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How can I monitor IoT devices in real-time while on a plane?
As a frequent traveler (for work and research), currently, a lot of this travel is by plane. While in flight, I have to have my devices (that are with me obviously) in flight mode. This is a standard regulation for flights, so this question may be a bit of a stretch.
My situation is similar to what AstroDan mentions in his comment here on his question "Is there a way to turn on large numbers of IoT devices remotely?", where I am monitoring a set of small solar power monitors (that I inherited from a retiring professor).
Asides from recording the data, these small devices need to be monitored to make sure they don't overheat (if the cooling systems fail), which at the very least causes a distortion in the monitoring results and at worst, cause the device to burnout.
Is there a way to be able to monitor (real-time) the devices while on a plane?

Depends on the airline I suppose. Do you have access to any devices which can transmit data between the plane and the ground? If not, you're looking at smoke signals or semaphore. Not easy on planes.

What could you do if they do start overheating, while being on a plane? Could that action be automated, so you don't have to be personally involved?

Some airlines provide in-flight wireless connectivity, usually for a fee. You can use WiFi in "Airplane Mode" on most mobile devices, so that would let you connect to a monitoring server to retrieve the status of your devices, but you would still be unable to monitor your devices during taxi/takeoff/landing periods when your devices (even the small handheld ones) must be powered down.

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Sensors Communicating With the Pi, BLE / Wifi
I want to place a Pi 3 somewhere in my house and battery powered sensors. The Pi will read the inputs from e.g. the same level, one level above and the garden. So 1-2 regular brick walls in between and a range between 0-50m.
I looked into different technologies from Z-Wave, Digimesh, XBee, ZBee, Sigfox etc. but in the end I landed on the more common technologies. Because on most of the above technologies you need different players e.g. in ZigBee you have three different types e.g. routers. Also the above technologies require either a very costly commercial licensing or the components are > 7$.
So right now I'm between BLE and Wi-Fi. A college of mine recommended me to use Contiki, an open source OS which makes it easy to setup a communication with sensors.
Questions

He explained to me that there are three layers: physical, protocol and routing. So 6LoWPAN is one of the routing options.
Can I make a mesh with Contiki and the ESP8266? Otherwise, I would go for the CC2650. I have seen there are mesh solutions with the ESP8266.

Both technologies seem pretty similar to me. Both have ranges ~200m (which are probably more 30m through walls). And are widely used. Where are the differences for my use case?

Please ask your two questions as independent questions. Also, LoWPAN is a WAN (see The Things Network as an example), although it does use a routing architecture too. If you look here, most of your WiFi/BT question may have been covered, so just ask about the gaps.

Disclamer, not going to answer your question directly, but instead I'm going to give to you my experience with home automation
If you want to create a mesh with raspberry pi there some options out there.
You can check openHAB, a software that runs on raspberry pi and can monitor other devices using MQTT protocol. I've no experience with this environment, but there is a lot of info out there.
My personal favorite is Blynk (not the first time I do recommend it here). It's a server + Android App that can be installed and hosted on a Rpi and the control layer (user interface) it's on Android/iOS. Since you (or others) develop the UI, you can customize the UI and how it interfaces with the real world. ie: If you have n nodes with the same sensors and same software, you can use a device selector to change from node to node without needing to create several screens. Really really easy to use and really powerful.
At my place, I've three nodes running. ! uses a photon core to show Temperature and humidity + led strip control, and two of them uses nodemcu boards to show just temperature and humidity. All of them have been running for about 1 year now, and I've faced any server downside yet (I'm using blynk server). but, if you use your own server (could be your own raspberry pi) you will have total control over it.

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FitBit integration with Alexa; Play music when waking up
I m trying to integrate my Fitbit with my Amazon Echo. My goal is to make my Echo play music when I wake up in the morning. Is it possible to send a notification (or alert) via Bluetooth to my phone or Echo directly from my phone at the moment I wake up?
I then want to instruct Alexa to play music upon receiving this signal from Fitbit. Can anyone tell me a best place to start? I have researched a lot but could not find a way to get data from Fitbit at the moment I wake up? Is this possible?
(I came up with an idea to connect the Fitbit to a gateway like a Raspberry Pi and use the gateway to instruct the Echo. But I got stuck at connecting Raspberry Pi to Fitbit and sending a notification from Fitbit to the gateway.)


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Raspberry Pi outdoor connectivity for large farm
I have several raspberry pi zeros connected to agricultural sensors in a large farm(1500+ acres). What is my best solution for getting the agricultural data from them wirelessly? I want to get the data to a central internet connected server which will be approximately 5-8km away from the sensor.

Welcome. Your question could use a few more details to make it easier to answer. Specifically, how far will each device be from each other, and how much data are you planning to send from each device? Where do you want to get the data to? Please [edit] with that information so that your post is a little more specific and we can give more tailored advice. Thanks.

Take a look at A review of wireless sensors and networks' applications in agriculture as well as A Review of Wireless Sensor Technologies and Applications in Agriculture and Food Industry: State of the Art and Current Trends as well as A Wireless Sensor Network Solution for Precision Agriculture Based on ZigBee Technology.

