If, like me, you’re up for replacing your home breakers (power breakers and earth leakage) you may have come across the EARU Electric EAMPDW-TY-63 on AliExpress. I just came across a couple of these with no manual or box. I just HAPPEN to know they are (not uncommonly) Tuya-compatible –…
Category: General
1NCE SIMS – SOMETHING NEW
December 2024 update Do you have an IOT setup and maybe no WiFi – do you want a SIM card so you can attach it to a cheap 3G/4G modem (or an old or new phone for that matter) to do nothing but send a small amount of data (and…
Sonoff Zigbee Smart Water Valve (SWV)
Just as I was pondering starting this Sonoff BSP review early July 2024, I saw Matt’s video (NotEnoughTech). Matt had a slightly different take on the SWV to what I’m about to share. He noted that the Zigbee2MQTT is not quite ready for the SWV (or vice-versa) (but see the…
PAJ 4G GPS Tracker
This morning a package arrived in the post from PAJ UG (Halftungsbeschrankt) of Windeck in Germany. It’s the PAJ 4G GPS Tracker. I also noticed the device is designed in Germany and assembled in China. Do I have a clue how this is going to work? No. Thankfully I have…
Home Assistant Editing, Styling, Colouring and Charts
It’s not that long since I wrote this article about the use of colours in Home Assistant (HA). Essentially since first learning how to make use of HA to replace my ageing Node-Red home automation setup (including lighting and air-conditioning, presense monitoring etc). I’ve recently become fascinated with the job…
Apollo PLT-1 Garden Moisture Sensor
Apollo Automation have 2 versions of this new PLT-1 sensor for use with Home Assistant, a small USB-powered version and a larger battery-powered version. I knew about this sensor before it arrived thanks to one of several videos out there. I think videos are popular because you don’t get a…
Aqara Dual Relay Module T2 – Wet and Dry
I LOVE getting new stuff from Aqara. About the only thing I’ve had from them that was slightly disappointing was the G4 Video Doorbell. Don’t get me wrong, it works well, but I can’t get it integrated into Home Assistant. Other than that, it’s great – I’d check the battery…
Home Assistant Progress – Colours
As a died-in-the-wool Node-Red fan of several years for my home automation, earlier this summer, my Italian friend Antonio began trying to convince me that Home Assistant was the way forward. When I first looked at HA it was pretty basic but a lot has changed in the last year…
Reolink Atlas PT Ultra, Solar Panel and More
NEW! Officially launched October 1 October 1 but available from late September when I originally published this blog entry. If you read this blog regularly you will know that I’ve reviewed several ReoLink cameras and loved every one of them – in the end however the only one I’ve kept…
Motion sensors – and human memory
You’ll not see too many blog entries like this I would imagine as they end up binned for fear of embarassment – as I don’t work for anyone else – I could care less about making a fool of myself. In my home office I have a motion sensor attached…
First World Problems – “Need Adminstrative Account Permissions”
I’m prepared to guess that a good half of my Windows-using blog readers are either home users, self-employed or otherwise simply do NOT have an administrator other than themselves. In order to rename a drive on my Windows 11 Pro machine, I’ve just had to bypass a warning telling me…
Sonoff Cam Slim 2 WiFi Smart Security Camera
Regular viewers may recall, back in August 2022 I reviewed Sonoff’s Cam Slim, described as an FHD Smart Security Camera, a neat little job I’ve since called Cat Cam as it watches our cat litter tray. It’s worked perfectly and talks to Home Assistant – that’s how I use it.…
NSPanel Pro 120 USA
Haven’t I already written about the NSPANEL PRO? Yes I have here.. but this is slightly different, instead of the square form factor – this one is LONG. For the USA (why the USA, no idea, I’d have thought we in Europe would be just as keen – but what…
SEEED Wednesday
I didn’t get any delivery notices yesterday yet we arrived back from the market to find a package from China with SEEED written all over it. Inside, a SEED “Mono Enclosed Speaker 4R 5W” – not sure what any of that means – 5W in a tiny speaker with the…
Argon40 Argon NEO5 + Poly+5 RPi5 Cases
This might be of interest to those of you who own one or more Raspberry Pi 5 boards (NOT previous models such as RPi3 or 4): Argon40 have been around for some years now, producing a range of cases for various Raspberry Pi models. I’ve used several over the years…
Sonoff ZBMiniR2 Extreme – Why Another Power Controller?
Why indeed – Sonoff will release the new ZBMiniR2 (Extreme) on 19th September 2024 – the last one I owned was (is) the ZBMini L2 – this new device is named ZBMini Extreme on the top of the box and ZBMiniR2 on the side). So what’s new – and why…
The storm before the break – HA and Air Conditioning
I just had some root canal work done and it didn’t go too well (understatement – I currently look like the original Godfather). We’re off for a few days break this coming week so I planned on doing nothing at all until then – but life doesn’t work like that.…
HamGeek Zigbee Gateway V1.5
If you’ve been reading the blog (I hope you have) recently you’ll know I’ve reviewed the SMLIGHT SLZB-06 and SMLIGHT SLZB-06p7 Zigbee Coordinators which can also VERY EASILY be used as Zigbee routers. You may also have noticed that I’ve converted the odd Sonoff Zigbee Coordinator to be a router.…
Apollo MTR-1 and MSR-2 Sensors
Elsewhere I’ve written about the new Apollo Air-1 gas sensor for Home Assistant (based on ESP-home). In that blog I also mentioned their DEV-1 ESP32C3 board. As the blog entry was starting to get a little long, I decided to separate out the MTR-1 and MSR-2 sensors – so here…
Shelly and Sonoff Shout-out
I WAS going to incorporate this into earlier Shelly and Sonoff posts but lots going on this weekend gone – so: Let’s get Sonoff out of the way… you may be familiar with the Sonoff Smart Water Valve – and how quickly they updated this to work with Zigbee2MQTT including…