known for being waterproof, so [Sebastian] coated the PCB with varnish to protect it from moisture. This worked well enough that he could leave it running in a bowl of water for a few hours without any ill effects. The end result looks good and should be able to handle the outdoors for a long time.

Building a weather station is a popular DIY project. Some of the interesting varieties we’ve seen are powered by supercapacitors, show readings on antique analog dials and convert parking distance sensor kit into a wind gauge.

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Hacking The IKEA OBEGRÄNSAD LED Wall Lamp

The IKEA OBEGRÄNSAD is a pixel-style LED wall lamp that comes with a few baked-in animations, and [ph1p] improved it immensely with an ESP32 board and new firmware. The new controller provides all kinds of great new abilities, including new modes and animations, WiFi control, and the ability to send your own images or drawings to the panel. All it takes is desoldering the original controller and swapping in a programmed ESP32.

Hacking in a new controller provides a whole new range of capabilities.

Sadly, opening the unit up is a bit of a pain. It seems the back panel is attached with rivets rather than screws, but it will yield to a little bit of prying force.

The good news is that once the back panel is off, the inside of the OBEGRÄNSAD is very hackable. All the parts and connectors are easily accessible from where they are, and a nicely-labeled pin header makes a convenient attachment point for the new ESP32 board. There’s no need to disassemble any further once the back is off, and that’s always nice.

Going a bit smaller, we’ve also seen an IKEA LED nightlight greatly improved by a little hacking, and there are plenty more IKEA hacks where that came from.

ChatGPT Rules The World… Or, At Least, The Home

With all the hype about ChatGPT, it has to have crossed your mind: how can I make it control devices? On the utopia side, you could say, “Hey, ChatGPT, figure out what hours I’m usually home and set the thermostat higher when I am away.” On the dysfunctional side, the AI could lock you in your home and torment you like some horror movie. We aren’t to either extreme yet, but [Chris] couldn’t resist writing a ChatGPT plugin to control a Raspberry Pi. You can see a video of how it turned out below.

According to [Chris], writing a ChatGPT plugin is actually much simpler than you think. You can see in the video the AI can intuit what lights to turn on and off based on your activity, and, of course, many more things are possible. It can even detect snoring.

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An Elegant Solution For Smart Home Device Integration

Integrating non-smart devices into your home automation system can be a cumbersome process, involving the wiring of multiple modules. However, [Pricelesstoolkit] has created the ESPClicker — a compact, ESP8266-based module that can remotely “press buttons” and simplify this process.

The ESPClicker’s core feature is its three relays that can be soldered to the button terminals of any existing “dumb” device, as [Pricelesstoolkit] demonstrated with his coffee machine in the video after the break. One of the relays can also be configured in the normally closed configuration. A compact twelve pin connector provides a removable wiring interface for the buttons, additional relays, power and even a contactless power detector that can be wrapped around an AC wire.

[PricelessToolkit] has done several Home Assistant related projects, and we recently featured his little Home Assistant controlled guardian bot. We’ve also seen other project that make use of ESPHome, like a iPod style scroll wheel and a LEGO train set.

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Cheaper Sodastream With A Big CO2 Tank Is A Semi-Dangerous Way To Save

Sodastream machines are a fun way to turn tap water into carbonated water. However, the canisters are expensive and generally require a trip to the store to get a replacement. Lifehacker has a workaround that may make life easier for the bubble-addicted set.

The trick is simple: simply buy a larger bottle of CO2, and hook it up to the Sodastream in place of the regular cartridge. CO2 can be bought in large cylinders at a far cheaper rate than Sodastream will charge you for their proprietary canisters. All you need is a local supplier of food-grade CO2 in cylinders, and you can visit them when you need a refill or swap.

There are several caveats, though, which the comment section dicussed when we featured a similar hack before. Getting an extra-large CO2 canister can pose a risk to life if there’s a leak. Alarms may not save you as the heavy gas has a tendency to lurk low to the ground. You should also consider using a regulator to lower the pressure from your large canister to something closer to the levels the Sodastream machine is built to withstand. Beyond that, you want to ensure you’re using food-grade CO2. Don’t go bubbling cheap welding gas through your water if you want to live a long and healthy life.

It’s a neat hack, it’s just one that requires you to practice proper gas safety at all times. Reports are that a cylinder costing less than $200 can last you for several years though, with ultra-cheap refills, so it may indeed be worth the hassle! Go forth and bubble, friends.