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There’s a lot to love about the fall season, and when it comes to home automation there’s a ton of opportunity here for smart makers to start playing around with new ideas and creations.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some ways you can use home automation to enhance your autumn experience, and we’ll share a few inspiring ideas from the Arduino community.

Automated garden care

If you have a lawn — or any outdoor space — you probably know the never-ending struggle of keeping it in good condition.

On top of your regular tasks of cutting the grass and caring for its quality, you’ll also have to contend with the yearly influx of beautiful but dead leaves cascading down from the trees and forming a crisp blanket over your grass.

This can keep the autumnal gardener much busier than usual, but the good news is that home automation can make things much easier in this department. Let’s find out how!

Smart leaf blowers

Clearing the fallen leaves out of your yard can be a tedious task, but with the power of home automation it gets a lot easier.

Remote-controlled leaf blowers like this one can take care of the laborious work of getting rid of dead leaves while you relax on the porch with a nice cup of coffee. Right now this kind of tech is still mostly in the prototype DIY stage, but the future could see more commercially available models.

Robot lawn mowers

The Roomba revolutionized the world of home maintenance. No longer did you have to devote chunks of your day to walking around the house with a vacuum cleaner — now a neat little robot could take care of it all for you.

Robot lawn mowers are now bringing the same game-changing concept to the world of gardening, automatically whizzing around your lawn and getting it to just the right condition while you hang out and enjoy the cool autumn breeze.

If you’re feeling creative, why not build your own robot lawn mower?

Arduino user ReP_AL decided to do that with this project —  an Arduino-controlled lawn mowing robot. Now you can sit inside with a pumpkin spice latte and watch in comfort as your robot leaves your lawn in perfect condition. You can check out a full guide for this project here.

Temperature control and energy efficiency

While it’s not quite winter yet, fall is the period where temperatures start to drop, and some days can get pretty chilly.

This is the perfect opportunity to get on top of your temperature control systems and get prepared for the colder months on the way. Once again, home automation can play a major role here, helping you maintain just the right conditions in your home without wasting any energy.

Smart thermostats

Until recently, controlling the heat in your home required you to actually be at home.

Today, thanks to smart thermostats, that’s no longer the case. These gadgets allow you to check the temperature of your house and make adjustments from wherever you are, by connecting your thermostat to a mobile app.

Smart thermostats can also automatically change the temperature based on when you enter or leave your home, the occupancy of a room at any given time, and your energy usage over time.

You can even make your own smart thermostat with Arduino. That’s exactly what Hwhardsoft did with this project, combining an Arduino MKR board with a wall mounting enclosure and color TFT touchscreen to create a professional-looking and easy-to-use thermostat for the chilly winter months.

Energy conservation

As the days get shorter and colder in the fall months, it’s tempting to crank up the heating and flood your house with light.

The downside to this is that it takes its toll on your energy bills, especially during a time when costs are high. Home automation can help mitigate this, with the use of monitors that track energy usage, show alerts, and even automatically switch off or turn down lighting, heat, and electrical appliances when they’re not needed.

Lighting and decorations for fall

Fall isn’t all about dark nights and frosty mornings. It’s also a time for celebration, with quite a few big holidays taking place around this time.

Halloween is the most famous, but even if you aren’t a big fan of spooky decorations, adding some light and color to your home can help warm things up as the days get colder.

Smart lighting is a great example here. On top of keeping your living areas cozy and ambient, smart lighting can also help create a more seasonal mood, and can even be used to set up lighting displays for parties and holiday celebrations.

It’s not just indoor lighting, either, you can also set up smart illumination displays on the outside of your home. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you can even rig up entire lighting displays to celebrate an occasion of your choice. 

Home security

One of the downsides of the darker months is an increase in certain types of crime — specifically burglary.

Criminals like to operate under cover of darkness, and home break-ins are easier to carry out when the world is plunged into night from the afternoon onwards. Fortunately, burglars are fairly easy to deter, and home automation can be a powerful tool here. For instance:

• Motion sensors and smart camera systems that can detect any unusual activity and quickly report it to you, wherever you are, via a mobile app. This can also trigger alarms and even notify the police if needed.

• Smart locks and security systems that can be controlled remotely from your devices. This way you can ensure your home is secure at all times, giving you peace of mind, and grant trusted people access from afar.

• Automated lighting systems that make your home seem occupied even when nobody is around, deterring opportunistic criminals.

Entertainment

The fall season is home to a number of festivals and holidays. Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and Thanksgiving are just a few well-known examples.

Due to the chilly weather, most autumnal festivals tend to take place indoors, which is a great opportunity for you to tap into home automation to host a party nobody will ever forget.

Home automation can give you a ton of the tools to achieve this. With automated lighting to create the perfect ambience, smart speaker systems connected to voice assistants and shared apps, and unique, novel costumes and light displays, you can host the perfect party.

You don’t need to throw a huge celebration to make the most of smart entertainment, however. With the right combination of smart lighting, sound, and interactive entertainment systems you can have a great night in all by yourself.

Preparing for the holidays

On top of the fearful festivities of Halloween, fall also marks the beginning of a long holiday season.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year are all just around the corner, and major events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday take place around this time, too. This makes fall the perfect season to start laying the foundations for a busy few months of holidays.

Once again, home automation can make life easier and more productive here. For example:

• Smart kitchen appliances — like trash cans that sound alerts when they’re full and cupboards that add to your shopping list when ingredients are running low — can make life much easier during big eating and guest-hosting holidays.

• Automated travel planning — Tools such as Wonderplan make it easier than ever to create rough starting itineraries, book accommodation and transport ahead of time, and start making preparations for your coming trip.

• Automated gift shopping — Tools like ChatGPT can help generate thoughtful ideas for gifts, and you can easily place orders using voice automation software and list-making apps that can handle the entire process of ordering and shipping.

