First things first – I hope all of my subscribers and new readers had a wonderful Christmas – I’m sure it will be FAR from the best on record but hopefully Santa brought you some new gadgets as he did for me. Top of the list for me HAS to…
Month: December 2020
The rugged Doogee S68 Pro with Titanium Sides
This is a happy story as I’m sure you’re all sick to death of hearing about everyone’s favourite virus – far better to read about great gadgets… This first part is about the new phone I recently received from Banggood, the Doogee S68 Pro (Global version) Smartphone. Is this a…
The YeeLight and node-red-contrib-yeelite-compat-hue
My first 9W E27 RGB+White WiFi Yeelight from Banggood arrived this week. The plan is to run this on Tasmota firmware but as I’m having trouble (as are others) with my Tuya-convert hardware at the moment I ran it initially on the Android YEELIGHT app. Not ideal but they allow…
Crealty 3D LD-002R LCD Resin Printer and MORE
For those looking in for the first time, The LD-002R is not to be confused with the LD-002H which has improved speed and slightly increased cost – so we are looking at a USB connected printer which accepts files on a memory stick for printing. In the beginning How hard…
Smart Devices for 2021 and Beyond
As most of you will know there are a large number of Smart devices out there today -for example – smartplugs which can be run over Zigbee or WiFi – I’ll concentrate only on WiFi in here. Smartplugs vary from 10A capacity which are good for lighting but only useful…
USB-C to USB 3 Adaptors
Seen these? If not, you might find this useful. Sure all the new portable kit today comes complete with USB-C – but what if your computer isn’t 100% up to date? Still using USB 3? I am, so when I found myself with a spare 7-in-1 USB hub, I figured…
VIGOTEC VG-L7X 20W Laser Engraver for Christmas
The full title of this engraver on Banggood’s site is the Vigotec VG-L7X 20W Laser Engraver CNC Router Desktop Automatic Here below is the mandatory box photo complete with thin “manual” which to be fair is generally in decent English. On first opening the package, I found this initial installation…
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
I just happened to be looking at Tasmota – in particular the WS2812 addressable LED drivers – specifically using the TASMOTA-DISPLAY.BIN file – and noted the CLOCK mode complete with example. It works – and works well.. Up to now I have a 60-LED addressable strip clock, a Dallas temperature…
FriendlyArm NanoPi R4S SBC
My Raspberry Pi4 is in the process of upgrading to today’s NEW upgrade to Raspberry Pi OS, the artist formerly known as BUSTER. Done – and in case you are wondering – here is the post-upgrade login message in the console. “Linux rpi418buster 5.4.79-v7l+ #1373 SMP Mon Nov 23 13:27:40…
Seeed Studio WT32-S1 Module for Ethernet to Serial
The WT21-S1 is an ESP-32-based embedded serial to Ethernet module. The module includes a full TCP/IP stack – etc etc – basically you can use it to program boards normally programmed serially – where that is not practical, by plugging this board into Ethernet via RJ45 and the relevant IO…
PiVPN (OpenVPN + WireGuard) Pi-hole and ZeroTier
This recently updated blog entry started off back in 2019 as a simple comment on the amazingly useful PiVPN with OpenVPN and has branched out a lot since then – now covering the (now default) WireGuard option) and the completely unassociated ZeroTier VPN solution. Before we start, here is a…