Today, I received a shipment of goods from ZemiSmart including a small but surprisingly bright 5W E14 RGBW Smart Bulb, a WiFi Smart Socket (max load 16A – 1875W (non-inductive)) with twin USB (5v@2A) and a really neat battery-free (yes, battery-free bell-push) Smart Doorbell. Firstly, the WiFi Smart Bulb.. well,…
Category: General
Weather Data using Node-Red and APIs
With the forthcoming descent of Dark Skies into an Apple-Only universe (a sad loss for the rest of us) I’ve been looking into alternative APIs to use for grabbing weather forecasts and related data. While I struggle with the MET Office behemoth, here’s a little information on yr.no I’d not…
Ravpower PD Pioneer 61W Wall Charger RP-PC112
Wall chargers for phones are not something I generally get excited about but as this handles “Power Delivery” (a new standard for charging) for phones AND has enough power for a Raspberry Pi 4 or modern tablet/notebook, here goes. The RP-PC112 UK version is a white, neat-looking USB-C wall charger…
Sonoff Mini with Tasmota versus the competition
You can’t get away from it, the iTead products are cheap – and sometimes that is very important. But are they the best solution for Home Control? Well, that depends. Sonoff products have always been inexpensive. But bear with me. At one time the company had a seemingly unbeatable grip…
Sonoff RF Bridge 433
I just received more neat little inexpensive Sonoff RF Bridges from Banggood, this is a great boxed gadget for converting 433Mhz RF signals from various devices into WiFi. The POINT of Mhz RF sensors of course is that they are very cheap and run for long periods on battery. While…
Tasmota – TDM, Tasmotize and TasUI
This is a never-ending story about Theo Arends’s much-loved alternative firmware for IOT as Tasmota is now running at development version 8.2.0.1 “Elliot” (update March 22, 2020 – I’ve upgraded my various ESP8266-based devices including Itead Sonoff BASIC, TH10, 4CH Pro, ProR2, Powr2, Shelly One, Blitzwolf and others). (Warning, there…
NanoPi R2S OpenWrt miniRouter – where’s the WiFi?
The new FriendlyElec R2S is more fully described as NanoPi R2S: a Raspberry Pi alternative that incorporates two Gigabit Ethernet ports. That’s not strictly true, it is nothing like an alternative to the Raspberry Pi 4, for example, but with 1GB RAM it runs OpenWrt – the FA version which…
A Blitzwolf Blitz with Tasmota and Tuya Convert
Some time ago I wrote about Blitzwolf battery packs and mentioned the Blitzwolf BW-SS1 – a small mains power controller. Well, the company has a RANGE of such controllers including the BW-SHP6 and BW-SHP7 Smart Plugs as well as the new BW-SHP10 (680w power monitoring). I have all of them…
Sothing PTC Shoe Drier and Diodoriser
Something new… when you are stuck in the house for weeks on end with no sun (Northeast of England – under lockdown) and instructions to wash clothing and hands whenever you are planning a grocery shopping trip, it certainly comes in handy (and cheap) to have something to dry your…
H96 Max Android TV Box
After a while all of these Android TV boxes begin to look and sound alike – but are they? What about picture quality? I just received a new Android 9 TV box from Banggood – and we did not get off to the best start. On opening the box, hidden…
Skype Alternatives – DISCORD is the Winner
I am sick up to here with websites telling you “the best alternatives” while not allowing discussion – in other words, thinly disguised adverts. I’ve been a Skype user since long before Microsoft came along and ruined it. Recently we’ve been looking for FREE alternatives to the free Skype that…
Helpful Engineering Volunteers Against Covid-19
I’ve been asked today by Aidan Ruff – many of you will have come across the name of my friend and ex-business partner of many years as we work on projects together and so when he asked me to put a word in for a volunteer group called “Helpful Engineering”…
A Trip Down Memory Lane
Nothing beats virus-related-boredom like a trip down memory lane. This morning I got an email from Japan – specifically from game journalist Koji Fukuyama. Now, I get stuff in the mail all the time and I’m VERY wary of people asking questions out of the blue, not relating to the…
Teckin SP23 and SP27 Smart Plugs
In 2019 I wrote here (now updated) about the Teckin SP23 (for British plugs and sockets) Smart plugs and commented that whether this ends well or not will depend on the company. Well, they wrote back to me on Nov 4, 2019. It would seem they have binned power monitoring…
Guudgo 21 LED and 47 LED External IP Cameras
I have in my hands two cameras called Guudgo – one has 21 LEDs and the other has 47 LEDs. For reasons well beyond me the 21 LED camera uses Android APP called “YCC365 Plus” while the 47 LED camera uses downloadbale Android APP “V380 Pro” – there will no…
More Node-Red Dashboard Success
This is a blog entry from 2016 that I’ve just updated.. In an even earlier entry the subject of Node-Red Dashboard, you’ll see I can hide that top menu if needed (the blue menu is great on a phone – not much use on a thermostat)… and then I discovered…
Instar IN-9008 Full HD MQTT Wired/WIFI IP Camera
In February 2020 I received a very nice IP camera from INSTAR Deutschland (Germany) GmbH – the IN-9008 Full HD camera (1920×1080 which has turned out to be a winner). I’ve had several emails with support and comments from Mike Polinowski of Instar about the “first ever” MQTT IP Camera.…
GL iNET MT300N V2 Mini Router
Update March 2020: Back in 2018, I bought this low-cost Mini-router (Mango) without having a clear idea of how to use it, other than to somehow try to get past the RIDICULOUS GEO-restrictions that providers such as the BBC and others put on their TV content. My MT300N (Mango) is…
Cheaper Raspberry Pi 4 , New Flasher and More
Update: Raspberry Pi now has it’s own image downloader and flasher – https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/ called “Raspberry Pi Imager” – Note separate links for Windows, MAC and Ubuntu respectively within the above – odd that they chose Ubuntu and not Debian – given that Raspbian is based on the latter – but…
Meross Home Control
Recently I received several IOT units from a company called Meross (designed in California, made in China I noted on one of the boxes) including the UK version of their MSS310 power-monitoring Smart Plug, their Smart Radiator Thermostatic starter kit and othe items. Now, before I launch into this, I…