If you’re interested in getting started on your own home automation journey this fall, Arduino is the perfect place to start.

Our Project Hub is full of inspiration, and we have products and guides to help anyone get started, no matter their experience level or comfort with tech. Everyone has to start somewhere, and before long you’ll be putting together some seriously impressive creations.

Contact us to learn more!

The post Home automation ideas for the fall season appeared first on Arduino Blog.

If there’s one place in the world you want to feel safe, it’s inside your home.

And yet, the unfortunate reality is that our homes can sometimes be a source of danger. From burglaries to fires, it’s important to take precautions to make sure your house remains a sanctuary and not a deathtrap.

Home automation can be a huge help here. Today’s homeowners (and renters) have a ton of tools at their disposal to stay safe from a range of hazards and risks. Some of these tools you can even build yourself, with minimal cost and effort.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the main dangers people face at home, and how automation can minimize the risk.

5 common home security threats

What are the biggest dangers facing us at home? Apart from dropped Lego pieces and precariously-stacked crockery, here are some of the main dangers facing our homes and why they’re so serious.

Burglaries

Home burglaries are actually decreasing in frequency as time goes on, but they’re still a threat.

In the U.S., for example, over one million burglaries take place every year, and property crimes are the most common type of crime. Burglars use a range of techniques and methods to gain entry and steal your hard-earned possessions, and often leave behind a legacy of trauma and shock — even when you weren’t at home.

Fires

A house fire is a nightmare scenario, but this is also a very real concern.

Research shows that 24.2% of all fires worldwide occur in residential buildings. Some of the main causes include:

• Unattended cooking (this is the most common cause of house fires)
• Smoking (this causes the most deaths from house fires)
• Heating equipment (this was found to cause 9% of all home fires and 19% of home fire deaths)

Even when you manage to escape a house fire, the damage can still be enormous. On top of the financial cost, you have to deal with the loss of items that can never really be replaced. The best option when it comes to house fires is to do whatever it takes to prevent them.

Environmental dangers

Extreme weather events are on the rise around the world, and this is a problem for the safety of your home.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and wildfires can be devastating, and wherever you are in the world there’s almost certainly some kind of environmental risk facing your home. Repairing a damaged home can become extremely costly, and can cause massive disruptions to your life.

Cybersecurity threats

One of the biggest downsides to an increasingly tech-savvy world is the rise in cyber crime, which is much more widespread than it was in past decades.

The days of clumsy spam emails being the biggest threat to ordinary people are long gone — cyber attacks are now incredibly sophisticated and constantly evolving.

With the rise in smart home devices, typically as part of the Internet of Things, cyber criminals now have a new avenue to exploit. Many home automation systems aren’t properly protected, in fact one study found that many had major design flaws putting them at risk of cyber attacks like data leaks and break-ins.

Home automation as a solution

Although home automation can be a target for attackers, it can also function as a highly effective defence against many of the threats to your home.

The home automation market is growing fast, and is predicted to reach $163 billion by 2025. As this technology becomes more advanced, more possibilities for protecting your home keep emerging. 

Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can harness the power of home automation to keep your home safe from multiple dangers.

Enhanced security features

The best place to start with smart home security is with the basics — the locks, keys, and alarms we’ve been using to keep our houses safe since time immemorial.

With home automation, you can take these security features to the next level, adding a new layer of safety and convenience to your home, such as:

• Smart locks and keyless entry systems, for instance based on biometric data like your fingerprints, eliminate the need for keys (which are easily lost), and make it much harder for an unwanted visitor to gain entry to your home.
• Surveillance cameras and video doorbells allow you to see who’s at the door without going to check, even when you’re not at home. Research suggests that homes with security cameras are 300% safer from burglaries than those without.
• Motion sensors and alarms. While they might not be cutting-edge smart home tech, these time-tested devices have been in use for decades and are still very much around because they work so well.

Fire and environmental safety

House fires and environmental disasters are often treated as freak accidents — something we have no control over and that we should simply hope never happens to us.

However, we’re not powerless here, and home automation can actually offer some solid defences against the raging elements. Some examples include:

• Smart smoke detectors. Like traditional smoke detectors, these pick up on unusual smoke in your home and issue an alert. But these smarter models can also send warnings to your smartphone, wherever you are. They can detect the difference between, for example, carbon monoxide and smoke, and some can tell you where the smoke is coming from.
• Flood sensors and leak detectors can help you locate and identify water leakages while they’re still small and fixable, before they turn into destructive and expensive problems.
• An uninterrupted power supply (UPS) can ensure the lights and power stay on even when the main grid has been disabled by a storm or other natural disaster, so you can keep your essential functions running.

Cybersecurity measures

While home automation tech is becoming more advanced all the time, there are also vulnerabilities here though, and some cyber criminals target IoT and smart home devices.

To keep your smart home as secure as possible, it pays to take security seriously here. Let’s take a look at some basic steps everyone can take to keep their devices safe from cyber attacks.

• Make sure your WiFi network is secure, with a strong password and encryption. Try to find a router with a security protocol of WPA2 or ideally WPA3.
• Regularly update the firmware that runs on your smart home devices — this will ensure they’re protected against any new threats and have the most up-to-date security features installed.
• Replace any outdated technology including routers.
• Change your passwords frequently, and don’t use common or easily guessed passwords.

DIY vs. professional installation

When it comes to smart home security, it’s common to wonder if you should pay for a professional to take care of your needs, or do it yourself.

Security is, of course, a serious matter. It’s not an area you want to leave to chance, or risk leaving your home with safety flaws because you did something wrong. 

