The age-old combination of physical locks and keys, although reliable, also comes with a few drawbacks, such as when you lose the key or you want to share access with someone else remotely. Davide Gomba has recognized this and built the MKR Keylock project as a way to address some of these shortcomings.
Starting with an existing electronic lock module, Gomba installed it in his door before identifying the circuit responsible for triggering it to open. Once found, he connected the line to a relay that, when triggered by a GPIO signal, will unlock the bolt. An Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 was then attached to a 4×4 keypad, a small buzzer for signaling an incorrect code, and another relay that runs to the doorbell for remote ringing. Thanks to the MKR board’s Wi-Fi connectivity, the firmware configures an MQTT client that listens to a few topics: “/code” to set the keypad code, “/open” to override the locking mechanism, and “/alive/status” that reflects the real-time status of the lock.
Over on the web side, Gomba made a new Home Assistant integration that operates on the same topics as a controller. From a webpage, users can then toggle the lock or provide a new code for the lock to check against.
Want to bring your own door into the IoT era? More information about this IoT lock can be found here on Hackster.io.
When we think about air quality and pollution, it’s easy to conjure up images of smog-filled cities and power plants churning clouds of poison into the atmosphere.
And while all this is still important, and has massive consequences for our health, it’s all too easy to overlook the air pollution that takes place within our homes.
Indoor air quality is incredibly important for our health and quality of life, and taking steps to improve the air quality in our homes — while also saving energy — is one of the best things we can do. It’s also surprisingly easy and can be achieved even with DIY devices that aren’t difficult to put together.
In this article, we’ll look at the ways we can improve air quality at home, along with a few Arduino examples.
Why does air quality matter?
Air pollution is a massive health problem. In fact, unclean air can lead to issues like strokes, heart disease, lung cancer, and a whole laundry list of terrible respiratory diseases.
Many of these risks come from living in a part of the world with polluted air, which unfortunately isn’t something most of us can do much about. However, the air in our homes — which we do have some control over — is also a risk factor.
In 2020, the World Health Organization found that household air pollution was responsible for around 3.2 million deaths per year – including over 237,000 children under the age of 5.
Enhancing home environment
So what are the concrete steps we can take to improve the air quality in our homes and keep our family members safe? The good news is, there’s a lot we can do:
Ventilate our homes properly, using age-old methods like windows and doors and more modern approaches like ventilation systems.
Use monitors that measure the concentration of harmful substances like carbon monoxide and issue warnings when they reach dangerous levels.
Minimize emissions from things like waste by keeping the home clean.
Manage devices like HVAC units carefully — if not properly maintained these can be harmful to your indoor environment.
Avoid burning objects or using powerful toxic chemicals near the home.
3 ways you can improve air quality with Arduino
With automation and tools like Arduino, it’s more than possible to improve the air quality in your home and build a safer and healthier environment for your loved ones to share. Let’s take a look at a few examples.
Detecting HVAC failures early
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems make life much more comfortable, but more than that, in many parts of the world they’re essential for safe living conditions.
This is because HVAC systems don’t just regulate indoor temperature, they also provide a steady supply of fresh, clean air. This is crucial if you live in an area with poor air quality, or have household members with respiratory problems.
When HVACs stop working, problems arise. That’s why Yunior González and Danelis Guillan set out to fix the issue, developing a prototype device that uses machine learning to predict HVAC issues before they arise so you can avoid downtime entirely.
The project uses an Arduino Nicla Sense ME and Edge Impulse’s machine learning tools to create an algorithm that detects anomalous readings and issues warnings to the user when things don’t look right.
Another monitoring solution
In a similar vein to the first project, the medical center network Sangostino developed its own monitoring system using an Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect, aimed at tracking the performance of their HVAC units across 35 locations in Italy.
They fed the AI extensive amounts of data to help it quickly identify any concerning signs, allowing their teams to keep on top of their HVAC performance and avoid any malfunctions or downtime in an environment where air quality is literally a matter of life and death.
Air quality and education
If you’re interested in teaching young learners about the value of air quality, while simultaneously introducing them to some core STEM concepts, Arduino has you covered.
The Arduino Greenhouse Kit and the Arduino Explore IoT Kit include experiments involving air quality, allowing users to build their own sensors and tracking tools to measure a range of data points like humidity, moisture, and the presence of particles like CO2. These projects both work using the Arduino MKR IoT Carrier Rev2, which has a VOC sensor.
Share your projects
Have you created a project to monitor or improve the air quality inside your home? If so, share it on our Project Hub!
Whether you’re passionate about conservation or simply curious about the possibilities, now is your chance to join the community and make a difference.
Don’t miss out — embrace innovation while honoring our planet.
There’s a lot to love about the fall season, and when it comes to home automation there’s a ton of opportunity here for smart makers to start playing around with new ideas and creations.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some ways you can use home automation to enhance your autumn experience, and we’ll share a few inspiring ideas from the Arduino community.
Automated garden care
If you have a lawn — or any outdoor space — you probably know the never-ending struggle of keeping it in good condition.
On top of your regular tasks of cutting the grass and caring for its quality, you’ll also have to contend with the yearly influx of beautiful but dead leaves cascading down from the trees and forming a crisp blanket over your grass.
This can keep the autumnal gardener much busier than usual, but the good news is that home automation can make things much easier in this department. Let’s find out how!
Smart leaf blowers
Clearing the fallen leaves out of your yard can be a tedious task, but with the power of home automation it gets a lot easier.
Remote-controlled leaf blowers like this one can take care of the laborious work of getting rid of dead leaves while you relax on the porch with a nice cup of coffee. Right now this kind of tech is still mostly in the prototype DIY stage, but the future could see more commercially available models.
Robot lawn mowers
The Roomba revolutionized the world of home maintenance. No longer did you have to devote chunks of your day to walking around the house with a vacuum cleaner — now a neat little robot could take care of it all for you.
Robot lawn mowers are now bringing the same game-changing concept to the world of gardening, automatically whizzing around your lawn and getting it to just the right condition while you hang out and enjoy the cool autumn breeze.
If you’re feeling creative, why not build your own robot lawn mower?
Arduino user ReP_AL decided to do that with this project — an Arduino-controlled lawn mowing robot. Now you can sit inside with a pumpkin spice latte and watch in comfort as your robot leaves your lawn in perfect condition. You can check out a full guide for this project here.
Temperature control and energy efficiency
While it’s not quite winter yet, fall is the period where temperatures start to drop, and some days can get pretty chilly.
This is the perfect opportunity to get on top of your temperature control systems and get prepared for the colder months on the way. Once again, home automation can play a major role here, helping you maintain just the right conditions in your home without wasting any energy.
Smart thermostats
Until recently, controlling the heat in your home required you to actually be at home.
Today, thanks to smart thermostats, that’s no longer the case. These gadgets allow you to check the temperature of your house and make adjustments from wherever you are, by connecting your thermostat to a mobile app.
Smart thermostats can also automatically change the temperature based on when you enter or leave your home, the occupancy of a room at any given time, and your energy usage over time.
You can even make your own smart thermostat with Arduino. That’s exactly what Hwhardsoft did with this project, combining an Arduino MKR board with a wall mounting enclosure and color TFT touchscreen to create a professional-looking and easy-to-use thermostat for the chilly winter months.
Energy conservation
As the days get shorter and colder in the fall months, it’s tempting to crank up the heating and flood your house with light.
The downside to this is that it takes its toll on your energy bills, especially during a time when costs are high. Home automation can help mitigate this, with the use of monitors that track energy usage, show alerts, and even automatically switch off or turn down lighting, heat, and electrical appliances when they’re not needed.
Lighting and decorations for fall
Fall isn’t all about dark nights and frosty mornings. It’s also a time for celebration, with quite a few big holidays taking place around this time.
Halloween is the most famous, but even if you aren’t a big fan of spooky decorations, adding some light and color to your home can help warm things up as the days get colder.
Smart lighting is a great example here. On top of keeping your living areas cozy and ambient, smart lighting can also help create a more seasonal mood, and can even be used to set up lighting displays for parties and holiday celebrations.
It’s not just indoor lighting, either, you can also set up smart illumination displays on the outside of your home. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you can even rig up entire lighting displays to celebrate an occasion of your choice.
Home security
One of the downsides of the darker months is an increase in certain types of crime — specifically burglary.
Criminals like to operate under cover of darkness, and home break-ins are easier to carry out when the world is plunged into night from the afternoon onwards. Fortunately, burglars are fairly easy to deter, and home automation can be a powerful tool here. For instance:
Motion sensors and smart camera systems that can detect any unusual activity and quickly report it to you, wherever you are, via a mobile app. This can also trigger alarms and even notify the police if needed.
Smart locks and security systems that can be controlled remotely from your devices. This way you can ensure your home is secure at all times, giving you peace of mind, and grant trusted people access from afar.
Automated lighting systems that make your home seem occupied even when nobody is around, deterring opportunistic criminals.