You really need to show a bit more about what you have already researched - this will help us to understand your specific scenario. What have you been looking at as potential approaches?

Take a look at this related question for 16km range

Some mention of farms in https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/wiring-an-rf-lora-module-to-the-raspberry-pi.144369/#post-1224854  and a Raspberry Pi article at https://www.cooking-hacks.com/blog/send-data-at-extreme-long-range-using-lora-with-arduino-raspberry-pi-and-intel-galileo/

I would recommend a LPWAN setup with end node radios on the Pi-Zero's and a gateway (or a few to cover the area) to manage all of these devices.
Check out these.
You can get a cellular or ethernet version of the gateway and adaptors for the Atom radio module to interface with all of the Pi-Zeros in the field. The hardware setup is very fast and all of the device to cloud routing/key management is handled through a nice web dashboard. You can connect to pretty much any cloud endpoint from the web interface and push updates to pretty much anywhere from there.
It would be helpful to know what kind of terrain you are trying to cover since wide area network coverage will be dependant upon the environmental interferance you are dealing with.

Hackaday managed to connect two devices by LOWRAWAN using a balloon at 35km height - maybe not for you, but still very interesting to read.

Wow ! 5 to 8 kn is quite a distance.
If you are willing to spend in order of US $500 per sensor, then I can recommend a solution using an inexpensive satellite modem. Although this might sound expensive, think of the cost spread over many years, and be aware that in addition to the sensors, you can program the satellite modems themselves, if need be.
I have had lots of fun with Skywave’s offerings (they have now rebranded as OrbComm), and you might like to look at the IDP_800.
Read the datasheet.
Mass: with batteries: 1.3 Kg (with integrated antenna Dimensions : 43.2 cm x 14.7 cm x 2.5 cm and it runs on 6 AA batteries, which can be bought almost anywhere.
I send only one 50 byte message a day & they tell me that I can except a three year battery life. Their units generally cost US $500 - $1,000 (with discount for bulk purchases), and their airtime rates are competitive.
The device has built in GPDS and is fully programmable in the LUA scripting language.
Obligatory picture follows:

If you are looking for something cheaper, then II would recommend Flutter (see also completed Kickstarter page for more info).
It's a US $20 Arduino board with 1kmn wifi range, so you would still need to use repeaters, but you would certainly need fewer than with conventional WiFi. I would suggest a mesh network, which Flutter supports, and would recommend that you mount them on posts, as high above the ground as you can.
Whatever solution you go for, don't accept manufacturers claims as to range - start with one Flutter/whatever, and start adding more, checking as you go how good communication is.  DO NOT put hem all in place first & then go for a big bang turn on.
That's about it really, so now for the obligatory  graphic

Thanks for your help, but radio seems like a more practical solution because of its cost-effectiveness.

@HaziqMuhammad It's all radio...

@SeanHoulihane Yes of course, I meant LPWAN.


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Increasing the range of an RF module
I am working with a RF-LORA-SO 868Mhz module.
I read this article that says the range of this module could go up to 50km. But I would need to connect an antenna to my LoRa module. This article I mentioned above doesn't seem to talk much about wiring.
Most of these antennas have SMA.
How do I connect an antenna like this to my radio module?

Hi Haziq, it seems that the module you're using and the antenna you posted are the same than in the article you linked—which contains diagrams showing the necessary connections. Thus, the connectivity questions is unclear. Furthermore the product description you posted lists 16km as range so you probably need the antenna to get a longer distance. Considering that both questions you pose seem answered in your links it's unclear to me what you want to know. That's why I'm putting the question on hold. If you want to clarify you can [edit] your question.

Unless the question is expanded, it is going to be hard to add much detail to the answers. The basic question you ask is trivially obvious, until you explain exactly where you are lost.

The data sheet is not too forthcoming on their expectation for connecting an antenna (other than suggesting that a matching network is mandatory if you run high power). However, from the photos in the linked article, it's clear that what was used in this example was a 50 ohm coax to SMA 'pigtail'. You can get a short coax pre-connected to an SMA (with maybe a 2nd connector on the other end which you can cut). Keep the bare wires at the end of the coax where it solders on to the module as short as possible and take care not to melt the insulation (heatsink with pliers).
You shouldn't expect optimum performance like this, unless you're lucky (but it may be close).
The quoted 50km range seems to be in free-space, to an aircraft. On the ground, you will experience attenuation and reflection (trees, buildings, etc) and these can have a huge impact on range. This goes some way to explaining the difference between the module's data-sheet performance, and the best-case that can be achieved in perfect conditions.
You can also sometimes get increased range by using a more directional antenna. This rapidly becomes much more specialist though. I don't know what the LoRa protocol assumes, but radio protocols typically make some assumptions about time-of-flight in a duplex system, and this can also hard-limit the achievable range.


