Blinking patterns of Philips Hue Dimmer Switch V1 (RWL021)

I currently own two Zigbee-based dimmer switches from Philipps Hue (the old V1 version). I was always wondering what the different blinking patterns of the LED indicated. Understanding them was not too straightforward. So here is a quick summary: Blinking orange The device is currently in pairing mode, waiting to be paired. A hard-reset andContinue reading “Blinking patterns of Philips Hue Dimmer Switch V1 (RWL021)”

On energy consumption of different wireless protocols and modulations

Introduction As time moves on, more and more wireless communication protocols and modulations are being developed. They all have their own area of application and some suit certain applications more than others. In this post, we want to look at different factors that influence energy consumption of some of the widely used protocols. Particularly, weContinue reading “On energy consumption of different wireless protocols and modulations”

What is IoT?

IoT is short for Internet of Things. Internet is the worldwide electronic network connecting computers that we all know, but also people and society. And “things” in this case, are products or objects from everyday life, that get “augmented” by adding some form of smartness to them using a microcontroller and network connectivity. IoT devicesContinue reading “What is IoT?”

Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana with docker-compose

Docker is a great and easy way to run software in containers. Docker compose is a nice extension which allows to run whole systems composed of multiple containers in one command. This post shows you how you can set up a so-called “TIG” stack consisting of the open-source tools Step 0: Install Docker If youContinue reading “Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana with docker-compose”

What is Docker? How does it work?

In short: Docker is a platform and toolkit to develop applications that consist of multiple small containerized components that can be started, updated and replicated independently from each other. How it came to be Factor 1 – Monoliths are hard to handle Humans develop software since the early days of computers. Programming languages have evolvedContinue reading “What is Docker? How does it work?”

Headless setup of a Raspberry Pi 4 on macOS

This post explains how to setup a current Raspberry Pi 4 with the most recent version of Raspberry Pi OS (most recent = at the time of writing: January 2022). Some details can also be found on the official website. Step 1: Download the image For Raspberry Pi 4, if you want to install theContinue reading “Headless setup of a Raspberry Pi 4 on macOS”

720×720 LCD screen using DPI on Raspberry Pi 4

Some weeks ago, I bought a 4inch square LCD screen with 720×720 pixels from Waveshare. However, they did not provide any documentation at all for this specific display, but there was more than enough documentation for all the other displays, e.g. this rectangular one. Thus, I decided to document here how to get this displayContinue reading “720×720 LCD screen using DPI on Raspberry Pi 4”

WS2812B vs. WS28123 – Determine the type of LED strips

There are many different types of LED strips out there. What type do you have? This post gives you hints on how to determine this. LED types These are the types of SMD LED components that you might find on LED strips: 3528: single color, non-addressable, very low power 2835: single color, newer than 3528,Continue reading “WS2812B vs. WS28123 – Determine the type of LED strips”

What platform should I use for my IoT project?

There is a large choice of platforms, embedded microcontrollers and breakout boards available for prototyping your projects. I want to show you some aspects, that might help you to device what platform you should choose. First of all, answer the following questions for yourself: Do I need WiFi connection, or is some other wireless technologyContinue reading “What platform should I use for my IoT project?”

Subscribe to The Things Network (TTN) using MQTT

The Things Network (TTN) is an open platform for creating a worldwide LoRaWAN network. You can install your own LoRa gateways and register them on TTN so that other TTN users can use your gateways. If you have devices or sensors publishing data over LoRa, you can receive this data using an MQTT broker fromContinue reading “Subscribe to The Things Network (TTN) using MQTT”