Entertainment
The fall season is home to a number of festivals and holidays. Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and Thanksgiving are just a few well-known examples.
Due to the chilly weather, most autumnal festivals tend to take place indoors, which is a great opportunity for you to tap into home automation to host a party nobody will ever forget.
Home automation can give you a ton of the tools to achieve this. With automated lighting to create the perfect ambience, smart speaker systems connected to voice assistants and shared apps, and unique, novel costumes and light displays, you can host the perfect party.
You don’t need to throw a huge celebration to make the most of smart entertainment, however. With the right combination of smart lighting, sound, and interactive entertainment systems you can have a great night in all by yourself.
Preparing for the holidays
On top of the fearful festivities of Halloween, fall also marks the beginning of a long holiday season.
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year are all just around the corner, and major events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday take place around this time, too. This makes fall the perfect season to start laying the foundations for a busy few months of holidays.
Once again, home automation can make life easier and more productive here. For example:
Smart kitchen appliances — like trash cans that sound alerts when they’re full and cupboards that add to your shopping list when ingredients are running low — can make life much easier during big eating and guest-hosting holidays.
Automated travel planning — Tools such as Wonderplan make it easier than ever to create rough starting itineraries, book accommodation and transport ahead of time, and start making preparations for your coming trip.
Automated gift shopping — Tools like ChatGPT can help generate thoughtful ideas for gifts, and you can easily place orders using voice automation software and list-making apps that can handle the entire process of ordering and shipping.
If you’re interested in getting started on your own home automation journey this fall, Arduino is the perfect place to start.
Our Project Hub is full of inspiration, and we have products and guides to help anyone get started, no matter their experience level or comfort with tech. Everyone has to start somewhere, and before long you’ll be putting together some seriously impressive creations.
In a previous video about controlling household appliances and lighting fixtures from the Arduino Cloud, Sachin Soni of the techiesms YouTube channel designed a custom PCB that allows an Arduino Nano ESP32 to toggle a series of relays. But since then, he realized that his project needed a faster and more permanent method of getting to the controls, which led him to build a complete home automation dashboard using solely Arduino hardware.
Soni opted for the new Arduino GIGA Display Shield since it contains a 3.97” RGB touchscreen with support for up to five simultaneous touch points and an array of sensors if the functionality were to ever be expanded. On the back, an Arduino GIGA R1 WiFi was attached to act as the display’s controller and leverage its Wi-Fi capabilities to communicate with the system’s Arduino Cloud variables.
The final step in this project involved creating a software-defined graphical user interface (GUI) complete with toggleable buttons for the lights, dials to indicate temperature/humidity levels, and a way to select the fan’s speed from an array of values. Soni was able to finish most of the groundwork by utilizing the LVGL library and its highly customizable GUI components.
After laying out the buttons and dials, synchronizing Cloud variables, and connecting their event handlers to value updates, Soni had a functional tablet that could wirelessly manage his appliances from anywhere.
Hospitality professionals are constantly looking for ways to offer guests an enhanced experience while improving operational efficiency and optimizing energy management. To achieve this, they require cost-effective solutions that are easy to install and maintain while also providing the scalability of future-ready systems – such as automating hotel rooms or B&B rentals to increase safety, comfort, and energy savings.
Indeed, automation can be integrated seamlessly in various aspects including climate control, lighting, security, and entertainment. Upgrading these functions allows guests to enjoy customization and convenience throughout their stay, and staff to efficiently manage room settings remotely. Moreover, hoteliers can achieve substantial energy savings through optimized control and scheduling, contributing to sustainability goals.
Long-term scalability and future-proofing of automation systems, however, can be an issue. As hotels and rental properties undergo renovations or expansions, the ideal solution should accommodate changes without requiring substantial modifications or replacements. Adopting open and standardized protocols, as well as selecting flexible and modular automation projects, can help mitigate these challenges and provide a foundation for future enhancements.
Our solution
A comprehensive IoT automation solution can address these challenges effectively by aggregating sensor and user data and then intelligently managing lighting, cooling/heating and more – for a smart, connected experience. The elements required to achieve this kind of outcome are environmental sensors, a programmable logic controller (PLC), a human-machine interface (HMI), and cloud connectivity.
Programmable logic controller (PLC)
PLC-based automation systems are widely used due to their reliability, flexibility, and ability to handle complex tasks. Arduino Pro’s Opta microPLC can serve as the central control unit for hotel room automation by connecting and monitoring various devices and subsystems such as HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), lighting, and door locks. The microPLC receives data from sensors and users and processes them to trigger appropriate actions or adjustments in the room.
Human-machine interface (HMI)
A touchscreen panel through which guests and staff can control various room parameters – such as lighting status, fan status, and door lock status – provides a user-friendly and intuitive interface to interact with the automation system. This HMI also communicates data to the microPLC for execution.
The Modbus communication protocol
The HMI and Opta PLC communicate via Modbus RTU over RS-485. Modbus RTU communication protocol is widely adopted in industrial applications due to its reliability, provided by the physical layer strength and by the cyclic redundancy check included in the data packets. It allows for multiple devices to be connected to the same bus, forming a multidrop network where each device has a unique address, used to identify the recipient of the transmitted data. The Arduino Opta can communicate with other Modbus devices, such as sensors, actuators, or traditional PLCs, by addressing them individually.
IoT Cloud solution
Cloud connectivity enables seamless communication between the hotel room or rental property’s automation system and the central management system. The Opta and HMI connect to the cloud infrastructure, allowing remote access, monitoring, and control of multiple locations. The solution also enables data logging and analytics for better energy management, predictive maintenance, and guest experience personalization.
Solving it with Arduino Pro
Let’s get into the details of how this solution can be put into action, and identify the hardware and software resources needed for deployment. Arduino Opta is a great option for deploying building automation solutions, as it offers simple integration with current systems, real-time control capabilities, support for Over-The-Air (OTA) firmware updates, and hardware-to-cloud data security. The Arduino Pro ecosystem allows users to benefit from easy integration, along with a range of scalable, secure, and professionally supported services.
The Arduino IDE 2.0 can be used to program Opta using C/C++. Opta acts as the main controller, communicating with the HMI via the Modbus RTU protocol. The HMI gathers data from various sensors – including light, temperature and humidity, and PIR (movement sensor) – as well as user inputs from its interface buttons related to room climate, lights, and door lock status. It then forwards this data to Opta, which controls the relay outputs that will activate the lights, thermostat or door lock.
Opta also sends this data via Wi-Fi® to the Arduino IoT Cloud. After connecting it to the Arduino Cloud using the Arduino Create Agent, cloud variables corresponding to the sensor data being monitored can be defined.
Arduino Pro’s Opta microPLC offers an ideal solution for the automation of hotel rooms and B&Bs or rental properties. By leveraging standard communication protocols, easy integration, real-time control capabilities, secure hardware-to-cloud data exchange, and remote access to multiple rooms from a centralized location, Opta provides the cornerstone of a comprehensive platform for smart hospitality.
If there’s one place in the world you want to feel safe, it’s inside your home.
And yet, the unfortunate reality is that our homes can sometimes be a source of danger. From burglaries to fires, it’s important to take precautions to make sure your house remains a sanctuary and not a deathtrap.
Home automation can be a huge help here. Today’s homeowners (and renters) have a ton of tools at their disposal to stay safe from a range of hazards and risks. Some of these tools you can even build yourself, with minimal cost and effort.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the main dangers people face at home, and how automation can minimize the risk.
5 common home security threats
What are the biggest dangers facing us at home? Apart from dropped Lego pieces and precariously-stacked crockery, here are some of the main dangers facing our homes and why they’re so serious.
Burglaries
Home burglaries are actually decreasing in frequency as time goes on, but they’re still a threat.
In the U.S., for example, over one million burglaries take place every year, and property crimes are the most common type of crime. Burglars use a range of techniques and methods to gain entry and steal your hard-earned possessions, and often leave behind a legacy of trauma and shock — even when you weren’t at home.
Fires
A house fire is a nightmare scenario, but this is also a very real concern.
Research shows that 24.2% of all fires worldwide occur in residential buildings. Some of the main causes include:
Unattended cooking (this is the most common cause of house fires)
Even when you manage to escape a house fire, the damage can still be enormous. On top of the financial cost, you have to deal with the loss of items that can never really be replaced. The best option when it comes to house fires is to do whatever it takes to prevent them.
Environmental dangers
Extreme weather events are on the rise around the world, and this is a problem for the safety of your home.
Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and wildfires can be devastating, and wherever you are in the world there’s almost certainly some kind of environmental risk facing your home. Repairing a damaged home can become extremely costly, and can cause massive disruptions to your life.
Cybersecurity threats
One of the biggest downsides to an increasingly tech-savvy world is the rise in cyber crime, which is much more widespread than it was in past decades.
The days of clumsy spam emails being the biggest threat to ordinary people are long gone — cyber attacks are now incredibly sophisticated and constantly evolving.
