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All items in category Home & Garden
Small Circuits Revival (22): Dry Soil Alarm
April 1, 2020 by Eric Bogers

Small Circuits Revival (22): Dry Soil Alarm

Simply forgot to water it – and then you can wave goodbye to that expensive bonsai. A pity about all the work that went into it… But this dry soil alarm will save you from these disasters!
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Small Circuits Revival (21): Cable & Conduit Locator
March 25, 2020 by Eric Bogers

Small Circuits Revival (21): Cable & Conduit Locator

There will have been a time when you needed to drill a few holes in a wall to hang something up – but what about those electrical wires neatly hidden away behind the wallpaper? It is not nice to ‘strike’ one of those...
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Small Circuits Revival (20): Tormentor Prank
March 19, 2020 by Eric Bogers

Small Circuits Revival (20): Tormentor Prank

April 1 is quickly approaching again, and in these uncertain and virus plagued times, a little bit of light-heartedness can do no harm. Hence this small electronic prank...
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Control Those Cheap 433-MHz ISM Power Plugs with Arduino
March 17, 2020
Proposal
by Clemens Valens

Control Those Cheap 433-MHz ISM Power Plugs with Arduino

Many of us have at least bought one of those cheap remote-controllable 433-MHz ISM band power plug kits available for little money from gadget stores everywhere (I own two). You may even have used it (I didn't). They plug into a normal power outlet and come with a small remote control. Even though they make our lazy lives a little lazier, they could be much better at this if only they were programmable. This project adds just that.
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Review: Ultrasonic Rodent Repellers – Operation and DIY Construction
March 12, 2020 by Harry Baggen

Review: Ultrasonic Rodent Repellers – Operation and DIY Construction

If you're having problems with mice at home, then you can attempt to catch them with (animal friendly) mouse traps. But you can also repel them with the aid of an ultrasonic mouse repeller, devices that are sold these days by garden centres and hardware stores. How do these repellers work, and can you build something like that yourself? Of course you can, and it is even quite simple, as we will demonstrate here.
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Small Circuits Revival (19): Alarm Clock Silencer
March 11, 2020 by Eric Bogers

Small Circuits Revival (19): Alarm Clock Silencer

The alarm clock (radio) has seen two significant improvements since its invention. The first is the snooze button, and the second we present here.
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How-To: Integrate Your Doorbell in Home Assistant Using ESPHome
February 27, 2020
Finished
by Clemens Valens

How-To: Integrate Your Doorbell in Home Assistant Using ESPHome

Open source projects ESPHome and Home Assistant turn home automation into a set-and-forget system instead of endless fiddling with MQTT brokers and clients and what not. When things become that easy, I become interested, and so I set out to finally realize my dream of connecting the doorbell of our home to our Wi-Fi network. The goal is to detect doorbell rings in Home Assistant so that they can be relayed to places where the doorbell cannot be heard.
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Small Circuits Revival (17): Battery Refresher
February 26, 2020 by Eric Bogers

Small Circuits Revival (17): Battery Refresher

Long ago, before semiconductors became run-of-the-mill, a small neon lamp and a capacitor were used to generate a sawtooth…
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Build a Long-Range Infrared Beam Interruption Detector
February 25, 2020
Proposal
by Clemens Valens

Build a Long-Range Infrared Beam Interruption Detector

Intrusion detection and automatic garage door openers are just two examples of applications that commonly use infrared (IR) beam detectors. When the device is to cover more than a couple of meters, sensitivity becomes an issue. This project, built around a standard 38-kHz IR receiver module (like the one found in television set) and a bunch of NE555 timer chips, easily covers distances of up to seven meters.
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Small Circuits Revival (16): Light-sensitive Energy-efficient Relay
February 19, 2020 by Eric Bogers

Small Circuits Revival (16): Light-sensitive Energy-efficient Relay

In the second episode of this series we described and energy-efficient relay with a few interesting characteristics. Here the authors elaborate on that theme.
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