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Feb 23
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IoT Printable Devices

IoT 3D Printable Devices – The Spring 2021 Collection

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At The Connected Environments Lab, part of The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, here at University College London we are designing and building a series of IoT devices to communicate live data feeds. Using a mix of servo motors, neopixels, LEDs, speech systems, eink and sound we are exploring ways to monitor data within a home/office environment. These form part of a module exploring the ability to build and design devices that not only can be physically made but also exist and run with both Augmented and Virtual Reality.

The YouTube clip below details the collection so far (Spring 2021):

Each of these objects will be explored further and made available to print, insert into 3D worlds and view online. One such example is our ‘THE’ – Time, Headlines and Environmental Data.

THE: eink Time Headlines and Environmental Data

We have a full tutorial on making a ‘THE’ over at Connected Environments. A more recent addition is the ability to upload models to SketchFab and make them available to download.

IoT Printable Devices
Spring 2021 Collection on SketchFab

SketchFab also allows models to be embed and viewed directly within a web browser – below is an example of our 3D Printed Barograph, using realtime data feeds combined with more traditional paper and ink to recreate the Barograph – click ‘Play’ to view the model in 3D.

We will be posting more about the Spring 2021 collection in the coming weeks. Its been a while since our last post over here on Digital Urban, it is good to be back.

Apr 18
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Little Book of Conneted Environments and the Internet of Things

Download The Little Book of Connected Environments and the Internet of Things

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Our Little Book of Connected Environments is about opening up the potential of Internet of Things (IoT) devices to provide information about our environment. From city-wide systems and the idea of the Smart City through to building-level management systems and the connected home, data is being joined up – connected. Via a series of case studies this book explores the wide array of possibilities, from environmental data (Shazam for Bats) through to connecting everyday devices in public park settings (Tales of the Park) and onwards to adding IoT into the Curriculum via the Internet of Schools.
The context and impact is wider than these case studies. Connected environments have the potential to change everything we know about not only our urban environments but also our homes, healthcare, transport, security and beyond. This little book builds on work carried out by a team of computer scientists, social scientists, environmental scientists and artists over the last decade, providing a glimpse into the potential of connected environments. We hope to show that how, in many ways, we are at the start of a new digital revolution of connected devices which will transform how we view, manage and use our environments. So, what does this Little Book tell you? We begin by clearly explaining what we mean by connected environments and the Internet of Things. After this, we go into a bit more depth, presenting a number of case studies which we believe illustrate the potential of these technologies to change our lives for the better…

Little Book of Conneted Environments and the Internet of Things

Download the Little Book

Download as PDF (6.54Mb)
Download as an iBook
Apr 10
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eink MQTT Display

Make an eInk MQTT Reader for the Time, News and Environmental Data

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‘THE’ is a mini MQTT Information Display for Time, News and Environmental Information.  Using a 4.2-inch eInk screen, its concept is simple – to display information on a rotational basis, updating every couple of minutes. The data can be any feed – from the latest news headlines through to your smart home, energy usage, live local environmental conditions or simply the time – THE – Time, Headlines & Environment.

‘THE’ is built from two simple off the shelf components (an eInk InkyWHAT screen from Pimoroni and a Raspberry Pi) the code and the 3D printed casing are open source, allowing you to modify or redesign your own. You can follow along here or also take a look at the build at Instructable – https://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Your-Own-MQTT-EInk-Display-for-Time-News-and-/
The concept comes from a long tradition of viewing data on a screen, from systems such as Teletext, through to the beloved Chumby, onwards to the Sony Dash and then they current iterations of the Echo Show and Google Home. Yet there is a need for a simple information display that does not listen in, does not play music or videos and does not rely on having cloud-based data. Something that simply displays information, at a glance using a beautiful non lit eink screen, on widgets that cycle at predetermined intervals. One brilliant example is the eInk Status Display, using the InkyPhat see https://jsutton.co.uk/eink-mqtt-status/ for details. Thus with these in mind and some code to work on ‘THE’ was born, one cold weekend in November in deepest Norfolk, while thinking about the Connected Environments Curriculum back at University College London.

At its heart, THE is powered by Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), allowing it to receive messages as soon as they are broadcast, via series of scripts, written in Python. THE subscribes to the topic (THE/messages) which are displayed on the eInk screen whenever a new one arrives. This allows the hub of THE to simply be a displayer of a single message topic with the timings and subjects configured by external scripts. The configuration allows the system to display a wide range of data sources from internal sources around Smart Home Automation Systems through to the news headlines, personal messages to friends or family or simply to display the time.

eInk MQTT Case
To Make a THE you require:

  1. A Raspberry Pi (a Pi zero, or a Pi 3 ) – we used a Pi 3 for ours.
  2. An InkywHAT screen;
  3. If using a Pi 3 – a right angled USB cable (so the cable fits in the case);
  4. An MQTT broker – either running on your Pi or elsewhere. Don’t worry if you do not have one or are not sure what MQTT is, its quick and easy to set up and once installed it will automatically run – take a look at https://randomnerdtutorials.com/how-to-install-mosquitto-broker-on-raspberry-pi/ for a full and easy to follow tutorial on getting MQTT running – in this case mosquitto on your Pi.
  5. An easy to fit case – head over to Thingiverse to download and print our open source case.
  6. Our free and open source scripts to collect the Time, News and Environment conditions.

