More 3D Printed IKEA Hacks Make Life Better

There’s an old joke that the CEO of IKEA is running to be Prime Minister of Sweden. He says he’ll be able to put together his cabinet in no time. We don’t speak Swedish, but [Adam Miklosi] tells us that the word “uppgradera” means “upgrade” in Swedish. His website, uppgradera.co …read more

Continue reading More 3D Printed IKEA Hacks Make Life Better

Making Smart Bulbs Smarter With The Power Of MQTT

What’s the point of smart home automation? To make every day tasks easier, of course! According to [Tomasz Cybulski], that wasn’t the case when he installed IKEA smart lights in his closet. It’s handy to have them in a common switch, in this case a remote control, but having to …read more

Continue reading Making Smart Bulbs Smarter With The Power Of MQTT

DIY ESP32 Video Doorbell Locks Out Big Brother

There’s no question that being able to see who’s at your front door from your computer or mobile device is convenient, which is why the market is currently flooded with video doorbells. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear who else has access to the images these devices capture. Organizations such as …read more

Continue reading DIY ESP32 Video Doorbell Locks Out Big Brother

Protect Your Tomatoes With A 9V Battery

Growing fresh vegetables at home is a popular pastime, even moreso in a year when we’ve all been locked inside. However pests can easily spoil a harvest, potentially putting a lot of hard work down the drain. [Matt] of [DIY Perks] isn’t one to give up his tomatoes without a …read more

Continue reading Protect Your Tomatoes With A 9V Battery

A Brain Transplant For An Uncommon Smart Bulb

By now it’s a hardware hack that’s become common enough to be unremarkable, taking a smart light bulb or other mains switchable appliance and replacing its firmware with an open-source equivalent such as Tasmota. But what can be done when a new device is found to have a microcontroller unsupported …read more

Continue reading A Brain Transplant For An Uncommon Smart Bulb

DIY Automated Roller Blinds

Controlling blinds using off the shelf solutions can be expensive – more so if you have multiple blinds you want to control. [HumanSkunk87] felt the cost was too high, so they designed a controller to automatically open and close the blinds.

The main part of this build is a motor …read more

Continue reading DIY Automated Roller Blinds

Wemo Smart Plug Gets Brain Transplant

Like many modern smart home gadgets, Belkin’s Wemo brand of smart plugs has a tendency to phone home every time you turn on a lamp. [Gigawatts] wasn’t having it, so they figured out how to flash the device with OpenWRT and replicated its original functionality with a web interface. Unfortunately …read more

Continue reading Wemo Smart Plug Gets Brain Transplant

Amazon Sidewalk: Should You Be Co-Opted Into A Private Neighbourhood LoRa Network?

WiFi just isn’t very good at going through buildings. It’s fine for the main living areas of an average home, but once we venture towards the periphery of our domains it starts to become less reliable.  For connected devices outside the core of a home, this presents a problem, and …read more

Continue reading Amazon Sidewalk: Should You Be Co-Opted Into A Private Neighbourhood LoRa Network?