When dealing with indoor climate controls, there are several variables to consider, such as the outside weather, people’s tolerance to hot or cold temperatures, and the desired level of energy savings. Windows can make this extra challenging, as they let in large amounts of light/heat and can create poorly insulated regions, which is why Jallson Suryo developed a prototype that aims to balance these needs automatically through edge AI techniques.
Suryo’s smart building ventilation system utilizes two separate boards, with an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense handling environmental sensor fusion and a Nicla Voice listening for certain ambient sounds. Rain and thunder noises were uploaded from an existing dataset, split and labeled accordingly, and then used to train a Syntiant audio classification model for the Nicla Voice’s NDP120 processor. Meanwhile, weather and ambient light data was gathered using the Nano’s onboard sensors and combined into time-series samples with labels for sunny/cloudy, humid, comfortable, and dry conditions.
After deploying the board’s respective classification models, Suryo added some additional code that writes new I2C data from the Nicla Voice to the Nano that indicates if rain/thunderstorm sounds are present. If they are, the Nano can automatically close the window via servo motors while other environmental factors can set the position of the blinds. With this multi-sensor technique, a higher level of accuracy can be achieved for more precision control over a building’s windows, and thus attempt to lower the HVAC costs.
In 2021, the average household had 25 connected devices, a massive increase on previous years, driven in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. And in 2023, the number of smart homes worldwide looks set to hit 195.8 million.
We’re living through a fascinating time for technology in general, with new breakthroughs hitting the headlines all the time, and the home automation industry is especially exciting.
In this article, we’ll dive into some of the main ways home automation is changing in 2023, some of the biggest current trends, and what’s on the horizon.
Emerging trends in home automation in 2023
2023 so far has been a big year for home automation, and there looks to be more to come. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting emerging trends this year.
On top of that, the tech behind these gadgets is also developing fast, with new features emerging all the time. Today’s voice assistants are already a far cry from the first few generations of Amazon Alexa gadgets, and are capable of integrating with multiple devices and recognizing a range of different voices.
Edge computing and local processing
“Edge computing” refers to when data processing and analysis take place closer to the source of data generation (locally) rather than on centralized cloud servers somewhere else.
In the context of home automation, this means IoT devices can process the data they generate right there and then. This has a number of advantages, such as:
Low latency, because the data doesn’t have to travel all the way to a data center and back. This means tasks can be performed much quicker, and even in real-time.
Better bandwidth efficiency and reduced costs because only relevant information is shared over the network.
Better scalability, making it easier to add more devices to your smart home network.
Let’s check out a few examples of edge computing at work in smart homes.
Voice assistants like Amazon Echos with built-in processing capabilities are capable of handling voice commands locally, making them much more responsive and able to function smoothly even with the internet connection is unstable.
Security cameras can analyze video footage locally instead of sending that data to the cloud for analysis. This makes it easier to detect and report suspicious activity with much faster response times.
Managing things like lighting and temperature even when offline, keeping your working and living spaces in the most comfortable state at all times.
AI and machine learning
AI is a hot topic right now, and at times it can be hard to separate the truly exciting developments from the hype.
When it comes to home automation, though, AI holds a ton of promise.
Energy efficiency: AI can track the energy usage in your smart home appliances and make adjustments to ensure nothing is being wasted. It can also detect problems and unusual activity and take steps to correct any issues.
AI can add a touch of personalization to your smart home by learning your preferences and making automatic adjustments to things like temperature, lighting, and music.
Predictive maintenance: AI can monitor your smart home devices and predict when faults and issues are about to occur, helping you avoid outages and make repairs before they’re needed.
Sustainable and eco-friendly automation
We already briefly talked about how technologies like AI can help your smart home devices function more efficiently. In fact, smart heating and cooling systems, used correctly, can save users 50% of their energy consumption in some cases.
But that’s not the only way home automation can help you live more sustainably. For example, you can integrate your smart home with green energy sources like solar — something that’s becoming more common around the world.
What’s in store for the near future?
Now we’ve explored a few of the exciting things happening in home automation right now, let’s turn our gaze to the near future.
What can smart home owners look forward to over the next few years? This is where things get really interesting, as the rapid development of smart technologies mean things are changing fast.
Continued growth of 5G
5G technology looks set to grow in both popularity and sophistication throughout the next decade.
According to Ericsson’s 2022 Mobility Report, 5G subscriptions will reach 4.4 billion globally by the end of 2027, and account for around 48% of total mobile subscriptions.
For smart home owners, this means even faster connectivity, lower latency, and support for increasingly powerful and sophisticated IoT devices that aren’t possible just yet, as well as the opportunity to build more complex and connected smart home networks.
Augmented reality and virtual reality in smart homes
The AR and VR market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 13.72% between 2023 and 2027, which has a ton of exciting implications for home automation.
One example here is smart home maintenance. Augmented reality apps can make it much easier to repair faulty devices by providing real-time, 3D instructions that are far clearer than any manual or YouTube tutorial. AR can also be used to improve home design by helping you visualize how new furniture, decorations, and layouts will look before committing to them.
Even better security and privacy features
Keeping our families, homes, and possessions safe is always going to be a primary concern, and smart technology here is developing in some really interesting ways.
One example is the use of biometric tech to improve home security. The global biometrics market is projected to hit $83 billion by 2027, with voice recognition alone expected to reach $27 billion.
What does this mean for smart homes? Biometrics can be used to identify people with extremely accurate levels of precision, allowing you to enter your home with just your fingerprint, a scan of your iris, or even a voice command — while keeping everyone else out.
Other promising trends in smart home security include advances in data encryption and privacy controls to keep your IoT devices secure.
AI-powered home health monitoring
Keeping track of your vital signs and health metrics is more than just a hobby for fitness enthusiasts — for older people and those with health issues it can literally be life-saving.
Wearable devices like smart watches can track key health data, issue reminders to take medication, and alert emergency services when things go wrong. These devices can even be used to monitor individuals’ movement patterns and predict falls and other accidents.
