Simple MP3 Player Hides Home Automation Brilliance

August 17, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 7 Comments

Like bubble wrap or the corkscrew, plenty of everyday objects have lost almost all ties to their original purpose. It could be that the original product had no market but was able to find one in an unexpected place, or simply that the original use case disappeared. We think that this MP3 player for children might arrive at a similar fate as a home automation controller thanks to a recent project by [Sebastian].

The MP3 player is known as a Jooki and works by using small figurines (and a few buttons) to control the device. Different figurines cause the MP3 player to change playlists, for example, but it turns out that the device is capable of communicating over MQTT. This means that [Sebastian] was able to use the MQTT messages from the Jooki to do all kinds of things beyond its intended use with openHAB, an open-source home automation system, such as dimming the lights and closing the blinds when he puts his son to bed.

This platform has considerable potential for hacking thanks to the lightweight communications system it uses under the hood. The Jooki is a little pricey, but if you happen to have one around, it’s an impressive tool that can go well beyond its original intended use.

Home Automation Covers Everything

July 13, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 29 Comments

When starting out on a project, it’s accepted best practice to try to avoid feature creep. Of course, we can’t all say that we follow this guideline completely every time. In fact, sometimes it can get away from us, and in rare situations it might actually turn out pretty well. That appears to be what happened with [superczar]’s home automation project which now covers basically everything possible in home automation.

The build started in 2013, so we assume that features have been added periodically and that the system wasn’t designed and built all in one furious weekend. Either way, though, it covers a lot: lights, switches, media players in several rooms, includes sensors and logging for temperature, smoke, fire, and power, supports a number of cameras, the doorbell, and the locks. It also includes voice control for most of the systems.

That’s an impressive list, but what really drew our attention to this project is that it used to be based on domoticz, but that community has waned over the years and [superczar] had kept his system patched together with self-built scripts. An accidental upgrade recently broke the entire setup, so rather than rebuild everything a migration was made to home-assistant, an open-source platform that has a more active community. We’ve seen plenty of projects around here that use it as a platform, for ceiling fans, custom remotes, and doorbells.

Thanks to [pradeepmur] for the tip!

Heater Joins The Internet Of Things With ESP32 Board

July 8, 2020 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

The wood-burning heater [g3gg0] has at home works perfectly, except for one flaw: the pellet reservoir needs to be manually refilled every few days. Humans being notoriously unreliable creatures, this critical task is sometimes overlooked, which naturally leads to literally chilling results.

With automatic fill systems expensive and difficult to install, [g3gg0] wanted to find some kind of way for the heater to notify its caretakers about any potential fault conditions. Not just the fact that it was out of fuel (though that would naturally be the most common alert), but any other issue which would potentially keep the heater from doing it’s job. In short, the heater was going to get a one-way ticket to the Internet of Things.

As it turns out, this task was not quite as difficult as you might expect. The Windhager heater already had upgrade bays where the user could insert additional modules and sensors, as well as a rudimentary data bus over RS-485. All [g3gg0] had to do was tap into this bus, decode what the packets contained, and use the information to generate alerts over the network. The ESP32 was more than up to the task, it just needed a custom PCB and 3D printed enclosure that would allow it to slot into the heater like an official expansion module.

When an interesting message flashes across the bus, the ESP32 captures it and relays the appropriate message to an MQTT broker. From there, the automation possibilities are nearly endless. In this case, the heater’s status information is being visualized with tools like Grafana, and important alerts are sent out to mobile devices with PushingBox. With a setup like this, the Windhager will never go hungry again.

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Building An ESP32 Smart Power Strip From Scratch

June 10, 2020 by Tom Nardi 33 Comments

Surely the most straightforward way of creating a smart power strip would be to take an existing model and hack in some relays that you could fire with a WiFi-enabled microcontroller. But where’s the fun in that? Instead of repurposing a commercial power strip for his recent project, [Md Raz] decided to just build the whole thing himself.

The project started with a 3D printed enclosure that could hold the electronics and three panel mount sockets. The use of heat-set inserts makes it a bit more robust for future upgrade work, but otherwise it’s a fairly simple rectangular design. Nobody ever said a power strip had to be pretty, right? In addition to the panel mount sockets, there’s also a AC-DC converter to step mains voltage down to 5 VDC for the ESP32.