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Is a range of 50 km+ possible in LoRa?
I read this article which said I could get upto 50 km with a LoRa module.
But when I read the product description it says the in-built range is only 16 km, so I obviously need an antenna. But what kind of antenna can I use that can get my 16 km LoRa module to 50 km?
Will something like this work?

related https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/2560/increasing-the-range-of-an-rf-module

It seems that a range of at least 440 km is possible with the LoRa protocol (i.e. there is no time-of-flight assumption as in GSM).
The correct way to answer this question is by looking at the link budget for your transmit/receive arrangement. Although the basic calculations are simple, knowing the right way to do the calculation is not so simple.
To receive a usable signal, the receiver needs a certain signal-to-noise ratio (determined by the tolerable error rate and the modulation characteristics). You may find some online examples of how to calculate this (for LoRa or something similar).
Signal comes from transmit power, plus antenna gain, minus free-space loss (the range calculation) minus any shading from non-line-of-sight, plus antenna gain.
Noise comes from the receive environment or thermal noise (whichever is greatest) and amplifier noise figure, plus any multi-path interference which is not delay compensated in the receiver.
Assuming a 16km range is possible with a simple antenna (spherical uniform radiation), you're asking for a 3.125 times range increase or a 9.77 times increase in power. This is conveniently about 10 dB, so as a rough approximation you need a 5 dB antenna gain above the 'trivial' antenna at each end. If you aim for 7 dB at each end, this gives you a small margin for other factors you've not accounted for, imperfections in your assembly, etc.
A further complication is that the quoted 16km range is plausibly within the horizon of an antenna close to the earth, but to achieve 50km line of sight, you would need to raise one or both ends by many metres.

Free space path loss calculations are relatively unimportant unless you have actual line of sight - which typically means talking to an aircraft or mountain top.  In more usual applications, obstructions (including the horizon) and interference are the drivers.

@ChrisStratton in link budget lingo, free space path loss includes the 1/r² term. The difference between total path loss and free space path loss includes the effects you mention. In this very extreme case it's a whopping -317 dB! This is probably the largest actual free space loss ever measured.

The point was that if you do not have line if sight, that, rather than the free space loss, is the dominant driver, hence the free space path loss is not really that informative.  This answer tries to apply a flat unobstructed earth model at distances where only unusual topography or a raised antenna would make that true, so it is for most practical purposes misleading and wrong: the question asker will probably not get what they want, while in neglecting the real issues this incorrectly implies they will.

First, your question is unanswerable by the way as no one could tell what will work in an unknown environment. For example if there is a huge hill between the two modules, or a big city then it won't work. But if your module is attached to a ballon which has an altitude of 38 km, then you are possibly good.

While the balloon was at an altitude of 38.772 km (about 127204.7
  feet) somewhere close to the border between Germany and the
  Netherlands, it was spotted by a The Things Network node in Wroclaw,
  Poland, at a distance of 702.676 km, or about 436 miles.

But what I would consider this as more realistic data. They achieved roughly 18.3 km with a good line-of-sight and a better antenna than the one you have linked.

It  may be  possible to  achieve  a  greater  range,  especially  with  a  higher  gain  gateway  antenna [...]
For  best  range  performance,  line-of-sight  or  near  line-of-sight  is  desirable. Elevating  the  gateway  antenna (for example, on a building or a mast) is recommended along with a site survey to determine the best location to site the gateway antenna. [...]
Range  within  an  urban  environment  was  beyond  the  scope  of  this  test  but  1-2 kilometers (depending  on  the environment) should be possible in an urban environment with some degree of building penetration.

In summary to increase range:

Elevate your antennas.
Use antennas with higher gains.
Use directional antennas and not omnidirectional ones.

But keep in mind that at the end you will be always limited by the environment.
Here is a quite detailed study about the topic that worth reading.

That's a really interesting study and link!

Try a Yagi antenna. Both receiver and transmitter will need an antenna, and they must be aligned with each other (direct line of sight). Just a few degrees of inaccuracy will cause bad reception. There are various DIY yagi antenna guides online, and open source yagi calculator programs that will compute the required dimensions for a 868MHz antenna and balun. You can buy most of the supplies, such as thick copper wire or aluminum rods, at most hardware stores (Home Depot, Lowes). You will probably have to look online for SMA adapters (know the difference between SMA and RP-SMA) to attach the antennas, and decent coaxial cable. If you're going to try it out, I suggest you buy an RTL-SDR ($20USD) for radio debugging. I doubt you will achieve 50km though. If you upped the power level enough to achieve 50km range, at least in the US, you'd probably be violating FCC laws. I think max power is 25mW

An RTL-SDR is not useful for this.  While universal (to the point of feeding software LoRa decoding) it is a truly horrible receiver with a dynamic range best categorized as a joke, especially compared to something actually engineered for weak signal work like a typical LoRa chip.  Essentially you use an RTL-SDR for exploring nearby signals or downstream of an impressive front end.

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Call AWS Lambda https end point from AWS IoT rules Engine
We have an existing ASP.Net Core API that we deployed in AWS Lambda. We were able to access the https verbs using AWS Serverless URL
Now we would like to access a specific https end point through AWS IoT rules Engine, basically invoke the AWS Serverless URL using AWS IoT rules engine? Is this possible ?