Step One: Installing the InkywHAT
The first step is to set and install your InkyWhat eInk sceen. You can install the libraires required for your InkyWHAT by using the easy one-line-installer.
Open a new terminal to connect to your Pi, and type the following, making sure to type y or n when prompted:

curl https://get.pimoroni.com/inky | bash

The one-line-installer puts everything in place to get your eInk screen up and running, we recommend you head over to the Pimoroni Getting Started with InkyWhat for more info and examples – just to check its working.

Step Two: Getting the Time, News and Environmental Information
THE updates its information via subscribing to an MQTT topic, our custom scripts pull in other sources of information and publish to this topic, allowing any number of sources of information to be used. There are three main files – one for the Time, a second for the News Feed and a the third for Weather conditions.
Getting the Time:
All our files are available via the Connected Environments githib for THE – https://github.com/ucl-casa-ce/THE
For the time – download timetomqtt.py.
The script gets the current time and converts it to words for display on THE – so, for example, 12.14pm becomes The Time is Fourteen Minutes Past Twelve and so on. In the script you need to edit it to add in your own MQTT details  – we have highlighted the parts to edit in the code.
Copy it across to your Pi in a folder – we use /home/pi/scripts  – this can be down either via the command line or via ftp via Filezilla or similar.
Getting the News:
For the news, download rsstomqtt.py.
The script gets the latest news from Sky and publishes it to MQTT for THE. You can edit the news source as required in the file. This file can also be copied to pull in any RSS feed directly onto your THE. As before, in the script you need to edit it to add in your own MQTT details  – we have highlighted the parts to edit in the code.
Getting the Weather:
For the weather, download darkskytomqtt.py
You need to sign up to use the Darksky API (don’t worry, it’s free and allows up to 1000 calls a day, more than enough to display the latest weather on THE). In our script, simply put in your DarkSky key, which you will receive when you sign up to the API and also your longitude and latitude for the location you want to obtain the data for.
You can find a long and lat via  https://www.latlong.net/
If all this is new then it may sound complicated but with a little trial and error you will be able to edit files, write your own and get the information you want on THE in no time. Any issues just drop is a line via the contact form below..
THE: eink Time Headlines and Environmental Data
Step Three – THE 
Once you have the scripts to collect the feeds you needs to install the main script to run THE.
Download THE_pi_what.py
As with the other scripts, edit where indicated and add in your own MQTT details. Once edited, copy it across to your Pi with your other scripts.
Finally you need the font and the background image:
Download hm.ttf (the font)
Download whatbackground.png
These go in a new folder called ‘resources’ inside the scripts folder you crearted on your pi – simply create the new folder and copy the files across.
Step Four – Run the Scripts at Set Times.
The scripts run at set times on the pi via the cron service. To set this up, simply log into your pi via ssh and type

sudo crontab -e

This sets up a new cron process – if asked select option ‘2’ to edit with nano – copy the following into the cron file and save (cntl x).

*/5 * * * * python3 /home/pi/scripts/timetomqtt.py
*/12 * * * * python3 /home/pi/scripts/rsstomqtt.py
*/18 * * * * python3 /home/pi/scripts/darkskytomqtt.py
@reboot sleep 10 && python3 /home/pi/scripts/THE_pi_what.py
*/60 * * * * sudo reboot

 
The scripts run at set times – change them to any time to wish. We reboot the pi every hour to keep things fresh – this is not required and we know it is not the best of practice but we have found it keeps things running for our purposes.

Step Five
Reboot your Pi and sit back and wait  – your feeds will appear according the time intervals you set in your cron scripts.
You can edit the files and add as many sources of information as you like.
Do let us know if you make one, edit any scripts or remix the case.
Jan 31
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Raspberry Pi Internet Radio

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Part of creating a new insight into ‘Connected Environments’ (more on that term in future posts) is understanding the function, design and nature of devices. The enclosure of a device is all important and in the world of the Internet of Things, often overlooked.
Before delving into casing sensors its worth taking a step to look at kits available online and how they can be adapted to a new form. As such we have used the Pimoroni radio kit (its a great kit) as a first example:

The redesigned radio case was designed to create a small, easy to use radio with decent sound. It uses the PhatBeat header from Pimoroni, which can either be purchased alone or as as part of a Pi Radio kit, full links are below via Thingiverse. It will of course work with any other audio output from a Raspberry Pi Zero.

The speaker has been replaced with a Surface Transducer, allowing a smaller case as well as making use of what ever surface the radio is placed upon to enhance the sound. The transducer is at the bottom of the unit as a small metal disc, placing it on a wooden surface creates the deepest sound, a sound beyond the size of the device.

The buttons are ‘mini arcade’ buttons, aimed at simplifying the operation of the radio – it features play/pause (Yellow), next station (Blue) and Volume up (Red), Volume Down (Green).

There is no power off in the current version as its built to be left powered for instant audio (although the feature is built into the PhatBeat so can be easily extended).

Full details on how to make it, along with the 3D case to print are now available on Thingiverse.
.
Do let us know if you make one…
 
 

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