#iot

23 bookmarks tagged with #iot · RSS Feed · ← All Tags

Controlling your home with tiny, cheap touchscreens

https://a.wholelottanothing.org/controlling-your-home-with-tiny-cheap-touchscreens/?ref=a-whole-lotta-nothing-newsletter
This turned out really well and was a cheap solution to my problems (it cost me about$16 but it currently shows me $21 for a screen). In the weeks since I set it up, it's been so useful for everyone else in the house that I'm considering buying one for the kitchen to control all the living room lights without anyone having to take their phones out, and another one in my barn to turn all the lights on whenever I walk in (currently I always fire up the Apple Home app and run a shortcut to turn on the 6 different light switches).

Banned Book Library | Rick's Blog

https://www.richardosgood.com/posts/banned-book-library/
A long while back I had an idea to hack a WiFi smart light bulb to do something more useful to me. Actually, I had a few different ideas of things to do with them. One of these ideas was to modify the device to have an open WiFi access point and a web server hosting banned books. The idea was that if you lived somewhere that banned books you thought were important, you could theoretically stick a digital copy of the book on one of these light bulbs. Then you could go install it somewhere in your community. As long as the light bulb is switched on, then anyone in the vicinity can still access the banned material assuming they have an electronic device with WiFi. Since the device is a light bulb, it would be difficult to detect and likely to go unnoticed. A cyberpunk digital dead drop. These devices are also fairly inexpensive, so leaving them around town as is hopefully not very cost prohibitive.

Google is collecting troves of data from downgraded Nest thermostats | The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/news/820600/google-nest-learning-thermostat-downgraded-data-collection
Google officially turned off remote control functionality for early Nest Learning Thermostats last month, but it hasn’t stopped collecting a stream of data from these downgraded devices. After digging into the backend, security researcher Cody Kociemba found that the first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats are still sending Google information about manual temperature changes, whether a person is present in the room, if sunlight is hitting the device, and more.

Running Minecraft on a lightbulb

https://hackaday.com/2025/11/13/running-a-minecraft-server-on-a-wifi-light-bulb/
WiFi-enabled ‘smart’ light bulbs are everywhere these days, and each one of them has a microcontroller inside that’s capable enough to run all sorts of interesting software. For example, [vimpo] decided to get one running a minimal Minecraft server

Gadgetbridge

https://gadgetbridge.org/?utm_source=FuckOff&utm_campaign=FuckOff&utm_medium=FuckOff
Gadgetbridge is a free and open source Android application that allows you to pair and manage various gadgets such as smart watches, bands, headphones, and more without the need for the vendor application. So in short, you can use Gadgetbridge instead of relying on your gadget's own proprietary app.

Physical-web by google

http://google.github.io/physical-web
The Physical Web is an approach to unleash the core superpower of the web: interaction on demand. People should be able to walk up to any smart device - a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car - and not have to download an app first. Everything should be just a tap away.