You could invoke a new Lambda via the IoT rule and have the Lambda make the call to the AWS Serverless URL.  What I'm not sure of is the "ASP.Net Core API that we deployed in AWS Lambda" statement (unless it was meant to say ElasticBeanstalk).

I meant an existing asp.net core API was deployed to AWS Lambda.Refer Link https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/deploy-an-existing-asp-net-core-web-api-to-aws-lambda/

I meant an existing asp.net core API was deployed to AWS Lambda.Refer Link https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/deploy-an-existing-asp-net-core-web-api-to-aws-lambda/ . Was wondering if I could directly call the serverless url from iot rules engine. But looks like I cant. I need to create a lambda function and from within lambda function call aws serverless URL.

Ah, thanks for the link, haven't tried that. If it is already a Lambda, is it possible to call the Lambda directly without going through the step of calling the API Gateway?

No it looks like we cant. AWS IoT rules engine does not allow you to call serverless URL directly. It can be done by invoking a lambda function which inturn calls a URL.


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Device authentication
How should I authenticate my device?
I have an arduino yun, running an "daemon" on the OpenWRT side. The daemon reads commands from my message broker, executes them, and returns the value.
Before communicating with the broker, the device should be authenticated (I believe). What is the right flow?
Do I even need to authenticate it? If the broker credentials are embedded in the device, I maybe wouldn't need to do so. But I am not quite sure.

MQTT supports username/password authentication and client side certificates to authenticate the client to the broker.
Using certificates also allows you to verify the broker is not being impersonated as well if you use certificate pinning.

Beware that these schemes usually don't protect against an originally authentic but now compromised client box spying on traffic intended for other clients owned by other users.

No, but a well built topic tree and a ACL will ensure a compromised client can only see traffic meant for that client and the ability to revoke a certificate will cut it off. Keys/Certs should be kept in a secure element where possible

I believe you need to use a plugin to provide such segregation - it's not one of the designed capabilities unfortunately.  In terms of keys, it doesn't really matter if they're in a secure element - they need to be unique per instance of the client, and pretty much the entire capability of the client is attack surface by which someone could potentially make the client use its key for a purpose unintended by the manufacturer, so instead of relying on preventing that, you have to limit what a key can do.

No plugin needed for anything I've described (but the mosquitto plugin can make managing things easier). And yes, a tightly bound ACL linked to the cert/key identity the right way forward, but as the question was incredibly vague a high level answer was probably good enough. Feel free to add your own if you want.

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Is it possible to emulate IoT with Docker?
I started an IoT simulation project to gain better understanding of the domain.
So, I'm trying to emulate a number of IoT objects using Docker inside Vagrant.
In the Vagrant box I'm creating 100 Docker containers. Each container simulates a single IoT (is it?).
In each one of them I run a Python Flask application that exposes one endpoint that simply returns the "device" name. Additionally, one can ssh in each container.
I feel that using Docker doesn’t emulate an IoT object in the "right" way. My final goal is to emulate an IoT device (simulates all of the hardware if possible).
My questions:

Is Docker a good way to simulate IoT (examples)?
Are there any resources for IoT emulation with Docker?

What's the goal of your emulation? Do you want to test, for example, how a server would handle the load of many devices connecting to it, or how your devices would network together? Having a specific purpose for your simulations might help you to get where you want to be more quickly.

@Aurora0001 What I actually want, is to emulate various types IoT devices (thermostats, thermometers etc) without having the actual hardware. From there I want to capture the network traffic inside of each one of them.

Yes, but what is the end goal of the experiment? You need to have a plan of something measurable you want to test before you start to even think about how to go about doing it.

@hardillb My end goal is to see how secure IoT could be against cyber attacks (botnets etc).

This seems far too broad and indistinct to be a valid question within the rules of SE sites.  The quality of your simulation really depends on your simulation - what system you chose to host that is fairly irrelevant.  Using a VM per device really only makes sense if you are trying to simulate devices that are themselves comparable full Linux systems, but you'd still need the test harness.  The obvious thing missing is your goal in "simulating" to begin with!  Generally simulation only makes sense when there's behavior worth studying, and you seem to lack a valid goal of that sort.

Our experience with Docker is that the network stack is limited in the ability to add IP addresses to the system. There might be an advanced network plugin, but we have not figured it out. You might not need a different IP address per thing if you are simulating things behind NAT gateways, but if you do, Docker might not be enough.


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Multiple agents authentication to MQTT
I am building a small IoT platform. I have a webapp reading data from MongoDB. There is a worker that reads from MQTT and stores the data to mongo.
Until here, all good.
I want to be able to ship an agent to whatever device, be it a RaspberryPi or an Arduino Yún etc. The agent should read/send data from and to the MQTT broker.
Users need to register and add their device on my app before being able to do so. How do I handle authentication correctly?
Do I allow anyone to add stuff to mqtt? Do I force devices to authenticate via HTTP on the app first, and then they can use the agent?
Do I go for public key or maybe token authentication? I don't understand therefore I am asking you.

