“Code IT”, my thoughts on technology
This is a story of yet another DIY project. The result is a simple, inexpensive, open-source water-based bed cooling system that uses frozen ice packs instead of active refrigeration. This article explains how it works, why I designed it this way, and where the project stands today. Introduction A comfortable night s sleep is essential for ... Read more The post ‘Two Buckets, Two Loops’ Method…
Introduction I have a Home Assistant-based Smart Home in my apartment. Many of my electronic devices are connected to HA and I can monitor and manage them centrally. The main communication method for all the devices is Wi-Fi with Zigbee being a second option. Some time ago I wanted to monitor several processes outside of ... Read more The post Easy wireless mesh network with ESP32s and Arduino…
A year ago I published an article about a very simple Vibration Logger using an Arduino Uno, an SD card and an accelerometer. Recently, the need to measure vibration came up again, but this time I wanted something better. A device that will let me monitor the readings from anywhere without the need to go ... Read more The post Thingy:91 cellular vibration sensor first appeared on Arik Yavilevich's…
Recently I have had to monitor the operation of a system of pumps over a period of a few days. Monitoring in person would be a waste of time and would be a pain to do at night. The operation state of the pumps can be determined by the vibration of the system. When the ... Read more The post Arduino Vibration Logger first appeared on Arik Yavilevich's blog .
When I was taking my young kids to the park or playground I wished I had a solution that would tell me where they are in case they go out of sight. This led me to a project where I made a system to tell me in which direction (AKA bearing) and how far a ... Read more The post Real-time location tracking of individuals or things that are important to you first appeared on Arik Yavilevich's blog .
Smoke detectors are simple and effective means for saving lives and reducing damage to property in case of a fire. You should use smoke detectors in your house even if your local regulations don t require you to do so. All smoke detectors make a loud beeping alarm sound if smoke is detected, but some models ... Read more The post Integrating 433Mhz smoke detectors with Home Assistant first…
Separation between code and data (specifically configuration data) is a critical concept in any development environment. Having worked a lot with the nodejs stack I found the way configuration is handled in embedded Arduino/PlatformIO projects surprisingly messy. I decided to come up with a convention to simplify this and I will describe it below. tl;dr, ... Read more The post Convention for…
This is a quick follow-up post to my previous article about converting a Rinnai heater device to a smart device and controlling it with WiFi. Previously, when making the board that connects between the ESP32 and the traces of the Rinnai control panel, I did something that is not per-spec. I was using the ESP32 ... Read more The post Making a proper adapter board for the “smart” WiFi Rinnai first…
This article covers a home automation project, in which I extended a control panel of a Rinnai gas water heater with an ESP32. The ESP32 then functions as an interface between the control panel and Home Assistant, a home automation software. tl;dr, the ESP32 sits as a MitM (proxy) on a few data lines inside ... Read more The post Changing a “dumb” Rinnai water heater to a smart one first appeared…
This article covers an automotive project, in which I connect unused buttons on my car s steering wheel to a micro-controller, which in turn emulates a keyboard and mouse device to the car s infotainment system via USB. tl;dr, the buttons form a resistor ladder and I use an STM32 black pill board to read the state ... Read more The post Repurposing unused steering wheel buttons as generic macros…