IKEA Motion Lamp Hack

Last year while visiting a friend for the Portland Mini Maker Fair I became the owner of an IKEA STÖTTA, a battery powered, motion activated, LED lamp. I knew it was ripe for hacking. After arriving home, it sat on my desk waiting to be disassembled to reveal its secrets. I figured the only way to get it off my desk was to get around to tearing it apart and seeing what I could do with it. Over the weekend I spent more time trying to decide which direction to take since there are plenty of features I could add. At least I can get something going now and add to it later. Who ever said a project had to be completed?

IKEA LED Light PCB Close Up

The lamp consists of a small PCB which contains the following main parts;

• HS8A005 (BISS0001 Motion Detection IC)
• PIR Sensor
• LED Driver (Inductor and IC, powered by battery VCC and outputs 3V)
• 3.3V Regulator
• Voltage Detector (Disables trigger on low battery)

IKEA Light PCB Labeled

Mooltipass

A year and a half ago I helped support the Mooltipass on Indiegogo. I originally heard about it on Hackaday.com, but what really captured my attention other than it being an offline password manager, is that it was going to be designed by the the community. Anyone could volunteer time to help with the project. Unfortunately I was unable to do so with the many other things I had going on. But at least I could support the project by backing it.

The Mooltipass is a USB encrypted (AES256) credential storage device that acts like an HID keyboard. It can be used with or without the Chrome app and the extension. The extension allows it to detect which site you are on and load that credential after an approval from the on board display, as well as manage the device settings and credential database. The goal of the Mooltipass is to minimize the possible attack vectors on your stored passwords. I use LastPass which has a larger attack surface and offers greater convenience, so for the time being, I am using both systems. Security for the Mooltipass is accomplished by being a physical device as well as having a removable smart card. Without the smart card and pin number, you cannot access the credentials even if you have the backed up binary blob. There is also a permanent lockout after three failed attempts of entering the pin. Which I find a bit short since with the touch buttons it is easy to mess up. I should also mention that the pin isn't limited to 0-9; it has used all of the possible hex values, 0-9, A-F. Pretty neat!

Since the Mooltipass is a physical device pretending to be a keyboard, it will work with sites in which the login form isn't detectable, such as a Flash based web app, which is another great feature. This is accomplished by using the onscreen display to send the credentials. An unintended use that I found is that is greatly reduces keystrokes for non web based logins which is helpful for people like myself who have tendentious.  I realized with the Mooltipass how many times a day I am entering in my credentials.

Living Room Node Upgrade

For over a year now the living room node and La Crosse Gateway has been sitting atop a plastic bin next to my patio slider in a mess of wires.  This is when you know you have too many projects lying around the house.  So this summer I decided to design a PCB with a nodeMCU that will replace both projects and mount atop of a power brick. I went with the nodeMCU since there is power nearby, ease of connecting directly to the MQTT broker, and I can broadcast more often without the power limitations of a battery. This project frees up two RFM12B boards so that they can be used for the other window and the front door.

Living room slider node and La Crosse gateway

PCB Battery Clip

Just a small update to the battery powered nodes. Until now I had used a piece of tape to hold the PCB to the battery pack. It was always a pain when changing the batteries or accidentally hitting the node and watching it fall apart. I also wanted to try my hand at Fusion 360, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Fusion 360 sketch of PCB battery holder clip

I still have a lot to learn in using Fusion 360 but I got the job done, um sort of. I had issues extruding the width less than I had initially and I didn't want to start over. So canceling the print worked good enough at the size I wanted.

Fusion 360 model of PCB battery holder clip

It came out quite nice. I just need to learn Fusion 360 properly.

PCB battery holder in action

C.H.I.P. by Next Thing Co

After a year of waiting it has arrived: the $9 computer from Next Thing Co. When it launched on Kickstarter, there was no reason to skip backing this one to at least see what it was all about. Now that it has arrived I am quite happy that I did. For such a large project it would hardly be worth calling it late. My reward was due May 2016 and I received it June 2016. Very good compared to most crowd sourcing campaigns. I selected the C.H.I.P. plus battery reward, but before it shipped you could add accessories. I added the VGA adapter and an extra C.H.I.P. That way I can use it on my desk attached to my monitor since the DVI input is already in use. With the Raspberry Pi I have to connect it to the TV if I want to mess with it directly. At this price it's cheap enough to buy more than one that you can dedicate to a project and just fuggedaboutit.

$9 C.H.I.P. and accessories

nodeLED

As a hacker, I know all too well how much workbench space is vital. Alongside my three monitors, I have an extended desk that houses my soldering irons, compartment shelving, and countless projects, among other tools and devices. One constant that seems to get in my way is an old desk lamp. That’s where this project came to light, ha! I decided to design my own lamp using an analog RGBW LED strip. This board I designed will give you the tools to design your own WiFi controlled light source.

The boards' controller is run by the NodeMCU which is connected to an N-Channel MOSFET for each color of the RGBW LED strip. Trimpot for brightness and two user buttons (that can be setup to change modes, possibly) were also added. A 5v regulator was then added so the power can be shared with 9-12v input for the LED strip. The nodeMCU will be updated by wireless as well.

My idea is to have the nodeMCU be a web server for direct control via a web page. The site will have various configurations including color options, number of channels, animations (like fade effects) and a timer. I’d like to have it connect to MQTT server to integrate with larger servers such as openHAB.

You can follow the details of the project on Hackaday.io

https://hackaday.io/project/11521-nodeled

JeeNode to MQTT Gateway

It's been a few months since I have worked on openHAB but that is mostly due to focusing on FriedCircuits, Hackaday Prize and the Maker Faire. Not a dull moment around here! I finally sat down while watching some tube (or rather crystals) to start work on the JeeNode to MQTT gateway. Up to this point if you have read my other posts I have still relied on DomotiGA to get the JeeNode data into openHAB. This is because DomotiGA has support for JeeNodes. I noticed the sensor nodes weren't checking in again which usually is because DomotiGA is not running, this time I think it just needed a restart plus one node actually needs batteries. This prompted me to finally get around to writing the gateway. Once complete I won't need DomotiGA and the desktop UI so I can use Ubuntu server for my rebuild of openHAB.

After some research I was able to get receive the data over serial, split it and shift the bits into separate variables to publish over MQTT. Using the Paho MQTT python library it is trivial to connect and publish. I decided to map out it out as JeeNode/node#/name/value. Simple. I should mention this code is assuming the JeeNode is running the room node sketch or at least using the packet format. My remote nodes and receive node code is on Github if needed. Here is a graphical view of the tree for one node.

MQTT JeeNode Map

Switchmate

Last year my friend and I backed the Switchmate on Indiegogo.  At the time I didn't have much of a home automation setup - just two window nodes and the slider.  Not even any connected bulbs and I was still on DomoitaGA so I didn't have any of the fancy rules I now have in openHAB.  Over the course of the campaign, they had different deals so I ended up with three rewards.  I had actually forgotten about them, in part because since switching to openHAB and getting connected light bulbs, the need for these switches seemed diminished.  But one day I was pleasantly surprised to receive a shipping notice.  A few days later I received the package in the mail and boy was I surprised!  The quality and presentation was excellent - not what I expected at all.  Curious about them?  Read on!