If you’re a beginner to building and maintaining your own home automation devices, it’s best to leave the important security jobs to a trusted professional. And even if you have some experience with these jobs, it might still be a good idea to use a specialist for the really important stuff — things like alarm systems and smart locks.

However, it’s possible to take the DIY approach to many smart home safety devices, with only a handful of easy-to-acquire components and some basic coding and design knowledge. The Arduino Project Hub has plenty of examples here. Let’s take a look at just a few.

RFID card door lock

Arduino user mehmetefepekerr created this project — a radio frequency identification (RFID) card designed to add an extra layer of security to their home. The card enables you to unlock your door by tapping the card on your way in. RFID key cards are typically safer than magnetic cards since they’re more resistant to the elements, and unlike traditional locks they can’t be picked by thieves.

Ultrasonic security system

This system by theridgeguy is meant to keep your home safe by detecting the presence of intruders and sounding an alarm.It employs an ultrasonic distance sensor to detect how far someone is from the doorway, and then uses flashing lights and noises to deter them from getting any closer. Trusted guests and family members can enter a four-digit code to disarm the alarm.

Smoke detector using gas sensor

When it comes to preventing house fires, time is always of the essence. This smoke detector, developed by srajandikshit147, picks up on any unexpected smoke in the environment and then warns the user by sounding a buzzer and flashing a red LED if the smoke density is higher than the safe limit.

These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using Arduino to make your own smart home devices, including ones that protect you from various risks and dangers in your home.

By tapping into the power of home automation, you can build your own devices to do all kinds of things. You don’t need to be a coding mastermind or have access to expensive gear — pretty much anyone can get started with their own basic projects today.

Get in touch with us to learn more about what’s possible with home automation and get started on your own journey.

The post Is your house secure? 4 common threats and how home automation can keep you safe appeared first on Arduino Blog.

The Internet of Things has the power to transform your home into a futuristic web of cutting-edge gadgets, working together to make life easier, safer, and more entertaining.

And while the IoT has a bunch of day-to-day applications like watering your plants and keeping your cupboards stocked, you can also use it to throw a killer party.

Done right, you can build a smart home that leaves your guests gobsmacked, talking for months about their experience and frantically searching for ways to recreate it in their own homes.

In this article, we’ll look at a few of the ways you can use the IoT to enhance your guests’ experiences and become the talk of the town (in a good way).

What exactly is the Internet of Things?

The IoT is a way of connecting multiple everyday devices to the internet and each other, enabling them to perform smarter tasks such as collecting, processing, and exchanging data of different kinds.

For example, while an ordinary kettle is only good for boiling water, a smart kettle connected to the IoT can be controlled from your smartphone, set to automatically start boiling at a specific time, and be asked to do different things like keep the water at a certain temperature.

When it comes to throwing a party that will go down in legend, the IoT can be a big asset.

Impress your guests with the Internet of Things

1. Smart home ambiance

The first step to throwing a great party is setting the mood, and that applies to small gatherings, dinner parties, and even just hangouts.

The IoT can be a big help here, allowing you to tap into smart lighting with the help of color-changing bulbs and synchronized effects. At the tap of a button or your smartphone, you can produce customized lighting patterns and hues, engineering exactly the right environment to fit the vibe.

You can also integrate your lighting systems with voice control assistants, so you and your guests can change the ambience with simple commands. 

2. Interactive entertainment systems

With the IoT, you can take entertainment to the next level.

Use smart speakers to create fully immersive music and sound, perfectly adapted to the mood of the room and the desired noise level. Switch from soft background music to a lively dance floor with a simple voice command.

If you have a home theater or a gaming room, you can integrate these with the IoT to build a more customizable and personalized setup for guests.

3. Smart food and beverage management

If you really want to impress your guests, fill them up with delicious food and get them tipsy.

This is yet another place where technology can help — an IoT-connected kitchen can revolutionize the catering process, allowing you to host truly unforgettable cookouts and dinner parties.

Smart refrigerators with inventory tracking and recipe suggestions work alongside automated cocktail mixers and cupboards that send an alert to your phone whenever you’re running low on a certain ingredient.

You’ll go from being a stressed, overwhelmed amateur chef to the master of your kitchen, effortlessly commanding your army of tech tools to run the show confidently.

4. Intelligent climate control

The only thing worse than a party where everyone is sweltering hot, is one where they’re all too cold to even peel off their winter coats.

The good news for any aspiring host is that home automation can solve this age-old problem once and for all. Smart thermostats and HVAC systems are designed to keep your home in the perfect state of equilibrium — using automated adjustments to make a Goldilocks zone where all your guests feel just right, all the time.

The best smart homes can do this in an energy-efficient way, too, ensuring you don’t waste fuel and money keeping a room warmer than it needs to be for everyone’s optimal comfort. And you can easily adjust the temperature from your smartphone, a remote control, or voice commands.

5. Personalized guest experiences

The best parties are the ones where everyone feels welcome, and there’s no better way to create that vibe than with personalization.

The IoT can come in very useful here, helping you install things like smart mirrors which greet your guests personally and share information about the party like important times to remember and directions to specific places.

How well do you know your guests? If you can create a small profile on each one, your smart home can even put together tailored entertainment recommendations, ensuring the mood of the party fits the mood of the guests, and that there’s a bit of something for everyone on the playlist and the menu.

6. Automated home security

Parties can be a ton of fun, but they come with a few risks as well. When everyone is distracted and occupied, it’s sometimes easy for unwanted visitors to sneak in under cover of the crowd.

With IoT-driven security cameras and automated monitoring systems, you can keep your guests and property safe at all times, not just when the party is in full swing. You can program your smart security system to provide real-time alerts when something isn’t right, and even gain remote access.

If security is a key concern for you, you can give trusted guests their own digital keys and temporary access, gaining more control over who leaves and enters your event.

