Integrating RF smoke sensors into Smart Home

Reflecting from the fire in the Office of Ministry of Transportation This is an industrial-grade smoke detector that sounds very noisy and transmits an “RF-433 MHz alarm” when exposing heavy smoke (e.g., in case of fire). I converted it to a network device using an MQTT-RF bridge, so:1) it can be monitored anywhere, anytime, and … Read moreIntegrating RF smoke sensors into Smart Home

Android sensors to Smart Home

Our Android phone is by default equipped with multiple sensors, e.g., accelerator sensors, magnetic field, photo light detector, noise level sensor, etc. I have an unused LG G4 which I turned into a sensor device. To convert the sensor readings into MQTT message, Sensor Node Pro is used. Telegraf is embedded to the MQTT server … Read moreAndroid sensors to Smart Home

Low-powered living body detection

A friend asked me to design a low-powered living body detection system for a rural farm in Indonesia. The constraints are no electricity and limited Internet connectivity. The system is designed in microservices atop Raspbian to ease massive rollout.

Mailbox checker

As an online shopper, I need to regularly check my mailbox, 5 floors separated from home. It is really annoying to check whether a new delivery arrives. I came out with this mailbox checker solution that should draw low power (less frequent battery replacement, >6 months) and small (portable). To detect mailbox door activity, I … Read moreMailbox checker

Zwave+ vs. WiFi-based IoT devices

There are at least 4 competing IoT connectivity technologies that have already numerous rolled-out products in the market, i.e., RF-433 MHz, WiFi (ESP8266-based devices), Zigbee, and Zwave+. The first two have abundant cheap products, the other two have limited vendor-independent commercial products. I saw a lot of Zigbee & Zwave vendor-locked devices at IoT Expo … Read moreZwave+ vs. WiFi-based IoT devices