Ikea Standing Desk Goes Dumb To Smart On LIN Bus

February 10, 2017 by Anool Mahidharia 27 Comments

IKEA’s products are known for their clean, Scandinavian design and low cost, but it is their DIY or “assemble it yourself” feature that probably makes them so popular with hackers. We seem to receive tips about IKEA hacks with a consistent regularity. [Robin Reiter] has a Bekant Sit/Stand motorized table with buttons to raise and lower the surface, but it doesn’t have any memory presets. That’s a shame because it requires a lot of fiddling with the up/down buttons to get it right every time. It would be nice to press a button, go grab a Coffee, and come back to find it adjusted at the desired height. With a little bit of hacking, he was able to not only add memory preset buttons, but also a USB interface for future computer control.

The existing hardware consists of a PIC16LF1938 micro-controller with two buttons for movement control and a LIN bus protocol which communicates with the automotive grade motors with integrated encoders that report position values. After a bit of sniffing around with his oscilloscope and analyzer, he was able to figure out the control codes for the motor movements. For some strange reason, however, the LIN signals were inverted, so he had to introduce a transistor signal inverter between the PIC master and the Arduino Nano that would act as a slave LIN node. Software was made much easier thanks to an Arduino library developed by [Zapta] for the LIN Bus signal Injector, The controls now have four buttons — two to replicate the original up/down movements, and the other two to act as memory presets.

The code, schematic and a simple wiring layout are posted on Github, in case there are others out there who’d like to replicate this hack. Check out the video after the break where he gives a walk through the code.

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Reverse Engineering Ikea’s New Smart Bulbs

February 6, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 81 Comments

Over in Sweden, Czech, Italy, and Belgium, Ikea is launching a new line of ‘smart’ light bulbs. These countries are apparently the test market for these bulbs, and they’ll soon be landing on American shores. This means smart Ikea bulbs will be everywhere soon, and an Internet of Light Bulbs is a neat thing to explore. [Markus] got his hands on a few of these bulbs, and is now digging into their inner workings (German Make Magazine, with a Google Translate that includes the phrase, ‘capering the pear’).

There are currently four versions of these Ikea bulbs, ranging from a 400 lumen bulb designed for track lights to a 980 lumen bulb that will probably work in an American Edison lamp socket. These lights are controlled via a remote, with each individual bulb paired to the remote by turning the lamp on, holding the remote close to the bulb, and pressing a button.

Inside these bulbs is a Silicon Labs microcontroller with ZigBee support, twelve chip LEDs, and associated electronics that look like they might pass the bigclivedotcom smoke test. After tearing apart this bulb and planting the wireless module firmly in a breadboard, [Markus] found he could dim a pair of LEDs simply by clicking on the remote. Somewhere in these bulbs, there’s a possibility of doing something.

As with all Internet of Things, we must ask an important question: will it become part of Skynet and shut down the Internet, like webcams did last summer? These Ikea bulbs look pretty safe in that regard, as the bulb is inexorably tied to the remote and must be paired by holding it close to the bulb. We’re sure there are a few more interesting exploits for these bulbs, so once they’re released in the US we’ll take a look at them.

From IKEA Lamp To Robot Arm

January 4, 2017 by Jenny List 19 Comments

We’re used to projects that take everyday household objects and modify or enhance them into new and exciting forms that their original designers never intended. A particular theme in this endeavour comes from the IKEA hacking community, who take the products of the Swedish furniture store and use them for the basis of their work.

A particularly inventive piece of IKEA hacking is a project from [anastas.car], a low-cost 3D-printed robot arm based on Ikea Tertial lamp. The lamp in question is a relatively inexpensive spring-balanced desk lamp that when looked at in another light has all the metalwork ready-cut for a 5 degrees of freedom robot arm when combined with 3D-printed servo holders for five servos at its joints. The resulting design has all files available on Thingiverse, and judging by the video we’ve posted below the break makes for a rather effective arm.

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Comfort Thermometer With Impressive LED Display

January 2, 2017 by Jenny List 8 Comments

A frequent early project for someone learning to use a microcontroller such as an Arduino board involves hooking up a temperature sensor and an LCD display to make a digital thermometer. Not many components are involved, but it provides a handy practical introduction to interfacing peripherals. Once you’ve passed that step in your tech education, do you ever return to thermometers? Probably not, after all what can you add to a thermometer but a sensor and a display?