7. Smart party planning

If you aren’t much of a planner, putting a first-rate shindig together can be a stressful experience.

With the right tech solutions though, even the most disorganized among us can become expert event coordinators, piecing together seamless itineraries and dazzling guests by taking every tiny detail into consideration.

Some examples here include:

• Automated guest invitations and RSVP tracking
• Integrated calendars, to-do-lists and reminders
• AI-powered suggestions for how to plan and organize your event

8. Entertain your guests with AR and VR

Virtual reality and augmented reality are two emerging technologies that have the power to keep your guests engaged for hours.

Gone are the days when a two-dimensional console was the only source of gaming-based fun — now your guests can strap on a headset and immerse themselves in a detailed and incredibly entertaining fictional world, even competing with other guests.

It’s not just about gaming, either — AR and VR can be used to create beautiful cyber experiences for your guests, from interactive works of art to guided tours of faraway places.

9. Smart furniture and layouts

Equipping your seating areas with charging ports and built-in displays will delight your guests and create a much more comfortable and convenient place to chill out.

As time goes on, furniture will likely get even smarter. For instance, smart furniture could soon detect the number of guests and available space and automatically adjust, folding away or expanding certain sections as needed.

10. Eco-friendly hosting

Parties — especially the big ones — can pack quite the environmental footprint if you aren’t careful.

If you’re concerned about the impact of your party, there are several home automation tools that can help reduce your energy expenditure and help you plan a greener and more eco-friendly event.

For example, you can use smart energy management tools to track your usage over time and make adjustments to avoid wastage, like turning down the lights and heat in a room that hasn’t been occupied in a while.

Many up-to-date IoT devices will have these kinds of features built in, and will already automatically monitor and adjust their activity to use energy more optimally.

(Bonus tip) Preparing for hiccups

One of the risks of relying too heavily on tech for your party is that tech can sometimes go wrong.

Things like glitching devices, network issues, and features that are difficult to use can all get in the way of your guests having the best time possible. It’s important to be prepared for the possibility of things going wrong and have plans in place.

It’s always a good idea, for example, to have backup entertainment options in place. Is your VR system playing up? If so, having a more traditional console on hand can work as a great alternative while you get things back up and running.

Ultimately, you don’t want your party to be too tech-centric. It’s always smart to balance your high-tech features with more traditional hosting and entertainment activities — not just because tech can sometimes go wrong but because guests will always appreciate a human touch.

Host a party from the future

Home automation, driven by technologies like the IoT, can transform your next party into something your guests will never forget.

From big, show-stopping features like augmented reality works of art, to small but no less revolutionary tools like a smart dishwasher — home automation is the perfect party assistant.

With Arduino, you can even start building your very own automated party tools, using just a handful of easy-to-find components and a bit of coding knowledge. Check out a few projects below!

Bluetooth lighting system

Arduino user akk47 made this project allowing users to build a lighting system that can be controlled with nothing more than taps from your phone, wherever you are in the building.

It uses Bluetooth® and can be put together with just a handful of components. Projects like this are the first step towards your very own smart lighting system, making your home the envy of any guests.

Multi-zone heating controller

This project was built by Arduino user erkr because his rooms were either too hot or too cold when using a single thermostat.

It allows you to split your home into zones and control the temperature for each zone separately. It’s not only a great way to save on energy bills and create a more comfortable living environment, but it’s also a fantastic tool when hosting parties where rooms have different temperature needs.

PCB gyro gaming wheel

A good gaming setup can turn a good party into an unforgettable one. Arduino user ashraf_minhaj built this project — a gaming steering wheel that can add a new dimension to racing games.

This shouldn’t be too difficult to replicate for anyone with some background in making their own smart projects, and is a cheaper (and more fun) alternative to highly advanced gaming gadgets.

These are just a few ideas to give you some inspiration — with Arduino the sky really is the limit when it comes to creating fun and original new gadgets for your smart home. Get in touch with us to learn more and get started.

The post 10 cutting-edge ways to impress your guests with the IoT appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Home automation is exploding in popularity. 

In 2021, the average household had 25 connected devices, a massive increase on previous years, driven in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. And in 2023, the number of smart homes worldwide looks set to hit 195.8 million.

We’re living through a fascinating time for technology in general, with new breakthroughs hitting the headlines all the time, and the home automation industry is especially exciting. 

In this article, we’ll dive into some of the main ways home automation is changing in 2023, some of the biggest current trends, and what’s on the horizon.

Emerging trends in home automation in 2023

2023 so far has been a big year for home automation, and there looks to be more to come. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting emerging trends this year.

Voice assistants and natural language processing

Voice assistants are multiplying rapidly, with the global population expected to hit 150 million this year.

On top of that, the tech behind these gadgets is also developing fast, with new features emerging all the time. Today’s voice assistants are already a far cry from the first few generations of Amazon Alexa gadgets, and are capable of integrating with multiple devices and recognizing a range of different voices.

Edge computing and local processing

“Edge computing” refers to when data processing and analysis take place closer to the source of data generation (locally) rather than on centralized cloud servers somewhere else.

In the context of home automation, this means IoT devices can process the data they generate right there and then. This has a number of advantages, such as:

• Low latency, because the data doesn’t have to travel all the way to a data center and back. This means tasks can be performed much quicker, and even in real-time.
• Better bandwidth efficiency and reduced costs because only relevant information is shared over the network.
• Better scalability, making it easier to add more devices to your smart home network.

Let’s check out a few examples of edge computing at work in smart homes.

• Voice assistants like Amazon Echos with built-in processing capabilities are capable of handling voice commands locally, making them much more responsive and able to function smoothly even with the internet connection is unstable.
• Security cameras can analyze video footage locally instead of sending that data to the cloud for analysis. This makes it easier to detect and report suspicious activity with much faster response times.
• Managing things like lighting and temperature even when offline, keeping your working and living spaces in the most comfortable state at all times.

