TempBug: internet-connected thermometer. Last January, we had some trouble with the heat in my office. Specifically, the kind of trouble wherein the heat is not on, you turn it up, and it still not on. This went on for more than a few days, and finally ended a day or two after we got an email announcing that the heat was broken and speculating that it had probably been down for a few days. My teammates and I laughed a bit at this - we knew exactly when the heat had stopped working. We had a continuous record of the temperature in the office going back months, with 10-minute resolution. You can do this too, and it's quick, cheap, and easy! This project takes about an hour to two hours, if you've never done a project with an electric imp before, and when you're done you'll have a thermometer that you can toss anywhere with wifi and collect data for months to years on a single battery, depending on how often you check the temperature.
TinyPrinter. SWB Labs » Alarm Monitoring with the Electric Imp. In my last post, I explored alarm monitoring using the Raspberry Pi and Arduino. I thought I’d give the Electric Imp a try as well. The Electric Imp is a WiFi module and Cortex-M3 processor built into an SD card form factor and available on Sparkfun for $30. It needs a few extra bits like an ID chip to function but I picked up an Electric Imp Shield on Sparkfun to make it easy. To configure the Imp, I put the shield on top of an Arduino Uno and powered up the Uno off USB.
This powered the Imp which begins flashing it’s LED red. The photo below shows the Arduino, Electric Imp Shield, and my “Alarm Monitoring Shield” on top. The Arduino monitoring routine given in my original post needed only a minor tweak — to send a copy of the data via software serial on pin 9. Spime Watch: Electric Imp | Beyond The Beyond. *First comes a bunch of use-cases, like the doors that spam you with SMS messages and the fridge that nags you for milk — ideas as old as the “smart home,” that have never worked for obvious human-interface reasons — but then they start getting down to brass tacks about the tech itself, its capacities and price-points, and suddenly it gets pretty interesting. *Forget automating household routines. That’s expensive and dangerous. Re-think everything from the point of view of experience design.
If you add a Kinect-style motion-controller to this Electric Imp controller you can “live in the cloud” and get rid of every analog mechanical interface in your house. *In a couple of days I’m going to be having a few words on this subject in Eindhoven. “Wi-Fi connected devices aren’t exactly new. “So what does it all look like in action? Electric Imp Startup Demo - SVNewTech. Electric Imp Blink-Up Application for Windows | Fendeavours. Wiring and programming the Electric Imp with an LCD display.
To get your imp ready for an LCD screen, it needs power and a process called "Commissioning" that allows it to connect to a local Wifi connection. I chose to power this example via USB which requires the addition of a header and jumper on the April development board. Insert the Imp into the carrier and plug in the USB - he Imp should start flashing a variety of colors when the power is applied. Follow the steps outlined on the Electric Imp website for Commissioning an imp Once commissioned, you should get familiar with creating nodes for your Imp and perhaps get "Hello, World!
" or some other sample code working before continuing. Some basic knowledge of creating and loading a node is required.