We’re still some way off fully automated health care, but this is a step in the right direction.
Entire smart cities
Cities around the world are getting bigger, and that means they need to get smarter.
Home automation isn’t just for houses and apartments — it can be scaled up to the size of a city, a trend which is well underway. The global smart cities market is expected to grow at an annual compound rate of 13.13% until at least 2028.
Smart cities use technology like 5G, the Internet of Things, and AI to build more efficient, safe, and pleasant environments for millions of people to share. These technologies drive features such as:
Better connectivity for everyone, like accessible WiFi anywhere in the city including on transport.
More efficient and better-connected public transport systems, including more intelligent traffic management based on constant monitoring using sensors.
More efficient usage of energy, based on tracking usage and minimizing wastage.
Better waste management, using sensors to measure how full waste bins are and issuing alerts when it’s time to empty them.
Staying ahead of the smart home curve
With so much happening so fast, with no signs of slowing down, staying up-to-date with home automation tech can feel like an impossible task.
However, there’s a lot you can do to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and access these incredible benefits as they roll onto the market. Let’s check out a few ideas.
Keep your network current
Your home automation devices are only as good as the network they run on. That means a robust and up-to-date home network is one of the best investments you can make in your smart home.
Consider upgrading to a Wi-Fi 6 router, or the even more advanced 6E router. This will open up new possibilities when it comes to 5G and bring a new level of speed and slickness to your IoT network.
Another option is to set up a mesh network — a collection of connectivity sources around your home instead of a single router — to provide better coverage.
Keep your devices maintained
With the rate at which home automation technology is advancing, devices that were brand new just a few years ago are quickly becoming outdated.
This is especially true for firmware — it’s essential to keep your devices updated at all times to ensure they’re optimally secure and can take advantage of new features and capabilities.
Remember that your devices won’t last forever, and have some kind of plan in place to review and replace any older technology.
Stay informed
One of the best ways to keep pace with the rapidly changing world of home automation is to join online communities and attend events.
Of course, it’s not always feasible to travel huge distances to attend conferences and expos just to learn more about your smart home devices, but you can learn a lot from joining the right forums and online groups. These can help you get quick answers to questions, gain inspiration for future projects, and stay up to date with all the latest news and advice.
Here are some ideas:
r/HomeAutomation on Reddit, a subreddit dedicated to home automation with tips, questions, and shared projects.
Arduino’s community and forum: a place for Arduino users to gather and talk about their own projects, share guides, and discuss challenges they have encountered.
There’s also an extensive list of Facebook groups, YouTube channels, and blogs to explore, and specific technologies and devices often have their own dedicated support groups and online spaces.
Get into DIY
What better way to access the next generation of home automation technology than to build it yourself?
Today it’s easier than ever for total amateurs to build their own IoT devices and home automation projects, with nothing more than some simple components and a bit of basic coding knowledge.
At Arduino, we help people get started with their own home automation journey. Our products are built to help everyone from complete beginners to advanced makers create their own smart home technology and share it with the world.
Contact us to learn more about this and how to get started.
Rodents, including mice, are problematic. They can cause significant damage to your home by chewing up wires, walls, and insulation, while leaving behind unsanitary droppings that present a health hazard. But those of us who love animals are reluctant to utilize traditional mousetraps. Not only are those fatal, but they can also cause a lot of suffering along the way. That’s why Trapsticles built this rodent-friendly catch-and-release mousetrap.
This mousetrap doesn’t kill rodents or harm them at all. It simply traps them in a large box, so the homeowner can relocate them. To keep a mouse from just coming back, it is necessary to release them far away. But that’s a lot better than killing them. It may also be possible to donate the captured mice to pet stores to use as feeders. That is still a little gruesome, but nature is like that.
The concept here is simple: it is a big box and the top is a trap door actuated by a servo motor. Bait (like peanut butter) lures mice onto the trap door, which then swings down to drop the critter inside. The door then closes so the mouse can’t escape — though one wily rodent was able to climb out of Trapsticles’s trap.
An Arduino Nano board controls the servo. It detects the presence of a mouse (or any small warmblooded creature) using a PIR sensor. Blinder-style shields prevent the PIR sensor from spotting anything that isn’t on the trap door, so a passing person doesn’t set it off.
As you can see in the video, this works well and is much more humane than the traps at your local hardware store.
Servers don’t usually need monitors, keyboards, or mice. Because the user only interacts with servers through separate devices under normal conditions, a server can just be a box with with a processor, RAM, storage, and network adapter. But that becomes an issue if something is wrong with the server that requires direct interaction. To help his dad in those situations, Abraham Limpo added an LCD interface to his father’s old file server.
Limpo’s father owns an HP ProLiant MicroServer that he uses as a file server. Its only real job is to provide storage that is accessible over a network and/or the internet. It was a simple black box, but Limpo upgraded it to make it more usable. He installed an interface that includes an LCD screen and a couple of buttons. The LCD shows the file server’s IP address, so it is readable without having to check the router for that info. And the buttons let Limpo’s father safely shut the system down without having to SSH in.
An Arduino Nano board monitors the buttons and controls the LCD screen. It receives information from the file server via a Node app. Limpo mounted those in the ProLiant MicroServer using a 3D-printed frame that sits in place of the unused drive bay. The LCD is just a standard 16×2 character model, but that is sufficient for displaying the IP address and a little bit of extra information.
Air quality concerns encompass several different pollutants and irritants. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were, for example, a major concern in the 20th century due to the damage they cause to the ozone layer. But not all pollutants are easy to monitor. Hydrogen sulfide, which causes irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat at low levels and much more serious symptoms at high levels, can collect in pockets. To find them, researchers from Brazil have a developed a low-cost lab-on-a-drone.
The CDC reports that hydrogen sulfide exposure is a risk for those working in rayon textile manufacturing, petroleum and natural gas drilling and refining, wastewater treatment, and farms with manure storage pits. Because industry isn’t always keen on environmental protection, these researchers wanted a way to find pockets of high hydrogen sulfide concentration. To detect that gas efficiently at a variety of altitudes, they decided a drone-mounted approach was best.
