This is a never-ending story about Theo Arends’s much-loved alternative firmware for IOT (http://ota.tasmota.com/tasmota/tasmota.bin.gz) as Tasmota is now at stable release version 8.5.1 “Hannah” (update October 2, 2020) and development version 9.0.0.1 – I’ve upgraded my various ESP8266-based devices including Itead Sonoff BASIC, TH10, 4CH Pro, ProR2, Powr2, Shelly One,…
Category: General
Raspberry Pi 4 plus SSD Case
Right now this is a request for ideas from readers – hopefully someone will have answers and I can then write about them here. Having recently gotten to grips with and blogged about Rasberry Pi 4 and the speed benefits of using an SSD drive via a USB3 to SATA…
PiSugar 2 and PiSugar 2 Pro
I’m now the proud owner of both the PiSugar 2 and PiSugar 2 Pro These are un-interruptible power supplies for the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi (3A, 3B, 3B+, 4B. Both of these boards come complete with magnetically attached Lithium battery – 1200maH capacity in the case of the…
Carku 64B versus D28A Portable Car Jump Starters
I have a couple of cars, one of which has a battery in doubtful state afet being flattened a few weeks ago. It works perfectly but knowing car batteries and their ability to recover from being flattened (or not) I at first figured I’d buy a battery charger – and…
Mikato S2 Smart PIR Toothbrush Sterilizer
It seems like an age ago that I wrote about the Soocas X3 Electric Toothbrushes.. and yet in fact it was just a couple of weeks ago – and now THIS – the Mikatu S2 Smart PIR Induction Electric Toothbrush Sterilizer Holder (to give it the full title). I was…
Laser Engraver Coming Up
I’m currently awaiting delivery of my new laser engraver but in the meantime, down at San Jose (the original one in Spain) on our weekend off, I just picked up this wonderful USB desk light – I could not resist showing it to you guys – as it occurred to…
GL-iNET Brume-W Travel Router
I’m currently playing with the Brume-W (GL-MV1000W) “Edge Computing Gateway”. To test, I turned on the virgin Brume – and connected the WAN to my network via a handy network lead. That’s it – nothing else – not a single extra step. I then pointed my phone to a new…
Lilygo TTGO ESP32 T-Watch-2020
OK, that’s a mouthful… The Lilygo watch is particularly interesting to us technical folk as it runs on an ESP32 processor. I’ve been after one of these for ages for those tech moments – i.e. for the few times I get to go drinking with other technically minded folk who…
Xiaomi Mi Band 5
Back in 2019 I wrote about the wonderful Xiaomi Mi Band 4 and it is no secret, despite owning and reviewing many smart watches and bands in detail, that the Xiaomi Mi 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watches remain my favourites – one or the other being in use every single…
False Review Epidemic
You HAVE to see this. Blackview company just sent me emails promoting their new products – they wanted me (and others) to follow their official store – so being me, I sent back an email to suggest that if they wanted to ship one to me, I’d have a play…
Eachine E520S GPS WIFI Quadcoptor
I started this blog entry to tell you a little about the nice-looking Eachine E520S GPS WIFI FPV With 1080P HD Camera Quadcopter which I received from Banggood Back in June (but read on) – I’ve added some VERY short videos further down – and I have an upgrade. My…
SOOCAS X3 Electric Sonic Toothbrush
A good start to the week, I think. Today our new “smart” Soocas Electric Sonic toothbrushes arrived in the mail and very nicely packed they were. This interesting sonic toothbrush (with APP) looks well made – and after the boring colours of my regular old non-sonic Braun electric, provides a…
Honorable Mention Weekend
Lots of things going on this weekend, nothing completed sufficiently to blog about in isolation but I felt the need to keep subscribers up to date and thank some people in the process. I’ve been trying to brighten up the blog a little – and CSS was never my strongest…
KSGER T12 Soldering Station
A quick writeup about the V2.1S T12 Digital Temperature Controller Soldering Station courtesy of Banggood – the unit comes minus mains power cable and with a single all-in-one tip – but looks very sturdy. So above I’ve shown what you get with the package, below I’ll show the unit assembled…
GL-iNet Spitz 4G LTE Smart Router
I’m impressed already – as a long-term occasional user of the GL-iNet Mango travel router, I thought I’d give their upmarket products a look – there is a lot more to this router than it first seems. The Spitz is LOVELY. Check pricing in your area. Tiny and open-source, the…
M5Stack Core 2 ESP32 IOT Development
Regular readers may recall a couple of years ago I wrote about the M5Stack – https://tech.scargill.net/the-m5-stack/ and here we are again with the M5Stack Core 2 – the ESP32 IoT development kit which comes complete with 2 inch touch display. The new, upgraded Core2 has 8MB or RAM, a 390maH…
Blitzwolf BW-UP2 USB 3.2 Flash Drive
This morning in the post, arrived a Blitzwolf BW-UP2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Flash Drive. As a first simple write test, I copied one of my videos from my PC D: drive to the BW-UP2 – ok, not very scientific – but the copy time took exactly 8 seconds for…
Xiaomi ZAJIA Auto-sense IR Induction Water Saver
I LOVE getting new toys. The original Zajia was sent to me in January 2020 by Banggood and it turned up in the UK in February. The battery-powered, USB-charged Zajia clips straight into the tap in the kitchen or bathroom to provide proximity-controlled water. If you are on a water…
Mustool MT8208 2-in-1 Multimeter and Oscillosope
A couple of years ago, regular readers may recall I took a look at the Mustool MT8206 2-in-1 Multimeter and Oscilloscope. Well, things change and now there is the improved MT8208 2-in-1 Multimeter and Oscilloscope – how’s that for a dynamic change of name 🙂 They have of course improved…
Blitzwolf BW-S16 75W PD Charger
To give this beauty its full title – BlitzWolf® BW-S16 75W 6-Port USB PD Charger. Hard to believe our local stores are still selling USB chargers that are not even Quick-charge, never mind PD (Power Delivery). These days, such terms are mandatory to gain my interest. This monster from Blitzwolf…