Plant’m If You Got’m And Keep’m Alive

June 19, 2020 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

Having a few plants around is a great way to liven up your living and/or working space. They look nice, you get to watch them grow and change, and some types of plants can actively improve the room’s air quality. But let’s face it — even the easy ones require a baseline level of care that can easily fall by the wayside. After all, the poor things can’t scream out for water or get up and find a sunnier spot for themselves.

[Ine Hocedez] was tired of watching her plants die and not knowing why. The two main culprits involve water and light, though there can be other issues like soil pH and bugs. It’s easy to get the balance wrong, so why not automate everything?

Plant’m is a complete, portable package that [Ine] designed for a school project. A soil moisture sensor dictates the watering schedule via Raspberry Pi, and water is automatically pumped from an elevated tank.

The lamp is meant to supplement the sunlight, not replace it. But that’s the real beauty of this botanical box — [Ine] can just pick it up and try a different spot if the plant droops or shows burnt spots.

Got the sunlight part down for your plant, but can’t remember to water it? Re-purpose an old Keurig and give it an automatic drip.

Capture The Flag, Along With The Game Data

June 18, 2020 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

With events of all sizes on hold and live sports mostly up in the air, it’s a great time to think of new ways to entertain ourselves within our local circles. Bonus points if the activity involves running around outside, and/or secretly doubles as a team-building exercise, like [KarelBousson]’s modernized version of Capture the Flag.

Much like the original, the point of this game is to capture the case and keep it for as long as possible before the other team steals it away. Here, the approach is much more scientific: the box knows exactly who has it and for how long, and the teams get points based on the time the case spends in any player’s possession.

Each player carries an RFID tag to distinguish them from each other. Inside the case is an Arduino Mega with a LoRa shield and a GPS unit. Whenever the game is afoot, the case communicates its position to an external Raspi running the game server.

If you haven’t met LoRa yet, check out this seven-part introductory tutorial.

Compile A Hydroponics System From Source

June 16, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 18 Comments

Tending to a garden is usually a rewarding endeavor, as long as there is good soil to work with. If there isn’t, it can either get frustrating quickly having to deal with soils like sand or hard clay, or it can get expensive by having to truck in compost each year. Alternatively, it’s possible to set up systems of growing plants that don’t need any soil at all, although this requires an automated system otherwise known as hydroponics to manage water and nutrients sent to the plants.

This setup by [Kyle] is unique in that it uses his own open-source software which he calls Mycodo to control the hydroponic system. It is loaded onto a Raspberry Pi 4 (which he notes can now be booted from a USB drive instead of an SD card) which controls all of the peripherals needed for making sure that the water has the correct amount of nutrients and chemical composition.

The build is much more than just a software control panel, though. [Kyle] walks through every part of setting up a small hydroponic system capable of effectively growing 15-20 plants indoors. He grows varieties of lettuce and basil, but this system can work for many more types of plants as well. With just slight variations, a similar system can not only grow plants like these, but fish as well.

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Portable Video Looper Is Easy As Pi

June 15, 2020 by Kristina Panos 10 Comments

We all have handfuls of thumb drives lying around with only a vague idea of what’s on most of them, right? So why not dust one off, back it up somewhere, and give it a new purpose? That’s exactly what [Cher_Guevara] did to make this portable Raspberry Pi video looper. The hardest part of recreating this one might be coming up with such a good candidate mini CRT TV.

Once powered on, the Pi Zero W stuffed inside this baby Magnavox waits for a thumb drive to be inserted and says as much in nice green text on the screen. Then it displays the number of video files found on the drive and gives a little countdown before looping them all endlessly.

We love how flawlessly [Cher] was able to integrate the USB port and a flush-mounted shutdown button for the Pi into the TV’s control panel on the top. It’s like a portable from another timeline.

