Search This Blog

kilomon

About Kilomon

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Dan at Kilomon is a Systems Engineer with years of experience in datacenter infrastructure and cloud deployment, management, automation, and optimization.

Dan is blogging on his daily work and hobbies he enjoys.

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Creating Alexa Skills for IoT and Nodemcu - Part 2 AWS IoT

Connecting Nodemcu to AWS IoT This is part two of a series of posts showing how I setup a AWS based solution to allow Alexa to read data collected by Nodemcu with DHT temperature and humidity sensors. The design is discussed in part one of this series. Go to Part 1 - Design Overview I recommend reviewing my first post in this series, so you can understand the gameplan... but here's the short version. We will create and configure three separate services in AWS. An Alexa Skill for voice commands, a AWS Lambda function that will act as a middle man, and AWS IoT for storing the current state of the Nodemcu sensors. DISCLAIMER: This guide uses a work around to allow Nodemcu to communicate directly with AWS IoT. The work around uses API keys that will be written in cleartext on the Nodemcu. Proceed at your own discretion. Goals Configure an IoT Thing Setup a security policy and user that can write data to the Thing Shadow via the REST API Ensure the policy limits ac...

Hacking the Sonoff Wifi Switch - Part 3 Alexa Smart Home

Controlling Sonoff with Alexa This post will build our previous work with the Sonoff Wifi Switch. We'll focus on using an Arduino library called fauxmo to allow Alexa to interact with the Sonoff. Go to Part 1 Go to Part 2 Overview I have been controlling appliances such as lights and aquaponics equipment using MQTT with Node-RED and also Blynk. Both work well. When I recieved an Echo Plus as a gift for Christmas I quickly understood the potential that the Alexa service had. It is simple to use and for those of us that like getting under the hood, functional short comings can be overcome with the creation of Alexa Skills and some type of internet accessible service to handle logic and automation (AWS Lambda, Node-RED, etc). Echo Dot can be had a reasonable price currently. You can also keep tabs on the Alexa development pages. They have been giving out Echo Dot's to Skill creators that meet certain criteria. This guide will use the FauxmoESP library ...

Creating a PC Fan Power Hub

DIY PC Fan Hub I recently ran out of fan power headers on my PC motherboard. A quick search online and about $12 later, I had a fan hub heading my way. A few days later I had the fan hub installed in about 5 minutes and all my fans were adding to the office noise. The thing is... I couldn't stop thinking about how easy it would be to make. Overview Fast forward a couple months and I find myself in need of a way to hook up some 120mm fans for cooling purposes. This time I want to find out if building my own fan hub is worth the effort. I have four 120mm PC fans that need to be powered. I would like to have the option of adding more fans later. I want to keep it cheap and simple. I will use a 12V wall wart and will add switch to power on and off. I had considered throwing a Nodemcu on it and making it a Smart fan hub. It might be a fun little project, but I have several Sonoff switches that I hacked and programmed for use with Alexa. You can see the Sonoff series at...