Ok, I admit, I needed a snappy title to make a water cleaner interesting. Two things I’ve always wanted but never got around to buying: one of these water irrigators and a bidet. The later is still on my todo list and will probably remain there, but ‘m pleased to…
An Aqara Week and New Headphones
It’s been a good week for gadgets so far. Here we go… SuperEq sent me their new SuperEQ S1 noise-cancelling headset – rather handy for any upcoming flights. Bluetooth and 3.5mm jack. I’ve included their links above – they also sent me Amazon links but I’m not that keen on…
ESP32 Development Trials – The Sunday to Thursday Sermon
That is, as in “trials and tribulations”. I’m busy getting myself familiar with the ESP32 and ESPHOME to see how far I can push these devices now that the price is not a LOT more than the ESP8266. Regular readers will know that years ago I and others developed “ESP-GO”,…
Sonoff NSPANEL – I Like It
The new Sonoff NSPanel has been sitting on my desk for some time now, awaiting the go-ahead to put it on the blog. It has now been released on Kickstarter so you may wish to take a look! And here’s a photo. The NSPANEL looks great and out of the…
Weather APIs and OpenWeatherMap
I’ve had a morbid fear of using API calls since I first heard the term years ago, just before I developed a morbid fear of JSON. Well, the latter didn’t last too long but JSON responses from websites can get awfully complicated, awfully quickly. And that’s how tonight I ended…
Meross MSL120 RGB E27 Light Bulb
This is going to be a quick one. The Meross MSL120 E15 RGB light bulb works just fine with their Meross APP, giving the usual RGB control features including warm and cool white + RGB. Sadly, Meross continue to use chips other than ESP8266 or ESP32 so their lamps at…
Zigbee – The Ongoing Sonoff Story
You may recall for a while I got fanatical about Zigbee – I’ve not lost interest – it’s just that by and large, Zigbee just WORKS – in particular, I have a load of Zigbee sensors around the house, mostly AQARA, mostly running on CR2032 batteries and the (rather short-range…
ESPHOME on RPI plus my First October Postbag
ESPHOME By now you’ll have seen my frantic posting about ESPHOME, running on the PC command line to allow the creation of ESPHOME-equipped ESP32 and ESP8266 devices… I’ve been making little display projects, the likes of which I could only dream of in TASMOTA. I originally tried ESPHOME on the…
Another TTGO with ESPHOME
The first time I did this last week, I was a complete newby to ESPHOME – a popular yet free firmware option for ESP8266 and ESP32-based boards. I also had no idea how to make use of the ESP32-based LILYGO TTGO module which Banggood sent me some time ago so…
My ESPHOME Adventure
I recently wrote about experimenting with the LILYGO TTGO ESP32 development board and my first attempts at using ESPHOME as against my firmware of choice Tasmota. Well, I’ve been heads-down for several days of learning – with several false starts I may add. The short version of this is, I’ve…
M5Stack Core 2 ESP32 IOT, STAMP PICO and ATOM LITE
Regular readers may recall a couple of years ago I wrote about the M5Stack – at the time I didn’t have much to say about the original as I could not find much in the way of software tools for it – yet here we are again with the M5Stack…
Xiaovv Q12 H.265 2MP 1080P HD Smart IP Camera
The Xiaovv Q12 H.265 2MP 1080P HD Smart IP Camera just arrived from Banggood. Take into account that this camera is under €20 so an ideal starter camera, but overall I have questions. I made sure it has the latest firmware installed – it has – yet there is a…
ESP32-Based TTGO Module Revisited with ESPHOME
Described as the LILYGO® TTGO T-Display ESP32 CP2104 WiFi Bluetooth Module, back in March 2021 I received two of these ESP32-based modules, so as you can imagine, I’ve had yet another learning experience – le’s take a look at these lovely modules complete with colour display. So I’ve put together…
Imou Cruiser 2MP Full Colour Night Vision Pan-Tilt Camera
The longer this camera runs, the more I LOVE it. Regular readers will know that I’ve already reviewed the Bullet 2C and Ranger 2C cameras from Imou, so it should come as no surprise that here I have the new Imou Cruiser Pan & Tilt OUTDOOR 2MP camera. Here’s the…
Condenser Microphone Kit from Banggood
Thanks to some Covid-related postal delays this turned up later than expected but as it turns out, the mic is a winner so here’s the link – Banggood did their best to ship this earlier in the summer – but ultimately this microphone kit arrived with some other gear last…
M5Stack® M5Paper ESP32 WiFi + Bluetooth
The M5Stack® M5Paper ESP32 Wifi + bluetooth Development product I just received from Banggood is – well, I’ve not gotten into detail yet but it’s a neat, slim ESP32-based unit with low-power 4.7″ e-Ink touch display. As it came out of the well-packed box, it was showing a menu and…
Geekcreit CH9102X QFN28 ESP32
Ok, I know, that was one hell of a title. What I just received from Banggood on returning from our mini-holiday at the beach was this ESP32 board and it occurred to be that since I’ve started to get to grips with using the ESP32 and especially with using special…
A Constructive Tasmota Weekend
A week or so ago I was struggling to get everything I wanted in one ESP8266 running Tasmota – for example, the tasmota-sensors.bin file has lots of sensors and very little display capability while tasmota-display,bin has very few sensors. One of the guys suggested I tackle doing my own Tasmota…
Sonoff POWR3 5500W Controller – It’s a Monster
Back in 2019 I reviewed the Sonoff POWR2 unit – an upgraded mains controller which, as against typical power controllers which handle 10A MAX (good for lighting, not so good for heating controls such as immersion heaters), handles 15A MAX along with power monitoring (at a push and for non-inductive…
Plug-In TV Simulator From Redline Security
A new device in the UK called the Defender Plug-in TV Simulator has just arrived for me here in Spain, from the UK. The device emits an ever-changing series of lights to imitate a real television. The consumer site for this product is called Redline Security and no I’m not…