AI and machine learning

AI is a hot topic right now, and at times it can be hard to separate the truly exciting developments from the hype.

When it comes to home automation, though, AI holds a ton of promise.

• Energy efficiency: AI can track the energy usage in your smart home appliances and make adjustments to ensure nothing is being wasted. It can also detect problems and unusual activity and take steps to correct any issues.
• AI can add a touch of personalization to your smart home by learning your preferences and making automatic adjustments to things like temperature, lighting, and music.
• Predictive maintenance: AI can monitor your smart home devices and predict when faults and issues are about to occur, helping you avoid outages and make repairs before they’re needed.

Sustainable and eco-friendly automation

We already briefly talked about how technologies like AI can help your smart home devices function more efficiently. In fact, smart heating and cooling systems, used correctly, can save users 50% of their energy consumption in some cases.

But that’s not the only way home automation can help you live more sustainably. For example, you can integrate your smart home with green energy sources like solar — something that’s becoming more common around the world.

What’s in store for the near future?

Now we’ve explored a few of the exciting things happening in home automation right now, let’s turn our gaze to the near future.

What can smart home owners look forward to over the next few years? This is where things get really interesting, as the rapid development of smart technologies mean things are changing fast.

Continued growth of 5G

5G technology looks set to grow in both popularity and sophistication throughout the next decade.

According to Ericsson’s 2022 Mobility Report, 5G subscriptions will reach 4.4 billion globally by the end of 2027, and account for around 48% of total mobile subscriptions.

For smart home owners, this means even faster connectivity, lower latency, and support for increasingly powerful and sophisticated IoT devices that aren’t possible just yet, as well as the opportunity to build more complex and connected smart home networks.

Augmented reality and virtual reality in smart homes

The AR and VR market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 13.72% between 2023 and 2027, which has a ton of exciting implications for home automation.

One example here is smart home maintenance. Augmented reality apps can make it much easier to repair faulty devices by providing real-time, 3D instructions that are far clearer than any manual or YouTube tutorial. AR can also be used to improve home design by helping you visualize how new furniture, decorations, and layouts will look before committing to them.

Even better security and privacy features

Keeping our families, homes, and possessions safe is always going to be a primary concern, and smart technology here is developing in some really interesting ways.

One example is the use of biometric tech to improve home security. The global biometrics market is projected to hit $83 billion by 2027, with voice recognition alone expected to reach $27 billion.

What does this mean for smart homes? Biometrics can be used to identify people with extremely accurate levels of precision, allowing you to enter your home with just your fingerprint, a scan of your iris, or even a voice command — while keeping everyone else out.

Other promising trends in smart home security include advances in data encryption and privacy controls to keep your IoT devices secure.

AI-powered home health monitoring

Keeping track of your vital signs and health metrics is more than just a hobby for fitness enthusiasts — for older people and those with health issues it can literally be life-saving.

Wearable devices like smart watches can track key health data, issue reminders to take medication, and alert emergency services when things go wrong. These devices can even be used to monitor individuals’ movement patterns and predict falls and other accidents.

We’re still some way off fully automated health care, but this is a step in the right direction.

Entire smart cities

Cities around the world are getting bigger, and that means they need to get smarter.

Home automation isn’t just for houses and apartments — it can be scaled up to the size of a city, a trend which is well underway. The global smart cities market is expected to grow at an annual compound rate of 13.13% until at least 2028.

Smart cities use technology like 5G, the Internet of Things, and AI to build more efficient, safe, and pleasant environments for millions of people to share. These technologies drive features such as:

• Better connectivity for everyone, like accessible WiFi anywhere in the city including on transport.
• More efficient and better-connected public transport systems, including more intelligent traffic management based on constant monitoring using sensors.
• More efficient usage of energy, based on tracking usage and minimizing wastage.
• Better waste management, using sensors to measure how full waste bins are and issuing alerts when it’s time to empty them.

Staying ahead of the smart home curve

With so much happening so fast, with no signs of slowing down, staying up-to-date with home automation tech can feel like an impossible task.

However, there’s a lot you can do to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and access these incredible benefits as they roll onto the market. Let’s check out a few ideas.

Keep your network current

Your home automation devices are only as good as the network they run on. That means a robust and up-to-date home network is one of the best investments you can make in your smart home.

Consider upgrading to a Wi-Fi 6 router, or the even more advanced 6E router. This will open up new possibilities when it comes to 5G and bring a new level of speed and slickness to your IoT network.

Another option is to set up a mesh network — a collection of connectivity sources around your home instead of a single router — to provide better coverage.

Keep your devices maintained

With the rate at which home automation technology is advancing, devices that were brand new just a few years ago are quickly becoming outdated.

This is especially true for firmware — it’s essential to keep your devices updated at all times to ensure they’re optimally secure and can take advantage of new features and capabilities.

Remember that your devices won’t last forever, and have some kind of plan in place to review and replace any older technology.

Stay informed

One of the best ways to keep pace with the rapidly changing world of home automation is to join online communities and attend events.

Of course, it’s not always feasible to travel huge distances to attend conferences and expos just to learn more about your smart home devices, but you can learn a lot from joining the right forums and online groups. These can help you get quick answers to questions, gain inspiration for future projects, and stay up to date with all the latest news and advice.

Here are some ideas:

• r/HomeAutomation on Reddit, a subreddit dedicated to home automation with tips, questions, and shared projects.
• Samsung’s SmartThings community: an open-source home automation platform for users of Home Assistant.
• Arduino’s community and forum: a place for Arduino users to gather and talk about their own projects, share guides, and discuss challenges they have encountered.