With the rise in smart home devices, typically as part of the Internet of Things, cyber criminals now have a new avenue to exploit. Many home automation systems aren’t properly protected, in fact one study found that many had major design flaws putting them at risk of cyber attacks like data leaks and break-ins.
Home automation as a solution
Although home automation can be a target for attackers, it can also function as a highly effective defence against many of the threats to your home.
The home automation market is growing fast, and is predicted to reach $163 billion by 2025. As this technology becomes more advanced, more possibilities for protecting your home keep emerging.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can harness the power of home automation to keep your home safe from multiple dangers.
Enhanced security features
The best place to start with smart home security is with the basics — the locks, keys, and alarms we’ve been using to keep our houses safe since time immemorial.
With home automation, you can take these security features to the next level, adding a new layer of safety and convenience to your home, such as:
Smart locks and keyless entry systems, for instance based on biometric data like your fingerprints, eliminate the need for keys (which are easily lost), and make it much harder for an unwanted visitor to gain entry to your home.
Surveillance cameras and video doorbells allow you to see who’s at the door without going to check, even when you’re not at home. Research suggests that homes with security cameras are 300% safer from burglaries than those without.
Motion sensors and alarms. While they might not be cutting-edge smart home tech, these time-tested devices have been in use for decades and are still very much around because they work so well.
Fire and environmental safety
House fires and environmental disasters are often treated as freak accidents — something we have no control over and that we should simply hope never happens to us.
However, we’re not powerless here, and home automation can actually offer some solid defences against the raging elements. Some examples include:
Smart smoke detectors. Like traditional smoke detectors, these pick up on unusual smoke in your home and issue an alert. But these smarter models can also send warnings to your smartphone, wherever you are. They can detect the difference between, for example, carbon monoxide and smoke, and some can tell you where the smoke is coming from.
Flood sensors and leak detectors can help you locate and identify water leakages while they’re still small and fixable, before they turn into destructive and expensive problems.
An uninterrupted power supply (UPS) can ensure the lights and power stay on even when the main grid has been disabled by a storm or other natural disaster, so you can keep your essential functions running.
Cybersecurity measures
While home automation tech is becoming more advanced all the time, there are also vulnerabilities here though, and some cyber criminals target IoT and smart home devices.
To keep your smart home as secure as possible, it pays to take security seriously here. Let’s take a look at some basic steps everyone can take to keep their devices safe from cyber attacks.
Make sure your WiFi network is secure, with a strong password and encryption. Try to find a router with a security protocol of WPA2 or ideally WPA3.
Regularly update the firmware that runs on your smart home devices — this will ensure they’re protected against any new threats and have the most up-to-date security features installed.
Replace any outdated technology including routers.
Change your passwords frequently, and don’t use common or easily guessed passwords.
DIY vs. professional installation
When it comes to smart home security, it’s common to wonder if you should pay for a professional to take care of your needs, or do it yourself.
Security is, of course, a serious matter. It’s not an area you want to leave to chance, or risk leaving your home with safety flaws because you did something wrong.
If you’re a beginner to building and maintaining your own home automation devices, it’s best to leave the important security jobs to a trusted professional. And even if you have some experience with these jobs, it might still be a good idea to use a specialist for the really important stuff — things like alarm systems and smart locks.
However, it’s possible to take the DIY approach to many smart home safety devices, with only a handful of easy-to-acquire components and some basic coding and design knowledge. The Arduino Project Hub has plenty of examples here. Let’s take a look at just a few.
RFID card door lock
Arduino user mehmetefepekerr created this project — a radio frequency identification (RFID) card designed to add an extra layer of security to their home. The card enables you to unlock your door by tapping the card on your way in. RFID key cards are typically safer than magnetic cards since they’re more resistant to the elements, and unlike traditional locks they can’t be picked by thieves.
Ultrasonic security system
This system by theridgeguy is meant to keep your home safe by detecting the presence of intruders and sounding an alarm.It employs an ultrasonic distance sensor to detect how far someone is from the doorway, and then uses flashing lights and noises to deter them from getting any closer. Trusted guests and family members can enter a four-digit code to disarm the alarm.
Smoke detector using gas sensor
When it comes to preventing house fires, time is always of the essence. This smoke detector, developed by srajandikshit147, picks up on any unexpected smoke in the environment and then warns the user by sounding a buzzer and flashing a red LED if the smoke density is higher than the safe limit.
These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using Arduino to make your own smart home devices, including ones that protect you from various risks and dangers in your home.
By tapping into the power of home automation, you can build your own devices to do all kinds of things. You don’t need to be a coding mastermind or have access to expensive gear — pretty much anyone can get started with their own basic projects today.
Get in touch with us to learn more about what’s possible with home automation and get started on your own journey.
The Internet of Things has the power to transform your home into a futuristic web of cutting-edge gadgets, working together to make life easier, safer, and more entertaining.
And while the IoT has a bunch of day-to-day applications like watering your plants and keeping your cupboards stocked, you can also use it to throw a killer party.
Done right, you can build a smart home that leaves your guests gobsmacked, talking for months about their experience and frantically searching for ways to recreate it in their own homes.
In this article, we’ll look at a few of the ways you can use the IoT to enhance your guests’ experiences and become the talk of the town (in a good way).
What exactly is the Internet of Things?
The IoT is a way of connecting multiple everyday devices to the internet and each other, enabling them to perform smarter tasks such as collecting, processing, and exchanging data of different kinds.
For example, while an ordinary kettle is only good for boiling water, a smart kettle connected to the IoT can be controlled from your smartphone, set to automatically start boiling at a specific time, and be asked to do different things like keep the water at a certain temperature.
When it comes to throwing a party that will go down in legend, the IoT can be a big asset.
Impress your guests with the Internet of Things
1. Smart home ambiance
The first step to throwing a great party is setting the mood, and that applies to small gatherings, dinner parties, and even just hangouts.
The IoT can be a big help here, allowing you to tap into smart lighting with the help of color-changing bulbs and synchronized effects. At the tap of a button or your smartphone, you can produce customized lighting patterns and hues, engineering exactly the right environment to fit the vibe.
You can also integrate your lighting systems with voice control assistants, so you and your guests can change the ambience with simple commands.
2. Interactive entertainment systems
With the IoT, you can take entertainment to the next level.
Use smart speakers to create fully immersive music and sound, perfectly adapted to the mood of the room and the desired noise level. Switch from soft background music to a lively dance floor with a simple voice command.
If you have a home theater or a gaming room, you can integrate these with the IoT to build a more customizable and personalized setup for guests.
3. Smart food and beverage management
If you really want to impress your guests, fill them up with delicious food and get them tipsy.
This is yet another place where technology can help — an IoT-connected kitchen can revolutionize the catering process, allowing you to host truly unforgettable cookouts and dinner parties.
Smart refrigerators with inventory tracking and recipe suggestions work alongside automated cocktail mixers and cupboards that send an alert to your phone whenever you’re running low on a certain ingredient.
You’ll go from being a stressed, overwhelmed amateur chef to the master of your kitchen, effortlessly commanding your army of tech tools to run the show confidently.
4. Intelligent climate control
The only thing worse than a party where everyone is sweltering hot, is one where they’re all too cold to even peel off their winter coats.
The good news for any aspiring host is that home automation can solve this age-old problem once and for all. Smart thermostats and HVAC systems are designed to keep your home in the perfect state of equilibrium — using automated adjustments to make a Goldilocks zone where all your guests feel just right, all the time.
The best smart homes can do this in an energy-efficient way, too, ensuring you don’t waste fuel and money keeping a room warmer than it needs to be for everyone’s optimal comfort. And you can easily adjust the temperature from your smartphone, a remote control, or voice commands.
5. Personalized guest experiences
The best parties are the ones where everyone feels welcome, and there’s no better way to create that vibe than with personalization.
The IoT can come in very useful here, helping you install things like smart mirrors which greet your guests personally and share information about the party like important times to remember and directions to specific places.
How well do you know your guests? If you can create a small profile on each one, your smart home can even put together tailored entertainment recommendations, ensuring the mood of the party fits the mood of the guests, and that there’s a bit of something for everyone on the playlist and the menu.
6. Automated home security
Parties can be a ton of fun, but they come with a few risks as well. When everyone is distracted and occupied, it’s sometimes easy for unwanted visitors to sneak in under cover of the crowd.
With IoT-driven security cameras and automated monitoring systems, you can keep your guests and property safe at all times, not just when the party is in full swing. You can program your smart security system to provide real-time alerts when something isn’t right, and even gain remote access.
If security is a key concern for you, you can give trusted guests their own digital keys and temporary access, gaining more control over who leaves and enters your event.
7. Smart party planning
If you aren’t much of a planner, putting a first-rate shindig together can be a stressful experience.
With the right tech solutions though, even the most disorganized among us can become expert event coordinators, piecing together seamless itineraries and dazzling guests by taking every tiny detail into consideration.
Some examples here include:
Automated guest invitations and RSVP tracking
Integrated calendars, to-do-lists and reminders
AI-powered suggestions for how to plan and organize your event
8. Entertain your guests with AR and VR
Virtual reality and augmented reality are two emerging technologies that have the power to keep your guests engaged for hours.
