A breath of fresh air, or dead in the water? Let’s take a look. But firstly an update – as of today (Feb 1, 2016) the Kickstarter campaign has been cancelled. Now see my comments below.. WiFithing overall: So WiFithing comprises a master board in a nice white box and…
Month: January 2016
Memory sticks/SD and USB3
I was just reading an article in a blog where people were slagging each other off over views about USB3 and the speed of memory sticks when a package arrived for me in the post. A couple of USB3 32GB memory sticks (tiny ones at that).. and it occurred to…
UI Update
I’ve been busily beavering away at a commercial project for the last couple of weeks but that ends at the weekend and I hope to soon have some more reviews of new and interesting products for you including some surprisingly cheap SBCs. Meanwhile, close to the heart of many of…
A little aside
Some testing of 40 ESP-01 processors – all sending MQTT data data back to a database, powered by a 20 amp power supply. Just two more of the same to go. Of interest to those struggling with ESP-01 – I normally have a 3v3 supply on board but this time…
The Nextion Experiment
Our latest experiment! The board you see to the right should be with us in a couple of weeks. This little number will sit on the back of a Nextion board, from the smallest to the largest without adding any height (hopefully) and contains as you see an ESP-12 and…
General Update
The last couple of days has been interesting – we’ve been checking that the Raspberry Pi 2 script works properly – it turns out that it simply won’t work if you have any kind of root access to the Pi. I’d not realised by by giving myself SUDO access in…
Obsolete Fixed IP Tutorials
I’ve just spent half the day trying to fix the address of one of my Raspberry Pis. No matter what I did, it kept the address that it was assigned some time ago. I even tied the IP address to MAC in the router – and THAT didn’t help. Countless…
The not $25 LeMaker Guitar
You may well not be familiar with the name LeMaker but you are likely familiar with “Banana Pi” – same people (Shenzhen LeMaker Technology). This is NOT like other boards I’ve reviewed in here. This morning a large box arrived in the post from LeMaker. So the Guitar is a…
BigTimer for Node-Red
This is an old article – For information and the latest on BigTimer – see this blog article. Having just fixed a bug in big-timer (npm install node-red-contrib-bigtimer) I thought it was time to do a short video. So this is for users of Node-Red – this demo on a simple…
Itead Slampher and Sonoff
Remind you of IKEA? No? Heard of ESP8266? Yes? Well, Slampher and Sonoff are two products from Itead and I think you’ll like at least one of them. They arrived at my desk today. Slampher is a screwfit lamp fitting – take the E27 lamp out – put Slampher in…
Screen on Raspberry Pi
This is so much fun I’ve added it to my Raspberry Pi install script http://www.tecmint.com/screen-command-examples-to-manage-linux-terminals/ Self Explanatory in the article except I used: sudo apt-get install screen (As user Pi) Pete.
Pi Zero and the USB Problem
The £5 Raspberry Pi Zero has great potential as a cheap gadget but it has one major problem – lack of USB. So it has no ETHERNET – your ONLY option is WIFI – but will the WIFI work and how the HELL are you supposed to figure that out…
Thermostat Progress
I’m quite chuffed. Having finally managed to make a new working Node-Red on a Pi2, with a copy of all my work, so that I’m no longer losing sleep over losing the lot, I can finally start to get more ambitious with my thermostat over at Hollyberry Cottage. I’ve had…
Instant Node-Red
Peter Oakes kindly made a video – you’ll see it in my last post – on installing Node-Red using my script. Well, I was in the process of watching THAT when (as you do) I got side-tracked and discovered a really wonderful online tool for testing out Node-Red instantly –…
Enter the Video
A friend of mine, Peter Oakes has a series of videos on Youtube covering a lot of the subjects we touch on in here. He’s been tackling my latest Raspberry Pi script – so for those who like their information in video – here’s the latest.
Enter the Nextion 7” Display
In previous blog items I’ve mentioned the Nextion displays. These are a fairly unique product in that they offer a simple to use LCD touch display which works serially – and hence are not tied to any device – and they don’t need drivers. I have a very nice “proper”…
About Turn! The Z-Turn Board
Today’s my lucky day, first the postman then couriers – you’d think it was Christmas. The Z-turn board from Myr looks at first glance like many other boards out there – it is around the size of a Raspberry Pi. The layout is immaculate with resistors and other components grouped…
Free GPS for the Weekend, Sir?
Well, not QUITE – the Navspark Mini + UART to USB adaptor is free – but with a caveat of postal shipping charges. http://navspark.mybigcommerce.com/navspark-mini-uart-to-usb-adapter/ Already the more savvy of you will have noticed a treat here. Let’s say you have no interest whatsoever in GPS – the second half of…
The Udoo Neo
The Udoo Neo (www.udoo.org) arrived in my postbag today. Described as “The Ultimate Single Board Mini-PC for Android and Linux” – the Neo is the top end of the range and the full version is $64.90 plus tax/shipping etc. So £45 – probably £60 by the time you’re done –…
Quick Web Page
No sooner had I finished my new Debian Jessie installation (see previous blog) than I tested it – I typed in “http://jessie2” – nothing – zilch. Turns out that even the latest Raspbian doesn’t do this properly – so – off I went and: sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin That…