There should be no need to use Authentication via HTTP first for MQTT devices. MQTT supports Authentication which can be linked to ACLs to control what topics a given user/device can publish/subscribe to. Authentication can be user/password at the MQTT protocol level or TLS certificate based the transport level.
Most brokers support wildcard (and variable substitution e.g. {username}) topics in ACLs which allows you to build topic structures that can create topic trees that can only be accessed by a given user.
When a user registers a new device you can have the system either issue a username/password/clientid for that device or a certificate that can be used to uniquely identify the device and attach it to the right ACL structure.
It's hard to answer in a more specific way without knowing more about the sort of information you will be passing round and what sort of MQTT topic structure you intend to use.

Never let "anyone" add stuff via MQTT to a database ;)  Once bad data gets into the database, any results from your analysis programs will be skewed at best, or down right wrong at worse.  Any time you have MQTT traffic coming from "outside", you want to have a few things in place: DDoS protection so someone can't swamp your database, Topic Validation...is the Topic on the 'Access' list?  and Payload validation...should this 3,000 byte payload be allowed in to my MQTT Broker that is normally seeing 50 byte payloads?
To your question; since the user has to register the device before the first MQTT packet is sent, you could use something like a token + SSL for auth & encryption.  Your client software asks for the token and its sent as the username or password when it connects with the MQTT broker, and since you generated it ahead of time, the broker can do a quick lookup to make sure its valid and assigned to that agent.

If you do not want to bother with broker yourself and embed any authentication scheme inside it I have solution for you (non commercial, e.g. it is free):
Per each instance of your small IoT platform you need to have separate flespi.io account(we call it customer). Your platform will have in configuration one flespi supertoken (for accessing flespi.io) and is able to create restricted tokens either by using MQTT or HTTP API. Per each device during registration or activation you will issue token with specified ACL that limits sub/pub access only to specified topics.
And token is used by the device for authentication to MQTT broker (see authorization in the middle of the page).
In that scheme you can listen to all published messages from devices and create entries in your database automatically ensuring that they are coming from authenticated (real) devices.


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Using Raspberry Pi as a Lora Node for a TTN setup
I already have a LoRa gateway that I made using a NodeMcu with ESP8266 and now I want to send data from a Raspberry Pi 3 through that gateway to the TTN.
The first thing that I did was to connect a RFM95W to the Raspberry Pi, (with success, since I tested it as a gateway with the single channel packet forwarder).
But how am I going to make the Raspberry Pi connect to the NodeMcu gateway to upload the data to TTN?
The only examples I can find concerning TTN nodes are all implementations with Arduino instead of Raspberry Pi.

You need to connect your RFM95W to RPI3 via SPI (as it seems to be done) and then, you will need a driver to allow the Linux kernel to communicate with the device over SPI. After that, you will need to adapt your software to communicate with the driver to send data from user space.
It seems no one developed a driver for Linux. The closest (not tested by me) is for RFM69CW here : https://github.com/gkaindl/rfm12b-linux
An easier solution is maybe to choose a LoRaWAN modem with UART interface and then you will only need to send AT command to it via standardize TTY interfaces. Here are a few example of references : RN2483, RAK811, mDot.
Or if you wan to use the RFM95W, you can use it with a small Arduino over SPI as the library already exist and then connect the Arduino to your RPI3 via UART and develop your own protocol between them.

Welcome aboard :-) A good answer (+1). I can see that you are very knowledgeable and will give us some good help :-)

The next step is to implement LoRaWAN on the Pi. The RFM95W handles LoRa but does not include a LoRaWAN stack. TTN requires LoRaWAN (and not much else).
Yes, most of the LoRaWAN implementations are either on an accompanying MCU, or a connected Arduino. LoRaWAN on Pi implementations are less common, but there are a couple.
Start by checking out the efforts to including LoRa in the kernel. This email will provide good context, particularly this section:

Ready-made LoRa hardware modules come in three flavors,
a) with SPI access to the underlying Semtech chip sets, needing a software implementation of e.g. LoRaWAN protocol stack (i.e., a soft MAC),
b) with a custom, often UART based interface and a pre-certified LoRaWAN
     protocol stack already integrated (i.e., hard/full MAC), and
c) with a microcontroller that serves not only for the protocol stack but
     also as application processor, not offering a ready-made interface.

Then check out the lmic_pi project. LMIC is a popular LoRaWAN stack for Arduino and Ernst de Vreede has kindly published their efforts to port it to Pi. It happens to have been tested with the radio you have in mind.


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Rogue Start-Up of Robot sweeper
I have an Xiaomi Mi robot sweeper and at 7:00:40pm each day it is being started up
by a rogue internet message.  I saved the active IP table from the DD-WRT router
firmware immediately before and after several of the startups and have found
the following unique IP remote (foreign) addresses, where the source (local) ip was
that of the sweeper:
52.80.189.157
52.80.66.219
Is it possible to modify the firewall in the router's DD-WRT firmware to include all
52.80.xx.xx addresses via the "Command line" input under "administration"?

Yes, it now appears to be reaching out as I turned off the robot and at that specified time there was nothing incoming.  I am now blocking outgoing specific range which includes the noted IPs, namely 52.84.0.0/21.