They achieved that by designing a sensor system light enough to be carried by off-the-shelf consumer drones. That payload consists of an Arduino UNO R3 board, the hydrogen sulfide sensor, an air pump for that sensor, and a DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor. It also has an HC-05 Bluetooth® module, so the researchers can monitor readings from anywhere within range.
The team found a significant increase in hydrogen sulfide levels as the drone got higher, indicating that existing sensors on the ground are insufficient for monitoring this kind of pollution. You can read more in their published paper here.
Images credit:Leal et al. Analytical Chemistry, 2023, DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c02719
You can play chess just as easily on a $2 set from a thrift store as you can on a $2,000 ornate set from a bespoke retailer. But that doesn’t stop people from building or buying those fancy chess sets. If you’re the DIY type, you may even be interested in an electronic chessboard like this one from the NVE Corporation team, which was made possible by practical magnetic switches.
This is an electronic chessboard that registers moves and speaks them out loud. That can make it useful for people who don’t have good eyesight. It also allows for the possibility of recording entire matches on a connected computer. Chessboards like this aren’t uncommon, but this project was simplified by the use NVE’s GMR magnetic switch sensors. Those detect the presence of magnets in the bases of the chess pieces, with enough tolerance to account for variation in placement and board thickness.
An Arduino UNO R3 board monitors all 64 of those switches through a matrix similar to keyboard. When a player picks up a piece, the Arduino notes the square that changed states. Then, when the player puts down the piece, the Arduino records that square, too. It can then output PWM (pulse-width modulation) audio to an amplifier board that says, for example, “B7 to B6” using the Talkie library.
By updating a running log of every piece’s position, it would also be possible for it to instead say “pawn to B6.” But the current implementation doesn’t do so.
The rapid rise of edge AI capabilities on embedded targets has proven that relatively low-resource microcontrollers are capable of some incredible things. And following the recent release of the Arduino UNO R4 with its Renesas RA4M1 processor, the ceiling has gotten even higher as YouTuber Nikodem Bartnik has demonstrated with his lidar-equipped mobile robot.
Bartnik’s project started with a simple question of whether it’s possible to teach a basic robot how to make its way around obstacles using only lidar instead of the more resource-intensive computer vision techniques employed by most other platforms. The chassis and hardware, including two DC motors, an UNO R4 Minima, a Bluetooth® module, and SD card, were constructed according to Open Robotic Platform (ORP) rules so that others can easily replicate and extend its functionality. After driving through a series of courses in order to collect a point cloud from the spinning lidar sensor, Bartnik imported the data and performed a few transformations to greatly minify the classification model.
Once trained, the model was exported with help from the micromlgen Python package and loaded onto the UNO R4. The setup enables the incoming lidar data to be classified as the direction in which the robot should travel, and according to Bartnik’s experiments, this approach worked surprisingly well. Initially, there were a few issues when navigating corners and traveling through a figure eight track, but additional training data solved it and allowed the vehicle to overcome a completely novel course at maximum speed.
The great thing about art is that it doesn’t have to serve a purpose. When utility is irrelevant, the artist is free to express their creativity in whatever way they like. A painting doesn’t have to inspire introspection or revolution — it can just be something pretty to look at. In the same vein, Eirik Brandal’s Intermittent Luminal Phase kinetic sculpture is both gorgeous and useless.
Brandal started this project as an excuse to experiment with his new CNC router. Cutting gears seemed like a good way to do so, but he didn’t have a need for any mechanism that utilized them. That led him to the concept of a kinetic sculpture and Intermittent Luminal Phase is the result. It spins endlessly, making noise and blinking lights. But it is almost hypnotizing to see in action.
An Arduino Nano Every board controls two motors that spin a central input shaft, which turns all of the other gears. The gears aren’t perfect and produce a fair amount of vibration, but Brandal converted that bug into a feature. He added a piezo element that picks up the vibrations. Those are then amplified and pumped out through a speaker on the sculpture. The gears also have LEDs that make contact through DIY slip rings, so they light up at certain points in the rotation.
Cyborgs have long been a staple of sci-fi, but we see few real-world examples of this concept outside of a handful of biomedical devices and prostheses. But bionics — engineered systems that integrate biological structures — is an adjacent field with interesting possibilities. A bionic device would include some biological material (often tissue) with artificial components (often electronics). In the burgeoning field of bionics, Saarland University Human-Computer Interaction Lab’s Biohybrid Interactive Devices look promising.
The goal of this research was to a develop viable and practical HCI devices. The approach taken by the researchers was to embed traditional electronics in bacterial cellulose. Comparable to animal tissue, bacterial cellulose is a growable biomaterial. It is flexible and retains structural integrity, which makes it suitable for many applications. To embed electronics in the bacterial cellulose, the team had to create growth and stabilization techniques that enable the biomaterial to remain stable for a useful amount of time.
A couple of different prototype devices demonstrate this. One is a shoulder-worn accessory that conveys the user’s emotions visually. An embedded galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor lets an Arduino Leonardo detect user anxiety or stress. When it does, it passes current through shape memory alloy that causes bacterial cellulose flaps to rise noticeably. Another is a gamepad with an embedded multi-touch matrix and capacitive touch buttons, which connect to a computer through an Arduino Nano.
Both of these prototypes were successful, but the bacterial cellulose did still experience degradation caused by the presence of the electronic components and the heat they generate. Further research may allow for more stability. You can read more about Biohybrid Interactive Devices in the team’s paper here.
It’s time to catch up on all things LoRaWAN® and low-power IoT! Our team is looking forward to returning to The Things Conference this year, joining all LoRa® key players in Amsterdam on September 21st-22nd. Our experts will be showcasing new products and applications relevant to the technology that is putting the “smart” in smart cities, smart agriculture, smart logistics, and more.
