Introduction The Sonoff Basic Wi-Fi Smart Switch is an inexpensive wireless smart switch for anyone who wants to remote control and/or automate electric devices around the house or workplace. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same privacy issues as many of the inexpensive consumer grade smart devices, like the one in …
Recently, more and more consumer devices are available to make your home “smarter”. While they can make our lives a bit easier, comfortable, most of these smart devices also give rise to a number of privacy concerns as well as usability/reliability issues: The mobile apps (i.e. Ewelink, Smart life, etc) that …
Introduction Although optional, having a central coordinator (ActoSenso Server) in an automation environment can open up new possibilities. Advantages of having an ActoSenso Server include more processing power, more mass storage (for historical data), easier to develop business logic, etc. Options for an ActoSenso Server Almost any computer can be converted …
Introduction In the previous article I described the system overview of my automation platform, which I call ActoSenso Platform. In this article I discuss some of the nodes that can be (and I have) used in ActoSenso Platform. Any suggestion, tip for improvement, constructive criticism or related comment is mostly welcome …
Introduction Over the past few months I have created an easily expandable, well scaling and easy to optimize solution for controlling and otherwise bringing together a wide range of disparate devices. With it one can gather data from all kinds of sensors (e.g. light, noise, pollution, position, etc) to keep …
Introduction The D-Link DIR-600 is a consumer grade router. Although it’s not a new model, it is still a very capable router at a price tag and feature set that is difficult to beat. Also, OpenWrt can be installed on it to make it even more capable and more configurable. …
Introduction Recently, I finished my first, usable IoT prototype on a breadboard. It is a simple unit, consisting of an LED (emulating a digital output) and a switch (emulating a digital input). Many of the IoT applications can be traced back to this simple application, so even if a particular …
Introduction I am working on a home automation project which required I installed Mosquitto, an open source MQTT broker, on my Raspberry Pi. Installation went smoothly, so a few minutes after first hearing about Mosquitto it was ready to be used on my RPi. Next, I tested it by subscribing …
Introduction This is not a pure DIY project in the sense I also used a third party company to achieve my goal. Nevertheless, it’s a fun and pleasant one if you like photography as I do (I am also a photographer). In this article I will describe a novel way …