There’s also an extensive list of Facebook groups, YouTube channels, and blogs to explore, and specific technologies and devices often have their own dedicated support groups and online spaces.

Get into DIY

What better way to access the next generation of home automation technology than to build it yourself?

Today it’s easier than ever for total amateurs to build their own IoT devices and home automation projects, with nothing more than some simple components and a bit of basic coding knowledge.

At Arduino, we help people get started with their own home automation journey. Our products are built to help everyone from complete beginners to advanced makers create their own smart home technology and share it with the world.

Contact us to learn more about this and how to get started.

The post Some of the biggest ways home automation is changing in 2023 appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Our smartphones go pretty much everywhere with us, and we use them for more things than we even realize. From literally the very moment we’re startled into life in the morning, until the one final doom scroll through social media before bed, our phones are with us.

It makes sense, then, to think about ways to connect your smartphone to your Arduino projects, adding another layer of user-friendliness and convenience. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best tips and hacks for bringing your phone and your home automation projects closer together, and we’ll share some examples from the Arduino community.
Arduino Cloud is the perfect companion for building automated projects, and the IoT Cloud Remote mobile app makes things a lot easier. In this article we’ll see some companion apps and you can check out more compatible projects in our Home Automation website.

Use the iRobbie app

The iRobbie app is designed specifically to connect your smartphone to your Arduino projects. It’s actually a fairly simple concept, using Bluetooth to connect your phone to the Arduino board. Once connected, you can access a ton of features like object recognition and tracking, all via the phone’s camera. iRobbie allows your Arduino projects to recognise and track over 60 objects.

Other features include:

• The ability to find objects with iFinder
• Voice Control prompts to control your robot more easily
• A responsive touchscreen joystick on your phone to move your iRobbie around
• The ability to play music via your robot

You can learn more about iRobbie and how to get started with it here.

Notification IoT Using NeoPixel and Smartphone

If there’s one thing phones are good for, it’s receiving updates. But what about when you miss important updates? What about when your phone is on the other side of the room, or the TV is playing loud, or you just missed that vibration?

Speaking of vibrations, wouldn’t it be cool if there were a slightly less annoying way to get notifications from your phone?

Well, step forward Arduino user notiduin, who used NeoPixel and Arduino to find a solution. This project allows you to get notifications in the form of LED lights of different colours. By combining HC-06 Bluetooth, Arduino Uno, Neo Pixel and an Android App, it’s possible to have all your phone’s notifications sent to an Arduino where they can turn on different colours of LED.

You can even assign a certain colour to each type of notification. For example, a Facebook notification can light up the blue LED, an SMS message can trigger the yellow light, and a new email can cause the red light to flash — it’s entirely up to you. The project works with any of the apps on your smartphone.

Check out the full project description here.

More user projects

3D printed smartphone camera slider

Getting the perfect smartphone photo can be a tougher task than it first appears. Stores across the world now have their shelves lined with tripods, stands, and other gadgets to make snapping that perfect shot more manageable than ever… but sometimes you just need to take matters into your own hands.

That’s what Reddit user u/careyi4 did. He 3D-printed his very own smartphone camera slider, powered by an Arduino, to make it easier than ever to line up pro-level smartphone photoshoots. Check out the video for more information.

Make any Arduino smartphone-controlled with just a few lines of code

You don’t need to be a programming genius to make your own Arduino projects smartphone-controlled. Reddit user u/TylerTimoj used just a few lines of simple code to make their projects easily controlled from their smartphone, and anyone can emulate it.

You can check out the full project here, along with a video where u/TylerTimoj shows you how it’s done.

Did you know that your phone is an IoT device?

The Arduino IoT Remote app (available for Android and iOS) was created to enable you to remotely manage and monitor your devices through the Arduino Cloud dashboards, offering complete control at your fingertips from anywhere you are. Arduino has gone a BIG step further and enabled you to use the app as an IoT device, utilizing some of the sensors in your mobile phone such as accelerometer, GPS, microphone, compass or barometer to collect data and transmit it to the Arduino Cloud. This feature automatically creates in the Arduino Cloud everything needed to monitor the sensors (the Device, the Thing and a dashboard) and share the data with other devices.

Starting to play with real hardware can be tricky for non-experienced users, so this feature enables users to get familiar with the Arduino Cloud device management environment using their own phone. Easy, right?

But you can also use the data from your phone sensors in your projects. Imagine the endless possibilities using that information. For instance, you can use virtual geographic boundaries for geofencing to initiate actions based on your location. You can also automate home-based tasks such as turning off lights when you depart and turning them on when you return, securing doors, and adjusting home climate control. Moreover, you can track your loved ones with geofencing and receive immediate notifications if they leave a designated area. The accelerometer in your phone can also be utilized to detect accidents or falls, and you can even use your phone as a remote control for games or robots. 

Only your imagination sets the boundaries of what you can do with this new feature.

If you want to learn more about the “Phone as Device” feature, don’t miss this article on the documentation.

Unlock a whole new side to your smartphone

With Arduino, a few basic components, and a bit of knowledge, anyone can bring entirely new capabilities to their smartphone and start doing a whole range of new tasks with it. I mean, if it’s going to be with you all day, you might as well get as much out of it as possible, right?

Check out the Arduino Home Automation page to learn more and get started with your own projects.

The post Get More Out of Your Smartphone with Arduino appeared first on Arduino Blog.

3D printing, the stuff of science fiction only a few short years ago, is becoming more widely available all the time. Buying your own 3D printer to keep in your home is now fairly accessible, with entry-level printers available for just a few hundred dollars.

But why would you buy one? It’s easy to think 3D printers are still a niche toy, exciting for a few enthusiasts but largely useless for the general population. But this couldn’t be more wrong — 3D printers have a wide range of very practical uses for everyday households.