According to the Amazon page, there is a cloud service available for the vacuum cleaner.  Presumably, that's what the app is communicating with.  You can also use Alexa with the vacuum cleaner, so there are many places packets might be coming from towards your vacuum.
One of the IPs you listed seems to be a company or part of a university in China, I can't tell which my the whois page.
Searching for that company some more, I found this page, showing that the company might be a datacenter.
So you're either looking at a feature that you or someone else signed up for and forgot about, or known bad IP addresses own your network.  It's kind of a crapshoot at this point with the information provided.  However, hackers in this day and age would be more interested in using the robot as part of a botnet or Bitcoin miner rather than just pranking you at the same time every day.

There are cloud services that the Xiaomia Mi works with but those IPs identify themselves ok.  The two IPs I identified in the original question indicate a hostname of "ec2-52-80-189-157.cn-north-1.compute.amazonaws.com.cn" and "ec2-52-80-66-219.cn-north-1.compute.amazonaws.com.cn" in the Webanalysis site.  This evening I will be blocking the vac from accessing 52.84.0.0/21 which includes both sites (and more) to see if it has any affect.

Since the "rogue" startup of the robot only occurs when connected to the internet the brute force solution is to simply deny internet access from 19:00 to 19:01 using a DD-WRT Access Restriction.  Will try such this evening (10/17/18).

The deny of access to the internet of the robot vac for one minute at 19:00 worked.  Now will to try just blocking specific IP address ranges related to those seen on the IP tables without the deny to get more in depth knowledge of source of "vac start", i.e.,42.62.64.0/18, etc.

Why not disconnect the robot from wifi or reset it to factory default, thereby unlinking it from whatever cloud account you have?

As I mentioned in my last comment the deny of internet access via DD-WRT from 19:00 to 19:01 did just that when the problem occurs.  All other times I need the wifi to operate it remotely using my tablet.  It has become clear now that the Amazon related advertising IPs are the culprits.(52.xx.xx.xx & 54.xx.xx.xx).  Thanks for the interest.

Interestingly the router clock drifted 23 seconds (slow) and allowed the robot vac to start but by the next day the clock was back to within a few seconds.  Looking to update my 2013 version of DD-WRT.  In another router a 2018 beta DD-WRT would not even allow iptables to be listed.  Intent remains to find out what is turning on the vac at 19:00:40 (and 19:00:50) but a good DD-WRT tool is the current dwelling point.

Per Scott's comment and ignoring the original question, the story is that apparently a firmware update for my robot sweeper included the option of an "automatic" mode with a default of turning it on at 1900 DST (and 1800 when DST ended).  I say "apparently" because I was unaware of such an "automatic mode" until a week or so before the end of the forty some days mentioned in Scott's posting.
On my tablet where I follow the robot sweeper and restart it when it complained of blocked brush I finally stumbled into the "new" "automatic" part of the program and saw "1800".  Wow!   Part of the instructions and information in the automatic mode is in Chinese, so character by character I translated it to English and determined how to turn off the "automatic" option.  Even in English these programs are not really user friendly.
In "automatic" the robot uses a program on any one of many Amazon clouds to implement its auto sweeping start up.  I blocked 24 ranges of IP addresses in the router from being accessed by the sweeper and with no success I then finally blocked the sweeper from internet access for the 1 minute it was occurring.  That did work.  I was at the point of trying to block incoming instructions to the sweeper to identify the IP address of the culprit when I posted the original question.
I originally tried to contact the seller/factory of the subject but they claimed no obligation to "export" customers.
Yeah, the background to the question is more interesting than the question.


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Fitbit keeps dying when reacing step goal when >~50% charge
I have a Fitbit Alta and when it's around 50% charged (according to battery screen) or less and I get my step goal I find I can not turn it on. When I plug it in to charge, it shows the logo and the version number then shows it has less than a 10% charge. It only happens when I hit my step goal and not when I get phone notifications on it or when it does the hourly reminder to move. Is there any way to prevent this?

How old is the Alta? And can you explain your normal charge pattern, e.g. do you normally let the battery run most of the way down before charging it, or do you normally charge it everyday regardless of what level the battery is at?

@hardillb I don't know exactly how old the Alta is because I got it from my grandfather when he replaced it with an apple watch, but I think at most it is 4 years old. While I don't know how my grandfather charged it before this happened I would wait till about 25% before I charged it, and now I wait till it does the shutdown thing or when it is close to that percent,

In that case I would suggest that the battery worn out and it's probably not user replaceable.


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Digital multimeter product on the Internet and Integration of Camera electronics
Digital multimeter
Will it be useful to have camera electronics integration in Digital multimeter product as well as have DMM product on the Internet or "WWW"?

You have a tendency to ask such weird and broad questions, which are clearly off topic here…

useful to whom?

you can simply purchase a DMM that contains a LAN interface and judge for yourself if a network connected DMM is useful


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Can you reconfigure advertising packet during advertising BLE on ESP32
I'm trying to make a simple environmental sensing module on the ESP32 with ESP-IDF. I want to use BLE with gap only. I'm thinking of sending all the received data with the Advertising packets but since the sensor inputs are going to change periodically I'll have to send new data once in a while over the gap protocol. My question is do I have to stop advertising whenever I want to re-configure the advertisement data, or can I just do it in another thread (separate than the thread running BT)?
Sorry if my question is confusing, I'll try to clarify any points I messed up at explaining as more people answer : )

You do not need to have a thread dedicated to BLE advertisements. Just start advertising and go do something else. When you need to, change the data to advertise.