Gone are the days when a two-dimensional console was the only source of gaming-based fun — now your guests can strap on a headset and immerse themselves in a detailed and incredibly entertaining fictional world, even competing with other guests.
It’s not just about gaming, either — AR and VR can be used to create beautiful cyber experiences for your guests, from interactive works of art to guided tours of faraway places.
9. Smart furniture and layouts
Equipping your seating areas with charging ports and built-in displays will delight your guests and create a much more comfortable and convenient place to chill out.
As time goes on, furniture will likely get even smarter. For instance, smart furniture could soon detect the number of guests and available space and automatically adjust, folding away or expanding certain sections as needed.
10. Eco-friendly hosting
Parties — especially the big ones — can pack quite the environmental footprint if you aren’t careful.
If you’re concerned about the impact of your party, there are several home automation tools that can help reduce your energy expenditure and help you plan a greener and more eco-friendly event.
For example, you can use smart energy management tools to track your usage over time and make adjustments to avoid wastage, like turning down the lights and heat in a room that hasn’t been occupied in a while.
Many up-to-date IoT devices will have these kinds of features built in, and will already automatically monitor and adjust their activity to use energy more optimally.
(Bonus tip) Preparing for hiccups
One of the risks of relying too heavily on tech for your party is that tech can sometimes go wrong.
Things like glitching devices, network issues, and features that are difficult to use can all get in the way of your guests having the best time possible. It’s important to be prepared for the possibility of things going wrong and have plans in place.
It’s always a good idea, for example, to have backup entertainment options in place. Is your VR system playing up? If so, having a more traditional console on hand can work as a great alternative while you get things back up and running.
Ultimately, you don’t want your party to be too tech-centric. It’s always smart to balance your high-tech features with more traditional hosting and entertainment activities — not just because tech can sometimes go wrong but because guests will always appreciate a human touch.
Host a party from the future
Home automation, driven by technologies like the IoT, can transform your next party into something your guests will never forget.
From big, show-stopping features like augmented reality works of art, to small but no less revolutionary tools like a smart dishwasher — home automation is the perfect party assistant.
With Arduino, you can even start building your very own automated party tools, using just a handful of easy-to-find components and a bit of coding knowledge. Check out a few projects below!
Bluetooth lighting system
Arduino user akk47 made this project allowing users to build a lighting system that can be controlled with nothing more than taps from your phone, wherever you are in the building.
It uses Bluetooth® and can be put together with just a handful of components. Projects like this are the first step towards your very own smart lighting system, making your home the envy of any guests.
Multi-zone heating controller
This project was built by Arduino user erkr because his rooms were either too hot or too cold when using a single thermostat.
It allows you to split your home into zones and control the temperature for each zone separately. It’s not only a great way to save on energy bills and create a more comfortable living environment, but it’s also a fantastic tool when hosting parties where rooms have different temperature needs.
PCB gyro gaming wheel
A good gaming setup can turn a good party into an unforgettable one. Arduino user ashraf_minhaj built this project — a gaming steering wheel that can add a new dimension to racing games.
This shouldn’t be too difficult to replicate for anyone with some background in making their own smart projects, and is a cheaper (and more fun) alternative to highly advanced gaming gadgets.
These are just a few ideas to give you some inspiration — with Arduino the sky really is the limit when it comes to creating fun and original new gadgets for your smart home. Get in touch with us to learn more and get started.
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.
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!
What’s the most important substance in the world? After the air we breathe, the answer is almost certainly water. We need it to live, we can’t go more than a few days without it, and it makes up about 60% of our bodies.
All this just makes it even more worrying that in many parts of the world, running out of water is a very real problem. As time goes on, the global population grows, and the effects of climate change continue, water shortages around the world will become even more of a challenge.
What can we do? One of the tools in our toolbox here is automation. Used right, it can help us manage our water supplies better and ensure as many people as possible have access to plentiful safe water. It’s even possible to employ automation in our own homes, using tools like Arduino and the Arduino Cloud and to better manage our water consumption, eliminate any wastage, and save on bills.
Why is water conservation so important?
Even though the planet is 70% water, less than 2% of that is freshwater, and even less is clean and drinkable.
One in six people globally has no access to clean water, which puts them at enormous risk for all kinds of waterborne diseases. And the problem is getting worse — the UN has predicted that water shortages will affect almost 20% of the human population by 2025.
As a result, it’s incredibly important to conserve the clean water we do have and ensure it stretches as far as possible. Here’s why:
Saving water ensures communities are prepared in the event of droughts and other water shortages. Managing our water usage and conserving an appropriate amount when times are good gives us a valuable buffer when times are hard.
Conserving water helps avoid the political unrest and even conflict that can arise when people have to compete for the same inadequate amount of water.
In developed countries, conserving water more efficiently helps protect against rising costs.
Transporting and cleaning water requires a lot of energy. By reducing our usage, we limit the environmental cost of all this work.
How can automation help save water?
The concept of using automation to save water is not new. In fact, there are many innovative projects already in place around the world, and as time goes on they look set to continue. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting ways automation is being used to save our water.
Irrigation sensors
Irrigation — the process of artificially adding water to soil — is a critical part of modern-day farming. It enables us to keep crops watered on a consistent basis, ensuring large-scale farms that can feed entire populations.
However, despite its necessity, irrigation comes at a cost — it uses a huge amount of water. If we can find ways to manage our irrigation systems more efficiently, minimizing waste, we stand to save a lot of H2O.
Enter automated irrigation. This relies on using sensors in the soil to detect when water is needed and trigger irrigation systems only when the levels are low enough to warrant it. This ensures water is used only when needed, helping us conserve much more.
Manage water infrastructure more efficiently
Cities are incredibly complex beasts — huge networks of various different processes and systems to keep the lights on, the trains running… and the water flowing.
Ensuring everyone gets constant access to clean water is a monumental task, and often results in inefficiencies and wastage.
The St. George Water Services Department in Washington County, Utah, decided to introduce automation tools to manage their water systems more efficiently. They did this via a radio network that transmitted sensor data from across the entire district, giving them newfound visibility into their water systems and allowing them to minimize wastage and optimize the water cycle for more than 80,000 people in the city of St. George.
Home automation
Conserving water isn’t something you have to leave to governments and other big organizations. You can start using automation to optimize your water usage at home, saving money on energy bills and doing your bit for the environment.
One example is water sensors, which can detect the level of water in your tank and automatically alert you when they’re running low. They can also automatically turn off the water supply when it isn’t needed.
Another example is detecting leaks — you can install simple sensors that notify you when water is leaking, for example through damaged pipes. This can not only damage your home but also lead to large avoidable costs.
The Arduino Project Hub is filled with examples of home automation systems just like this one. Conserving water in your home is one of many incredibly useful ways to deploy automation, and can be done with only a few components and some basic knowledge.
Visit our Home Automation website to find out more about how Arduino works and how you can get started.
Who said robots had to be all work and no play? For many years, people have been designing and building robots not just to help with chores, but to help us win games. Possibly the most famous examples of this are the robots that play chess.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the history of chess-playing robots, how they’ve evolved over time, and share three famous examples.
And do not forget that with the right inspiration, Arduino, and the Arduino Cloud, creating a robot is not a dream anymore!
The history of robots in chess — Three famous robotic chess prodigies
Chess is an old game. Humans have been playing it for 1,400 years, and for the vast majority of that time, their only opponents were other humans.
As time went on and technology became more advanced, people started to turn their thoughts to ways of using tech to win at chess. One of the first (somewhat clumsy) attempts came in the 18th century.
The Turk
The Mechanical Turk, developed in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen, stunned audiences by repeatedly holding its own against human opponents. The world had changed forever — were machines finally beginning to outsmart their makers!?
Well… not exactly. The Turk actually turned out to be a case of fraud — and featured a human chess player hiding inside the machine and controlling its movements. False alarm.
The Mechanical Turk was destroyed by fire in 1854, after a perplexingly long career.
Boris Handroid
Throughout the 20th century, people worked furiously to build machines that could beat humans at chess. Progress slowly chugged along, and in 1980 the first commercially available chess robot came into being.
It was based on a chess computer called Boris and was extremely rare and limited, to the point where many people doubted it even existed. Due to its incredibly exclusive nature, it’s no surprise that the Handroid never became a household name.
The Milton Bradley Computers
Although the Handroid was not exactly a success story, it did show the world that there was at least an appetite for chess-playing robots, if they could be made effectively and at scale.
In the early 1980s, American board game giant Milton Bradley decided to take on the challenge. Working with computer scientists, they began to develop a robotic chess game that would move the pieces reliably enough to be sold at a mass scale.
The result was actually three different models: the Grandmaster that hit the US market, the Milton which was sold in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, and the Phantom which was built for the British market — although all three devices were extremely similar.