Perhaps if you have asked yourself that question you might be interested in [Richard Stevens]’s thermometer project, as he refers to it, a Comfort Thermometer Display. It takes the form of an Ikea Ribba frame inset with 517 LEDs arranged as a central set of seven segment displays, a ring of bar graphs, and an outer ring of RGB LEDs. Behind the scenes is a mass of cabling, and four shaped pieces of stripboard to fit the area around the LEDs. The display cycles through readings for temperature, heat index, and humidity.

Powering it all are a brace of microcontrollers: an ATMega328 for the 7-segments and a range of PICs controlling the bar graphs and RGB LEDs. Another PIC handles RF communication with the sensors, which are housed in a remote box. We’ve embedded the video of the device in operation below the break, and we’re sure you’ll agree it’s an impressive piece of work.

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Adding An IKEA Wireless Charger To A Project

January 1, 2017 by Rich Hawkes 13 Comments

IKEA sometimes seems like a DIY store disguised as a furniture store. We may go there looking for a new sofa or kitchen table, but, to the DIY enthusiast, it’s a shop full of possibilities. While wandering through the local IKEA, [Erich Styger] noticed they had some Qi wireless chargers and receivers for a very reasonable price, so he bought a few and added wireless charging to his Mikroelektronika Hexiwear.

toothpicking-the-coil — Removing the wireless charger

[Erich Styger] didn’t like the clumsiness of the Hexiwear’s USB charging options and, at the price he got the IKEA Vitahult Qi phone case wireless receivers at, he couldn’t resist buying a few for his projects. After carefully separating the circuitry from the phone cases they came in he opening up the Hexiwear. He removed the battery connector and soldered the charger to battery charging circuit. [Erich Styger] then 3D printed a new back to the Hexiwear’s case to fit the new circuitry. A quick test with the IKEA charging pad proved the hack had worked.

IKEA has become something of a DIY enthusiasts go-to shop, with everything from weather stations to a camera slider at a decent price. Walking through the maze inside the store, the DIYer doesn’t see lamps and boxes and shelves, they see light projectors and enclosures and, well, everyone needs shelves.

IKEA Table 3D Printer

December 22, 2016 by Pedro Umbelino 43 Comments

In this Instructable, [Wayne Mason-Drust] shares the step by step guide on how to make a cool, good-looking, 3D printer based on the Ikea LACK table. From an Ikea lantern weather station to a fully printed CNC based on an Ikea table, it’s almost safe to say that a 3D printer Ikea hack was overdue.

The idea to use a Ikea table as a base for a 3D printer first came to [Wayne] as he used this table to support other 3D printer he had working in his business. He realized that, even after five years of use, the table showed no signs of wear or distortion. So he decided to start to work on a 3D printer based on this precise table, the one that used to hold the printer.

[Wayne] stacked two together and named it Printtable (pun intended?). This open source, cartesian rep-rap 3D printer looks pretty slick. With a build area of 340mm X 320mm and 300mm on the Z axis and a price tag for the parts starting as low as $395, seems like a pretty decent 3D printer. With some work sourcing the parts, maybe it can be even lower.

Or we can just wait until Ikea starts selling them.

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Ikea Desk Lamp That Will Defend Your Lungs

November 15, 2016 by James Hobson 23 Comments

While some people may enjoy the occasional whiff of noxious smells — gasoline, axe body spray, etc — prolonged exposure to fumes is not good for your health. This goes for soldering too, isn’t it about time you added some abatement to your bench tools?

Inspired by some of the fume hoods we’ve featured before — take note, ye who art lacking projects — [Georg Sluyterman] put together his own Ikea lamp fume extractor.

The most striking feature is that it’s mounted on an Ikea desk lamp making for convenient positioning and minimal clutter. A NeoPixels strip lights up your soldering space while the PIR sensor activates the fan when it detects movement. A WeMos D1 Mini is included for WiFi connectivity but that feature still down the road a little bit. The functionality that is in place is still quite impressive; more on that after the break.

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