In this article, we’ll take a look at why 3D printing is so useful and some of the many reasons to consider adding a 3D printer to your own smart home.

Why 3D printing is so useful

• It’s fast and convenient. With a 3D printer, you can produce simple objects, creations, and components for existing items in a fairly short amount of time — much quicker than ordering the same things online or heading to a local store.
• You get a ton of control over what you print. Need a very specific shaped object to repair a broken item in your home? It may be impossible to buy what you need anywhere, but a 3D printer allows you to create exactly the right size and shape you need.
• It’s relatively affordable. As mentioned, basic 3D printers can be had for fairly cheap nowadays, and printing — for smaller objects, at least — costs very little.
• It’s sustainable. It’s much more sustainable to print your own things than order them across large distances, and this is especially true for niche items that might need to be shipped across the globe to reach you.

Using 3D printing in your smart home

So what can you use a 3D printer for? There are many potential uses for a 3D printer in your smart home, and they range from practical tasks like repairing broken furniture to more creative hobbies. Let’s take a look at some of the main reasons to own a 3D printer.

Create useful items for your home

3D printers are perfect for creating small, useful items to use around the home. Some examples are coasters, decorations, lampshades, stationery, and small kitchen tools. This is a great way to combine practical use with a fun creative hobby, putting your own personal spin on the little items you use every day.

Repair items

You know that table you have that just never sits right? The door handle that doesn’t quite match the others in the house? The light switch that doesn’t fit exactly flush with the wall?

3D printing is the perfect solution to many of these small defects and faults. Because you have so much control over what you print — 3D printers can print according to virtually any instructions — it’s easy to create components to fix and spruce up the objects and appliances around your smart home.

Education

3D printers aren’t a regular fixture in classrooms around the world just yet, but it’s only a matter of time. These machines allow students to take a more hands-on and creative approach to their learning. Some examples could be:

• Science projects like creating models of the solar system of the structure of an atom
• Geography work like printing detailed models of mountains or volcanoes
• All kinds of product design work
• Creative work like art

Arts and creative projects

Creative projects aren’t just for the classroom — many people own 3D printers purely for their own artistic work. There’s almost no limit to what a 3D printer can do in this area, and with a little experience, it’s possible to create truly beautiful and incredibly detailed works of art at home.

Build your own smart home with Arduino

3D printing is just one aspect of a smart home. There’s an almost endless list of things you can do with the right home automation tools — from growing a smart garden to keeping your pets entertained and fed.

Check out Arduino Project Hub for inspiration on projects you can build with Arduino’s tools, or visit our homepage for more information.

The post Why using 3D printing in your smart home is so useful appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Everybody loves a good BBQ. Getting your family and friends together on a long summer day and evening, cooking delicious food and having a great time as smoke drifts through the air — it’s the perfect weekend activity.

BBQs can also be stressful, however. Anyone who has ever tried to host one will know the challenges of managing multiple meats at once, trying to avoid any overcooking (or undercooking) disasters, and keeping track of all that equipment.

Automation can help run your BBQ much more smoothly, minimizing any mishaps and making sure everyone has the best experience possible. In this article, we’ll look at how home automation can improve the BBQ experience and share some examples from Arduino’s Project Hub.

How home automation improves BBQs

• Keep track of different items. Automation makes it easier to manage multiple meats and other food items at the same time, notifying you when something is ready so you don’t get overwhelmed by tasks and neglect any of your cooking.

• Stay on top of temperature by measuring each piece of food and ensuring it’s at the perfect point.

• Create a more welcoming outdoor area with things like automated lighting, heaters, and even a smart garden.

• Easy cleanup with robots and other tools to leave your grill and other tools sparkling clean.

Some project examples from Arduino

Temperature Controled Charcoal Smoker

Arduino community member Duncan Barbee knew that the most flavorful way to grill is to use charcoal to heat your smokers. While propane and electric smokers give you better temperature control, they lose that unique and delicious charcoal flavor.

But charcoal heaters present many challenges. You need to constantly stay on top of the temperature, adjusting the vents on a regular basis to make sure everything is just right as the charcoal level changes in the smoker.

Barbee wanted to build a project that gave him the best of both worlds — the tasty charcoal flavor with the ease and convenience of an electric or propane smoker. He developed a controller that monitors the temperature in the smoker and automatically adjusts the airflow to the charcoal to maintain the correct temperature at all times, allowing him to sit back and relax as the perfect charcoal-based BBQ unfolds.

Smokerduino

Robert Korn had already created a sous vide controller using Arduino and a handful of other components, with great success. He chose to apply the same model to a smoker and devised the Smokerduino, which ensures perfectly cooked meat every time with minimal effort from the chef.

Alexa BBQ/Kitchen Thermometer with IoT Arduino and ePaper

Roger Theriault and his wife enjoy making cheese and yogurt at home, but this is a long process involving a thermometer and lots of waiting around. To cut some steps out, he built his own smart thermometer to monitor the temperature of the food and beep when a specific temperature was reached and it was time for the next step.

However, when the device stopped working, Theriault decided to upgrade it instead of simply fixing it. The new iteration of the thermometer uses Alexa devices too, enabling him to easily monitor and control everything cooking in the kitchen or outside in the smoker.

The way it works is fairly straightforward — just give Alexa an instruction and it will find the recipe and instruct the given device to start from step one of that recipe. It also draws on the data from the recipe to monitor the temperature and make any notifications or adjustments needed.

Better BBQs with Arduino

Monitoring and controlling cooking is one of the most useful and rewarding use cases for home automation. Arduino’s products make it possible to assemble detailed and advanced projects to take your BBQs to the next level.

Check out the project hub for some more inspiration or visit the home page to learn more about how Arduino works.

