As a died-in-the-wool Node-Red fan of several years for my home automation, earlier this summer, my Italian friend Antonio began trying to convince me that Home Assistant was the way forward. When I first looked at HA it was pretty basic but a lot has changed in the last year…
Reolink Atlas PT Ultra, Solar Panel and More
NEW! Officially launched October 1 October 1 but available from late September when I originally published this blog entry. If you read this blog regularly you will know that I’ve reviewed several ReoLink cameras and loved every one of them – in the end however the only one I’ve kept…
Motion sensors – and human memory
You’ll not see too many blog entries like this I would imagine as they end up binned for fear of embarassment – as I don’t work for anyone else – I could care less about making a fool of myself. In my home office I have a motion sensor attached…
First World Problems – “Need Adminstrative Account Permissions”
I’m prepared to guess that a good half of my Windows-using blog readers are either home users, self-employed or otherwise simply do NOT have an administrator other than themselves. In order to rename a drive on my Windows 11 Pro machine, I’ve just had to bypass a warning telling me…
Sonoff Cam Slim 2 WiFi Smart Security Camera
Regular viewers may recall, back in August 2022 I reviewed Sonoff’s Cam Slim, described as an FHD Smart Security Camera, a neat little job I’ve since called Cat Cam as it watches our cat litter tray. It’s worked perfectly and talks to Home Assistant – that’s how I use it.…
NSPanel Pro 120 USA
Haven’t I already written about the NSPANEL PRO? Yes I have here.. but this is slightly different, instead of the square form factor – this one is LONG. For the USA (why the USA, no idea, I’d have thought we in Europe would be just as keen – but what…
SEEED Wednesday
I didn’t get any delivery notices yesterday yet we arrived back from the market to find a package from China with SEEED written all over it. Inside, a SEED “Mono Enclosed Speaker 4R 5W” – not sure what any of that means – 5W in a tiny speaker with the…
Argon40 Argon NEO5 + Poly+5 RPi5 Cases
This might be of interest to those of you who own one or more Raspberry Pi 5 boards (NOT previous models such as RPi3 or 4): Argon40 have been around for some years now, producing a range of cases for various Raspberry Pi models. I’ve used several over the years…
Sonoff ZBMiniR2 Extreme – Why Another Power Controller?
Why indeed – Sonoff will release the new ZBMiniR2 (Extreme) on 19th September 2024 – the last one I owned was (is) the ZBMini L2 – this new device is named ZBMini Extreme on the top of the box and ZBMiniR2 on the side). So what’s new – and why…
The storm before the break – HA and Air Conditioning
I just had some root canal work done and it didn’t go too well (understatement – I currently look like the original Godfather). We’re off for a few days break this coming week so I planned on doing nothing at all until then – but life doesn’t work like that.…
HamGeek Zigbee Gateway V1.5
If you;ve been reading the blog (I hope you have) recently you’ll know I’ve reviewed the SMLIGHT SLZB-06 and SMLIGHT SLZB-06p7 Zigbee Coordinators which can also VERY EASILY be used as Zigbee routers. You may also have noticed that I’ve converted the odd Sonoff Zigbee Coordinator to be a router.…
Apollo MTR-1 and MSR-2 Sensors
Elsewhere I’ve written about the new Apollo Air-1 gas sensor for Home Assistant (based on ESP-home). In that blog I also mentioned their DEV-1 ESP32C3 board. As the blog entry was starting to get a little long, I decided to separate out the MTR-1 and MSR-2 sensors – so here…
Shelly and Sonoff Shout-out
I WAS going to incorporate this into earlier Shelly and Sonoff posts but lots going on this weekend gone – so: Let’s get Sonoff out of the way… you may be familiar with the Sonoff Smart Water Valve – and how quickly they updated this to work with Zigbee2MQTT including…
Apollo Air-1 CO2 Sensor for Home Assistant
A box arrived yesterday for my new Apollo Air-1 C02 sensor and other items. No information, thankfully the Apollo Automation website is full of it. The device, like others in the range, at trhe time of writing come in low-volume 3D printed casing – it’s nice to see something new…
Nank OE MIX Earbuds
This one came out of the blue – the company (naenka.com – I’d never heard of them before) contacted me and asked if I’d write about their earbuds. As always “only if you send a set – no conditions”. Ok, so they did and days later, a set of buds…
The Aqara FP1E Presense Sensor
Some time ago I reviewed the Aqara FP2 Presense Sensor. I like it but it keeps seeing 2 people in my office when there is only me – even with the latest updates. So, I thought I’d better try the later FP1E. Here it is straight out of the box.…
TOMLOV HDMI Digital Microscope Model DM9 MAX
OK, not my normal tech stuff – or isn’t it? The Tomlov DM9 microscope came out of the blue – I was not aware of the company until just a short time ago when they contacted me by the contact page in here. They asked me if I’d like to…
SMARTLIGHT.ME, Ethernet Zigbee Controllers and more…
I recently wrote about my first experience with the SMLIGHT SLZB-06 Ethernet Zigbee coordinator given to me by a good friend in the UK (and left there – working well – I’m now back in Spain). That prompted me to contact the company who make them – here’s a link…
ESPresence for Home Assistant Presense Monitoring
The point of this article is/was to show how inexpensive ESP32 boards can be used as ESPRESENSE points in places around the home (for example) for detecting people and animals hopefully better than simple IR units. People carry phones and/or smart-bands – animals can wear tiny, inexpensive BLE beacon devices…
An Exciting Shelly and Sonoff Friday
It’s Friday and I got up VERY early this morning and in this entry I have new devices from SHELLY – a pair of SHELLY MOTION devices (about which I’m quite excited) – and a not-so-new but handy Shelly RGBW PM Led Controller.. but I’ll get to these further down!…