Indeed, with IoT’s huge growth potential in both B2B and B2C applications, LoRaWAN® is stepping up as one of the technologies of the future. Already established as the low-power connectivity choice, according to The Things Network it is reaping the benefits of innovations that increase efficiency even further – and is poised to support ESG (environmental, social and governance) goals with reduced energy consumption and secure data transmission.
LoRaWAN® novice, or expert? We’ve got you covered
Whether you are just realizing the potential of LoRaWAN® or have been a fan of it since day one (like us!), we’ll have something for you to discover at our booth at The Things Conference:
Looking for an entry-level option? The Arduino MKR WAN 1310 offers you the renowned versatility of the practical and cost-effective MKR family and adds LoRa® connectivity to projects requiring low power.
Ready to take it up a notch? The solution for advanced applications requiring sturdy computational power is to boost Arduino Pro’s Portenta H7 module (in any of its three variants) with the capability to run embedded computer vision applications, connect wirelessly via LoRa® to the Arduino Cloud (or third-party infrastructure), and activate systems upon the detection of sound events. How? With thePortenta Vision Shield LoRa®, of course!
Feel the need for high performance? Pair the Portenta Max Carrier with aPortenta X8module to add LoRa® connectivity to your project, transforming your robust SOM into a single-board computer or reference design enabling edge AI for industrial, building automation and robotics applications.
Need deep indoor coverage or want to add reliable connectivity to your outdoor system? TheWisGate Edge Lite 2 andWisGate Edge Pro are your ready-to-use, industrial-grade gateways for LoRaWAN® connectivity powered by RAKwireless.
The Arduino ecosystem has something for everyone, and might just have everything you need for your next LoRaWAN® idea. Contact us or come by the booth to find out more.
Don’t miss the demos!
The Things Conference will also be a great opportunity to see some of our products in action. You’ll have the chance to explore our solution to control pests in vineyards with the most effectiveness and the least use of chemicals or labor, for example. Computer vision and LoRa® connectivity combine in a smart trap based on a MKR WAN 1310, which attracts bugs and records their number and type in real-time, allowing for remote monitoring and therefore more cost-effective interventions.
Our experts at The Things Conference will also be happy to show you how Portenta X8 and Portenta Max Carrier can join forces to deploy a secure, industrial-grade Linux computer capable of interacting with equipment/machinery or integrating within an existing smart kiosk: a system ready to collect data from onsite controllers, process them thanks to supported industrial protocols, and finally send useful information to your Cloud or ERP system, acting as a multi-protocol gateway via Wi-Fi, NB/IoT, LTE Cat.M1 or – you guessed it – LoRa®.
People make The Things Conference special
We are proud to have two special events included in the program this year.
On Friday, September 22nd, our Application Engineering Lead, Sebastian Romero, will return to Amsterdam with a keynote showing how IoT-capable hardware can be retrofitted to integrate smart remote management, using Arduino components and LoRaWAN®. Interested in present opportunities, but also curious about the future of IoT from Arduino’s perspective? Then make sure to attend the fireside chat with our CEO Fabio Violante on Thursday, September 21st at 10:30am CEST, to find out how the company’s philosophy will continue to leverage the latest technological evolutions to best serve innovators like you.
Let’s get social!
We’ll be happy to see you at the booth: come say hi, ask questions and get to know Arduino better. While approaching the venue, keep an eye on the ground and look for our street graffiti – be sure to take photos and tag us on social media: we’ll repost to share highlights with the millions in our community!
“But can it run Doom?” is more than just a joke in the tech world. It is also a decent litmus test for the computing power of hardware. That test isn’t very relevant for modern computers, but it is still worth asking when discussing microcontrollers. Microcontrollers vary in dramatically in processing power and memory, with models to suit every application. But if you have an Arduino Nano ESP32 board, you can run Doomas Naveen Kumar has proven.
The Nano ESP32 is a small development board for the ESP32-S3 microcontroller. Espressif developed the ESP32 for IoT applications, so it has onboard Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® adapters. It also has a relatively high clock speed and quite a lot of memory: 240MHz and 512kB SRAM, respectively. That still isn’t enough to meet the requirements of the original Doom release, which needed a lot more RAM. But Kumar demonstrates the use of a microcontroller-friendly port that runs well on this more limited hardware.
To try this yourself, you’ll need the Nano ESP32, an Adafruit 2.8″ TFT LCD shield, an M5Stack joystick, a Seeed Studio Grove dual button module, a breadboard, and some jumper wires. You’ll then need to compile and flash the Retro-Go firmware, which was designed specifically for running games like Doom on ESP32-based devices. You can then load the specialized WAD (Where’s All the Data) files.
Kumar reports an average frame rate at a 320×240 resolution, which is very playable.
It’s back to school! Whether you are a student or not, Arduino’s Project Hub is a great place to never stop learning, thanks to the wealth of knowledge, experiments, and plain cool ideas our community so generously shares. The three highlights we’ve selected among the projects uploaded in June indeed all have something to teach us… with one valuable lesson in common: the past has a lot to offer, if we take the time to recharge, rediscover or revamp it just a little!
This tutorial is so clear it can make anyone feel capable of building their own charger – with additional functionalities such as determining battery wear. Batteries always have to be handled with care, but if you have the skills to customize code and solder a circuit according to the schematic provided, more power to you! All you need are an Arduino Nano and a few other common components.
This is not just a project, but a wonderful deep-dive on wireless communication where you’ll learn about the ISM band, ASK modulation, and synchronous and asynchronous demodulation. More importantly, you might rediscover the “simpler and older radio frequency devices and schemes” that are perfect to save resources on smaller projects. In this case, they will be all you need to implement wireless communication interfacing a Nano with a 433 MHz RF module.
Time and date, timer and alarm, but also detailed temperature data and even the weather forecast: you can have it all in one clock! With this project, Project Hub user dzh121 improved upon a previous version of theirs by adding a touchscreen and displaying more information. An impressive device that makes great use of Arduino IoT Cloud-based dashboards.
For your chance to be selected for a $100, $300 or even $500 gift card to spend on the Arduino Store, submit your best project on the Project Hub! We will be awarding three new entries every month, as detailed in the complete terms and conditions. Good luck!