The Milton Bradley chessboard was able to detect where pieces were and used magnets attached to motor-driven belts to pull the pieces around the board. Unlike most of its predecessors, the Milton Bradley chess robot was a success and sold many copies in the US and Europe.
For chess aficionados, an important moment had arrived — you could now play chess at home without the need for a human opponent.
Deep Blue
Although it’s more of a computer program than a robot per se, no article about chess-playing robots would be complete without a mention of Deep Blue. Built on an IBM supercomputer, Deep Blue was the culmination of many years of grueling research and programming — a computer that could finally challenge a human chess champion.
In a series of games over the course of 1996 and 1997 — 10 years after development began on the project at Carnegie Mellon University — Deep Blue beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.
It was a groundbreaking moment not just for chess, but for humanity as a whole — a reminder that, as advanced and intelligent as we are, the machines might just be catching us up.
Build your own chess robots
Today, you don’t need to rely on astronomically expensive novelty gadgets to experience the wonders of chess-playing robots — you can easily make your own at home. With tools like Arduino, amateur tech enthusiasts can assemble chess-playing machines for relatively low cost and without the need for a highly specialized skillset.
The Arduino Project Hub is home to a ton of chess-related projects, including some robots. YouTuber RobotAvatar built this machine that uses 64 reed switches to direct an Arduino Uno where each chess piece is.
Meanwhile, a computer running a Python program takes care of the “thinking” and sends signals to the device to move pieces. It’s a pretty straightforward device that literally adds an extra dimension to the game of computerized chess — allowing you to play games against machines in a much more tangible way.
Another amazing project, created by Greg06 on Instructables, is the automated chessboard that can not only tell where specific pieces are moved but also play against an actual opponent while moving its own pieces.
Chess isn’t the only thing Arduino is capable of. Check out our homepage to learn more about how it all works, the kinds of projects you can build, and how you can get started.
Humans have domesticated animals since the dawn of time. Dogs (our oldest furry friends) were owned by humans as far back as 30,000 years ago, and since then we’ve formed bonds with all kinds of different creatures.
It was only in the last century, though, that we started to actually build our own pets. The history of robot pets is a short but fascinating one, going from barely recognisable gadgets to incredibly sophisticated devices in just a few decades.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the biggest milestones in the evolution of robotic pets, and show you a few neat examples from the Arduino Project Hub.
A history of robot pets
The Phony Pony
Built in 1968 at the University of Southern California, the Phony Pony marked the beginning of a new era. As the first ever autonomous quadrupedal robot, it is the common ancestor to which all of today’s robot dogs and cats can be traced back (despite being named after a different species).
By today’s standards, the Pony wasn’t all that sophisticated. It featured four legs, each with its own hip and knee joint, attached to a frame. But, it worked — the Pony was able to walk around at various slow speeds. It wasn’t wireless but, come on, it was the ‘60s.
The Tamagotchi
Here’s one for the ‘90s kids. The Tamagotchi, released in 1996 in Japan by Bandai, soon made its way to the rest of the world. This simple, handheld device containing an animated pet which needed to be fed, watered, and cared for like any living animal soon became a smash hit — selling over 80 million units to date.
Anyone who has been through the traumatizing experience of losing their Tamagotchi will testify that these bundles of pixels can inspire surprising amounts of love and devotion from their owners.
The Furby
Another ‘90s classic here — the robotic, furry Furbies were popular throughout the world and sold more than 40 million units. While they weren’t the pinnacle of sophistication in terms of what they could actually do, it’s clear that people enjoyed the novelty of a robotic pet that was, in some small way, kind of alive.
BigDog
Released in 2005, the BigDog was the debut project of the now-famous robotics company Boston Dynamics. The BigDog was designed to be used in the military, and is equipped to do tasks like move easily over challenging terrain and carry up to 154 kg of weight.
Unfortunately, in spite of its physical prowess, the BigDog never quite made the cut, as its engine was deemed to be too noisy to be effectively used in combat situations. However, since then Boston Dynamics have been refining and optimizing their robot war dogs, and the latest iterations look very fearsome indeed.
Pleo the Dinosaur
UGOBE, based in California, set out to build a robotic creature that was also imbued with its own operating system, giving it an uncanny resemblance to a living thing. The result was Pleo — a pet dinosaur that uses cutting-edge research in fields like robotics, sociology, and even philosophy to appear very life-like indeed.
ANYmal Robotic Dog
Developed by Swiss robotics company ANYbotics, the ANYmal Robotic Dog was designed to safely inspect unsafe industrial environments. It comes equipped with an arsenal of tools like laser inspection sensors and the ability to autonomously navigate through different environments, collecting and sharing an impressive amount of data.
Make your own
Inspired by the idea of building your very own robotic pet? The Arduino Project Hub has a number of examples from people who have tried their hands at just that. Let’s take a look at a few.
The Nerd
Built in the same mold as the Tamagotchi, The Nerd is an electronic pet that lives in your pocket (or wherever you put it down) and survives by eating WiFi SSIDs (it also needs rest and sunlight).
To properly care for your Nerd, you need to make sure it has just the right balance of offline and online mode, along with sufficient levels of light and darkness. If it’s disconnected from that tasty WiFi for too long, The Nerd will emit a desperate plea in Morse code,
You can build your own Nerd using the Arduino MKR IoT Bundle, a few other components like an RGB LED, phototransistor, and buzzer, and some code. Just make sure it doesn’t go too hungry — The Nerd makes a lot of noise when it dies. And you can now create your own Nerd with just one click with the ready-to-use The Nerd Arduino Cloud template. Read the full tutorial to learn more about how to use it.
Roger Bot
Arduino user hannu_hell built the Roger Bot in their very own home using an Arduino and a few other components. The Roger Bot features a robotic arm and the ability to move around on flat surfaces. It also contains built-in sensors that collect sensory data and display them on an LCD screen.
While it isn’t well-equipped to handle uneven or challenging terrain just now, this is something hannu_hell is working on for the future.
Build your own with Arduino
With an Arduino, a few simple components, and a free subscription to the Arduino Cloud, you too can create your very own robotic pet. Add to the ranks of historical robotic companions and gain a faithful and useful friend. And who knows… with the way AI is developing, maybe a truly autonomous robot pet is only just around the corner.
Our smartphones go pretty much everywhere with us, and we use them for more things than we even realize. From literally the very moment we’re startled into life in the morning, until the one final doom scroll through social media before bed, our phones are with us.
It makes sense, then, to think about ways to connect your smartphone to your Arduino projects, adding another layer of user-friendliness and convenience. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best tips and hacks for bringing your phone and your home automation projects closer together, and we’ll share some examples from the Arduino community. Arduino Cloud is the perfect companion for building automated projects, and the IoT Cloud Remote mobile app makes things a lot easier. In this article we’ll see some companion apps and you can check out more compatible projects in our Home Automation website.
Use the iRobbie app
The iRobbie app is designed specifically to connect your smartphone to your Arduino projects. It’s actually a fairly simple concept, using Bluetooth to connect your phone to the Arduino board. Once connected, you can access a ton of features like object recognition and tracking, all via the phone’s camera. iRobbie allows your Arduino projects to recognise and track over 60 objects.
You can learn more about iRobbie and how to get started with it here.
Notification IoT Using NeoPixel and Smartphone
If there’s one thing phones are good for, it’s receiving updates. But what about when you miss important updates? What about when your phone is on the other side of the room, or the TV is playing loud, or you just missed that vibration?
Speaking of vibrations, wouldn’t it be cool if there were a slightly less annoying way to get notifications from your phone?
Well, step forward Arduino user notiduin, who used NeoPixel and Arduino to find a solution. This project allows you to get notifications in the form of LED lights of different colours. By combining HC-06 Bluetooth, Arduino Uno, Neo Pixel and an Android App, it’s possible to have all your phone’s notifications sent to an Arduino where they can turn on different colours of LED.
You can even assign a certain colour to each type of notification. For example, a Facebook notification can light up the blue LED, an SMS message can trigger the yellow light, and a new email can cause the red light to flash — it’s entirely up to you. The project works with any of the apps on your smartphone.
Getting the perfect smartphone photo can be a tougher task than it first appears. Stores across the world now have their shelves lined with tripods, stands, and other gadgets to make snapping that perfect shot more manageable than ever… but sometimes you just need to take matters into your own hands.
That’s what Reddit user u/careyi4 did. He 3D-printed his very own smartphone camera slider, powered by an Arduino, to make it easier than ever to line up pro-level smartphone photoshoots. Check out the video for more information.
Make any Arduino smartphone-controlled with just a few lines of code
You don’t need to be a programming genius to make your own Arduino projects smartphone-controlled. Reddit user u/TylerTimoj used just a few lines of simple code to make their projects easily controlled from their smartphone, and anyone can emulate it.
You can check out the full project here, along with a video where u/TylerTimoj shows you how it’s done.
Did you know that your phone is an IoT device?
