Update September 2018

I read about the most convoluted ways to back up SBC systems…. some back up only data, some use arcane commands to do the job – few if any are a single click job for a complete backup that can even handle larger or smaller SDs. That is except for RPI-Clone.

Below “Original article” was written back in 2016 – things have changed a little since then. Bill Wilson has revamped his rpi-clone project and the current version of this superb command-line tool for the Raspberry Pi is here.. https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone

Continue reading SD CARD Backup →

While we were down at the coast paying a fleeting visit to Gibraltar, a package arrived for me from  www.koogeek.com – their LS1 Smart Light Strip – which is available from TomTop - https://www.tomtop.com/p-ls1-1.html

Here it is, it arrived well-packed – it is worth noting that apps are available for both Android and IOS. The box describes the product and spec in English, Chinese and what looks like German. For IOS users the strip works with Apple HomeKit. Somewhat less info is provided on the box for Android.

At this point I got the urge to open the box and take a look. This time, there were instructions in several languages including French and Italian. The manual has in total three sides in English including specifications and safety warnings.

The strip is for indoor use only and the product includes a 60-LED, sealed, adhesive-backed strip (somewhat waterproof-looking) and inline controller with USB at the end – all in white. Control is over WiFi - 2.4G only.

I plugged the strip into a handy USB supply and with the one button on the controller, turned it on. Double-click doesn’t seem to do anything so at this point it looks like an on-off control only – giving a smooth fade into a satisfyingly bright white.

On removing and re-applying USB power, the lights come up again in white, regardless of the last button state (on or off) so you could end up with a room full of lighting during the day in your absence – not a good thing. I think there may be an assumption here of the user always being present – and power always being on (i.e. no power cuts or brown-outs).

The light works with Google, Siri (Apple) and Alexa voice technologies none of which I had handy to test.

Rather too much Apple bias for me – and that shows in the Android Store who gave the app “Koogeek Smart Home” a rating of 1.7 – particularly low.

I downloaded the app onto my Android phone.

The unit comes with full colour control in the App and setup was particularly easy, however, again  if you get a power failure, when it reconnects, app settings are lost and worse, you have to be at the light strip to turn the power on otherwise the App has no idea of the state of the lights. As this is presumably all down to software I’m sure this can be sorted but right now at v2.2.14 it isn’t, which leaves the current strip as a novelty but little else.

I recently bought this low-cost Mini-router without having a clear idea of how to use it, other than to somehow get past the RIDICULOUS GEO-restrictions that providers such as the BBC and others put on their TV content. My MT300N (Mango) is yellow incidentally, like the photo. Only today after very carefully reading the instructions and comparing to other routers did I realise what a winner it really is, or could be if I could get it to vpn connect reliably.

Continue reading GL iNET MT300N V2 Mini Router →

There’s a discussion going on in here about the M5 Stack and one of the guys says he wants to use ESP8266 – now then is possibly a good time to announce that I’ve been updating the code in ESP-GO for  the ILI9340 and QD-Tech displays. It is all in the doc file but here are some pics… An ESP-12 board plus cheap display..

Above the ILI9340 and below the smaller and lower res QD-Tech display board, both dirt cheap, in the example below, boxed up on the wall as a stat display…. I’ve added the option to re-purpose gpio4 and 5 in ESP-GO for a maximum of 3 auto responders on input state change (trigger2, trigger4 and trigger5) making a thermostat display with buttons a snap.

For the DIY-er on a budget, this is a very inexpensive solution. The display layout of course is not fixed, you can set up your frame, select fonts and update icons as you see fit in Node-Red or other high level environment. The QD_Tech board is lower res than the ILI9340 but I got a bunch of suitable boxes from Ebay for just £3 each some time ago.  The light you see is driven by one of those touch sensitive plates we discussed in the blog some time ago. In reality I will end up using 3 tiny buttons.

My  friend Aidan who many of you will know through this blog, has just put an entry into Hackaday about his self-powered, auto aligning solar tracker. He is building a house in Aragon in Spain with no electricity but he’s compensating for that with lots of solar power – which in turn needs a tracking system. In true DIY fashion, Aidan is developing that himself.

If you’d like to know more, here’s the Hackaday link.

As you can imagine, I’ve looked at many chargers, lots of them have proven to be disappointing, many are just plain boring. Early days but this ISDT C4 charger (from Banggood) looks neither. Indeed it looks marvellous.

From initial impression through to operation this looks like a complete winner to me up to now. 4 sides of the manual are in English, certainly enough to get started. The unit does charging, discharging, storage charging, activation (for batteries that look dead, I so wish other chargers would do this), analysis and USB charging (to charge phones)….

Continue reading ISDT Smart Charger C4 →