Introduction Recently, I have tried a number of cheap WiFi smart bulbs. Usually, they arrive OK from China (although they are in serious need of weeding all the spyware in them), but this particular one failed to do more than a quick flash when I switched it on. No WiFi, …
Introduction Recently I have come across some smart LED light bulbs that came in different sizes, shapes, functionalities and manufacturers. One thing they share is that they all do their “smarts” over a WiFi connection for which you need to use a smartphone and one of the many apps that …
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 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 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 The latest “craze” among embedded electronics engineers is the tiny chip called ESP8266. It’s a low cost, low power, high performance chip allowing wireless connectivity with your wifi network. In the following I would like to share my experiences setting up such a module for the first time. The …