The Arduino IoT Remote app (available for Android and iOS) was created to enable you to remotely manage and monitor your devices through the Arduino Cloud dashboards, offering complete control at your fingertips from anywhere you are. Arduino has gone a BIG step further and enabled you to use the app as an IoT device, utilizing some of the sensors in your mobile phone such as accelerometer, GPS, microphone, compass or barometer to collect data and transmit it to the Arduino Cloud. This feature automatically creates in the Arduino Cloud everything needed to monitor the sensors (the Device, the Thing and a dashboard) and share the data with other devices.
Starting to play with real hardware can be tricky for non-experienced users, so this feature enables users to get familiar with the Arduino Cloud device management environment using their own phone. Easy, right?
But you can also use the data from your phone sensors in your projects. Imagine the endless possibilities using that information. For instance, you can use virtual geographic boundaries for geofencing to initiate actions based on your location. You can also automate home-based tasks such as turning off lights when you depart and turning them on when you return, securing doors, and adjusting home climate control. Moreover, you can track your loved ones with geofencing and receive immediate notifications if they leave a designated area. The accelerometer in your phone can also be utilized to detect accidents or falls, and you can even use your phone as a remote control for games or robots.
Only your imagination sets the boundaries of what you can do with this new feature.
If you want to learn more about the “Phone as Device” feature, don’t miss this article on the documentation.
Unlock a whole new side to your smartphone
With Arduino, a few basic components, and a bit of knowledge, anyone can bring entirely new capabilities to their smartphone and start doing a whole range of new tasks with it. I mean, if it’s going to be with you all day, you might as well get as much out of it as possible, right?
Love your plants, but also have a life? If you work long hours, travel often or just can’t be tied down to a regular schedule, the Arduino Plant Watering Kit is for you.
It’s a complete kit with all the components you need to set up an automated mini irrigation system that will unfailingly water your favorite pothus, spider plant or monstera on a regular schedule.
There’s more: the humidity sensor in the kit connects to the Cloud so you can monitor soil moisture on-the-go from your computer or phone, via a custom dashboard.
This means you can trigger manual watering on a particularly hot day or skip a routine activation if not needed. Over time, you might even gain useful insight about your plants’ water requirements and fine-tune the best schedule for each one, from cacti to ferns.
The whole project is simple to put together and easy to use: a perfect solution to make your plants happy and feel empowered at the same time.
The Plant Watering Kit might be your first taste of home automation, leading to more ambitious projects – why not connect all of your plants, create a smart greenhouse, or explore other areas of the house where IoT can make your life easier?
Whether you want plants off your mind or wish they could just tell you exactly how much water they need, check out the new kit on the Arduino Store.
3D printing, the stuff of science fiction only a few short years ago, is becoming more widely available all the time. Buying your own 3D printer to keep in your home is now fairly accessible, with entry-level printers available for just a few hundred dollars.
But why would you buy one? It’s easy to think 3D printers are still a niche toy, exciting for a few enthusiasts but largely useless for the general population. But this couldn’t be more wrong — 3D printers have a wide range of very practical uses for everyday households.
In this article, we’ll take a look at why 3D printing is so useful and some of the many reasons to consider adding a 3D printer to your own smart home.
Why 3D printing is so useful
It’s fast and convenient. With a 3D printer, you can produce simple objects, creations, and components for existing items in a fairly short amount of time — much quicker than ordering the same things online or heading to a local store.
You get a ton of control over what you print. Need a very specific shaped object to repair a broken item in your home? It may be impossible to buy what you need anywhere, but a 3D printer allows you to create exactly the right size and shape you need.
It’s relatively affordable. As mentioned, basic 3D printers can be had for fairly cheap nowadays, and printing — for smaller objects, at least — costs very little.
It’s sustainable. It’s much more sustainable to print your own things than order them across large distances, and this is especially true for niche items that might need to be shipped across the globe to reach you.
Using 3D printing in your smart home
So what can you use a 3D printer for? There are many potential uses for a 3D printer in your smart home, and they range from practical tasks like repairing broken furniture to more creative hobbies. Let’s take a look at some of the main reasons to own a 3D printer.
Create useful items for your home
3D printers are perfect for creating small, useful items to use around the home. Some examples are coasters, decorations, lampshades, stationery, and small kitchen tools. This is a great way to combine practical use with a fun creative hobby, putting your own personal spin on the little items you use every day.
Repair items
You know that table you have that just never sits right? The door handle that doesn’t quite match the others in the house? The light switch that doesn’t fit exactly flush with the wall?
3D printing is the perfect solution to many of these small defects and faults. Because you have so much control over what you print — 3D printers can print according to virtually any instructions — it’s easy to create components to fix and spruce up the objects and appliances around your smart home.
Education
3D printers aren’t a regular fixture in classrooms around the world just yet, but it’s only a matter of time. These machines allow students to take a more hands-on and creative approach to their learning. Some examples could be:
Science projects like creating models of the solar system of the structure of an atom
Geography work like printing detailed models of mountains or volcanoes
All kinds of product design work
Creative work like art
Arts and creative projects
Creative projects aren’t just for the classroom — many people own 3D printers purely for their own artistic work. There’s almost no limit to what a 3D printer can do in this area, and with a little experience, it’s possible to create truly beautiful and incredibly detailed works of art at home.
Build your own smart home with Arduino
3D printing is just one aspect of a smart home. There’s an almost endless list of things you can do with the right home automation tools — from growing a smart garden to keeping your pets entertained and fed.
Everybody loves a good BBQ. Getting your family and friends together on a long summer day and evening, cooking delicious food and having a great time as smoke drifts through the air — it’s the perfect weekend activity.
BBQs can also be stressful, however. Anyone who has ever tried to host one will know the challenges of managing multiple meats at once, trying to avoid any overcooking (or undercooking) disasters, and keeping track of all that equipment.
Automation can help run your BBQ much more smoothly, minimizing any mishaps and making sure everyone has the best experience possible. In this article, we’ll look at how home automation can improve the BBQ experience and share some examples from Arduino’s Project Hub.
How home automation improves BBQs
Keep track of different items. Automation makes it easier to manage multiple meats and other food items at the same time, notifying you when something is ready so you don’t get overwhelmed by tasks and neglect any of your cooking.
Stay on top of temperature by measuring each piece of food and ensuring it’s at the perfect point.
Create a more welcoming outdoor area with things like automated lighting, heaters, and even a smart garden.
Easy cleanup with robots and other tools to leave your grill and other tools sparkling clean.
Arduino community member Duncan Barbee knew that the most flavorful way to grill is to use charcoal to heat your smokers. While propane and electric smokers give you better temperature control, they lose that unique and delicious charcoal flavor.
But charcoal heaters present many challenges. You need to constantly stay on top of the temperature, adjusting the vents on a regular basis to make sure everything is just right as the charcoal level changes in the smoker.
Barbee wanted to build a project that gave him the best of both worlds — the tasty charcoal flavor with the ease and convenience of an electric or propane smoker. He developed a controller that monitors the temperature in the smoker and automatically adjusts the airflow to the charcoal to maintain the correct temperature at all times, allowing him to sit back and relax as the perfect charcoal-based BBQ unfolds.
Robert Korn had already created a sous vide controller using Arduino and a handful of other components, with great success. He chose to apply the same model to a smoker and devised the Smokerduino, which ensures perfectly cooked meat every time with minimal effort from the chef.
Roger Theriault and his wife enjoy making cheese and yogurt at home, but this is a long process involving a thermometer and lots of waiting around. To cut some steps out, he built his own smart thermometer to monitor the temperature of the food and beep when a specific temperature was reached and it was time for the next step.
However, when the device stopped working, Theriault decided to upgrade it instead of simply fixing it. The new iteration of the thermometer uses Alexa devices too, enabling him to easily monitor and control everything cooking in the kitchen or outside in the smoker.
The way it works is fairly straightforward — just give Alexa an instruction and it will find the recipe and instruct the given device to start from step one of that recipe. It also draws on the data from the recipe to monitor the temperature and make any notifications or adjustments needed.
Better BBQs with Arduino
Monitoring and controlling cooking is one of the most useful and rewarding use cases for home automation. Arduino’s products make it possible to assemble detailed and advanced projects to take your BBQs to the next level.
Check out the project hub for some more inspiration or visit the home page to learn more about how Arduino works.
Keeping the air in your home in the right condition is incredibly important. Your home is your safe haven from the outside world, a place where you can control your environment and enjoy the comfort and peace of a secure space.
Humidifiers are an excellent way to keep the atmosphere of your home in exactly the right balance for your health and enjoyment. Traditional humidifiers work well, but automated humidifiers can work even better.
In this article, we’ll look at why humidifiers are so useful and how you can use home automation to create your own smart home humidifiers.
Why home humidification is important
Stay moisturized. Humidifiers keep the air in your home sufficiently full of moisture, which helps counteract the effects of artificial heating systems. This prevents dry skin — especially on the lips and hands — as a result of dry indoor air.
