Blog

Received Upcycle IoT Design Challenge Runner Up Reward

2024-10-20T10:20:15Z

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...(read more)

Winners Announcement - Upcycle It Design Challenge

2024-02-13T13:02:06Z

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...(read more)

Blog #5: Completing up-cycling broken wireless earbuds

2024-02-09T23:37:39Z

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...(read more)

Blog #4: HDC1080 with SAM E51

2024-02-09T23:34:30Z

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...(read more)

Blog #3: Fake battery emulator

2024-02-09T23:32:54Z

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...(read more)

Blog #2: Earbuds internals

2024-02-09T23:27:10Z

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...(read more)

Blog#1: Reusing broken wireless earbuds

2024-02-09T23:22:16Z

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...(read more)

Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 7, final implementation

2024-02-09T15:57:00Z

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 ...(read more)

Super-cycle Design Challenge

2024-02-09T04:10:42Z

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/...(read more)

Curiosity Nano Programming

2024-02-08T05:01:17Z

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...(read more)

Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 6, measuring temperature distribution inside the fridge

2024-02-07T22:16:35Z

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...(read more)

Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 5, feasibility analysis

2024-02-07T16:18:27Z

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...(read more)

Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 4, unboxing

2024-02-06T16:49:54Z

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...(read more)

Unboxing the Microchip Curiosity Nano Evaluation Kit

2024-02-05T07:30:18Z

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...(read more)

Using (obsolete) home appliances to optimize energy consumption - blog 3, instrumentation

2024-01-31T16:29:00Z

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...(read more)