When playing a short game of basketball, few people enjoy having to consciously track their number of successful throws. Yet when it comes to automation, nearly all systems rely on infrared or visual proximity detection as a way to determine when a shot has gone through the basket versus missed. This is what inspired one team from the University of Ljubljan to create a small edge ML-powered device that can be suspended from the net with a pair of zip ties for real-time scorekeeping.
After collecting a total of 137 accelerometer samples via an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense and labeling them as either a miss, a score, or nothing within the Edge Impulse Studio, the team trained a classification model and reached an accuracy of 84.6% on real-world test data. Getting the classification results from the device to somewhere readable is handled by the Nano’s onboard BLE server. It provides two services, with the first for reporting the current battery level and the second for sending score data.
Once the firmware had been deployed, the last step involved building a mobile application to view the relevant information. The app allows users to connect to the basketball scoring device, check if any new data has been received, and then parse/display the new values onscreen.
A well-maintained garden is a beautiful thing. The envy of your friends and neighbors, and a lifelong project you can truly take pride in, especially in the summer months.
Gardening itself, though, can be a chore. The really fun parts often feel like a small fraction of the overall work, with a ton of time spent on tedious, boring, and even physically uncomfortable tasks.
The good news is that automation can help. In fact, garden automation is its own entire topic — one that’s growing in popularity all the time.
By tapping into this rapidly growing pool of garden automation tools and technologies, you can take your garden to the next level. Save time on the dull work so you can focus more on the rewarding stuff, and use tech to enhance your garden and make it better than ever before.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the key ways tech and automation help with gardening, and how you can start harnessing it at home.
How can tech benefit gardeners?
Let’s dive into a few of the ways tech can help gardeners:
Save time by making tasks more efficient and automated.
Take care of boring tasks, leaving you free to focus on the more interesting and enjoyable elements of gardening (which may be simply chilling out in your garden).
Assist with planning and design, helping you build the most attractive and convenient garden possible.
Make things more fun with creative and collaborative projects
Garden automation trends to pay attention
We’re currently living through an incredibly exciting time when it comes to technology. New, fascinating trends are emerging all the time, and existing technologies are growing at breakneck speed.
When it comes to garden automation, let’s check out some of the most interesting tech trends and solutions you can tap into this summer.
Soil monitoring and management
Soil is the lifeblood of your garden.
Without healthy soil, imbued with just the right balance of nutrients, minerals, pH levels, and moisture, your dreams of a thriving and beautiful garden are over before they’ve even begun.
However, it’s hard to find out this information ourselves. There are techniques and tricks you can use, but they rely on guesswork more than actual measurement.
This is where technology comes in. Smart garden tech makes it possible to accurately monitor all kinds of different aspects of your soil health. Thanks to the Internet of Things, even amateur gardeners can now access a ton of powerful sensors that keep track of various key metrics and alert you when something needs to change.
You can even install automatic tools to fix any issues your sensors detect. Let’s find out more about that.
Automated irrigation systems
Watering your plants by hand isn’t just tedious, it can also be wasteful.
The downsides to underwatering your plants are obvious, but overwatering can be bad for the plants and soil, as well as wasting precious water, especially in the hotter months.
On top of that, relying on manual watering can mean forgetting key times, and of course the stress of leaving home for a few days and worrying about your garden becoming dry and wilted.
Once again, though, tech can help out. Smart irrigation systems combine sensors with up-to-date weather data, planning and executing watering schedules that work perfectly for your garden with minimal wastage.
Better gardening through AI
Whatever you think about it, there’s no denying that artificial intelligence is the flavor of the month right now, and with good reason.
We’re currently experiencing a renaissance of AI, with new tools exploding onto the scene every day and regular massive leaps forward in sophistication and power.
Gardening might not be the first use case that springs to mind for AI, but there is actually lots of potential here for tech-savvy gardeners. Here are a few examples:
Robots: Just like the Roomba revolutionized the way we clean our carpets, automated lawnmowers and other tools are transforming the way we care for our gardens.
Designing your garden: AI can now suggest ideas for how to design your garden, like providing plans for different layouts and structures, suggestions for plants and colors that work well together, and recommendations based on your previous designs, preferences, and your location.
Reminders and updates: The right apps can help you stay on top of various aspects of running your garden by using AI to notify you when you need to do tasks like watering your plants, trimming the lawn, planting seeds, and more.
Smart pest control
Hungry pests are the bane of any gardener’s existence, and depending on where you’re located they can be an enormous problem.
Gardeners have battled against pests for millennia, trying just about every strategy under the sun to finally defeat them, with varying degrees of success.
Now, technology may provide yet another powerful weapon in this fight. In fact, it can offer several.
Here are just a few quick examples:
Automated traps that quickly and efficiently remove pests from the danger zone.
Pheromone-based systems attract pests by simulating the chemicals that lure them in, drawing them away from your precious plant life.
AI-driven pest detection tools can be used to accurately monitor your plants for the presence of unwanted visitors, and then guide your pest control systems to efficiently deal with them.
On top of helping you reduce pest damage, these technologies also remove the need for harmful pest control methods like toxic pesticides and help you move towards a safer, cleaner, and more environmentally-friendly approach to gardening.
Vertical and space-efficient gardens
If you live in an urban environment, the chances are that one of the biggest challenges for you when it comes to gardening is a lack of space.
It can be tough to grow a varied, beautiful garden when you have serious constraints on space, but the good news is that smart gardening methods can help you stretch every square meter further and build a much more space-efficient garden — even if you live in an apartment.
One example here is stackable planters — essentially multiple plant containers stacked on top of each other that allow you to grow several different types of plants in the same space. These can range from simple, basic designs to much more complex constructions.
Another way technology can help make the most of small spaces is by giving you the insights and tools to optimize things like light exposure, water distribution, and plant health. This lets you make the most of limited resources to grow the best garden possible in the conditions available to you.
