Articles

Air conditioners consume a fair amount of electricity. As such, forgetting to turn one off before leaving one's home can result in an expensive electricity bill. This is a Wi-Fi enabled controller for air condtioners, which can turn the unit on or off according to MQTT messages. It is built around an Wemos D1 mini and interfaces with the AC using an IR LED.

This headset enables the overlay of information on top of its user's field of view. The field of view of the user is captured by a camera and then fed to video goggles, while a MAX7456 OSD chip overlays text on the video feed.

The thermal insulation of my apartment not being the best, I decided to buy an electric heater in order not to freeze during cold winter nights. However, the one I got was probably too powerful for my needs and letting it run for too long would heat up my place too much. Thus, I added a wifi enabled controller to it so its operations are controlled by my home automation system.

Few would argue that having lights turned on in a room without occupant is a waste of electricity. Ideally, lights and other appliances like air conditioners would only be turned on when someone is around. This project is a NodeJS application that gathers data about the occupancy of an apartment and manages appliances accordingly.

This briefcase is fitted with an electronic lock and a fingerprint reader so as to be unlocked with a simple touch. It also features a bluetooth module, which enables unlocking using a smartphone or computer.

Smartwatches can be rather expensive and tend to be known for their poor battery life. On the other hand, Xiaomi's Mi band 2 is cheap and its battery lasts for up to 20 days. However, the Mi band 2 is mainly limited to fitness tracking functions, at least without the appropriate apps.

One of the companies I used to work for had a serious bathroom issue: My floor had only three toilet stalls for about 200 employees. There were countless times when I would walk all the way to the bathroom only to find all stalls occupied. I built this simple system to quickly identify whether one or more stall were. It consists of an IoT sensor installed on the bathroom stalls' door and an indicator placed somewhere easily visible.