Controlling virtually anything with a simple Wemos D1 mini board (ESP8266) , a relay and an Amazon Echo Dot.
DIY home automation CHEAP using the amazon Alexa voice service and a few parts!
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This is a full tutorial on how to use a cheap Wemos D1 Mini wifie board to control anything in your home with the Amazon Alexa enabled Echo Dot device. Using the Arduino IDE (programming environment) you just need to import the Wemos D1 Mini support then follow this video. After complete just hit upload and your devices (lights 1 through 4) will appear in the Amazon Alexa Device manager for control. Its that easy!
Follow my relay video for explanation of how they work and how to hook things up for control such as lights, motors, etc.
Quick update on all he projects going on the MKME Lab right now. Everything from Amazon Alexa, robot builds, 3D printing, drone builds and more coming soon!
Recently I updated my FlySky FSi6 transmitter with yet another new firmware. This is the one I’ve been waiting for! I now have fully functional flight timer with alarms and 3 more fully configurable alarms as well as full 10 channels. This is all on an under $50 transmitter. Simply amazing.
WARNING! There is always a chance you can brick your radio. Only proceed if you can accept the risks.
Important: If you use this firmware you need to bind any new receivers in the factory menu found HERE. This is just holding both sticks down to the left when powering up. The bind button wont work with this firmware.
To update yours follow the video here:
The RC Groups thread for all the information and help is HERE
The firmware itself is found in the RC Groups thread as: hali9_updater_04_21_23_13.bin (This may change quickly so use the newest one available in the forum)
Follow the video and enjoy this amazing new firmware! Make sure you take the time to thank the guys over in the RC Groups thread. They are amazing!
If you would like to build the smart kitchen terminal shown in my videos start by setting up your Raspberry Pi set up as shown in the video and detailed instructionshere. You can also start with any basic Raspberry Pi running Raspbian. Now we can set you Pi up to be a fully functional Amazon Alexa powered device.
If you didn’t already watch the Alexa setup video you can see it HERE
As described in the video you need only follow the instructions on the Raspberry Pi Alexa GitHub page here.
For me I decided to create shell scripts to run each of the 3 commands required to get Alexa up and running. To do this you just make a new file on your desktop with any name you like followed my .sh. in each of the files you will enter the startup commands.
alexa1.sh:
alexa2.sh:
alexa3.sh:
To make your shell scripts executable you must use the command line tool and do this comamnd for each file
chmod 755 alexa1.sh
chmod 755 alexa2.sh
chmod 755 alexa3.sh
Now to start up your Alexa you just need to double click the shell script icons on your desktop in order starting with the first one. This is the same as the instructions on GitHub just a bit easier for those not comfortable with the command line
You can also make these start automatically when your Raspberry Pi boots up. I will try to post instructions for that in an upcoming article.
Remember to Subscribe to the MKME Lab on YouTube and give a like on the video if you enjoyed this project. It helps a lot! Next week we will add full Amazon Alexa control to our Raspberry Pi and give it a tonne more functionality. Stay tuned!
Here’s the full instructions to build your smart kitchen display with a Raspberry Pi to display live video, weather reports, news, time and more. To get started you can see the full video overview here:
Go ahead and assemble your Raspberry Pi as shown in the video. The webcam/microphone isn’t needed right now but I included it because next video we will be adding full control and voice activation via the Amazon Alexa service.
You can use the NOOBs software found here to set up your Raspberry Pi. I advise you install both Raspian and Open-Elec so you can use your Pi to watch movies and TV as well by booting into KODI/OpenElec. See my video here:
If you decide to use Open-Elec you can also see this video how to set it up to watch movies and add various “add-ons” so you can stream just about anything:
Now go ahead and set up your Pi for VNC access. This way you can easily access and change your Pi from any PC in your home. This makes it really easy to add new programs or change our setup.
Download the files and copy all the files inside the Web Page folder over to your web server. Setting up your webhosting/server is beyond the scope of this tutorial- Sorry. If you need to buy a hosting plan check out BlueHost. They currently have a plan at $2.95 per month and I’ve heard many people like their service.
Edit the index.php file and at the top change the timezone to your local one:
Now edit the stream URL’s to whatever YouTube videos or live streams you want displayed on your Pi:
Now edit the getHeadlines area to use the news feed you wish. There are both the UK and US BBC links as well as you can try others you wish (not tested here). I like the US feed fine for my Canadian and US news.
Now we need to edit the weather.js file. Change the location to your location as well as the units to F or C as you wish.
That’s it for the page code! Set up your pi wherever you wish and open Chromium browser to the url of your site (yourwebsiteaddress/index.php).
Press F11 and this will toggle your page full screen and should look something like this:
If you like you can also make a handy shell script to open Chromium automatically into full screen by using code like this:
You will need to Google around for methods to make this autostart on Raspberry Pi boot as there are many ways to do it (beyond the scope of this instruction)
Remember to Subscribe to the MKME Lab on YouTube and give a like on the video if you enjoyed this project. It helps alot! Next week we will add full Amazon Alexa control to our Raspberry Pi and give it a tonne more functionality. Stay tuned!
With the holiday season upon us we all might get a bit more time to spend around home. What better time to make some neat new Raspberry Pi projects! I’ve gathered up some of the recent projects I’ve found shared around the web.
Raspberry Pi Satellite Data Receiver:
Raspberry Pi Bar Top Arcade:
EEVBlog Raspberry Pi Cluster Computer:
NES Classic Mini RetroPie Gaming System:
Pi Zero Hand Held Gaming Console:
Poison Tap- Pi Zero USB Hacking Exploit:
I hope you make something cool with Pi this holiday season. Make sure you share it with me @mkmeorg and I’ll share it out!
