A Smart Way To Wire Smart Switches

February 19, 2021 by Lewin Day 33 Comments

Smart switches are fun, letting you control lights and appliances in your home over the web or even by voice if you’re so inclined. However, they can make day-to-day living more frustrating if they’re not set up properly with regards to your existing light switches. Thankfully, with some simple wiring, it’s possible to make everything play nice.

The method is demonstrated here by [MyHomeThings], in which an ESP8266 is used with a relay to create a basic smart switch. However, it’s wired up with a regular light switch in a typical “traveller” multiway switching scheme – just like when you have two traditional light switches controlling the same light at home. To make this work with the ESP8266, though, the microcontroller needs to be able to know the current state of the light. This is done by using a 240V to 3.3V power supply wired up in parallel with the light. When the light is on, the 3.3V supply is on. This supply feeds into a GPIO pin on the ESP8266, letting it know the light’s current state, and allowing it to set its output relay to the correct position as necessary.

This system lets you use smart lighting with traditional switches with less confused flipping, which is a good thing in our book. If you’re using standalone smart bulbs, however, you could consider flashing them with custom firmware to improve functionality. As always, if you’ve got your own neat smart lighting hacks, be sure to let us know!

Dynamic Macro Keyboard Controls All The Things

February 18, 2021 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

Keyboard shortcuts are great. Even so, a person can only be expected to remember so many shortcuts and hit them accurately while giving a presentation over Zoom. [Sebastian] needed a good set of of shortcuts for OBS and decided to make a macro keyboard to help out. By the time he was finished, [Sebastian] had macro’d all the things and built a beautiful and smart peripheral that anyone with a pulse would likely love to have gracing their desk.

The design started with OBS, but this slick little keyboard turned into a system-wide assistant. It assigns the eight keys dynamically based on the program that has focus, and even updates the icon to show changes like the microphone status.

This is done with a Python script on the PC that monitors the running programs and updates the macro keeb accordingly using a serial protocol that [Sebastian] wrote. Thanks to the flexibility of this design, [Sebastian] can even use it to control the office light over MQTT and make the CO2 monitor send a color-coded warning to the jog wheel when there’s trouble in the air.

This project is wide open with fabulous documentation, and [Sebastian] is eager to see what improvements and alternative enclosure materials people come up with. Be sure to check out the walk-through/build video after the break.

Inspired to make your own, but want to start smaller? There are plenty to admire around here.

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Custom Firmware For IKEA’s ORSALA Lamp

February 17, 2021 by Lewin Day 29 Comments

These days, home appliances are equally as likely to have soft buttons and rotary encoders as they are to have a simple old clunk/clunk power switch and an analog knob for controls. This is all well and good if the device aligns with your personal philosophy about how such controls should work; otherwise, it’s absolutely maddening. [j-zero] ran into this problem with their ORSALA lamp from IKEA, and set about rectifying the problem with some custom firmware.

The ORSALA lamp uses a rotary encoder for setting both brightness and color temperature, with a button to toggle modes. A long press is required to switch the lamp off. The custom firmware modifies this behaviour, such that the lamp can be switched on and off with a simple button press. Turning the encoder modifies brightness, and turning it to minimum switches the lamp off too. Meanwhile, the less commonly used color temperature setting can be modified by using the button while adjusting the encoder.

The hack was executed by reprogramming the ORSALA’s onboard microcontroller, the STM8S003F3P6, via its SWIM interface. The pads for the interface are easily located on the board, making the hack easy. Other than the inputs, the lamp packs separate TTP932 LED drivers for the warm white and cool white LEDs, making it easy to code a custom firmware to handle all the necessary functions.

It’s a great example of a hacker taking control of their own device and remaking it to suit their needs. Of course, if you want to go for another hacker trope, just stuff a Raspberry Pi in there instead!

Making A Toothbrush From Scratch, Right Down To The Bristles

February 16, 2021 by Lewin Day 31 Comments

Most of us probably get by with a toothbrush costing a couple dollars at most, made of injection-moulded plastic for delicate, tender mouths. Maybe if you’re a real cleantooth, you have a fancy buzzy electric one. We’d wager few are machining their own bespoke toothbrushes from scratch, but if you want some inspiration, [W&M Levsha] is doing just that.

