Months ago I came across this project: Traintrackr. It gives you a live view of where the trains are arriving in each station. I made one for Chicago. Tldr; I made a pretty thing that isn’t (really) IoT but involves trains and many LEDs. Chicago CTA line Mounted on acrylic backing Tracking methods Live To track the trains live, you would need access to CTA’s API, which only requires you to sign up. ...
I often get asked: “Ben, that soil sensor you used is too complex! I$^2$C for some capacitive sensing? Have you thought about using something cheaper?” Literally no one has asked me this question, but that’s okay. Tldr; I found a a soil sensor that costs 10% of the first one I used and got it to work with the Bluetooth device from Silabs, BG22. The Big Circle Skip this part if you are not interested in origin stories. ...
I’ve come to a rule of thumb that I feel is quite useful in measuring the longevity of an IoT product: does it require the cloud? Please note that I am in no way recommending for or against any of the companies that are listed below as examples. They simply provide useful examples to illustrate the point. Requires Cloud to work, no subscription These are the riskiest class of products. The company can turn off cloud access at any moment, rendering the product useless. Without a subscription model, it is unlikely the company will be able to keep funding their cloud services, even if it is promised to be ’lifetime’ in the marketing material. ...
It is a fairly interesting to me that you can get a cheap (~$6) solar powered device that controls a bunch of long fairy lights. Think about it: a battery, a solar panel, a string of LEDs, and a PCB to control it all, housed in a water resistant case for $6. That’s a lot of things for $6. These devices require a low voltage source for power, and are often deployed in open spaces where power outlets are not easily accessible, which makes them perfect candidates for solar power. This is actually quite close to the use-case of wireless devices, where in order for them to be useful, they should be as independent as much as possible so that they aren’t tethered to an outlet, especially so for wireless sensor nodes. ...
BreatheDot by West Side Electronics on TindieA Portable Meditation AidTindieExtra units available for purchase A BreatheDot for modern times. A fully featured meditation aid now comes with GPS 🛰️, WiFi 🌐, Bluetooth, and a mindfulness app 🧘. Just joking! We certainly learnt our lesson from the IoT Table Lamp debacle didn’t we? BreatheDot 2 features quality of life improvements (for me), and some design changes that will make it easier to use. The most useless IoT table lamp in existenceHow I made the most useless IoT table lamp in existence. Now comes with mechanical and electrical design comments!West Side Electronics·Benjamen Lim It serves the same purpose as the original BreatheDot: an aid for guided breathing exercise in a small form factor. It also helps as a focus object when experiencing high stress or anxiety. The design is deliberately simple to remove all distractions and possibilities of failure. ...
Another day, another teardown. Today the focus of my prying screwdriver is the Symfonisk Sound Remote from IKEA. It is quite nice to use. It has a brushed plastic texture that keeps it from becoming a fingerprint magnet. It turns smoothly, and the rubber feet that is used for the base is sticky enough to give the sensation of weight. What I didn’t like was the wobble of the button. It is not noticeable at first if you use a finger to spin the knob, however if you hold the button and wiggle it, there is about 1mm of wobble. ...
Tldr; well-designed button with multiple interesting design features. If exposed, well-labelled, debugging pins excite you, you’ve come to the right place. I am a big fan of IKEA products. I’m also a big fan of checking out the electronics of low-cost products. So when I saw this smart LED bulb and wireless button bundle during my quarterly sojourn to IKEA, I simply could not resist the temptation to open it up and see what IKEA has decided to use for their Home Smart™ products. ...
I triumphantly declared that the Cloud was simply too expensive for me in my second post about the bus app, and migrated from Google Firebase to my own hosted instance to save costs. Building a better bus arrival appBus App V2! In this installment, we are rewriting the app in Node and React.West Side Electronics·Benjamen Lim Yeah, about that. Turns out to be quite involved the deeper you get into it ...
One project that I’ve always been interested in implementing is a soil sensor because I frequently forget to water my plants and then compensate by flooding the pot (my poor plants). While there are a ton of soil sensors out there, I decided to implement my own with a twist of adding bluetooth functionality to it so as to have a low power node to collect data about soil conditions periodically. ...
Today I want to introduce the most useless IoT thing that I’ve made so far. It is a table lamp that I’ve retrofitted with a WeMos Mini Pro. Tldr; took me way too much effort to control the lamp wirelessly. Who needs a wireless table lamp anyway? How this lamp is used This table lamp is literally the most useless thing in existence: **It is on my table. **1. Take out my phone. 2. Find the MQTT app. 3. Press the light level icon. 4. Select light level. It is not on my table. 1. Why isn’t it on my table? 2. Why do I want to adjust the brightness of something far away without going over to it? Compared to the original lamp WITHOUT the IoT portion stapled in: ...