The post Host the best BBQs ever with home automation appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Home monitoring is a big part of home automation, but it’s often overshadowed. Our attention tends to get hijacked by cool projects that perform physical actions. Whether it’s turning the lights on, changing their color, running a robot vacuum cleaner, pulling on the blinds or watering the garden. All these actions are very cool and very visible. Which makes it easy to ignore the background tasks that are the backbone of great home automation.

YouTuber and robotics maker RootSaid has been giving this a lot of thought. He’s put together an excellent tutorial on creating a self contained, real-time home monitoring module. It’s built around the excellent Nano RP2040 Connect, and sends everything to Arduino Cloud.

Home Monitoring for You, and Your Family

His objective was to create a compact bundle of sensors to keep an eye on various conditions around the home. This battery powered system can then be positioned anywhere, and monitored from Arduino Cloud. His idea is to install the module in an elderly relative’s home. That way, he can keep an eye on their environment from anywhere.

Of course, this doesn’t have to be used purely as a care system. That’s a great application for his environment monitoring platform, but it’s just as useful for your own home automation system. Too often, sensors (temperature, for example) are physically connected to other automation devices, like Wi-Fi mains switches. But chances are you want to know the temperature over by your sofa. Not down the back of the TV cabinet.

RootSaid to the rescue.

A Compact Home Automation Sensor Module

Let’s take a look at the sensors bundled into this compact package.

He’s got an LDR in there to monitor the light levels. This is perfect for bigger home automation projects, as it can trigger lights all around the house. Even outdoor lighting, if you wanted.

There’s a Bosch BME280 to keep an eye on the environment. This is becoming a popular device among the home automation crowd. It’s small, very low power, cheap, accurate, and gives you temperature, humidity and air pressure data.

Finally we have a gas sensor, which is a really interesting addition. Especially as part of his original brief for monitoring an elderly relative’s environment. It keeps a check on air quality, but being able to get alerts for gas leaks or rising carbon monoxide levels could be life saving.

Home Monitoring in Arduino Cloud, for Free

Finally he takes you through the Arduino Cloud set up, including a monitoring dashboard. Which is more good news, since all this is running from a single Nano RP2040 Connect. That means you’re only adding one Thing (with five variables), so the free tier is a practical option. If you want to begin comparing the data the module collects over time, you can then easily bump up to a subscription for longer data retention options.

Because he’s collecting data through Arduino Cloud, he’s automatically got smartphone access to it, as well. Or, if he wanted to share the data with members of the family or household, it only takes a click.

Although RootSaid is running his module from a 9V battery, there’s nothing to stop you using other power sources. The Nano RP2040 Connect will accept all kinds of voltage inputs. From USB to 12v PSUs, your power options are wide open here.

This is a project that no home automation enthusiast should overlook. It’s small, simple and very easy to build. But it’s also the gateway to creating a great home automation system. If you’re only just getting started, this is the project to begin with. It’s the tiny module where all the important data comes from to make your home truly autonomous. RootSaid’s excellent tutorial also makes it easy to see how you can expand on the project in lots of ways.

Check it out, and make sure you subscribe to his channel.

The post Self Contained, Cloud Connected Home Monitoring Module appeared first on Arduino Blog.

While once an essential communication tool, rotary phones in the wild are quite a rarity today. Still, they do hold a certain charm, and hacker Kristiaan N. decided to turn one of these units into a clever home automation interface.

The original idea was to use the phone as a doorbell. Like many projects, this simple job turned into something much more involved, with an Arduino Nano and a bevy of complimentary electronics being installed in the housing. This allows it to respond to doorbell presses as intended, and it’s now also able to ring in different patterns via wireless input from a smartphone. 

Most impressively, the modified phone can signal up to 10 devices using the rotary input, using the MySensors Arduino library and a Domoticz setup. The system’s capabilities are demonstrated in the video below, switching lights, and showing off its multi-ring capability.

The current version features the following functions:

• Doorbell function with simple button
• MySensors integration with NRF24 radio
• Wirelessly activate 5 different ringtones
• Alarm signal
• Working dial with 10 virtual switches

The idea is basically that it will ring just like a old phone when somebody presses the doorbell button. If you don’t want any wires for that, you can just sent a command from any button attached to your Domoticz controller. You can also set your Domoticz controller to ring different ringtones for any events like a door that has open, or a set timer that has passed.

The dial also acts like 10 virtual switches. Your Domitcz controller will see these as 10 different switches that will be turned on and immediately be turned off again. You can use this to trigger events like turning a light on, or set the heating to a different setpoint.

The wireless function is done by the incredible MySensors library. In my opinion its one of the best platforms for home build sensors and actors. Its cheap to build, very reliable, and the possibilities are endless. You will need a MySensors gateway attached to your Domiticz controller. I’m using the USB version. Building one is very easy and doesn’t require knowledge of MySensors, Arduino, or electronics. If you just want the doorbell, don’t worry about all the other functions. Just leave out the radio and the connections to the dial. The Arduino code will work fine without.

A few years ago, Integreight set out to turn your smartphone into more than 40 different Arduino shields. Now, the creators of the 1Sheeld have launched an open-source, fully-customizable home automation kit that will enable you to control your door locks, light switches and power strips using that very same mobile device.

“Togglit” can be assembled without any programming, wires, or hassle — only a screwdriver. For its debut at Maker Faire Bay Area, the connected interface was based on an Arduino Uno and 1Sheeld; however, the startup’s founder Amr Saleh notes that it can run on virtually any hardware platform, ranging from Raspberry Pi to other Wi-Fi products.

At the moment, Togglit is compatible with typical toggle light switches, standard deadbolts, as well as American and European power outlets. Ready to make your house smarter? The DIY kit is currently available for pre-order.