Arduino Tutorials

Stream to Initial State from any Arduino/third-party Arduino Device

Arduinos have been a Maker favorite for years. They're powerful, small, and always open source. With the advent of tiny, cheap WiFi chips like the ESP8266, many Arduinos and third-party boards are now also network connected!

The best part about a network connection? You can stream to Initial State!

Because streaming can vary a little from board to board, I'm going to go over the basics and provide examples of streaming from a few boards that should encompass the majority of Arduinos you're going to work with: 

• Arduino Yun (using cURL)
• An ESP8266 board (using HTTP POST)
• An ethernet shield (using HTTP GET)
• A board that supports Ciao (using URL parameters)

Adding an Arduino (Cactus Micro) to your Smart Home Network

At the size of two postage stamps and the price of $11, it's hard to believe that the Cactus Micro has 12 I/O pins, 5 of which are PWM capable, and a built-in ESP8266 WiFi chip.

But there's a price for being cheap - the Cactus Micro (and many boards like it) is one of those internet-connected boards incapable of handling basic TLS encryption when sending data over the web. This is definitely a problem if you want to securely stream data about your home. This is where the Raspberry Pi comes in handy as a hub that accepts data and then handles all of the encryption before sending that data over the internet. The Cactus Micro is also much less user-friendly than the Pi!

This tutorial is going to go over how to connect devices like the Cactus Micro to a hub being run on something like the Raspberry Pi.

Arduino IoT Trash Sensor

Ever wonder how much trash you produce in a week? Want to know how fast you fill up your recycling bin? Kids telling you they've taken out the trash when they really haven't? Can't remember if you put the bag in the bin and it's trash day?

There's a cheap and easy way for you to track your trash (or any other sort of receptacle for that matter).

Arduino Streaming Sensor Box

Want a completely autonomous way to monitor rooms in your home (or even somewhere like your porch)? Want to see both your room's instantaneous status and how it's been doing over the past month? What if your child has been leaving the lights on when they're not in a room while you're at work? What if all you needed was an internet connection to check on your home or office?

Well lucky for you, monitoring your home is not only easy to do, it's cheap too.