I learned something new last week-ending Aug 10, 2019)…. and now MORE…

I’ve set up countless Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 SBCs over time, usually headless and using the file /etc/dhcpcd.conf to set up a static IP address, It works every time. Or WORKED every time. Read on for some hopefully useful info…

When I got my new RPI4, I upgraded all my older systems to BUSTER, not one of the easiest things to do and indeed not recommended on the RPI-forums. (Use a clean installation, they say. GREAT unless you happen to have years’ worth of complex, only partly documented code on your RPI2 or 3.

Well, I did upgrade, the change is all documented on the blog – and of course when it came to setting a static IP address I never thought twice about it. I used my Buster-upgraded installation several times on the RPI4 without issue.

Continue reading RPI4 Network Lesson →

As far as simple gimmicks go, this new one is a “corker”. As many of you know, I’m a sucker for LED gadgets and have them all over the place. The full title for this winner is (corrected English spelling) “Colourful Diamond Shape USB Rechargeable Wine Cork LED Bottle Light”. Good gimmick or WHAT??

Continue reading Diamond USB Wine Cork Light →

Updated July 26, 2019: I am using a combination of Echo Dot generation 1 and generation 3 here in Spain.  

Amazon insist on using port 80 for gen 3 Echos, a port already used by something else on my Raspberry Pi 3-based home control system.

I  am using port 8980 to avoid being the hated Linux ROOT user and so now, on my main Pi 3,  I moved the web server to port 86 and using “iptables” have redirected port 8980 traffic to port 80 to keep Amazon happy while continuing to use port 8980 to keep Linux happy as user Pi. This all seems to work well.

Continue reading Alexa, Raspberry Pi and Sonoff →

To give it the full title, this entry is about the Alfawise T9 Body Fat Fitness Tracker (or Smart Bracelet). With a 0.96 inch screen, the T9 uses an App (Android or IOS) called Gloryfit (I use the Android version from the Playstore).

The bracelet uses an NRF52832 CPU and offers Body fat, Heart rate monitor, Sleep monitor, Pedometer, Multi-sport mode, notifications, camera remote, find-the-phone, alarm clock and much more.

The bracelet came from Gearbest and has detachable strap and comes with USB charger which works in any USB port. Note the readout (fat, water, protein) as well as time.

The bracelet/watch arrived completely flat and so I stuck it on charge for an hour.  So now, it is around 75% charged and I can give it a test. Here (above) it is on my wrist.

Continue reading Alfawise T9 Bracelet →

No doubt you’ve seen ads for the little “Charger Doctor” gadget from China – well, my advice is to avoid it like the plague.  I have two of them, I’ve used them in the past but never on a Raspberry Pi. It turns out that given a 5.2v input, one of them reduces the output voltage to 4.8v, the other to 4.6v as measured by a 5-digit meter on the Pi edge connector.

If I take the same load, the same charger and the same short lead with no “Charger Doctor” inline – I get the original 5.2v. i.e. same start up conditions, same meter, same everything – the only difference being the presence or absence of the “Charger Doctor”.

Spec for Charger Doctor is 3.5v-7v in, 0A-3A out. The loss is not specified – and in my book is WAY too high.

In the bin – both of them.

Updated June 14, 2019:

So many phones out there, so much choice, so much rubbish. When it came to updating my own phone last year, I took advice from my friend Antonio (Mr Shark) and went for the Xiaomi Pocophone F1 and as it turns out, it was good advice as the Pocophone is an absolute winner. More of that elsewhere.

Now it is my wife’s turn and recently we took delivery of the Umidigi F1 phone from Banggood.

The phone arrived here safely in deepest rural Spain, tracked and on time along with a separately shipped glass screen protector. 16/4/2019 - Above image taken this morning with the F1 back camera – no adjustments or enhancements.

My experience from opening the Umidigi package through to actual phone use is that of a high-end model phone – from the boxing and thank-you card from Umidigi themselves through the packaging effort by Banggood and to the phone and accessories, everything looks top notch.

Continue reading The Umidigi F1 Smartphone →

In order to minimise spam, I have removes some email subscriptions where the user names looked automated. This process is nowhere near perfect but is essential to protect valid readers/subscribers.

I’ve also changed email newsletter requests to double-opt-in – that is, if you newly request emails from the blog, you may be asked to confirm your email address. I apologise in advance for any inconvenience to registered blog readers.

While I’m here – has anyone been watching the media coverage of the new folding Samsung phone (and others)? I know this is technically neat but am I alone in wishing manufacturers would concentrate on the things we really want and in some cases need? Improved charging/battery life would be good. Better cameras, by which I don’t mean much higher resolution, but vastly improved low-light performance and optical zoom would be good – even if that means new lens technology. Do we really need higher resolution for selfies? Probably not. Let’s see real innovation, guys.

I just spent ages debugging issue with theSunCalc module used in Node-Red-Contrib--BigTimer.

It turns out that the getMoonTimes module doesn’t seem to handle the alwaysUp and alwaysDown methods the way one might expected – these do not return FALSE  if not TRUE – they return undefined – that took some figuring out.

I started with try-catch but that failed also. Simply checking as follows did the trick:

if (typeof moons.rise==='undefined')
moonrise=1440;
else
{
date2=moons.rise; moonrise = (date2.getHours() * 60) +
date2.getMinutes();
}              

if (typeof moons.set==='undefined')
moonset=0;
else
{
date3=moons.set; moonset = (date3.getHours() * 60) +
date3.getMinutes();
}           

I’m pretty sure this is now fixed as of BigTimer 2.1.7

Thanks to Aidan Ruff for his help in this one.