Tag archive for: Internet of things

How to control a SG90 servo motor with the ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA Development Board

When you are looking to operate remote-controlled or radio-controlled toy cars, robots and airplanes, you will need to use servo motors.

Since the ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA Development Board is cost efficient for IOT solutions, it can be used for controlling servo motors.

So how can we control a servo motor with the ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA Development Board?

This post discusses how we can control the SG90 servo motor, with the ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA Development Board.

Making sure that the password of your user account does not expire on Windows 10 IoT

Once upon a time, I was developing an IoT prototype on a Windows 10 IoT device that does not have any display port. Therefore, the only way to work with that device is to use Microsoft Remote Desktop. After using it for some time, I switched to another Raspberry Pi project of higher priority.

When I came back to this Windows based device, the password of the user account had expired. As a result of that, Windows Remote Desktop Connection Manager denied access to the device. Since that was the only user account for me to access the device, I had to start all over again with another device.

After this incident, I make it a point to configure my user account with a password that never expires.

In order to have a reference in the future, I created this post to document the steps to do so on Windows 10 IoT.

Enabling ESP8266 Development on Arduino IDE

Undeniably, the ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA Development Board is cost efficient for IOT solutions. Available at a low price point and built-in WiFi, we can easily get sensor readings and make them available on the Internet.

In order to run our program on ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA Development Board, we will need to write our program into the flash memory of the development board. Since it is easy to write code and flash programs with Arduino IDE, it is a good tool to use with the ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA Development Board.

In case you are looking for a reference to enable ESP8266 development on Arduino IDE, this post shows how you can do so.

How to read temperature and humidity from a DHT11 sensor that is connected to a Raspberry Pi 3

I had always wanted to measure the temperature and humidity of the environment where my herbs are grown at.

Since I had a few pieces of Raspberry Pi 3 lying around the house, I decided to use one of them to measure the temperature and humidity of the area of the house where my herbs are.

An additional sensor is required to measure the temperature and humidity of the environment. Therefore, I went to AliExpress and got a DHT11 sensor. By connecting a DHT11 sensor to my Raspberry Pi 3, I can give it the ability to read the temperature and humidity of its environment.

Given these points, I created this post to show how to read temperature and humidity from a DHT11 sensor that is connected to a Raspberry Pi 3.

In order for us to check the temperature and humidity from the DHT11 sensor, we will build a simple Flask application that returns the temperature and humidity values as HTTP responses to HTTP clients.

How to deploy Python 3 Flask application on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx, Supervisor, Virtualenv and Gunicorn

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B boards make good gifts for programmers and if someone had gifted you with one, you may want to use it as a control center for interacting with various IoT sensors and devices at home.

In such a situation, you may want to build a Python 3 Flask application to present the web interface for accessing the control center.

After you had built that Python 3 Flask application, the next step will be to deploy it on your Raspberry Pi 3 for serving HTTP requests.

This post discusses how you can deploy a Python 3 Flask application on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx, Virtualenv and Gunicorn.

How to setup Raspbian Stretch Lite on Raspberry Pi 3 to run Python 3 applications

Raspbian Stretch Lite operating system is the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s official supported operating system for running headless software. It is a good operating system for different Raspberry Pi 3 use cases. Some examples include:

If you are planning to use Raspberry Pi 3 GPIO to interface with the real world, it is recommended that you setup Raspbian Stretch Lite to run Python 3 applications.

This post provides the steps to setup Raspbian Stretch Lite on Raspberry Pi 3 for running Python 3 applications.

How to setup Raspbian Stretch Lite with remote configuration over WiFi on first boot

Two of the good features of Raspbian Stretch Lite is that it allows us to enable the SSH server and connect to our WiFi network before it boots up for the first time.

Combining these two features is useful for projects based on Raspberry Pi Zero W as we can configure Raspbian Stretch Lite via SSH without connecting extra peripherals to it.

This post documents how you can enable remote configuration of your Raspbian Stretch Lite over WiFi on first boot.