No matter where I am, it always seems to be about the same time of year that I suddenly get the urge to play with garden solar lights… and I keep discovering new varieties to keep my interest up. This weekend I was at home in Northumberland when a package…
Xiaomi Mijia LCD Writing Tablet with Pen
This is one of those sub-£20 gadgets your spouse or partner will say you don’t really NEED but you will probably want anyway! At least the first part is what my wife has told me repeatedly until last night. “You don’t NEED one, she said – but regardless, here it…
Another Day, Another RGB Bulb
This turned up from Banggood for me yesterday – an E27 (screw-fit) 85-265V E27 7W WiFi RGBW LED Smart Light Bulb and it works well with the recommended, free Smart Life app. These bulbs also work with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. I really can’t complain as the lamp does…
Pocophone F1 Strikes Again – with Infra-Red Photography
What are incorrectly touted as “x-ray-like” photos, the OnePlus 8 Pro phone supposedly has IR capability and of course, all the media can think about is that pervs will abuse this feature as it can see through certain materials – such is our sick 21st century world. But there are…
RAVPower – something new from an old favourite
I’ve been using RAVPower battery packs for years and recently taken kindly to their new high power PD (60w and 65w) phone chargers, so my excitement at receiving the new PD Pioneer 20000maH 65E 2-port Power House should come as no surprise. That didn’t stop me getting excited when it…
More Blitzwolf Blitz from Banggood
This morning I received a package in the post which included a couple of Blitzwolf Smart sockets including the BW-SHP6 (2350w). You may then recall that I’d been made aware that there was a “pro” version of one of that model of smart socket – same name (exactly) but higher…
The Script
May 14 2020 Regular readers may be aware of The Script, created to simplify the often torturous job of putting together a bunch of utilities onto a Raspberry Pi including Node-Red, Mosquitto MQTT broker and graphing tools such as Grafana along with text editors, a basic web page, lots of…
Riden TC66C Type-C PD Trigger Capacity Meter
This is the story about a tiny USB-C tester which just arrived from Banggood – the RIDEN® TC66/TC66C Type-C PD Trigger Capacity Meter. Having recently acquired a couple of decent plug-in-the-wall Blitzwolf Type-C PD (Power Delivery) mobile phone chargers (see relevant blog entries I figured I’d better have a tester…
Viva “Recharge” Kickstarter Mug
It isn’t that often I look at Kickstarter but a few weeks ago I happened to be checking in and this travel mug came to my attention. Not that I’ll be travelling anywhere significant in the next several weeks but I am hoping for an overseas trip in the summer.…
Not ANOTHER PI Editor?
What’s your favourite text editor? In a recent blog entry I updated “The Script” for IOT fans and as usual, got myself incredibly frustrated with the lacklustre “Nano” editor that comes with Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi, only to discover that my backup editor “MCEDIT” is really only marginally better…
Sunday Filler – Alexa for the Bone Idle
Well, it is Sunday, after all… so, while I would never actually rely on Alexa or other personal assistant to control my home or office, precisely because of their reliance on the cloud, there is no getting away from the simple fact that they can make life easy for techies…
New for 2020 – Bluetooth 5.0 Earbuds and much more
Having spent much of January 2020 visiting family in Chicago, USA – I came back to the UK full of enthusiasm for new product testing. Here’s a quick update on the first new toy I opened on my return to the UK (and its eventual demise). First, the back-story: On…
Safekeeping
A new lock-down gadget to play with! The Vecta Personal Safe is designed in the UK, manufactured in China and mine came direct from Vecta Safes (UK) Ltd. The safe is suitable for storing money, keys, passports, keys etc and despite it’s small size is rock solid. For sizes, see…
Ravpower PD Pioneer 65W 2-Port Wall Charger
The important bit here is 65W PD – model RP-PC133. The new charger from Ravpower has both USB C and USB3 outputs and is able to deliver up to 3.25A at a range of voltages suitable for high speed charging phones and tablets. The first photo depicts the USA version,…
Lucky Weekend
Despite abysmal weather here in lockdown Northeast of England, it’s been a good weekend. One of my biggest daily challenges when running the blog is effortlessly, wirelessly transferring image from my Android phone to my PC for inclusion in the blog or elsewhere. As many of you will know, the…
Xiaomi ZAJIA Auto-sense IR Induction Water Saver
I LOVE getting new toys. This one was sent to me in January 2020 by Banggood and it turned up in the UK in February. The battery-powered, USB-charged Zajia clips straight into the tap in the kitchen or bathroom to provide proximity-controlled water. If you are on a water meter…
More Tasmota, ZemiSmart and some Colour Fun
We have lots of IOT going on right now. So, firstly – in the DEV 8.2.0.5 release of Tasmota (alternative firmware for ESP8266 processors – keep up!) we noted changes not necessarily reflected in dev version changes (well, that’s why they are development versions I guess)… As of Monday April…
Tuya-Convert on RPi or Orange Pi Zero
Elsewhere in the blog I’ve referred to Tuya-Convert – which I have been running on the Raspberry Pi. Today Antonio (Mr Shark – based in Italy) and I took on the MINOR task of putting Tuya-Convert on an otherwise unused Orange Pi Zero. SO – what is Tuya-Convert? Let’s say…
Mosquitto and Aedes on Raspberry Pi 4
I currently have The Eclipse Mosquitto MQTT broker running on the Raspberry Pi 2, 3 and 4, Buster Raspbian, not to mention countless other variations of Debian and Ubuntu on various boards used at one time or another in the past (Orange Pi, various FriendlyArm boards and far more). Below…
Cutting or Bleeding Edge – RGBCCT Lamps and Tasmota
I’ll let readers decide if we are on the cutting or bleeding edge here. Having received a 6-pack of ZemiSmart new GU10 Smartlamps to test, I installed them in my kitchen where I have a pair of ceiling 3-lamp non-smart fittings and duly replaced the six normal GU10 LED lamps…