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Why a requested/sniffed BLE characteristic handle mismatch on Linux?
I'm learning BLE and trying to sniff packets just to understand how communication happens. I do this with Wireshark on Linux and sniff traffic between the Linux machine and a BLE-powered wristband.
I noticed that sniffed packets always have the characteristic handle +1 of what I used to send a request to. For instance, when I send a request with char handle=0x46, Wireshark shows me packets with handle=0x47. I'd like to know why this happens, thanks in advance!


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Predictive Data Logger Device
I'm searching for an IOT componenet/device/automaton that logs date/time when it is used(button presses?), and has a simple output(Vdc probably) that turns on automatically over time when machine confidence builds up and monitors itself for correctness. I'm guessing it's more of a software problem/machine learning you can solve with a ESP8266, sensors and a FET transistor that drives a DC relay. I'm asking if an engineered integrated solution exists.

what does this have to do with IoT?


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How to advertize BLE custom data in Linux
I'm learning BLE and slightly got stuck with advertisements. I'm trying to advertise custom data representing an iBeacon with the commands below:
bluetoothctl
menu advertise
manufacturer 0x4C 0x00 0x02 0x15 0xE2 0x0A 0x39 0xF4 0x73 0xF5 0x4B 0xC4 0xA1 0x2F 0x17 0xD1 0xAD 0x07 0xA9 0x61 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x2a
back
advertise broadcast

On another side I have iBeacons' locator that does not find the beacon, so I deduce I setup advertisement incorrectly.
bluetoothctl seems not to be the best documented tool and I cannot find any hits

Related: https://stackoverflow.com/a/67758943


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Wired Protocol for Home Automation
I am designing a centralised home automation system.
Specifications:
Switch / Control

Lighting
HVAC

Take inputs from

Sensors (temperature, occupancy, etc)
Physical Inputs (Switch/Buttons)
Mobile Inputs

The rough design is that there is a controller in the electrical room some where in the building. For more basic devices such as light build, relays can be connected to controller to control electrical supply to the devices. For more complicated devices such as HVAC system, communications protocol of system manufacturer is probably required.
Now I am having problem with determining communication methods for sensors and physical inputs. I am currently exploring wired protocol as an options as sensors require powers anyway so the network can be wired alongside the power delivery (or included in the protocol preferably). As for physical inputs for switches and buttons, they can be rudimentary like power lines running through the switches then the controller detects the voltage at return line. But this does not work for more complex inputs such as rotary dials (like light dimmer), or other complex devices such as screen. Also if the input devices were complex, they may require power (similar to sensors).
The reason for not going for wireless protocol is due to the very thick walls which may not yield good signals. (There are a lot of problems with wifi, so I'd imagine wireless protocols may not be a good option).
So currently, I would like to learn about possible wired communication methods for communicating for sensors or physical inputs.
Nice to have:

daisy chained or line/common bus topology to reduce wiring length
devices not reliant on specific manufacturer (possibly custom design)

Considering:

Power over Ethernet (PoE) as they have both power delivery and data, as well as dynamic IP for easily adding/removing devices, but not sure of the wiring length limitations, power consumptions, and heating of wires/devices. Not sure if can be daisy chained or line.

CANBus as it allows line/common bus topology, but no protocol on dynamic ID and no standards on power delivery.

RS485 specifies physical layer but no data link and onward and no power delivery.

There are quite a few building automation systems like KNX, DALI, BACnet, LonTalk, and more. You may want to look into those.


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Credit/debit card machine to send bill to mobile app after payment
Hi all I'm totally new to iot, I just wanted to know if it's possible to send the bill from a credit/debit card machine to a mobile app after a payment, would to be possible, if yes any specific article steps I can follow  any information will be immensley helpful
Thank you

Can you clarify exactly what you want to do? There are many app-controlled card readers (like Square, SumUp, and more). An app could also be interfaces with a system receiving notifications of payments on the merchant account. There are probably quite a few other possibilities but it depends a lot on what you want to achieve.


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Jetson AGX Xavier - mmc_rx_fifo_overflow Meaning
Currently running JetPack 4.4 - L4T R32.4.3 on a ConnectTech Jetson Xavier AGX. We have our own custom application accepting data on one of the ethernet ports via UDP. Occasionally we’ll notice that our software (which monitors the incoming data) reports missing packets. Looking at the the mmc_rx_fifo_overflow parameter from ethtool -S eth0 we see a direct correlation in this value increasing and the number of packets we see missing from our datastream.
My question, what exactly does this parameter (mmc_rx_fifo_overflow) represent and what could potentially cause it to increase?
Thanks!


