Remote checking Home Control Units

Those of you who are aware of the Home Control project (Home Control 2019) will know that the software/hardware combination of a Raspberry Pi (running Jessie, Node-Red, SQLite and Mosquitto) and ESP12 (running the software described in the Home Control project) is proving very reliable – but there are occasions…

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Smoke Alarm by Email

Reader Christian brought this to my attention.. (http://www.simpleiothings.com/10-diy-wifi-smoke-alarm-notifier-roost-nest-alternative-full-tutorial/) The guy uses a NodeMCU, a USB wall power supply and audio sensor (microphone) to catch the audible alarm and start a WiFi alert via IFTTT. The smoke alarm unit stays unaltered and you never have to think about running out of…

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Some thoughts on Node Red variables

In learning how to use Node-Red I’ve changed my coding countless times as I’ve found better ways to do things. Please note that in 2017, the way I use global variables here is out of date. It still works but for example context.global.fred=1 is now written as global.set(“fred”,1). Read this…

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EMW3265 ESP8266 KILLER

Erm, no, though you might think so by this headline..  https://hackaday.com/2015/07/13/new-part-day-the-esp8266-killer Read the comments – the $5 ESP8266 – where?  $2 ESP8266 more like it – less, even – http://goo.gl/VB0V9K There’s even a claim that this new single-source board (Seeed Studio) has MORE memory – well at least one variation…

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Cheap ESP8266 NodeMCU

Seems like a good offer from Banggood – from their China warehouse (the EU warehouse is for some reason more expensive) http://www.banggood.com/NodeMcu-Lua-ESP-12E-WIFI-Development-Board-p-985891.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Celc-ad-KI-Unbeat-ESP12E&utm_content=hazel&utm_design=27&gclid=CJyo17OZ9MgCFc-6GwoddIgJbA And while we’re on – a new board.. http://www.espert.co/

Automatic Router Selection for ESP8266

I wonder if anyone who has done this can help.  As most of you know, I program my ESP8266 devices in C.  I’ve been having some issues with weak signal recently and it would be really nice to have a list of acceptable access points and their passwords – and…

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