[Cher] got lucky because this TV happens to have a video-in jack for connecting up the Pi. If yours doesn’t have one, you might be able to use an RCA to RF converter if the antenna is removable. We’ve got the demo video waiting for you after these messages.

Okay, that’s one thumb drive repurposed. Now find another and experiment with adding USB OtG to it.

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Tiny Barcode Scanner Beeps Your Shopping List Together

June 12, 2020 by Kristina Panos 21 Comments

Taking a paper list to the grocery store seems like a good idea, at least until you get there and try to use it. Did you remember to bring a pen? Great. How about a clipboard so you don’t punch through the paper when crossing something off? Apps are easier to use for this, especially the ones with checkboxes, but you’ll still have to enter everything manually. Wouldn’t it be easier (and way more fun) to just scan the barcodes of stuff you need into a list before you chuck the packaging?

That’s exactly the idea behind [DavidE281]’s barcode scanner, which is designed to work with the Bring! app. All he has to do is scan a barcode, and the product ends up in a tidy list on his phone. It’s a simple build that’s based around the M5StickC, which is an ESP32 dev kit that has a small display and a 6-axis IMU along with some other goodies. [David] combined it with a 2D barcode scanner that has a serial port and designed a printed case that joins them together.

Here’s how it works: the M5Stick sends the barcode over MQTT to an external Raspberry Pi that’s running Home Assistant. The Pi does a lookup in a spreadsheet and sends the data to the Bring! app over a community-built API. At the same time, it sends the product name back to the M5Stick’s display to confirm that it was added to the list. Check out bite-sized demo video after the break.

Scanning barcodes is super fun. So why not use an IoT barcode scanner to keep track of everything you own?

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Build This Cyberdeck In A Cave With A Box Of Scraps

June 7, 2020 by Tom Nardi 17 Comments

Desktop 3D printing has been a big enabler for the cyberdeck community, as it’s allowed individuals to create unique frames and enclosures which would have been far more difficult and time consuming to produce using traditional methods. But what if you don’t have access to a well-stocked workspace, and need to do your building with the bare minimum of equipment? In that case, [ALX] recently put together a minimalistic design that can be assembled with off-the-shelf components and basic tools.

It’s the ideal cyberdeck for the neophyte, as all the parts are widely available and relatively inexpensive. While it might not be a customized as something with a fully 3D printed frame, we think it nails the look and utility that are the hallmarks of a proper deck.

The key to this build is the SmartiPi Touch case, which puts the Raspberry Pi and touch screen on a hinged panel. These hinges happen to be compatible with GoPro-style mounts, so with a few extension pieces, the panel can be lifted up high enough that it can be folded over the keyboard. The base of the SmartPi Touch case is then attached to the bottom of the keyboard with nothing more exotic than double-sided tape. Here [ALX] is using a Happy Hacking KeyBoard Lite 2, but you could substitute it with whatever you have handy.

On the other hand, if 3D printing out the frame isn’t a problem for you, this miniature cyberdeck we covered recently could be a great alternative if you’re looking to get started in the burgeoning world of bespoke mobile computers.

Bust Your Own Ghosts With A PKE Meter

June 7, 2020 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

You know, we wouldn’t be that surprised if aliens or ghosts show up for real before this year is out. If paranormal becomes part of the new normal, it might be nice to have a PKE meter that can detect spirits and help get a head start on figuring out what they want from us.

Yes, that’s right — instead of just lighting up whenever ghosts are near, [starscream205]’s meter goes the extra yard and translates spiritual energy into English words that scroll across the LED matrix. Inside is a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a sense HAT, which takes spatial and environmental readings and assigns different words based on the results.

Now [starscream205] can go fearlessly into the night, guided by the night vision camera on the end, and watch for ghosts on the screen. Instead of a typical Pi-compatible screen, this is from a car back-up camera system and has been modified to work with the Pi.

We’ve seen a few PKE meters around here before, but they usually do things such as detect radiation. It’s nice to see one that’s faithful to the original purpose.