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What could be causing ESP IDF to not recognize the content of my included header files?
ESP - IDF not functioning as expected. I've been trying to work on esp32s3 and skainet using esp-idf(ide not the eclipse or vs code plugin) and I am facing this issue constantly. Issue: I have made a project but and at times the idf doesn't recognize or include the header files and states they are missing even though they are included and when it includes the header files the it doesn't recognize it's contents.
Ex I enable ble 1. it doesn't include the header files and says they are missing. 2. if it includes them then it doesn't recognize their content i.e if the definition and structure of a function or variable is given then it then it display the variable first used here and not defined. I've tried different methods and approaches like manually placing them, editing the cmakelists.txt and trying the example codes given by espressif on github but it is the same for them also it's not working even in their code. I was expecting it to work atleast for their code so I can take reference and work or make changes accordingly but to no avail. I also tried using it via terminal but still it is the same. I am still not clear if it's the cmake file or anything else but if it is possible then please explain.

which part of your post is about a problem with voice recognition? ... which part is about smart home?


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How to use a tp4056 and a lithium battery on an esp8266
I am new to IOT and I would like to have your opinion on my wiring, I want to power my project with a lithium battery for that I use a tp4056 to charge my battery but also to power my breadboard I would like to know if my wiring is good for the battery or if I need to make some changes
I use 2x 100k resistors
Here is the file just below

It’s commendable that you included wiring, but I think it would be easier to read if you included a schematic. Also I don’t quite understand what you are doing, notably with those two resistors, the lack of connection to GND, the weird connections to SCK, the purpose of the buttons, the weird colour choices (or weird wiring, not sure which)… also we don’t really know what you are trying to achieve so it’s a bit difficult to have any idea whether it makes sense or not.


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stop alexa from giving gps and weather when you ask for events
Every time I ask Alexa and Astro what is on my Calendar they give me GPS and Weather before giving me event.  How do I stop them from this?  All I want is the event and time of event.


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How to include a timer in a nightly routine for lights?
The use case I'm trying to solve is that after dinner our early teenage kids keep coming into the kitchen and leaving the light on.
We moved into our current home in January and have a collection of leftover mismatched smart products from the last two homes we've had.
I'd like the kitchen lights to be on a timer, but only after 10pm each night. I haven't been able to find a method to do this.
I'm using Alexa, the HS200 switch and the bulbs are 4" sealed recessed LED (not looking to change at this time).
Thanks


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Verification of CMAC
How to Verify CMAC in install for install command in javacard..
I used the process given below but this method not able to verify

Key = Session Key for CMAC,
IV =  CMAC which is given in external authenticate command,
Message = First 8 bytes of install for install command

Use same key,
IV = Output of previous step,
Message = Next 8 bytes of install for install command

this steps until all blocks of install for install command taken at DES-3Key
if last block of install for  install command not multiple of 8 than add ISO9797_M2 padding
The Result of last block is taken as CMAC.


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incorrect values in array in node-red
I am new to Node-Red and I need to create a small system where three input values of the power phase need to be summed. For this, I am using the "join" node to create an array. But the problem now is that the values from the array do not match the individual values in the power phase nodes. Can someone show me how to create a simple array with three values (coming from different nodes). Or can someone help me sum three values from three different nodes? I WOULD greatly appreciate any advice.
PS: This is how it looks like at the moment

What is the msg.topic on each of the Power Phase nodes? They need to be different so the join node knows how to distinguish them


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Private ip in raspberry pi?
I have a Raspberry pi 4 that is connected to a therm sensor ds18b20. The Raspberry Pi is running a flask application in 0.0.0.0 in port 5000, the app gives the current temperature using the sensor every second.
Then I have a website in html css and javascript in github pages. I my javascript I have a function that uses "fetch" the ip of my raspberry pi to collect the temperature.
But when my github pages website is in the air it gives error in the console saying that it can't connect the ip.
I think that my raspberry pi has a private IP like a home network IP and github pages can't connect to it.
How do I solve this?
I tried changing the port of the flask app but didn't work. I also tried put a static ip and didn't work

Either configure your router to perform “port forwarding” from your public IP to the local IP of your RPi or use reverse tunnelling services like ngrok or equivalent.


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How to reconnect to Google Home devices after signing out?
My wife was concerned that she had a virus on her PC.  Out of an abundance of caution,  she used the "sign out of all my devices" option in Google Home on her laptop.
The devices (Nest thermostat, Nest outdoor camera) naturally also disappeared from the Google Home app on her phone and tablet.
We've since taken care of the virus issue.  So now the question is, how do we re-add the devices back to our Google Home app?  Is there an easy way to do it?  Or are we starting from square one here?
We tried adding the thermostat as a new device, but after scanning the QR code on the back and choosing which wires it has, it put us in an endless loop of "Something went wrong.  Could not save your changes", over and over.
We also tried adding the camera as a new device, but we were unable to find a QR code sticker anywhere on it.  (I'm guessing the installation guy gave the sticker to us and told us to keep it somewhere safe, but that was a long time ago and I have no idea where that paperwork is...)
Is there an easy way out of this mess?  Is there an easy way to re-add the devices we previously had in the app?