A while back, I made a couple of ESP8266-based room thermometers. These have been beavering away happily ever since – one on the desk in my office and one in the living room (or salon as we say in France). The only significant change I’ve made to them is to add the capability for them to report temperatures to an… Read more »
In the first part, I outlined my plan to build an infrared receiver to act as a hub for IoT devices in the home. Here, we’ll take a closer look at house the receiver works. Here’s what is required for this initial stage of the project: An ESP32 development board. I’m using a DOIT device, which costs around $14. A… Read more »
How many remote controllers do you have in the house? One for the TV, one for the DVR, one for the Blu Ray player… There are five remotes sitting on the coffee table in our living room. Plus another couple scattered around the house, controlling table lamps and other TVs. And do you know what? This post isn’t even about… Read more »
These days, there’s a huge amount of support out there for virtually any device you can buy. But every now and again you need to do a bit of head-scratching. So this post is simply my way of helping out anyone who’s going through the same process I just did. I bought a couple of cheap ESP32 boards that have… Read more »
The best projects are the ones you finish. And as projects go, this IoT room thermometer – and, for good measure, clock – was one of the easier ones. To recap, I wanted a thermometer in my office to measure the temperature and compare that with how I’m doing, at any given time, in terms of hand pain. I have… Read more »
Having cobbled together an ESP8266 microcontroller, temperature sensor and TFT LCD screen, the next step was to have the device talk to a server. There are two reasons for wanting to connect to a server: first, to get time and date updates; and second, to report the temperature and humidity so that the server can display them on an intranet… Read more »
Impulsiveness is not always a good thing. So here’s a handy rule for you: first, prototype; then fabricate the PCBs. Doing it that way, things have a chance of going well. Reverse that order and … well, not so much. Not that it was a disaster. In fact I had prototyped this little project – mostly. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves…. Read more »