Tags / Sensors

 

Extreme Aquarium Automation

- Exposé on home-made, handmade, aquarium automation setup

This post describes my current aquarium setup, in particular, the technical, custom designed parts of it. There is a lot of monitoring and control going on; though virtually all of it is hidden behind the scenes, as my aim has always to create a natural looking environment. An aquarium is an eco-system, some aspects of it can stay in natural balance with maintenance, and other parts require active control. Things are more complicated with plants - I recently have become more serious about growing plants.
Published Sep 20, 2018  7 min read   internet of things · sensors · polestar
 

Energenie Integration with Python on a Raspberry Pi

- Using pyenergenie to do Energenie automation with out need for the cloud

It is disappointing what IoT hardware manufacturers provide regarding software with their products. I don’t want to single out Energenie - at least they created a tremendous hackable radio board specifically for the Raspberry Pi. The ENER314-RT provides two-way communication with all Energenie products including all their power switches, energy monitors and radiator valves. This means that you don’t need to buy an Energenie Gateway MIHO001, and you also don’t need cloud connectivity and the worry that somebody might be snooping on your data.
Published Sep 18, 2018  4 min read   internet of things · sensors
 

Radar Speed Camera Rebooted

- building a radar speed gun with a Raspberry Pi

Background This post is a follow-up from my previous post Building Radar Speed Camera and Traffic Logger with more information, improved design and experience from using the device in the field for nearly 2 years. This project is a self contained speed radar that can be used to give realtime traffic speeds, log traffic flows and statistics over a period of time and also possibly capture speeds of other objects in sporting environments, for example, though I haven’t specifically tested and tuned the code for this.
Published Dec 28, 2016  5 min read   internet of things · sensors
 

Build a Spectrometer

- using a Raspberry Pi for less than $50

This project promises to give you super-human powers. I still find it amazing that our eyes construct all the colours for the most part1 from the mix of red, green and blue that the cones in our eyes can detect. Despite this simple three valued approach to colour that pervades our eyes, cameras, monitors and computer graphics there is a deeper reality to colour in everyday life. This projects opens the door on that reality.
Published Jun 22, 2016  8 min read   internet of things · sensors
 

Introducing Polestar

I’m not really sure why it’s taken so long but I’d like to introduce Polestar. I actually first started the project back in 2014. I got a couple of early adopters in January 2015. Since then it’s been used quietly without much fuss with a few updates along the way. Background I got the idea for Polestar at the 2014 Good Things conference in Bath, UK. I noticed a repeating pattern from the speakers - a kind of reference Internet of Things architecture.
Published Jun 14, 2016  5 min read   internet of things · polestar · sensors
 

Building Radar Speed Camera and Traffic Logger

- with a Raspberry Pi

There is a major update to this article, please see this later post Radar Speed Camera Rebooted. I’ve always been interested in connecting things up to computers that they were never designed for. I could reminisce about my first drawing capture arm that used captured the two joint angles with potentiometers and used them to control the pulse width oscillators that fed into the cassette input on a ZX Spectrum.
Published Mar 31, 2015  6 min read   internet of things · polestar · sensors
 

Home Monitor Update

It has been about three months since I first got the NetKernel based home monitor system live. This post is an update about how it has performed and how it has evolved. Issues The major issues over this period have been hardware related. Loose connections where plentiful until I decided to commit the circuitry to a PCB, place it in a box and attach proper connectors. The rain sensor has been a real problem.
Published Feb 11, 2005  3 min read   internet of things · sensors
 

NetKernel based Home Monitoring System

For a bit of fun I put together a low budget home monitoring system using an old PC, a few wires, sensors and 1060 NetKernel. The aim was to create a system to remotely monitor my home and its ambient weather conditions. I also wanted the data to be stored so that historical graphs could be generated. The Hardware The host PC was an old Gateway Solo Laptop with a Pentium 166MHz MMX, 64MB RAM running Win98SE with a USB network adaptor and with an in-built joystick port.
Published Nov 25, 2004  4 min read   internet of things · sensors