Keep your sinuses in good condition. Dry air, over time, can cause your sinuses to become irritated. It’s a feeling most people are aware of and can result in discomfort, headaches, and even nosebleeds. A good humidifier helps avoid this, ensuring your sinuses are lubricated and healthy at all times.
Make it easier to recover from illness. The right humidifier can ease the path to recovery from illnesses like the flu or a cold by helping your sinuses recover.
Minimise snoring. A noisy bed partner, over many months, can be the source of much stress and frustration. Snoring is a complex issue that can be difficult to solve, but a good humidifier can often ease the problem significantly by providing enough moisture to keep the throat and nose clear.
Living in Boston, Arduino user chenwei19940207 found that the air was so dry, especially in the evening, that a solution was needed. As a result, they decided to develop their own humidifier to turn on and off automatically, ensuring a consistent level of humidity in the air all year round and all day long.
Healthy air has three components — be fresh, clean, and the right humidity. The third factor is important because humans use evaporative cooling (sweating) to rid our bodies of excess heat. This is why humans can be comfortable and safe within a fairly wide range of humidity — between 30 to 70 percent at a push.
But we still struggle at lower levels of humidity. It can result in great discomfort, trouble breathing, and aggravated allergies, and anything below 20% humidity is especially difficult. As a result, it’s best to keep our homes at the right level of humidity.
Recognizing this, Arduino member Md. Khairul Alam developed a project to keep the home sufficiently humidified year round. His device senses the temperature and humidity in your home, checks if it is in the ideal humidity range, and turns on the humidifier to ensure you stay in the right zone.
Arduino “having11” Guy developed this project to regulate the humidity of their home. It involves attaching a dht11 temperature and humidity sensor to an Arduino, letting you modify your humidifier in a way that allows you to automatically turn the device on whenever the humidity in your home drops below a set level, for example 30%.
You also have the ability to set a “cooling down” period, avoiding the humidifier becoming overheated.
NOTE: It’s worth noting that this project uses high voltage and amperage, and doing any of these steps incorrectly could result in serious injury or even death. So be careful and don’t attempt this without any prior experience or skill!
Build a healthier smart home with Arduino
With Arduino, controlling the humidity of your home is just the beginning. Our Project Hub is filled with examples of home automation projects, using all kinds of technology to make their homes smarter, safer, and easier to live in.
Check out our site to find out more uses for Arduino and how you can get started with your own home automation projects.
A beautiful, lush garden is a wonderful thing. Not only does it look good year-round and impress the neighbours, but itâs also a great place to spend time in the summer months and entertain guests.
However, a good garden is not an easy thing to maintain. It takes many hours of hard work and toil to create a beautiful garden in the first place, and then many more hours to keep it that way. If you take a vacation or have a few busy weeks, things can start to go wrong fast.
The good news here is that home automation can save the day. With the right tools, you can build a smart garden that cares for itself in many ways and is more efficient, convenient, and even more impressive.
In this article, weâll take a look at why a smart garden is the best kind of garden, and some of the smart features you could consider building into your own outdoor space.
How home automation helps with gardening
It saves time and stress. Smart gardening tools allow you to automate a lot of your gardening work, from mowing the lawn to watering the flowers, so you can spend more time enjoying your garden and less time worrying about it.
Itâs more efficient. With the right combination of smart gardening tools, you can optimize energy use in your garden, saving water, power, and money.
Your garden will grow better. Smart gardening devices know how to optimize your garden, ensuring your plants have just the right balance of nutrients, light, water, and more to grow in the perfect way.
Features of a smart garden
Now letâs take a look at some of the top smart gardening devices and how they work to transform your little patch of nature into the perfect self-nurturing paradise.
Smart sprinklers
Watering the garden is one of those monotonous tasks that brings very little joy but is impossible to avoid. Well, not anymore! Smart sprinklers can take care of this tedious task, working according to a pre-set schedule or even based on sensors that measure the dryness of the soil. Smart sprinklers even know when to conserve water, saving you money on bills.
Smart lawn mowers
There can be a certain satisfaction in trimming the lawn, but most of the time itâs a chore. Fortunately, mowing the lawn is one of those gardening tasks that are particularly easy to automate, and smart lawn mowers can easily take care of it.
Smart lighting
The right lighting can make the difference between a welcoming, ambient outdoor space and a dark patch of grass. As well as making your garden more hospitable to you and your guests, lighting is also useful for security reasons and for helping plants grow.
Smart lighting can take your garden lighting up another notch. It can decide when to turn on based on a pre-determined schedule or by detecting light levels, and it can even adjust lighting levels to suit the environment. Smart lights can detect movement for security, and can measure natural light levels and switch on to provide your plants with the light they need.
Smart indoor plant care
Not all gardens are outdoors. More and more people, especially in cities, are tending to their own indoor gardens. There are many benefits to this â plants in the home have been shown to improve mood, boost focus, and even help you heal faster.
Home automation devices can make sure your indoor garden is healthy and cared for even when youâre not around by automating watering and feeding, managing light levels, and keeping track of your plantsâ health via sensors.
Smart soil and plant sensors
Many smart garden tools simply automate tasks we can already do ourselves. But what about things we canât do, at least not without specialist equipment? One example is measuring the levels of moisture and the balance of nutrients in your soil. Smart garden tools are able to do this, along with monitoring other conditions like temperature and light levels.
By keeping track of this data, your smart garden can ensure your plants have the perfect environment to grow, allowing you to make changes and adjustments in response to changes in conditions. You can learn about the perfect time to water your plants, the exact nutrients your soil needs most, and much more. Itâs a data-driven approach to gardening.
Weather sensors
The weather can be an unpredictable thing, but itâs one of the most important factors when it comes to growing and managing a healthy garden. Keeping track of the weather is now easier than ever with the right smart garden solutions, which can monitor things like rain, temperature, humidity, and more.
This information allows you to better understand your garden and learn what types of plants thrive best there, as well as make adjustments to help your current plants adapt and grow more successfully.
Grow a smart garden with Arduino
Arduinoâs Project Hub is full of examples of people who have used automation to build their own, DIY garden projects. Arduino is built to be simple, user-friendly, and effective â helping you take control of your home automation.
Let’s face it — mornings can be tough. Even the earliest risers and the most enthusiastic morning larks sometimes struggle to drag themselves out of bed and attack the day. The good news is that automation can always save things.
By using home automation wisely, you can save time in the morning, cut out tedious tasks, and start the day on the best possible note. In this article, we’ll look at why automation works so well in the morning and share some morning projects from the Arduino community.
Morning is the best time for automation
Home automation has a ton of benefits at all times of the day, but it’s especially useful in the morning. That’s because the first few minutes and hours of the day are usually where we need to save time the most.
Automation helps save precious seconds off your AM routine by helping you rise earlier, save time on important morning tasks, and manage your time better. As a result, you get less stress and more time to focus on enjoying the start of the day.
Now, let’s take a look at some projects from the Arduino community that members built to improve their own mornings.
Morning automation examples from the Arduino community
Alarm clock
Arduino member galoebn had had enough of struggling with slow, difficult mornings. To solve the problem, they made an alarm clock that really worked.
The clock uses a motion sensor, so it notices if you get back into bed after hitting the snooze button. If so, the alarm will go off again, but if you stay out of bed for a certain period of time, the alarm won’t sound anymore.
Best of all, this project is fairly easy to construct at home with just a few components including a clock module, a motion sensor, a buzzer, a small button and an Arduino.
Coffee machine
In the morning, there are few things better than a steaming cup of coffee to get the day started. However, coffee takes time to brew, and there’s no feeling more frustrating than realizing you don’t have enough time to prepare your morning cup of Joe.
Arduino member Thomas sxt was so tired of this feeling that he decided to build his own automatic coffee machine to take care of this part of the morning routine, ensuring a hot cup of coffee was waiting for him every morning.
The machine works via an app, allowing you to choose your coffee size, and can even be controlled by voice.
Curtain control
Throwing your curtains wide open is a great way to start the day. Our bodies are programmed to respond to natural light in the morning, and it helps us wake up naturally and get energised for the day ahead. Of course, climbing out of bed to open the curtains is less fun.
Arduino member JayV decided to solve the problem by designing curtains that automatically open in the morning and close in the evening according to your pre-set instructions. The project also comes with a manual override, just in case you want to take a mid-day nap.
Your curtains need to be the right design to work (JayV’s old curtains had a simple looping rope) but it should work with most models.
LUMOS: Smart lamp for better sleep
Smart lighting isn’t just about creating a more comfortable home environment, it can also give us great control over our daily routines and even improve our health.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, we are surrounded by sources of blue light. It bombards us from our TVs, smartphones, and laptops, and this blue light causes our bodies to produce more cortisol which makes it more difficult to fall asleep. More than 20% of the world population is sleep deprived, and this is very likely linked to the fact that many people spend huge portions of their day around unnatural blue light sources.
To tackle this problem in his own home, Arduino community member Jonty came up with the LUMOS smart lamp. The lamp mimics the natural light of the sun as it passes overhead each day, generating bright blue light in the morning and warmer amber light (which has been shown to encourage melatonin production and get us ready for sleep) in the evening.
