As far as simple gimmicks go, this new one is a “corker”. As many of you know, I’m a sucker for LED gadgets and have them all over the place. The full title for this winner is (corrected English spelling) “Colourful Diamond Shape USB Rechargeable Wine Cork LED Bottle Light”.…
Month: July 2019
BigTimer and Amazon Polly Notifications
Sometimes it can be helpful to think outside of the box and I just did. We were discussing getting Amazon Echo to give out arbitrary notifications from a Raspberry Pi + Node-Red installation and after messing about with this for a while I remembered I have an Amazon AWS account…
Alexa, Raspberry Pi and Sonoff
Updated July 26, 2019: I am using a combination of Echo Dot generation 1 and generation 3 here in Spain. Amazon insist on using port 80 for gen 3 Echos, a port already used by something else on my Raspberry Pi 3-based home control system. I am using port 8980…
I7E Alfawise Fitness Tracker
The I7E Fitness Tracker bracelet is my second bracelet of the day – this one came from Gearbest and comes in an adequate if basic case. As you can see, the bracelet is quite attractive. The App is the freely downloadable Zeroner Health Pro app available in both the Android…
Alfawise T9 Bracelet
To give it the full title, this entry is about the Alfawise T9 Body Fat Fitness Tracker (or Smart Bracelet). With a 0.96 inch screen, the T9 uses an App (Android or IOS) called Gloryfit (I use the Android version from the Playstore). The bracelet uses an NRF52832 CPU and…
QC 3.0 Car Chargers
That’s it, all my “normal” USB chargers are gone – worse than useless for charging modern phones – and today the mail brought the second of a pair of purchased QC3.0 car chargers – I believe from AliExpress or Banggood. Look up this model in their ads based on price…
SD Speeds and Reliability
For years I’ve been promoting Samsung and Sandisk cards for use with SBCs such as the Raspberry Pi and similar. This article checks out ne A2 class cards and seems to come to the conclusion that the latter hold no benefits – indeed that the Samsung Evo+ in particular is…
Umidigi S3 Pro Phone
The Umidigi S3 Pro smartphone arrived for me today from Banggood – and very nice looking it is. This large (6.3” FHD – 2340x1080px) phone is inexpensive but sports some great features such as 48Mpx camera images. But here’s a point – it is common to get maximum resolution out…
Raspberry Pi 3/4 Power
For one of my (up to date) Raspberry Pi (SBC) installations, I have a 5v supply able to deliver sufficient power i.e. over 3 amps… I don’t need a full uninterruptible supply, but I thought it would be nice to use one of my USB battery packs in between the…
Raspberry Pi 4 Arrival
My 2GB Pi4 arrived from the UK. My good friend sent me a micro-HDMI to HDMI adaptor along with the Pi and a 3d-printed case he made – except he didn’t…. the adaptor is a micro-USB to HDMI adaptor – NOT what the RPI4 uses. Because I’m impatient I’d already…
Alexa NotifyMe Skill + Node Red
Here’s another winner for Raspberry Pi (though not specifically) and thanks to my good friend Aidan Ruff for taking time out of his busy schedule and bringing this to my attention. As regular readers know, I try to use Node-Red for just about every aspect of my home control here…
Charger Doctor
No doubt you’ve seen ads for the little “Charger Doctor” gadget from China – well, my advice is to avoid it like the plague. I have two of them, I’ve used them in the past but never on a Raspberry Pi. It turns out that given a 5.2v input, one…
Raspberry Pi 4 + Buster
The new Raspberry Pi 4 is out and about. The new model has something folk have been screaming for i.e. 2GB and 4GB RAM options, not only that but BUSTER, the new version of Raspbian which is not only supported but recommended – and it is backward compatible. In my…
Mosquitto on Raspberry Pi 4
I currently have The Eclipse Mosquitto MQTT broker running on the Raspberry Pi 2, 3 and 4, including Stretch and Buster Raspbian, not to mention countless other variations of Debian and Ubuntu on various boards used at one time or another (Orange Pi, various FriendlyArm boards and far more). Below…
Samsung Galaxy and Gear Watches
So the latest is that the new Gear 4 watch won’t be called that at all, just Samsung Galaxy watch – and for anyone who has been living in a cave for some time(I have, but a cave with WIFI) can there be any doubt that this is the best…