Integration with smart home systems
A well-equipped smart home is a hive of powerful features and tools.
Voice assistants and mobile apps bring everything together, enabling you to control your lighting, sound systems, heating, A/C, and much more at the touch of a button or a single spoken command.
The same process can be extended to your smart garden.
By integrating your smart garden tools like automated sprinklers, sensors, traps, and gardening robots with your existing smart home ecosystem, you can even more easily control your garden and stay on top of key data insights.
This can save a ton of time and bring your home and garden into the same, easily controlled system.
Data-driven plant selection
Not all plants are suitable for all gardens.
Various factors like your soil type, climate, water levels, humidity, and a ton of others will determine which plant species thrive in your garden, and which ones wilt away.
Finding out which plants fall into each category can be an incredibly time-consuming task, one that takes many gardeners years to work out through trial and error. Fortunately, with the right smart garden tools, you can shave a ton of time off that process.
Apps like Iris allow you to share information about the conditions in your garden — like climate and soil data — and it will recommend the best plants for you.
Data is an incredibly powerful, yet underused, tool for gardeners. It can help you grow a garden the smart way, by making informed and intelligent decisions to save huge amounts of time and disappointment.
Make it a family activity
One of the great things about gardening is that it’s an activity that really can be fun for the whole family.
With the right tech gadgets and tools, you can make gardening much more engaging and rewarding for kids, sparking what could be a lifelong interest in the hobby.
There are many resources to help with this. For example, this project from EDUcentrum uses Arduino tools combined with other components to help children build their very own automated gardening kit.
The project is designed to help kids get some hands-on experience with automation while learning about plants, gardening, and the environment — all while cooperating with other young learners from different countries.
The power of a smarter garden
Smart garden automation can completely transform the way you care for your garden and approach your future gardening plans.
By helping you make data-driven decisions, monitor the right vital signs more easily, keep pests at bay, and automate tedious tasks, technology can bring joy back into gardening while at the same time giving you a healthier, better-looking, and more durable outdoor space.
Everyone’s garden is different, of course, so ultimately this is all about experimentation and finding out the right tools and technologies that work best for you.
At Arduino, we have many different solutions to help you build and refine your own smart garden, along with just about every other aspect of your home. Check out a few examples from our users:
A smart soil moisture sensor
Check out this project by Arduino user Fouad_Roboticist. It’s a soil moisture sensor, made using just a handful of fairly simple components.
The sensor works by sending the data from the sensor to an Arduino microcontroller, giving you the ability to stay on top of your soil moisture more easily and efficiently.
Automated plant watering
Arduino user Saikan45 decided to build their very own automated plant watering system. The goal was to automate plant watering while ensuring there was enough moisture for healthy growth.
The project was also designed to cool the soil and soften the tillage pan, reducing the need for human work and creating a more suitable environment for plants to thrive. Built using just a few simple components, Saikan45’s project has the potential to save gardeners a ton of time and stress.
Crop monitoring and controlling
Arduino user beena_2000 created a robot that saves a huge amount of human time by giving real-time readings of temperature, humidity, and soil moisture, combined with live camera recordings from the robot.
Everything is controlled through a mobile application, and the robot can move through the environment and deploy pest spray and fertilizer to specific plants, avoiding wastage.
With an Arduino, some basic components, and a curious mind, there’s no limit to what’s possible. Get in touch with us to find out more and get started!
The launch of the Arduino UNO R4 marks a huge leap forward for our community. For us, it’s also the chance to celebrate the people who bring our ecosystem to life with their bright ideas, radiant enthusiasm, and shining insight.
That is how the UNO R4 Stars blog post series began: to highlight makers who have not only created amazing projects with Arduino, but who are giving back to the community by sharing as they go and helping others make anything they wish.
We invite you to discover each profile, hoping you might find a North Star to navigate around an expanding galaxy or venture into completely new universes.
After competing as a national figure skater in her native Canada and attracting over 1 million views as a Minecraft YouTuber – all by the age of 12! – the good-vibes powerhouse that is Tigris Li now invites us all to explore our most human inner workings. Her goals? To help everyone develop heightened emotional intelligence, and to educate and empower a new generation of innovators. She does so through her eclectic practice as an artist and creative technologist – leveraging 3D design and every tool making has to offer, to create experiences that spark conversations about our relationships with technology, each other, and ourselves.
Indeed, she says the project that best represents her is a “playfully absurd” installation she built in 2021, focusing on the very concept of love: the Incu-dater touches on the speculative future by welcoming couples in a futuristic pod, where they can assess the emotional status of their relationship and, based on the results, are prescribed a recommended dose of oxytocin to compensate any imbalances.
More in general, Li was always excited about turning imagination into reality by building physical objects: “Being a maker today is a very radical thing. It’s very radical to be independent against consumer and commercial objects, to be able to create something on your own that stems from you and your individuality.”
And today, she is able to inspire millions of followers to do the same, by sharing her projects online. Check out her latest one: a custom DJ controller based on the UNO R4 Minima and loads of fun retro style.
We asked Li, “What’s your favorite part of the UNO R4?”
The 12×8 LED matrix in the UNO R4 Wifi, because it allows her to build “hardware as an intimate art experience which you can hold in the palm of your hand.”
The ESP32 module (also featured in the WiFi variant), great for wireless connectivity.
How the entire Arduino ecosystem is able to transcend borders and accessibility limitations, to offer new opportunities for exploration and connection to everyone.
Li is currently based in London but of course you can catch up – and keep up – with her many projects anywhere in the world: just check out her portfolio on her website, or join the thousands already following her on Instagram and X!
Building a robot is only half the battle, because you also need a way to control it. Something like a rover may work with a simple joystick or even typed commands. But complex robots often have many motors and controlling those all directly becomes a challenge. That’s why Will Cogley chose motion control for his bionic hand.
This is the newest iteration of a project that Cogley first started a few years ago. It is robotic hand meant to mimic a human hand as much as possible. Human fingers do not contain muscles. Instead, muscles in the forearms and palms pull on tendons to move the fingers. Cogley’s bionic hand works in a similar manner by using servo motors in the forearm to pull on cables that actuate the fingers. An Arduino UNO Rev3 moves the servos according to commands from a PC, but Cogley needed a way to streamline those commands.
