Lighthouse wire sculpture

hackaday.com is one of my goto blogs to see cool projects others work on. This project was inspired by a Circuit Sculpture Contest they had hosted on there website. I had bought all the materials in preparation to enter it into the contest, however 1 month after the contest ended I had not even started CAD'ing the sculpture. Nevertheless the project was completed and managed to mesh it into the ongoing home automation project.

The sculpture is, if not obvious, a lighthouse. There is a power circuit and a 555 timer circuit triggering a transistor controlling a BIG led. The intent was to make it fade in and out, but it really just blinks.

The second part of the project is how the sculpture is integrated with the home automation server. Currently it sits on a shelf I made out of spare pallet wood and lumber from the farmhouse table project. I painted and stained it to match the coffee table. And light the coffee table it has a RGB led strip on the back for some ambient lighting. I used a Magichome RGBW Light controller reprogrammed with Tasmota software to control the RGB led strip, then wired the extra white output to a barrel connector which plugs into the circuit sculpture. Look at my earlier RGB light controller post for pics and info on the led controller I used.

Future plans will be to create a set of openhab rules to turn the lighthouse sculpture on when some event happens. Could be a phone notification, phone call, ISS flying overhead... TBD

3d Printer Enclosure

This whole project began because my 3d prints were failing to stick to the glass printer bed. I think its only happening in the winter because I keep the apartment on the colder side and that doesn't treat the printer well. So to help with that you can build or buy enclosures for your printer. I pretty much followed these instructions:

https://blog.prusaprinters.org/cheap-simple-3d-printer-enclosure/

Using these thingiverse files to print the enclosure pieces:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2864118

I went with 3 white IKEA lack tables and printed the pieces in white as well. After everything is complete, i think it turned out nice but would have preferred the wood finished lack tables.

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-side-table-white-30449908/

Below is a pic of the Led strip light controller, 2 rows of white led's and the controller are fastened to the bottom of the top table. A wemos controller is used to receive MQTT commands from the openhab/mosquitto server so lights can be turned on/off and the temperature inside can be reported back. I used a 1-wire ds18b20 temp sensor, b/c thats all I had.

I cut a hole in one of the tables, ran the wires through, and added some 3d printed brackets to hold the 3d printer controll box.

Overall turned out well, but the printer is still a POS. It will be upgraded in the future.

Wifi RGB controller

After doing the smart coffee table project, I read online that others had done the same thing in a much much easier way. And cheaper... Instead of soldering the mosfet circuits together and connecting it to a nodemcu, you can pretty much buy commercially available versions(link here). Then you just reprogram them to your liking. In my case I want it to talk MQTT to my openhab server.

I also discovered the lovely Tasmota software, a more elegant and put together version of what I made.

To do this you have to solder some wires to the labeled pads on the pcb and connect it to your usb to ttl converter. 

In my case I left the header soldered to the board in case I ever want to reprogram it in the future. I plan to use this controller with some led strip lights that I am putting above my 3d printer. 

Wifi Door Sensor

I started out by buying a NEO Wifi Door Sensor. They are fairly cheap and I had read online that they had a esp chip in them. So the theory was I could reprogram it to talk MQTT to my openhab server. The device was fairly small and runs off a cr2 battery.

So I tore it apart and saw the pads labeled vcc,gnd,tx,rx,and io_0. Thought it was a walk in the park, solder some wires and load code through the arduino ide. 

This is where everything fell apart... Couldn't get an code to load and I realized there was another mcu sharing the tx/rx lines. In the end I gave up and just took the magnet and reed switch, then built my own using a Wemos D1 Mini.

I used the schematic found from this website: http://www.whatimade.today/esp-8266-mailbox-notifier-using-deepsleep-and-blynk/. A single 18650 battery powers the unit, currently monitoring the battery to determine how long it will last. The device was then packaged up on a hand soldered pcb.

Then placed on my front door.

So now every time the door is opened, it sends an update to the openhab/Mqtt server, the server then turns on my foyer and living room lights. #nerdgoals

Code: https://github.com/kbittle/Esp8266_DoorSensor