Adafruit IoT Monthly: Sensor Data with Edge LLMs, Arduino/Qualcomm, and more!

IoT Projects No-Code Indoor Grow Monitor with PPFD and VPD Measurements With temperatures falling in New England, the basil and heirloom tomatoes that you have been growing in your garden to top your dinner with are moving back inside the house for winter. But will they still grow? I built this IoT project with the Ruiz Brothers this past month to calculate a plant’s photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD). Knowing these data points can help optimize the yield of indoor crops. - Adafruit Learning System How to Interpret Environmental Sensor Data With Local “Edge” LLMs Tim documents his experiments with using a small (but local) Large Language Model, running on a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB, to provide insights into data collected by an environmental sensor. - Adafruit Learning System SplashFlag - Building an IoT Swimming Notification Device from Scratch Bert wanted to build an IoT device from scratch and selected “something fun” to try it out. He built a device that alerts his neighbors when his kids go swimming, extending an invitation for their kids to join them. - Data with Bert Hosting a Website on a Disposable Vape Bogdan Ionescu had been collecting disposable vapes from friends and family and noticed they all had a tiny ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller inside. Why not run a web server on one? - bogdanthegeek Turning a Billy Bass into a Voice Assistant Keen on Tech turned a Billy Bass animatronic fish into a voice assistant. The first few seconds of the video demonstrates the fish moving its head and responding to a “Hey Billy” command in a hilarious manner. - HackADay DIY Indoor Air Quality Monitor with Separate Display This step‑by‑step guide will walk you through building a fully functional indoor air quality monitor. You’ll learn how to capture real‑time measurements — such as temperature, humidity, and particulate matter — and automatically send that data to an external display for easy viewing. The project also leverages Adafruit’s WipperSnapper firmware and Adafruit IO Actions, allowing you to set up powerful data collection, visualization, and automation features without writing a single line of code. - Adafruit Learning System IoT News and More! A New Chapter for Arduino with Qualcomm Starting with the largest piece of news, Arduino has been acquired by Qualcomm for an undisclosed amount. This is a big deal for the maker community, Arduino has been a staple in DIY electronics and Open Source for years. As part of this announcement, Arduino released a new board. The Uno Q has a Qualcomm Dragonwing microprocessor and a STM32U585 microcontroller. This board with a “dual brain design” is designed for advanced IoT applications that leverage Edge Impulse’s ML/AI platform (also recently acquired by Qualcomm). The official press announcement is on the Arduino Blog , and our team has a post up about this on our blog . ESP32 Bus Pirate ESP32 Bus Pirate is an open-source firmware that turns your ESP32-S3 device into a multi-protocol hacker’s tool, inspired by the legendary Bus Pirate. - Adafruit Blog Logitech POP Buttons Get Deprecated A day after this newsletter hits your inbox, Logitech will shut down their services for users of the $100 USD POP Smart Button Kit. Logitech claims that these buttons will “lose all functionality” after the services are gone. - HackADay