Published originally July 4, 2025: Until a couple of weeks ago, I’d never heard the name NOUS – but now I have, I’m glad I have. I enquired for samples to demo in here and they quicky send off several of their devices – great stuff, slightly marred by an…
Month: April 2026
Home Assistant – a Quick Thank-You
Hard to believe it’s now something like two years since I made the break from many years of Raspberry Pi (2 through 5) and ultimately Node-Red + Node-Red Dashboard for my home automation during which I even developed and published my own packages for Node-Red (node-red-contrib-bigtimer for example) and a…
Semismart Smart Screen Switches
Just had my first play with a new Semismart Zigbee Smart Screen Switch ZMS-206EU-3 and I’m quite excited… See the main photo – this standard EU fitting wall switch – which requires neutral – switches up to 3 devices on and off – the blurb that comes with it says…
Shelly – The Pill
This is the last in my current round of Shelly product reviews. “The Pill” is a TINY little module which comes with brief instructions and a USB-to-3.5 mm jack female adapter. The device supports DS18B20, DHT22, digital input, and various add-ons. Shelly sent me The Pill along with several accessories:…
Shelly Presence Gen4
Another new Shelly product – this time a small, USB-powered presence detector from Shelly in Bulgaria. Rather than dive into the Shelly app I went straight for Zigbee use and added the device to my Zigbee2MQTT setup under Home Assistant. At first, Zigbee2MQTT accepted the device but said it was…
Shelly BLU H&T Display
This new device from Shelly in Bulgaria is a SLIM paper-white display temperature, humidity and light level sensor. I love the display, very low-power consumption, uses on a pair of CR2032 batteries (supplied – up to 2 years battery life) and the device comes with a flat magnetic, adhesive-backed wall…
Flint 3e (GL-BE6500) Router from GL-iNet
Through various communication and courier errors it has taken some time for my Flint 3e router to arrive but here it is at last. I have a pair of Flint routers (the originals) which offer WiFi 6 and I can definitely vouch that they have better range than WiFi 5…