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Jul. 30th, 2021 03:32 pm So lessee. Activities that are contributing to happiness, pleasure, and accomplishment.
I've fallen down the rabbit hole of microprocessor based electronics. It started when I decided to take a Wifi smart plug and jailbreak it from its original firmware that phoned home to China. In doing so, I gained the ability to control it locally, and now I don't have to worry about what it is telling the world about me and my switch habits. To do that for some of the switches I had was relatively simple through an over-the-air process. But some of the newer models had firmware that deliberately interfered with this. So that meant breaking out the soldering iron and opening up the plugs and getting access to the microprocessor that lives inside. It turns out that most of those wifi smart plugs use a similar base microprocessor chip, and if you have physical access to the chip itself, you can plug it into a computer and reprogram it. So with the help of Google, I worked through that process and was able to jailbreak these as well. But in the process of finding out that there is a common base electronics chip, I learned that the chip is relatively inexpensive, and unto itself can do a whole lot with the proper firmware.
So I bought my first set up breakout-boards with the chip (those are little circuit boards with the chip included that make it easier to access the pins and make it easier to program). These chips support coding and also have a variety of input and output capabilities, and there are some established pre-built firmware that makes it really easy to do things with it, including handling LED strips. In this case, I went with RGB LED strips (color changing), and my first project was to use a firmware called WLED as a base for what became a WiFi connected busy light for outside the office to help the rest of the household know when we were on phone calls and for us not to be disturbed. WLED was a little bit overkill for it, but because of the ease and flexibility, it worked out really well.
I ended up getting lengths of what essentially are RGB Christmas lights, and using another chip, was able to create Wifi enabled color changing lights with custom patterns. I had been using pre-designated LED Christmas lights before, but it meant having several strips for different purposes. With the RGB LEDs, I could have one set and make them doing multiple things.
Both of these projects integrated into my existing home automation software called OpenHab and enabled me to control the lights from my phone or any other device inside the house. I still say there is something to be said for being able to climb into bed and shut off all the lights while tucked in.
Moving on, I picked up some capacitance moisture sensors and built out a plant watering sensor that lets me know when it's time to water the plants. That was less of a need and more of a "because I can" project, but it was fun working it out.
The latest project using the same chips will be to integrate a temperature sensor along with a transmitting IR LED to turn on the portable AC when the temperature reaches a pre-set temperature.
There are so very many different things you can do with these. There are some modules that support cameras or relays to turn things on and off. Or to attach to various kinds of sensors that either can just report the data, or can be programmed to do other things as that data changes.
Totally deep rabbit hole. So far I haven't gone too far off the path on what they can do, but my mind spins pretty regularly on ideas. It has definitely gotten me back into the tinkering and I'm looking forward to future stuff.
I've fallen down the rabbit hole of microprocessor based electronics. It started when I decided to take a Wifi smart plug and jailbreak it from its original firmware that phoned home to China. In doing so, I gained the ability to control it locally, and now I don't have to worry about what it is telling the world about me and my switch habits. To do that for some of the switches I had was relatively simple through an over-the-air process. But some of the newer models had firmware that deliberately interfered with this. So that meant breaking out the soldering iron and opening up the plugs and getting access to the microprocessor that lives inside. It turns out that most of those wifi smart plugs use a similar base microprocessor chip, and if you have physical access to the chip itself, you can plug it into a computer and reprogram it. So with the help of Google, I worked through that process and was able to jailbreak these as well. But in the process of finding out that there is a common base electronics chip, I learned that the chip is relatively inexpensive, and unto itself can do a whole lot with the proper firmware.
So I bought my first set up breakout-boards with the chip (those are little circuit boards with the chip included that make it easier to access the pins and make it easier to program). These chips support coding and also have a variety of input and output capabilities, and there are some established pre-built firmware that makes it really easy to do things with it, including handling LED strips. In this case, I went with RGB LED strips (color changing), and my first project was to use a firmware called WLED as a base for what became a WiFi connected busy light for outside the office to help the rest of the household know when we were on phone calls and for us not to be disturbed. WLED was a little bit overkill for it, but because of the ease and flexibility, it worked out really well.
I ended up getting lengths of what essentially are RGB Christmas lights, and using another chip, was able to create Wifi enabled color changing lights with custom patterns. I had been using pre-designated LED Christmas lights before, but it meant having several strips for different purposes. With the RGB LEDs, I could have one set and make them doing multiple things.
Both of these projects integrated into my existing home automation software called OpenHab and enabled me to control the lights from my phone or any other device inside the house. I still say there is something to be said for being able to climb into bed and shut off all the lights while tucked in.
Moving on, I picked up some capacitance moisture sensors and built out a plant watering sensor that lets me know when it's time to water the plants. That was less of a need and more of a "because I can" project, but it was fun working it out.
The latest project using the same chips will be to integrate a temperature sensor along with a transmitting IR LED to turn on the portable AC when the temperature reaches a pre-set temperature.
There are so very many different things you can do with these. There are some modules that support cameras or relays to turn things on and off. Or to attach to various kinds of sensors that either can just report the data, or can be programmed to do other things as that data changes.
Totally deep rabbit hole. So far I haven't gone too far off the path on what they can do, but my mind spins pretty regularly on ideas. It has definitely gotten me back into the tinkering and I'm looking forward to future stuff.