In addition to the microcontroller, the custom PCB in the power strip holds a trio of MOSFETs connected to AQH2223 solid state relay (SSR) chips. Once the ESP32 toggles the line attached to each MOSFET, the indicator LED above the outlet goes on and the appropriate SSR is thrown to turn on the power. With a simple web interface running on the microcontroller, all three outlets can be independently controlled from any device with a web browser.

If you’d like to limit your interaction with mains voltages, then we’ve seen some projects that commandeer the low-voltage side of a commercial smart power strip. But remember, putting a Raspberry Pi inside of a power strip might seem suspicious to some folks.

The Easiest Way To Put Your Doorbell On The Internet

June 1, 2020 by Tom Nardi 39 Comments

Thanks to low-cost WiFi enabled microcontrollers such as the ESP8266 and ESP32, it’s never been a better time to roll your own smart home system. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t daunting for new players. If you’re looking for an easy first project, putting your old school doorbell on the Internet of Things is a great start, but even here there’s some debate about how to proceed.

Most people stumble when they get to the point where they have to connect their low-voltage microcontroller up to the relatively beefy transformer that drives a standard doorbell. We’ve seen a number of clever methods to make this connection safely, but this tip from [AnotherMaker] is probably the easiest and safest way you’re likely to come across.

His solution only requires an inductive current sensor, which can be had for less than $1 from the usual overseas suppliers. One leg of the doorbell circuit is passed through the center of this sensor, and the sensor itself is connected up to your microcontroller of choice (here, and ESP32). The rest is software, which [AnotherMaker] explains in the video after the break. With the addition of a little debounce code, your microcontroller can reliably determine when somebody is out there jabbing the bell button; what you do with this information after that is up to you.

If you’re worried this method is too easy you could always try it with an optocoupler, or maybe convert the low-voltage AC to something your microcontroller can handle.

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Home Assistant Get Fingerprint Scanning

May 28, 2020 by Al Williams 13 Comments

Biometrics — like using your fingerprint as a password — is certainly convenient and are pretty commonplace on phones and laptops these days. While their overall security could be a problem, they certainly fit the bill to keep casual intruders out of your system. [Lewis Barclay] had some sensors gathering dust and decided to interface them to his Home Assistant setup using an ESP chip and MQTT.

You can see the device working in the video below. The code is on GitHub, and the only thing we worried about was the overall security. Of course, the security of fingerprint scanners is debatable since you hear stories about people lifting fingerprints with tape and glue, but even beyond that, if you were on the network, it would seem like you could sniff and fake fingerprint messages via MQTT. Depending on your security goals, that might not be a big deal and, of course, that assumes someone could compromise your network to start with.

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An ESP32 Home Automation Swiss Army Knife

May 14, 2020 by Tom Nardi 37 Comments

Thanks to the ESP8266 and the ESP32, we’ve seen an explosion in DIY home automation projects recently. When it only takes $3 and a few lines of code to bring your gadgets onto the network, that’s hardly a surprise. But hacking bare ESP modules onto devices will only get you so far. Eventually you’ll probably want to put together a slightly more mature home automation system, and that’s where things can get a little tricky.

Which is why [Alfredo] created the Maisken Homelay. This device is a one-stop-shop for your home automation needs that leverages the power of the ESP32. With the microcontroller slotted into this compact PCB, you’ll be able to trigger four relays for your high current or AC loads, and still have 8 GPIOs and the I2C bus for expansion. All while retaining compatibility with existing open source projects like Home Assistant and ESPHome.

What really sets this project apart is the attention to detail. [Alfredo] has included a HLK-PM01 power supply on the board which takes mains voltage and brings it down to 5 VDC for the ESP32, so won’t need a separate power cable. He’s also taken the time to add isolation slots to separate the potential high-voltage connected to the relays from the rest of the board, added current and thermal fuses for protection, and peppered the board with screw terminals so you can easily connect everything up.

Sure you could get a simple relay board shipped to your door for a few bucks from the usual suspects. But it’s not going to offer the kind of quality of life and safety features that the Maisken Homelay has. There’s even a 3D printed enclosure available to help tidy things up.

With some of the blatantly anti-consumer decisions big-name home automation companies have been making recently, there’s more reason than ever to roll your own smart home using open source hardware and software. It still takes more effort than buying a bunch of modules from the Big Box retailer, but projects like this one are certainly starting to blur the line between consumer and DIY.