DIY Smart Lock with Arduino and RFID

You walk up to an invisible lock that only you have the key for, and open it without even touching it. Sounds cool? Today we are going to build a simple RFID-based smart lock using an Arduino as the backbone and a few cheap components.

The technology behind this project is already used in many industries. Anyone who has worked in a modern office or used public transport will probably have used it every day. RFID (radio-frequency identification) identifies data stored on a chip in a card or dongle, and compares them to a list of tags that have already been scanned.

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My DIY Home Assistant Garden Automation System – Climate Control, Dosing, and More. Pt.1 – Hardware

This is a quick peek at the hardware portion of the DIY garden automation system I’ve been slowly building over the past year or so. Currently, the system is managing climate control, doing pH and nutrient dosing, fertigation schedule, light cycle, and has flood detection capability. It’s a work in progress and I’ll be sharing more about it as I go.

Create Home Automation with Arduino IoT Cloud

 was always inspired to live in a smart home where I can automate some of the everyday tasks to make life easier and comfortable. For example, how many times does your TV remote disappear, and you just wish to say a voice command to do the task for you instead? Many Smart TVs do this already, of course, but buying a good one can be a bit expensive. In this project, I describe how easy it is to make some of your home appliances smart with an Arduino board. Besides controlling the TV with voice, I will use a temperature sensor, motion sensor, and an RGB LED to demonstrate the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 capabilities. I will also connect the Arduino board to an Amazon Alexa device, and then you can set up some routines for your home automation.

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Raspberry Pi Alarm Clock Radio

More than 10 years ago I bought a Sony Radio Alarm Clock. For the time, it was an excellent device.

After years of abuse, tuning to an FM station became problematic. In 2017, the buttons stopped working. I could have fixed these, but I thought it would be more fun to replace the guts with a raspberry pi. However, the final build is larger than the original case. So, I tossed the case.

Of course, all of the functions of a Radio Alarm Clock can be accomplished with a SmartPhone.

There is no point in building a Radio Alarm Clock. A home built alarm clock radio costs way more than buying one and it took a crazy amount of time to build. But this project made me feel like a kid again and I learned a lot.

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