Category "code"

Some 3 years ago I started building my own wireless sensor network at home. The technology I used at the moment has proven to be the right choice, mostly because it is flexible and modular. MQTT is the keystone of the network. The publisher-subscriber pattern gives the flexibility to work on small, replaceable, simple components that can be attached or detached from the network at any moment. Over this time is has gone through some changes, like switching from a series of python daemons to Node-RED to manage persistence, notifications and reporting to several “cloud” services....

Firmware over-the-air (OTA) is great. It makes you shiver whenever you throw an update to one of your devices. The ArduinoOTA library for ESP8266 is so easy to use it's almost magic. But once you have several devices deployed you start to think one step further. Here I'm going to talk about two different options: writing an automated deployment script that performs OTA updates or giving your device the ability to call home querying for new updates, downloading them and flash itself into the latest version available....

Have you ever forgotten your wet clothing inside the washer for a whole day? I have. Even for two days. They smell. You have to wash them again and you know you might end up forgetting about them again! Actually that is happening to me since me moved to an old house in a town north of Barcelona. Instead of having the washer in the kitchen, like we used to, now we have it in the cellar, in a place I don't normally pass by to notice the laundry is done....

Yes, sure! You can buy a Sonoff RF and you are good to go, I guess. But I didn't and I was not so sure about the no-named RF receiver so I ended thinking about adding my own. But first things first. The Sonoff is an ESP8266 based smart switch by ITEAD which comes with custom firmware that communicates with the manufacturer cloud to provide “smart” capabilities like remote switching or scheduling....

The Rentalito is a never ending project. It began as a funny project at work using an Arduino UNO and an Ethernet Shield, then it got rid of some cables by using a Roving Networks RN-XV WIFI module, after that it supported MQTT by implementing Nick O’Leary’s PubSubClient library and now it leaves the well known Arduino hardware to embrace the powerful Spark Core board. Spark Core powered Rentalito - prototype Spark Core The Spark Core is a development board based on the STM32F103CB, an ARM 32-bit Cortex M3 microcontroller by ST Microelectronics, that integrates Texas Instruments CC3000 WIFI module....

I have recently started a couple of projects based on the great Spark Core board. Hopefully I will be able to talk about them here soon. The Spark Core (courtesy of spark.io) The Spark Core is a development board based on the STM32F103CB, an ARM 32-bit Cortex M3 microcontroller by ST Microelectronics (the same you can find in the new Nucleo platform by ST) that was crowd-funded through a kickstarted campaign....

In my last post about counting events with Arduino and PCF8583 I talked about this “yet another weather station” project I was working on last summer. The station was deployed in the garden of a cute apartment we rented in an old “masia” near Olot, 100 km north of Barcelona. It is in the mountainside, surrounded by woods and 10 minutes walking from the near town. It has a beautiful garden with plenty of space....

Hey! I've been away for some time. It's not that I had stopped tinkering, but work and laziness have kept me away from the blog. During these months I have been working mostly on a new weather station (yes, yet another weather station or YAWS). The project was a step forward in a lot of aspects, from carpentry to remote reporting hacking cheap chinese routers and 3G dongles, from new libraries for Arduino to a bidirectional HTTP to MQTT bridge in node....

My last project is a über-cool Geiger-Muller Counter. Final box, with a LCD showing the last average CPM every 6 secons and sending the info to the server every minute... Hardware: Radio Hobby Store Geiger Counter Radiation DIY Kit (second edition) Some weeks ago I suffered a radioactivity fever, so to speak. I backed the APOC Mini Radiation Detector at Kickstarter and also bought a Geiger Counter Radiation Detector DIY Kit from Radio Hobby Store at Ebay....

[Update 2013-03-01] I have added more documentation on the codes these remotes use in a different post. I'm starting to move towards not only gathering information but also acting. My first project in this subject will be controlling some lights and the house heaters. So last week I visited the urban market of “Els Encants” in Barcelona and bought some very cheap wireless outlets. Two different remotes I bought two sets of three wall plugs, each set with it's own remote....