Recently, I exhausted my stock of common passive infrared (PIR) motion sensor modules and was looking for a new one to play with. I searched the web for a small type with self-contained electronics.

A good source of hackable home automation parts has come for a while in the form of inexpensive modules offered by large retailers such as Lidl, or IKEA. They’re readily available and easy to play ...

It’s really hard to overstate how awesome ESP8266 development boards like the Wemos D1 Mini really are. For literally a couple of dollars you can get a decently powerful Wi-Fi enabled microcontroller ...