Miro's Blog

The idea for this project came from a very practical situation at home. We have a Roborock robot vacuum, but it is configured only on my phone. In daily use, I mostly rely on room-by-room cleaning, which requires a bit of preparation before starting the vacuum. I wanted my kids to be able to start cleaning as well, but without needing access to my phone. Recently, I experimented with an unofficial API available on GitHub, and I found that it was relatively easy to trigger cleaning commands for individual rooms. That gave me the idea to build a simple, dedicated controller. Hardware Design The device itself is intentionally simple: ESP32 Huzzah (with built-in battery support) Small LED display Battery-powered operation Custom 3D-printed enclosure I designed a small case and printed it using a 3D printer to make the controller compact and easy to use for kids. Challenges and Decisions One of the main challenges was communication with the vacuum. From a previous project, I knew that handl...

In some of my previous posts, I mentioned that I’m a big chess enthusiast. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before I tried to automate the game. Of course, I’m far from the first person to attempt this. There are quite a few automated chessboard projects on YouTube. However, only a small fraction of them appear to be truly functional and reliable. As a starting point, I used this excellent guide from Instructables: https://www.instructables.com/Automated-Chessboard/ The author (Greg06) does a great job explaining both the challenges and the solutions in detail. The project includes a full list of materials and clear assembly instructions. My second source of inspiration was: https://oshwlab.com/skolodi/works This project builds on the same foundation but goes deeper into areas that weren’t fully covered in the original. I actually discovered it through the comments section. In this post, I’ll focus on what didn’t work well in my first attempt and what I would redesign. Where Thi...

As my son gets ready to start school, I wanted to surprise him with something special. Over the past few years, he's developed a strong passion for chess, playing it every chance he gets. So, I thought, why not combine his love for chess with a little lunchtime surprise? The idea was to create a custom chess puzzle that I could print out and include in his lunchbox as a fun note. The Inspiration and the Challenge I had some experience with thermal printers from previous projects, so I decided to use one for this idea. The challenge, however, was to find a way to generate chess puzzles easily. Creating puzzles manually would be too time-consuming, so I needed a reliable source of puzzles. As far as I know, two major chess platforms offer puzzles: Chess.com and Lichess. Fortunately, Lichess is open source and provides access to a vast database of chess puzzles . This made it the perfect choice for my project. Turning Puzzles into Printable Images With the puzzles secured, the next st...

I’ve always been a huge coffee lover. The smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning is something I can’t start my day without. However, like many others, I often find myself pressed for time, especially in the mornings. The usual process of making coffee with my machine, while not overly time-consuming, involved pressing a few buttons and waiting around for about three minutes. It’s not a lot of time, but enough to make me think: "Can this be done faster?" So, I decided to take on a fun and slightly geeky challenge to automate my coffee-making process using a Raspberry Pi. What started as a simple idea for a hackathon at work has now become a fully functional setup that I’ve been using for over six months! The Coffee Machine Hack Here’s how I turned my regular coffee machine into a remote-controlled, automated coffee-making station: Step 1: Disassembling the Coffee Machine The first step was to carefully disassemble my coffee machine. I needed to access the internal contr...

In this article, we’ll describe how to recognize skateboard tricks using a gyroscope. This sensor is already present in most smartphones, but if you’re not familiar with it, here is a description . Before we dive in, a small disclaimer: This project originated as part of a Slido hackathon with the goal of demonstrating that it’s possible to recognize skateboard tricks using a gyroscope. For simplicity, we’ll focus on recognizing just two basic tricks and won’t consider the skater’s stance on the board. We’ll break down the problem into several smaller tasks: recording the trick, storing the data, describing the trick, analyzing it, and, finally, recognizing it. Recording the Trick Let’s start with trick recording. To obtain precise data, the device with the gyroscope needs to be attached directly to the skateboard. Place it on the bottom of the board to avoid interfering with the execution of the trick. The device should also be compact and lightweight to avoid altering the board’s cen...