The SmartPi is an extension board to turn a Raspberry Pi into a smart energy meter. It can measure current (up to 100 A, with a hardware modification up to 300 A is possible), voltage (up to 400 V) and frequency on three phases plus neutral and calculate several flavors of power (active, reactive & apparent) and power consumption or production. The software is open source and available from GitHub.

Parking spaces in buildings are as small as possible to avoid wasting precious real estate. Furthermore, such parking spaces are often surrounded by concrete pillars or delimited by walls, making it difficult to move a car into such a tiny reserved space without scratching its precious metallic paint. Add to this that cars only get bigger and you will understand the need for an electronic parking aid. Here is a simple solution based on cheap ultrasonic transceiver modules.

Before electric lighting became common in the early 20th century, candles and oil lamps were commonly used for illumination. Even a modern candle producing approximately 80 W of heat energy has a luminous efficacy almost a hundred times lower than an incandescent light bulb. Tea lights are even worse. With a Peltier element it is possible to convert the heat released by a tea light into electricity and drive a highly efficient LED reading light, allowing you to read your favourite book by electric candle light.

Wi-Fi is great, when the signal strength is good. Indoors this is usually the case, but if you want to extend your network to cover for instance the garden all the way down to the shed, you will probably run into problems at some point. This is where Wi-Fi range extenders come in, or repeaters. Some Wi-Fi routers can also be configured as a repeater, but they often need a finger to push the power button before they will switch on. Here is a project to work around this silly problem. It allows you to have a repeater that remains on all the time, and, what’s more, it is solar-powered too. No need to dig trenches to bury the power cable in, and always a good connection.

Here is a high-tech clock using full-color 7-segment displays or RGBdigits. Wi-Fi connected, it can also show room temperature, humidity and air pressure thanks to an optional BME280 eBoB sensor board. The clock is based on an ESP12 module, allowing it to be synchronized to an internet time server. The clock settings can be changed from any mobile device or computer in the network. Captured environmental data can be transmitted over Wi-Fi, making this clock a real Thing for Internet (TfI).

Isn't it embarassing when you miss the birthday of a beloved one? Do you remember birthdays and anniversaries by jotting them down on Post-its or by annotating the new calendar every year? Sure, there must be a better way? There is and it is called the Reminder Clock. Become the thoughtful parent or friend and buy gifts or phone birthday and anniversary wishes “on time”.

The new IoT Smart Lighting Manager from ams can be controlled through its network connection, a serial UART, by means of simple, text-based commands. Direct connection to 0-10V dimmers is possible too. The device with embedded tri-stimulus color sensing for direct CIE color point mapping and control is intended to be integrated directly into luminaires.

Some time ago I installed four LED spots in the roof over our terrace. Unfortunately, the spots turned out to be way too bright and so they were rarely used. Then I got the bright idea to add a PWM dimmer. While exploring this avenue I thought of throwing in a motion detector. The result is a 10% duty cycle during normal use, and 50% duty cycle when motion is detected. After a few seconds brightness smoothly drops back to 10%. Works fine and saves energy too!

The sygonix BLE motion and vibration tag is now available from Conrad. This handy tag has a number of uses around the house and is really easy to program. The user can, for example program it so that it sends a message to a smartphone when post arrives in the post box or a door or window is opened...

Built around an Arduino Uno, this cool gadget displays the current time of the day, not by showing digits or changing the relative position of a pair of hour and minute hands, but by plotting four digits into a layer of sand. After an adjustable delay two vibration motors flatten out the sand before the write cycle begins again.