Sorry – couldn’t resist it. I saw a YouTube video yesterday where a guy was griping about LED STRIP and the rubbish adhesive on most of it – my thoughts exactly. He thoughly recommended 3M’s VHB foam tape (Very High Bond – that keeps making me laugh) – and he…
Month: April 2025
Home Assistant at long last BUST?
Sorry, I could not resist at least one of those stupid end-of-the-world headlines so popular with children disguised as adults who seem to dominate YouTube…. So the very much abbreviated story is this: Months ago, I put Home Assistant on a cheap miniPC for speeding up my HAOS installation –…
Automatic DHCP and Home Automation
This is SO obvious once you grasp the idea – for some reason it missed me for the longest time. Let’s say you have a load of devices on your home control network… we’ll ignore Zigbee devices here as they don’t have IP addresses – as they work on a…
Aqara G4 Video Doorbell and FP2 Presense Sensor – Updated
Hands-on review of the Aqara G4 Smart Video Doorbell and FP2 Presence Sensor, with long-term updates through August 2025. Covers battery life, SD card storage, firmware quirks, Home Assistant integration, and the surprising WiFi 6 limitation on the FP2 sensor.
Home Assistant Tuya Socket Woes
In my Home Assistant set-up – HAOS on a mini-PC, documented elsewhere in here, I have an AliExpress-sourced cheap WiFi Tuya (Smartlife) socket controlling a salt light and as it is part of my livingroom lighting set – I have an HA entity change helper turning the socket entity into…
New Sonoff Goodies – Plug and Thermometers
In today’s postbag, a new Sonoff Zigbee smartplug – S60ZBTPF type F/E – so an EU plug… nothing special to look at – just an EU-fitting Zigbee 3.0 smartplug with no lights anywhere – not on the manual on-off button, not around the frame… for testing you can just hear…
M5Stack DIAL V1.1 in Brief
The M5Stack Dial is a small (45mm hole dia) USB-C-connected rotary dial with touch-sensitive LCD display. Here it is – short video…. And here are a couple of links with potentially useful information on using the M5stack Dial – ESPHOME 1 and ESPHOME 2
Zigbee2MQTT Lights – A Quick One
Some weeks ago in an order to AliExpress, I included a Zigbee E27 220v light bulb. It works perfectly in Zigbee2MQTT (in Home Assistant). Perfectly that is except for one thing – the default state setting does not work and in the event of a power failure and subsequent reconnect,…
Seeed Studio 60Ghz mmWave Sensor
Billed as a “Breathing and Heart Rate Sensor (reference MR60BHA2)” this new device from Seeed Studios got me quite excited…. the device arrived on April 2, 2025 in a well-packed large box maybe 10cm*9cm*13cm. Inside, a small box (9cm*2.5cm*2.7cm) containing the sensor and a double-sided business card pointing the buyer…
Whatever happened to everlasting solar garden lights?
I have MANY years experience of solar garden lights from the cheapest rubbish to quite expensive… what happened? Well, price – greedy importers out to make a quick buck is what happened – along with the public’s need to get something for nothing. The result is that the manufacturer builds…