Blog

Received Upcycle IoT Design Challenge Runner Up Reward

misaz

Hello everyone. About two weeks ago, I received my runner up reward from Upcycle IoT Design Challenge. It is quite a while since design challenge concluded. If you do not remember it, I joined competition with my DIY attempt to reuse old broken wirel...
- 20 Oct 2024
Winners Announcement - Upcycle It Design Challenge

e14phil

Winners Announcement - Upcycle IoT Design Challenge 30 Applicants, 15 Challengers, 46 Blog Posts, 150 Comments. Please Congratulate the Winners of Summer of Green Tech Design Challenge. Every year, 50 million tons of e-waste e...
- 13 Feb 2024
Blog #5: Completing up-cycling broken wireless earbuds

misaz

I welcome you to my last part of my series as part of Upcycle IoT Design Challenge. Today I will complete up-cycling my broken wireless earbuds which I introduced in previous blogs. The last part remaining in my project is controlling device using Mi...
- 9 Feb 2024
Blog #4: HDC1080 with SAM E51

misaz

I welcome you to third part of my series as part of Upcycle IoT Design Challenge. Today, I will integrate HDC1080 to SAM E51 project. It was quite challenging for me, because I used SAM E51 microcontroller for first time. Even more challenging it was...
- 9 Feb 2024
Blog #3: Fake battery emulator

misaz

I welcome you to third part of my series as part of Upcycle IoT Design Challenge. In previous blogs, I described earbuds and shown their schematics which I reverse engineer. For practical reusing of earbuds, I want to use them with Curiosity Nano boa...
- 9 Feb 2024
Blog #2: Earbuds internals

misaz

I welcome you to second part of my series as part of Upcycle IoT Design Challenge. In previous blog I described earbuds which I want to upcycle and today I will show them in more details. Opening Erabuds Opening is not very hard. Main part plastic c...
- 9 Feb 2024
Blog#1: Reusing broken wireless earbuds

misaz

Hello Element14 community! I welcome you to my first blog as part of my series about my project which I want to do as part of Upcycle IoT Design Challenge. In this blog I want to introduce my project. Broken earbuds In last 5 years I was buying and u...
- 9 Feb 2024
Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 7, final implementation

JWx

Intro My original plan was to use an idea from the Radio controlled clock/weather station, port it to the new architecture (Microchip Curiosity Nano SAME51) and receiver board (OOK RX click module), add voltage measurement and a relay to create ...
- 9 Feb 2024
Super-cycle Design Challenge

dougw

Intro This is my eighth and final blog in the Upcycle IoT Design Challenge. During the course of this project I recycled, reused, repurposed, upcycled, salvaged, and reimagined various components and subsystems from a 23 year old PC to create: a CP/...
- 9 Feb 2024
Curiosity Nano Programming

dougw

Intro The design kit has finally arrived, so this is a belated push to get something built and working before the project deadline this week. I have been able to get the kit system running some preliminary software but unfortunately I need to break o...
- 8 Feb 2024
Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 6, measuring temperature distribution inside the fridge

JWx

Intro Following suggestion of DAB I have decided to verify my sensor's readings by installing a second one (and then a third one...) and got some - unexpected to me at first - results. Second sensor and a surprise Another sensor was ins...
- 7 Feb 2024
Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 5, feasibility analysis

JWx

Intro Initial measurements were conducted to asses the feasibility of obtaining working energy storage using refrigerator under test. The objectives were set as following: over-freezing during energy oversupply should allow for significant reduction...
- 7 Feb 2024
Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 4, unboxing

JWx

Intro Every design challenge should have an unboxing blog, that is traditionally one of the first written. Unfortunately because of some delays and availability problems, I have just obtained most of my design kit, which I can now proceed to unb...
- 6 Feb 2024
Unboxing the Microchip Curiosity Nano Evaluation Kit

dougw

Intro This is very late in the game to be doing an unboxing, but the design challenge kit only arrived a few days ago. There were problems with stock of the Click modules I asked for, and further problems with shipping. I ended up paying about $23 fo...
- 5 Feb 2024
Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 3, instrumentation

JWx

Intro In the previous blog post we have researched the method of controlling household refrigerator operations, but doing it blindly/open-loop can lead to sub-optimal results. Thus, some measurement method has to be prepared. To not make big modifica...
- 31 Jan 2024
Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 2, nature of the fridge

JWx

Intro As proposed in the previous blog post, I will investigate the possibility of turning home refrigerator into energy storage device, storing excess energy as cold, which hopefully will limit it's energy consumption during other parts of the d...
- 30 Jan 2024
Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 1, why

JWx

Intro If by some crazy accident you happen to analyze your customer agreement with the grid utility, you can probably find a paragraph about energy parameters and penalties when they are exceeded. It usually includes parameters like availability, vol...
- 29 Jan 2024
ColdCase - Blog #7 - Final demo

amgalbu

For the sake of a fair competition, I tried to complete this challenge within two months since I received the challengers kit (which is hopefully the same amount of time all the other participants had available to build their project). In any case, t...
- 25 Jan 2024
ColdCase - Blog #6 - The Android app

amgalbu

To control the mini fridge remotely, I developed an Android app that connects on a Bluetooth channel to the Curiosity Nano board. Other posts in this serie ColdCase - Blog# 1 - Introduction ColdCase - Blog #2 - The refrigerated cell ColdCase - Blog ...
- 25 Jan 2024
ColdCase - Blog #5 - Final assembly

amgalbu

In this blog, I will show how all the electronics parts have been placed inside the case and connected to existing LEDs, push button and fan Other posts in this serie ColdCase - Blog# 1 - Introduction ColdCase - Blog #2 - The refrigerated cell ColdC...
- 25 Jan 2024
ColdCase - Blog #4 - The software

amgalbu

In this post, I will talk about the software implementation. To drive the Click boards, I customized the functions provided by the MikroSDK Other posts in this serie ColdCase - Blog# 1 - Introduction ColdCase - Blog #2 - The refrigerated cell C...
- 19 Jan 2024
PC Power Supply - Upcycle & Repurpose

dougw

Intro This section of the Upcycle Design Challenge is about upcycling and repurposing a PC power supply. Specifically I want to turn the power supply from an obsolete PC into a useful bench power supply, complete with meters and binding post banana j...
- 13 Jan 2024
ColdCase - Blog #3 - Preparing the environment

amgalbu

This is the first of two blogs that address the software for the mini fridge. In this blog, I will focus in particular on environment setup and peripheral configuration. In the next one, I will provide more details about the software implementation&n...
- 13 Jan 2024
ColdCase - Blog #2 - The refrigerated cell

amgalbu

In this post, I will show how I built the refrigerated cell of the mini fridge Other posts in this serie ColdCase - Blog# 1 - Introduction ColdCase - Blog #2 - The refrigerated cell ColdCase - Blog #3 - Preparing the environment ColdCase - Blog...
- 5 Jan 2024
Blog 2: E-Waste Resurrection Kinds of E-waste

walleynp

Hi everyone, this is my next post on E-Waste Resurrection. Here I am going to describe the three vital kinds of E-waste. 1. PCB 2. Battery 3. Semiconductor Behind the project, I have seen these items in our surroundings. People di...
- 4 Jan 2024