This lamp even pairs with WiFi and uses machine learning to adjust the light to match your sleep schedule.
Have better mornings (and evenings) with Arduino
Arduino makes it possible to gain greater control over your environment and optimize your daily routine to be as healthy and productive as possible. The ideas shared in this article are just the start — with the right set of components and some basic knowledge there’s almost no limit to what you can do with home automation.
Whether it’s a home, an office, a school, a restaurant, or something else, it’s always important to keep your indoor environment safe, clean, and pleasant to be inside.
It’s also a good idea to keep track of the air quality and conditions around you, not just for safety but also to ensure your systems are all working correctly and to avoid any wastage and inefficiencies.
Accurately monitoring your buildings can seem like a big challenge, but it’s actually very achievable with the right tools, and in fact, doesn’t require a whole lot of technology and expertise to get started. In this article, we’ll look at why it’s so essential to monitor your buildings and how anyone can build their own systems for doing so.
What is building automation and why is it important?
Building automation refers to the combination of processes that allow automatic centralized control over many of a building’s systems. This includes heating, lighting, ventilation, and much more — all controlled through one central system.
Here’s why building automation is so useful:
It makes the environment more comfortable and pleasant for occupants
More efficient operation and less wastage of resources
Lower energy costs
Utilities and equipment last longer
An Example: Indoor Air Quality and Garbage Monitoring System
Arduino community member Guillermo Perez Guillen helped design and build his own indoor air quality and garbage monitoring system with the help of Arduino’s tools and a series of other materials.
The project used IOTA — an open-source distributed accounting technology built to securely exchange information and value within the Internet of Things. It’s designed in a way that ensures no commissions, low latency, and better scalability.
Using this framework, Guillermo built 3 systems to monitor the air and garbage of his building in Mexico City.
2 indoor air quality monitoring systems
Using the Arduino UNO board and a number of different sensors, Guillermo created 2 systems aimed at monitoring the air quality inside the building.
The first system measured the temperature in both Celcius and Fahrenheit along with Relative Humidity Percentage. The second system also measured these factors, along with the concentrations of LPG gas in ppm and CO gas in ppm.
Garbage monitoring system
In addition to air quality, Guillermo also built a system to monitor how much garbage was in the building’s trashcans at any given time, measured as a percentage of the trashcan’s capacity. This made it easier to track when the trashcans were full and needed to be changed, avoiding unpleasant overspilling and confusion.
The data collected from all 3 systems was sent to IOTA via the Arduino UNO and Raspberry Pi boards using Masked Authenticated Messaging (MAM).
A better environment for everyone
By keeping track of air quality and garbage in this way, it’s possible to run a much more efficient, clean, and pleasant environment in a building. The same project could be replicated fairly easily in most offices, apartment buildings, schools, and even individual homes.
Smart buildings allow us to harness the power of technology and data to maintain a better environment to live and work in. With Arduino’s products, these tools are now much more widely available, and easy to learn and start taking advantage of.
Security is one of the things we value most in our homes. A home is somewhere to feel safe, protected from the harms of the outside world. As a result, we tend to invest a lot of money in security features like well-locked doors, alarms, and cameras.
Most of the tools we use to keep our homes safe are decades or even centuries old. Can smart technology and automation help make our homes even safer? In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the ways you can use automation and other tools to keep your smart home as secure as possible.
Smart home security
There are lots of ways you can harness technology to improve the security of your home, such as:
Smart doorbells with attached cameras, that can film the person ringing your doorbell at any given time and transmit the video to your smartphone. This helps you quickly register who is at your door and alert you to any suspicious behavior, even when you’re not at home.
Smart alarm systems that use sensors to monitor movement around your home and send alerts to your phone. These can also use camera footage to record any suspicious activity
Smart locking features that allow you to open your doors using a digital keypad or even an app on your phone
Project examples
Let’s take a look at some smart home security projects from the Arduino community.
Arduino member Jayesh Naweni wanted to build a password-based door locking system. The project involved creating a keypad where you can enter the password and unlock the door without the need for carrying any keys.
This type of project is very simple to get started, requires only a few materials, and can be done by someone with a beginner-level understanding of programming.
The project works by using a sensor which detects movement outside the door of your home. When it picks you up, an LED will switch on and you’ll be required to say a specific, pre-set password to gain access. If it’s correct, this will trigger another LED and a music player and you will be allowed to enter. If you say the wrong password, a buzzer will sound and the camera will capture a photo of you (or your intruder) and post it on Twitter.
This system also helps keep the home safe by detecting if the water and gas in your kitchen pass a certain threshold. If so, you’ll receive an alert on your phone and the fan will be turned on to push gas out of the home.
Aaron Kow built this entire IoT security model as the final year project submission during his last year of engineering at University. It’s designed to be remotely accessible from any smart device or PC, allowing you to quickly stay on top of the security of your entire home.
The project relies on multiple sensors set up throughout the house. When the system is activated, any harmful activities taking place will be detected and a message alert will be sent to the homeowner.
On top of this, data collected by the sensors will be stored in the cloud and displayed on a website via a custom web-based application. This allows you to monitor any suspicious activity that takes place in real time. The project also features Access Control Technology, using the “Near Field Communication” approach that can recognize trusted individuals with the right to enter the house.
Create a safer home with Arduino
Smart homes are often safer homes. It’s fairly easy to build simple home security systems, drawing on technologies like automation and the cloud to detect intruders, alert you to any suspicious activity, and make it easier for you to protect your home and the people in it.
Arduino’s products can help you do this, and it doesn’t take long to learn the basics and start putting together your own cloud projects for all kinds of fascinating purposes. Visit our homepage to find out more and get started.
Smart homes have many benefits, and it’s not all about convenience, security, and chores. Entertainment is a big part of what we do at home, and smart technology can help us maximize our enjoyment of our home entertainment systems and manage them more easily.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the ways smart home technology leads to better entertainment, and we’ll share a few examples of home entertainment projects from the Arduino project hub that you can try.
The benefits of smart home entertainment
Smart entertainment systems are easier to control and navigate. Smart tech makes it easier to change the volume, switch between systems, and get more out of your entertainment device’s features.
You can sync entertainment devices with other gadgets like voice control tools and even exercise machines to create a more user-friendly and feature-rich experience.
With smart tech you gain more control over your devices, allowing you to monitor things like screen time and use, and keep younger family members safe by banning certain sites and apps and monitoring activity.
Exercise and entertainment can be a perfect combination, with devices like the Peloton gaining lots of popularity in recent years. Connecting an exercise machine to your home entertainment system can be a great way to make your workouts more interesting and engaging — especially when your entertainment acts as an incentive to work harder.
Arduino community member Roboro built this project where he connected a stationary bike to an Arduino Nano, allowing him to control the streaming of Netflix on a PC.
When you set up the device, it will open Firefox and start playing Netflix. The bike will monitor your speed according to a routine you designed, and if you fall below your desired speed for too long Netflix will pause until you speed up again. You don’t have to use Netflix — the same setup should work with any streaming service with a few small tweaks.
Pravin Desai built this simple project to allow users to change the channel on their TV using their voice. Voice control is a popular tool in many homes today, and devices like Amazon’s Alexa now make it easier than ever to control the technology in our homes simply by telling it what to do.
Desai’s project works by using a Bluetooth-controlled voice TV remote with an IR transmitter. An app called BT voice control converts voice input to string and sends it to Arduino to make your command a reality.
Jose Luis Bejarano Vasquez built a project to help users control their TV, DVD, and audio system using Arduino and an Android app. It’s fairly easy to replicate and requires only a handful of components.
The good old-fashioned pinball machine is a tried-and-tested form of entertainment, a staple of arcades and bars the world over. In your home, a pinball machine can be the perfect way to entertain guests or even just keep yourself busy.
Arduino member Frogger1108 had always wanted a pinball machine but soon discovered that fully-working pinball machines in good condition do not come cheap and require a lot of maintenance and knowledge — especially the older electromechanical (EM) machines.
Frogger1108 spent some time looking up how to build a pinball machine and found various homemade projects using Arduino. Instead of buying their own pinball machine components (which was expensive and time-consuming), Frogger1108 bought an old pinball playfield on eBay and used it for its parts.
The end result was a fully functional pinball machine controlled by a single Arduino Mega 2560. It cost significantly less than a new or even slightly used machine and is every bit as entertaining and fun.
Create a more entertaining home with Arduino
Building a better home entertainment system with fun games, easier control of your existing gadgets, and even more fun exercise options is easier than ever with Arduino’s tools. You can now build a home that is more enjoyable to spend time in for you, your family, and any guests you have over.
Visit our home page to learn more about how Arduino works and the many different projects you can build with our solutions.
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Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff ist erforderlich, um Nutzerprofile zu erstellen, um Werbung zu versenden oder um den Nutzer auf einer Website oder über mehrere Websites hinweg zu ähnlichen Marketingzwecken zu verfolgen.