Cogley chose a Leap Motion Controller for this job. It can track the motion of the user’s hand in near real-time and update a 3D model on the computer to reflect that. It displays that model in Unity, which is a 3D game engine that has the flexibility to perform in applications like this. Unity can determine the angle of each joint and Cogley was able to take advantage of the Uduino plugin to send servo commands to the Arduino based on those angles.
The Arduino PRO team will be exhibiting in Las Vegas next week at PACK EXPO 2023, the largest event for the packaging industry. From Monday, September 11th through to the 13th, meet our team at the Arduino PRO booth #7592 in the upper south hall.
This is the first year for Arduino PRO at PACK EXPO. The event is expected to bring over 26,000 attendees and 2,300 exhibitors from the packaging industry. Our industrial automation controllers, the Portenta Machine Controller (PMC) and Opta PLC have been particularly popular in the packaging industry. Ever since the launch of PMC, customers have recommended the expo, and we are excited to have this opportunity to exhibit.
The complete Arduino PRO product line will be featured on display, including the certified PMC and Opta PLC industrial controllers, the Portenta family of System-on-Modules, and the Nicla family of sensor boards. In addition, APS Engineering will be at the booth displaying their commercial inkjet fluid controller powered by the Portent Machine Controller.
The Arduino team will be joined by our newest system integrator partner, Dojo Five, who specializes in industrial firmware development. Throughout the event, our team of sales and solution architects are available live at the booth to walk through our solutions and discuss specific application architecture. Combined with the embedded software expertise of Dojo Five, attendees have the unique opportunity of a full end-to-end project consulting session live on the event floor.
The Arduino PRO team looks forward to meeting existing and potential new customers in Las Vegas – championing open source, accessibility, and flexibility in industrial-grade solutions at PACK EXPO.
Individually addressable RGB LEDs like the WS2812B models are popular because they’re so easy to drive and don’t require any complex wiring. Each LED in the chain passes a signal on to its neighbor and you only need to know the position of an LED in the chain to control its brightness and color. This project from Andrei Erdei shows how to use that to great effect in a minimalist lamp.
This lamp is charming in its simplicity. It has an opaque outer ring with a slightly thicker base and a translucent inner ring to diffuse the LEDs. When all of the LEDs are a single color, it is a unique lamp. But because they’re WS2812B LEDs, you can take advantage of the available Arduino libraries to produce all kinds of interesting lighting effects.
The frame is entirely 3D-printable. The only required components are an Arduino Nano board, a strip of 36 WS2812B LEDs (the 60 LEDs per meter density), and a power supply. The tutorial provides a sketch with lighting effects and also explains how to work with the FastLED Arduino library. That library is fantastic for easily controlling dozens or even hundreds of LEDs, so you can create whatever effects you can imagine.
In today’s modern world, smart technology is revolutionizing the way we interact with our surroundings. From managing our home’s energy consumption to controlling appliances remotely — such as washing machines, fans, coffee makers, and even air conditioners. Smart devices offer us a level of convenience and control that was once unimaginable. However, dealing with multiple apps for various systems can be cumbersome and inefficient. This is where an integrated platform like the Arduino Cloud comes into play, offering a unified dashboard to control all your smart devices. Moreover, if you’re an Arduino enthusiast, you’ll be excited to learn how Node-RED can bridge the gap between commercial products and the Arduino Cloud. Last, but not least, you can integrate this project with the rest of your Arduino Cloud projects automating your appliance control using other devices’ data.
In this blog post, we’ll delve into a fascinating project that demonstrates how you can harness the power of the Arduino Cloud and Node-RED to control TP-Link smart plugs, giving you the ability to manage and monitor your appliances from a centralized hub.
TP-Link smart plugs and Kasa
TP-Link smart Wi-Fi plugs are intelligent devices that transform everyday appliances into smart ones, enabling remote control via your Wi-Fi network. These plugs are part of TP-Link’s smart home ecosystem, designed to offer enhanced convenience and control over your home appliances. To manage and control these smart devices, TP-Link has developed the Kasa Smart platform. Through the Kasa Smart app, you can easily schedule, automate, and control your connected devices, making your home even smarter. Importantly, Kasa Smart provides an API that facilitates seamless integration with other platforms.
Arduino Cloud: Simplifying IoT development
The Arduino Cloud is a versatile platform that simplifies the creation, deployment, and management of IoT devices. It supports a range of hardware, including Arduino boards, ESP32/ESP8266-based boards and devices programmed with Python, JavaScript or Node-RED. This platform is a boon for makers, IoT enthusiasts, and professionals, as it enables them to build connected projects without needing extensive coding skills. Arduino Cloud lets you manage and monitor connected devices through customizable dashboards, offering real-time visualizations of device data. These dashboards can be accessed remotely using your favourite browser or via the Arduino IoT Cloud Remote mobile app, available for both Android and iOS devices, ensuring that you’re in control no matter where you are.
Node-RED: Bridging the gap
Node-RED is an open-source visual programming tool designed to facilitate the connection and automation of devices, services, and APIs. Its browser-based flow editor enables users to effortlessly create workflows by dragging and dropping nodes onto a canvas and connecting them. Each node represents a specific functionality or service, such as data input/output, data transformation, or communication with external systems. Popular in the Internet of Things (IoT) realm, Node-RED simplifies the integration of sensors, devices, and cloud services, empowering users to craft sophisticated IoT applications and automation systems without traditional coding. In this blog post we will see how Node-RED can act as a middleware between TP-Link smart plugs and the Arduino Cloud.
Project setup: Getting started
To embark on this exciting journey of controlling TP-Link smart plugs with the Arduino Cloud and Node-RED, you’ll need a few prerequisites:
An instance of Node-RED (running locally or in the cloud)
No Arduino, ESP32, or ESP8266 devices are required for this project.
