4 minute read
Rodiger and IoT
We decided to open a new R&D depratment that will be focused on IoT devices. IoT is rapidly gaining in populatiry and it’s here to stay and grow. However, it’s still relatively new and has room to change and develop over time.
What is IoT
“The Internet of things (IoT) describes the network of physical objects—“things”—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the Internet.”
Why is IoT so popular
Well, first off, IoT belongs everywhere, from offices and business buildings to farms and home gardens. That means that everyone, who has an interest and knowledge in IT or even works in IT, can introduce IoT to their workplace and/or to their hobbies. Such as gardening, sport, music, or just use it to add features to your home or your car.
Those features can be something like cameras to track your home and yard, motion sensors to detect movement in your vacation house, voice control over home devices, controlling your lights and some other devices with your phone. I mean let’s be honest, getting in bed to sleep and remembering that you didn’t turn off the bathroom lights is the worst thing. Having phone control over lights gives you the ability to turn it off with your phone from bed.
Some of this stuff might sound familiar because many manufacturers are trying to incorporate these kind of things into their products to stay ahead of their competitors. Such as smart refrigerators or smart wall outlets.
One other thing to mention here is solar power. IoT devices, that don’t have the way to connect to a wall outlet, have to use batteries. With solar power becoming cheaper and more common, IoT devices are increasingly relying on solar power. Solving the battery problem, IoT has gained yet another advantage.
What we’re working with
Some of the things we’re working with are:
Raspberry Pi 4 and 3B
Raspberry Pi camera v2
Arduino Uno and Mega
Pan-Tilt HAT
Adafruit thermal camera
Laser transmitter and reciever
Gpio extension
Respeaker 4-mic array
Different modules like joystick, potentiometer, speaker and microphone
Different sensors such as proximity sensor, MQ-2 gas sensor, DHT-11 temperature and humidity sensor
We also have a bunch of wires and simple passive compoments like
- LEDs
- Resistors
- Capacitors
- Potentiometers
and so on. Basically all you need to make some really cool stuff.
You can see our workspace on the picture above. It’s a mess, but we like to think of it as a creative mess. You never know what you’ll need at the moment, right ? :)