Much of the work will be familiar to die hard machining enthusiasts. There’s careful crafting of the wood handle, involving a stackup of multiple stained and varnished woods – in this case, hornbeam being the paler of the two, and amaranth providing that rich red color. The stem is a stylish stainless steel piece, elegantly bent to a tasteful curve. Finally, the assembly of the brush head alone is worth the watch. It’s custom made – with a steel backing plate and fishing wire bristles custom cut with an automated jig using stepper motors. We’re suspect fishing wire is not rated for dental use, but the nylon strands are at least in the ballpark of what regular toothbrushes use.

While we probably wouldn’t slide this one betwixt our lips without consulting a dental professional first, it’s a great video for learning about what it takes to make beautiful bespoke objects in the workshop. We’ve seen elegant work from [W&M Levsha] before, too – in the form of a delightfully eclectic cap gun lighter. Video after the break.

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Racing Game Crashes Into Its Next Life As A Sound Bender

February 15, 2021 by Kristina Panos 1 Comment

They say the best things in life are free, but we would loudly argue that a dollar can go a long way, too. It all depends on what you do with it. When [lonesoulsurfer] saw this busted-up handheld racing game at the junk store, he fell in love with the lines of the case and gladly forked over a buck in order to give it a new life as a wicked little sound-bending machine with dancing LEDs.

Here’s how it works: [lonesoulsurfer] records a few seconds of whatever into the mic with the looping function switched off, then turns it back on to start the fun. He can vary the pitch with the speed controller pot, or add in some echo and reverb. Once the sound is dialed in, he works the pause button on the left to make melodies by stopping and restarting the loop, or just pausing it momentarily depending on the switch setting.

The electronics are a mashup of modules mixed with a custom PCB that combines the recording module with an LM386 amplifier and holds the coolest part of this build — those LEDs that dance to the music behind the toy’s original lenticular screen. Like most of [lonesoulsurfer]’s builds, it’s powered by an old cell phone battery that’s buck-boosted to 5 V. Check out the build and bleep-bloop video after the break.

Lenticular lenses are all kinds of fun. Get one that’s big enough, and you can use it to disappear for a while.

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Print-in-Place Connectors Aim To Make Wiring Easier

February 15, 2021 by Dan Maloney 115 Comments

One thing some of us here in the United States have always been jealous of is the WAGO connectors that seem so common in electrical wiring everywhere else in the world. We often wonder why the electrical trades here haven’t adopted them more widely — after all, they’re faster to use than traditional wire nuts, and time is money on the job site.

Wago 221 compact lever connector via the Wago YouTube channel

This print-in-place electrical connector is inspired by the WAGO connectors, specifically their Lever Nut series. We’ll be clear right up front that [Tomáš “Harvie” Mudruňka’s] connector is more of an homage to the commercially available units, and should not be used for critical applications. Plus, as a 3D-printed part, it would be hard to compete with something optimized to be manufactured in the millions. But the idea is pretty slick. The print-in-place part has a vaguely heart-shaped cage with a lever arm trapped inside it.

After printing and freeing the lever arm, a small piece of 1.3-mm (16 AWG) solid copper wire is inserted into a groove. The wire acts as a busbar against which the lever arm squeezes conductors. The lever cams into a groove on the opposite wall of the cage, making a strong physical and electrical connection. The video below shows the connectors being built and tested.

We love the combination of print-in-place, compliant mechanisms, and composite construction on display here. It reminds us a bit of these printable SMD tape tamers, or this print-in-place engine benchmark.

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RFID Music Player Gets The Whole House Pumping

February 13, 2021 by Lewin Day 11 Comments

RFID tags are normally used for pedestrian tasks like tracking shipping crates or opening doors to workplaces we’d rather be absent from, but they can also be cool and fun. [hoveeman] demonstrates this ably with a tidy jukebox project.

The build is based on a Raspberry Pi Zero, secreted away underneath a table with a USB RFID reader attached. Atop the table are a series of RFID cards upon which [hoveeman] printed the artwork from his favorite albums using a special caddy in an inkjet printer. Through some Python code and shell scripts, when scanning a card, the Pi Zero is able to trigger all the Google Home compatible devices in the house to play the album selected at the same time.

It’s a visually enjoyable way to cue up some music, and likely more reliable than most voice assistants, too. We can see this being particularly useful for Weezer fans; with the band’s many self-titled releases, Siri and the Google Assistant typically fail to play the right album on request. We’ve seen other beautiful RFID jukeboxes before, but one player that really sticks out ditched the RF and just uses computer vision with vinyl albums as the ID.

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