Author: Richard

Time to grow some data…

Last weekend I decided to build a monitoring system for the planter boxes on my deck. I wanted to collect data on soil moisture and light levels from at least two of the 4 planter boxes. The issue is that I don’t have a place to plug it all into and I want to log the data using Google Sheets so that I can graph everything.

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So I grabbed a solar panel, whipped up a voltage regulator, connected a rechargeable battery and that took care of the battery. For the microcontroller I used a Particle Photon, mostly due to it’s abundance of analog read pins, and connected a Spark Fun soil sensor with an added photo-resister for light readings. The Photon reads the analog value of each sensor and adds a new row into my Google Sheets doc via IFTTT. After the data is sent the Photon goes into deep sleep mode every 10 minutes. This makes it so that the sensor sips power and can easily last using only solar power.

So here is the Data:

My next step is to collect enough data to flag events that I want to be notified about. Like when the water level gets low enough to were I should water my plants, or when my plats are about to die due to extreme dryness. I can also see how much daylight a particular box is getting so I know what plants need to go where. If I had access to a water outlet I could have that automatically water the garden, but for now my water bucket works well enough.

 

 

Wireless NAT server E-ink badge with Apache, PHP, SQL, Media Wiki, and MQTT

Intro

This will walk you through setting up a Raspberry Pi Web server with Raspbian Buster Lite. The following services will be installed and available by the end of this tutorial.

  1. Apache web server
  2. MySQL database
  3. PHP
  4. MediaWiki
  5. MQTT

Continue reading Wireless NAT server E-ink badge with Apache, PHP, SQL, Media Wiki, and MQTT

One Step Closer to Plug and Play ESP devices

For those of you that know me, I am kinda big on the ESP8266 WiFi enabled chip for IOT. I do use the Arduino IDE for coding these chips and have integrated aspects of automatic setup much like consumer IOT products use. The one thing that has been tricky is in setting up things like MQTT feeds and even the MQTT credentials on setup. Continue reading One Step Closer to Plug and Play ESP devices

Top Smart Home recommended devices

For quite a few years I have tried out many devices for smart homes and lived with them to figure out what works most consistently. For myself, there is also a need for things to share information and allow for automatons that use complex logic. An example of this is that while I do want my lights to turn on when I get home, I only want them to do so if it is dark outside and at a brightness that reflects the time of day that I am getting home. This kind of automation requires many devices to share information across my network, but some devices make that process easier than others. With that in mind, here are my recommendations on smart home devices that play nice with each other. Continue reading Top Smart Home recommended devices

Soft electronics projects

So a few weeks ago I got a visit from a friend that I worked with on getting embroidery machines to sew circuit patterns using conductive thread. This is one of the most time consuming and difficult part of doing soft electronics work for wearable tech.

Well he has made a huge amount of progress in doing the same types of embedded fabric circuits that only companies like Levies is doing. Using a $300 home embroidery capable sewing machine and his software anyone can assemble complex circuits complete with easy pads to stitch electronics to. There are even some embedded sensors that can be stiched into the fabric like Capacitive touch sensors, induction coils, and linear encoders. Even stitching the electronics in place is easy using the button stitch setting.

One other thing that has made this much more accessible is the development of better conductive thread. The thread I am working with is very similar to regular thread so it can used in the top and bottom of the sewing machine unlike other conductive threads that can only be used on the bottom part of the machine with regular thread at the top.

Currently I am working with this friend to get the software publicly available, and hopefully free, and develop a supply chain for getting this new conductive thread available in the US.

Currently I am using this to create exsamples of embedded wearable technology for an up and coming fashion show at the Living Computers Museum in Seattle. I do plan to post some videos and photos of what I am doing in the coming weeks.