Step-by-step implementation
Here’s a concise overview of the steps you’ll undertake to bring your project to life:
Configure your TP-Link smart plug: Begin by adding your TP-Link smart plug to the Kasa app on your mobile device. This process connects your plug to both your Wi-Fi network and the internet, enabling remote control.
Create the device in the Arduino Cloud: In the Devices section of Arduino IoT Cloud, create a new device. This process involves selecting “Any Device” and following the instructions in the wizard. Don’t forget to save your Device ID and Secret Key.
Create the Node-RED flow: Access your Node-RED instance and import the provided code. This code configures the integration between the TP-Link smart plug, Arduino Cloud, and Node-RED.
Configure the Kasa and Arduino Cloud nodes: Within Node-RED, you’ll need to input the IP address of your TP-Link smart switch and configure the connection to Arduino Cloud using the API key you generated.
Create the Arduino Cloud dashboard: Navigate to the Dashboards section of the Arduino Cloud and create your dashboard. Customize it to your liking for easy monitoring and control.
Test the System: With everything set up, it’s time to test your creation. Access your Arduino Cloud dashboard to observe the status of your smart plug and control it using the provided button.
Try it now!
Experience the future of home control now. Discover how the Arduino Cloud and Node-RED combine to command TP-Link smart plugs. Create your Arduino Cloud account and dive in at the Project Hub project page and transform your home today!
We are happy to announce that Arduino raised an additional $22 million round, taking our Series B funding to $54 million, thanks to an expansion co-led by CDP Venture Capital and Anzu Partners. Joining them is semiconductor leader Arm, following up on earlier investments.
CDP Venture Capital, Italy’s largest VC firm, invested through Large Ventures, launched in 2023 to support the scaling up of Italian global category leaders. “We are proud to support the dimensional leap of Arduino, a unique global excellence in the democratization of open-source hardware and software,” said Mario Branciforti, Head of CDP Venture Capital SGR’s Large Ventures fund.
After the first $32 million Series B financing received in 2022, “This investment will allow us to further fuel our transformational platform initiative for professional customers, lowering the barriers to entry in IoT and AI by providing a continuum from hardware to Cloud,” says Arduino’s CEO Fabio Violante.
Want to know more about how the funds will be put to good use? A major chunk will be invested to further strengthen the R&D team based in Turin, Italy, with the goal to grow enterprise application libraries and the Arduino Cloud for Business with more integrations and embedded AI features. Another consistent part is earmarked to help Arduino grow even more in the US, where we recently opened an office in Austin, TX and bolstered our presence in Chicago, IL. Finally, we will use the additional funds to accelerate go-to-market initiatives and customer support in selected areas.
“Arduino came a long way from its humble beginning, becoming a powerful industrial tool used by cutting-edge organizations all over the world. I’m honored by this investment which is a further confirmation that our original formula keeps applying to new domains.”
Massimo Banzi, Arduino’s co-founder, chairman and CMO
This continued and expanding confidence from investors reflects the quality of the work we’ve been able to do, building a global company based on the strong values we share with every user in our amazing community.
According to Jimmy Kan, Partner at Anzu Partners, “The enterprise ecosystem is on the cusp of a seismic transformation, driven by the convergence of efficient AI and IoT at the edge. Arduino stands at the heart of this revolution, and their commitment to innovation promises to redefine the industry norms.” Making technology accessible remains our mission, because the key to our success is empowering users: “Arduino supports an extensive community of developers who play a crucial role in accelerating the deployment of new computing solutions for IoT applications,” says Paul Williamson, senior vice president and general manager, IoT Line of Business at Arm.
Amidst great change, we take our role as enablers of innovation seriously, and strive to leverage every resource we can access to expand our platform, keep up our forward momentum, and always enhance our service to you – so you can create the world we will live in.
Ivan Miranda has a humble dream: he wants to build a massive 3D-printed robot that he can ride upon. In other words, he wants a mech. But that is obviously a very challenging project that will take an incredible amount of time and money. So he decided to test the waters with one piece of the mech: a huge 3D-printed robotic hand.
Miranda designed this robotic hand at the scale necessary for an enormous rideable mech, but he has only built the one hand at this point. This let him test the idea before jumping into the deep end with the full project. The structure and most of the mechanical components were 3D-printed. It has four fingers and a thumb, each with three joints (like a real human hand). It is mostly rigid PLA, but there are some flexible TPU parts that add grip.
Servos actuate all 15 of those joints. Most of them have 11kg-cm of torque, but the base of each finger has a more powerful servo with 25kg-cm of torque. An Arduino Mega 2560 controls all of the servo motors with pulse-width modulation (PWM) signals. Power, of course, comes directly from the power supply and not the Arduino.
In testing, the hand seems to work quite well. It can move and grip large objects, though the belts do slip and need to be replaced with a type that can’t stretch. We’re not sure if Miranda will complete the entire mech, but we sure hope that he does!
A popular goal among roboticists is animal-like locomotion. Animals move with a fluidity and grace that is very hard to replicate artificially. That goal has led to extremely complex robots that require a multitude of motors and sensors, along with heavy processing, to walk. But even those don’t quite match biological movement. Taking a new approach, engineers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign created a simple bipedal robot named “Mugatu” that walks using a single actuator.
This approach is counter-intuitive, but quite sensible when we actually look at the gaits of real animals. Bipedal animals, such as humans, don’t need to engage many muscles when walking on flat surfaces. We achieve that efficiency with balance and body geometry evolved for this purpose. In a sense, a walking human is always falling forward slightly and redirecting their inertia to take a step. This robot walks in a similar manner and only needs a motor to move one leg forward relative to the other.
The team built Mugatu using 3D-printed legs connected by a servo “hip” joint. An Arduino MKR Zero board controls that motor, moving it with the precise timing necessary to achieve the “continuous falling” gait. This prototype doesn’t utilize it yet, but there is also an IMU in the left leg that could provide useful feedback data in the future. For now, the robot relies on pre-programmed movements.
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