[Aleksejs Mirnijs] needed a tool to accurately measure the power consumption of his Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects, which is an important parameter for dimensioning adequate power supplies and battery packs. Since most SBC projects require a USB hub anyway, he designed a smart, WiFi-enabled 4-port USB hub that is also a power meter – his entry for this year’s Hackaday Prize.

[Aleksejs’s] design is based on the FE1.1s 4-port USB 2.0 hub controller, with two additional ports for charging. Each port features an LT6106 current sensor and a power MOSFET to individually switch devices on and off as required. An Atmega32L monitors the bus voltage and current draw, switches the ports and talks to an ESP8266 module for WiFi connectivity. The supercharged hub also features a display, which lets you read the measured current and power consumption at a glance.

Unlike most cheap hubs out there, [Aleksejs’s] hub has a properly designed power path. If an external power supply is present, an onboard buck converter actively regulates the bus voltage while a power path controller safely disconnects the host’s power line. Although the first prototype is are already up and running, this project is still under heavy development. We’re curious to see the announced updates, which include a 2.2″ touchscreen and a 3D-printable enclosure.

In this video, our friends at PubNub are going to create a smart home network that builds upon their previous Johnny Five tutorial. They again hack an Arduino Uno using JavaScript, but this time to create the simplest smart bulb. Because by “smart bulb,” we really just mean an LED.

The tutorial was developed by Tomomi Imura from PubNub and also uses Johnny-Five. No, not the robot from the movie Short Circuit. It is an open-source JavaScript robotics framework that lets you program an Arduino with Node.js. The bulb itself is remotely controlled via a web portal.

To establish the realtime communication between the Arduino and a web browser, the PubNub Data Stream Network (DSN) is used. PubNub provides global infrastructure and allows you to build and scale real-time apps and IoT devices quite easily.

The remote controller (web app) is written in JavaScript. This is a simple user interface that includes only one button. While a completed code sample is available on CodePen, this tutorial employs a simplified version so that it’s easier to follow along.

Use a servo to flick a light switch mechanically — without ever touching 110V power — with this Wi-Fi “Turner Onner”

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Back at Arduino Day 2016, Massimo Banzi explored the true meaning of the Internet of Things in a more philosophical, approachable way. During his presentation, the Arduino co-founder touched upon the current state of the industry, some guiding principles, as well as what the future may entail.

“A lot of people are trying to build products that are connected, but not a lot of stuff makes a lot of sense right now. There’s a lot of strange stuff happening. It’s the beginning of an industry,” Banzi explained. “There’s a couple of misconceptions. A lot of people tend to equate the Internet of Things with smart thermostats for your home, and it’s much more than that. The part of the IoT that right now is impacting and can impact your life the most is the least sexy one.”

You can watch the entire talk below:

Great news for Makers working on IoT projects! The Arduino and Genuino Yún Shield — now available on our online store for $49.90/€43.90 — is a device that enables you to easily bring Yún features to Arduino and Genuino boards supporting shields.

It’s the perfect shield to start connecting your projects to the Internet thanks to the Yún Web Panel and the dedicated ”YunFirstConfig” sketch. This new feature, implemented in the new Arduino Software (IDE) 1.6.9, allows you to manage your shield preferences and upload your sketch on the attached Arduino or Genuino. Like the previous Yún board, the Yún Shield uses the Bridge library and extends your board capabilities using the Linux processor.

The new Yún family runs the latest version of OpenWRT (15.05 Chaos Calmer), which offers an additional layer of security and a large amount of bug fixes over previous Yún distribution. The precompiled package list is huge (we have more than 4,000 packages ready to be installed), and if you still can’t find what you are looking for, you can use the community provided repositories since the new release is fully modular (not a fork).

Want to learn more? Explore all there is to know about the Yún Shield, including its documentation via the links below:

• Yún Shield Product page
• Getting Started guide

Go hands-on with these dedicated tutorials:

Got any question? Join the forum!

The internet of things is this strange marketing buzzword that seems to escape from the aether and infect our toasters and refrigerators. Now even a hamster is not safe.

[Mifulapirus]’s hamster, Ham, was living a pleasant hamster life. Then his owner heard about another hamster named Sushi, whose running wheel stats were broadcasted to the internet. Not to be left behind, Ham’s wheel was soon upgraded. Now Ham is burdened by the same social pressures our exercise apps try to encourage us to use. No, we are most certainly not going to tell our friends about two fourteen minute miles with a twenty minute coffee break in the middle, MapMyRun, we are not.

The feat of techno enslavement for the little hamster was accomplished with a custom board, an esp8266, and an arduino as described in the instructable. The arduino can be left out of the project now that the libraries have been ported to the esp8266. A hall effect sensor detects when the 3D printed hamster wheel is spinning.

If you’d like to check in on Ham, the little guy is alive and well, and the twitter is here. It looks like it’s been upgraded since the original article was posted. Now it shows when Ham is awake and running around the cage doing hamster errands.

This past week we celebrate Arduino Day with Makers like, saw a new marble machine, and started a conversation about how coding is taught.

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The Arduino MKR1000 is now shipping. But perhaps more importantly, comes the announcement of both Arduino's next generation community platform, and a new cloud development environment.

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Kansas City stages a 10-mile opening day pitch relay using a baseball that you can text message.

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The post Smart Baseball Allows You to Message it on Opening Day appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

No longer content with adding value to the thermostat in the hallway or making your fridge smarter than it should be, IoT vendors are pushing into the inner sanctum of homes, the holy of holies – the bathroom. Sure, you can spend big bucks on an electronically controlled valve to turn your shower into a remote-controlled spa that shares your bathing habits with the cloud, but if you’re on a more modest budget and have the hacker spirit, you might want to check out this DIY automated shower valve with IoT features.

When we last ran into [TVMiller], he was opening gates using Jedi mind tricks, and before that he was shrinking a floating golf green to a manageable size. Such hacks work up a sweat, and while a clean hacker is a happy hacker, all that pesky valve-twisting and temperature-fiddling is so annoying. So with a few parts acquired from the waste stream, like an acrylic box, some salvaged servos, popsicle sticks, and a hell of a lot of caulk, [TVMiller] hacked together a feature-packed controller for his existing shower valves. An Arduino MKR1000 reads the water temperature and controls the servos that allow him to start the shower from his phone. Time and temperature data are sent to the cloud using ThingSpeak. You can see the whole thing in action in the mildly-NSFW video after the break.

Admittedly, this is a pretty janky setup, but it falls under the universal hacker disclaimer of “it’s just a prototype.” Still, we like the idea of retrofitting standard shower valves, and the popsicle-stick parallelograms for increasing leverage is a neat trick. We’ll be watching to see where this goes next.