Switchuino

Why?

In my apartment, my light switch is all the way across the room and at night I always wished I could turn my lights off or the fan on from my bed. I knew products like this one existed, but I thought it would be more fun to try to create my own.

Design

To make it function, I used a Particle Argon to control servos. The Particle Argon is a WiFi, BLE, and Mesh enabled Arduino type device that makes it really easy to make projects function over the cloud. I was able to design a PCB to keep everything organized.

I designed and 3D printed a case, as well as bracket mounts for the servos.

The PCB also supports a PIR sensor, and a Temperature sensor. Currently I do not use these sensors but they both can be used.

Code

Particle makes developing for the Argon extremely easy, so I was able to quickly write some firmware to make the device work as intended.

To allow for a user to allow for up to four servos I have created a class structure that defines a switch, and lets sensors and the user act on it.

Future

I recently had an idea as to how I could potentially create a new and improved circuit board that could allow for the user to mount the servo to the PCB.

It is my hope that with this new design, I might be able to make a development platform that individuals could use to make their own homemade IoT devices.