I’ve had a morbid fear of using API calls since I first heard the term years ago, just before I developed a morbid fear of JSON. Well, the latter didn’t last too long but JSON responses from websites can get awfully complicated, awfully quickly. And that’s how tonight I ended…
Category: General
Meross MSL120 RGB E27 Light Bulb
This is going to be a quick one. The Meross MSL120 E15 RGB light bulb works just fine with their Meross APP, giving the usual RGB control features including warm and cool white + RGB. Sadly, Meross continue to use chips other than ESP8266 or ESP32 so their lamps at…
Zigbee – The Ongoing Sonoff Story
You may recall for a while I got fanatical about Zigbee – I’ve not lost interest – it’s just that by and large, Zigbee just WORKS – in particular, I have a load of Zigbee sensors around the house, mostly AQARA, mostly running on CR2032 batteries and the (rather short-range…
ESPHOME on RPI plus my First October Postbag
ESPHOME By now you’ll have seen my frantic posting about ESPHOME, running on the PC command line to allow the creation of ESPHOME-equipped ESP32 and ESP8266 devices… I’ve been making little display projects, the likes of which I could only dream of in TASMOTA. I originally tried ESPHOME on the…
Another TTGO with ESPHOME
The first time I did this last week, I was a complete newby to ESPHOME – a popular yet free firmware option for ESP8266 and ESP32-based boards. I also had no idea how to make use of the ESP32-based LILYGO TTGO module which Banggood sent me some time ago so…
My ESPHOME Adventure
I recently wrote about experimenting with the LILYGO TTGO ESP32 development board and my first attempts at using ESPHOME as against my firmware of choice Tasmota. Well, I’ve been heads-down for several days of learning – with several false starts I may add. The short version of this is, I’ve…
M5Stack Core 2 ESP32 IOT, STAMP PICO and ATOM LITE
Regular readers may recall a couple of years ago I wrote about the M5Stack – at the time I didn’t have much to say about the original as I could not find much in the way of software tools for it – yet here we are again with the M5Stack…
Xiaovv Q12 H.265 2MP 1080P HD Smart IP Camera
The Xiaovv Q12 H.265 2MP 1080P HD Smart IP Camera just arrived from Banggood. Take into account that this camera is under €20 so an ideal starter camera, but overall I have questions. I made sure it has the latest firmware installed – it has – yet there is a…
ESP32-Based TTGO Module Revisited with ESPHOME
Described as the LILYGO® TTGO T-Display ESP32 CP2104 WiFi Bluetooth Module, back in March 2021 I received two of these ESP32-based modules, so as you can imagine, I’ve had yet another learning experience – le’s take a look at these lovely modules complete with colour display. So I’ve put together…
Condenser Microphone Kit from Banggood
Thanks to some Covid-related postal delays this turned up later than expected but as it turns out, the mic is a winner so here’s the link – Banggood did their best to ship this earlier in the summer – but ultimately this microphone kit arrived with some other gear last…
M5Stack® M5Paper ESP32 WiFi + Bluetooth
The M5Stack® M5Paper ESP32 Wifi + bluetooth Development product I just received from Banggood is – well, I’ve not gotten into detail yet but it’s a neat, slim ESP32-based unit with low-power 4.7″ e-Ink touch display. As it came out of the well-packed box, it was showing a menu and…
Geekcreit CH9102X QFN28 ESP32
Ok, I know, that was one hell of a title. What I just received from Banggood on returning from our mini-holiday at the beach was this ESP32 board and it occurred to be that since I’ve started to get to grips with using the ESP32 and especially with using special…
A Constructive Tasmota Weekend
A week or so ago I was struggling to get everything I wanted in one ESP8266 running Tasmota – for example, the tasmota-sensors.bin file has lots of sensors and very little display capability while tasmota-display,bin has very few sensors. One of the guys suggested I tackle doing my own Tasmota…
Sonoff POWR3 5500W Controller – It’s a Monster
Back in 2019 I reviewed the Sonoff POWR2 unit – an upgraded mains controller which, as against typical power controllers which handle 10A MAX (good for lighting, not so good for heating controls such as immersion heaters), handles 15A MAX along with power monitoring (at a push and for non-inductive…
Plug-In TV Simulator From Redline Security
A new device in the UK called the Defender Plug-in TV Simulator has just arrived for me here in Spain, from the UK. The device emits an ever-changing series of lights to imitate a real television. The consumer site for this product is called Redline Security and no I’m not…
Android File Copying – Watching Paint Dry
Am I just being unlucky here? I copy huge volumes of files on my Windows 10 (64-bit) PC all the time – and today I decided I had FAR too many phone-related files (downloads, photos and video) all over the place. I started by taking my PC “screenshots” folder” and…
Raspberry Pi PICO – would you bother?
The “Raspberry Pi PICO” trades on the name “Raspberry Pi” which many of us find to be a cost-effective home -automation hub, thankfully widely supported by lots of third parties even though the Raspberry Pi Foundation is sticking with their “for educational use” mantra. I wrote this when the PICO…
Midweek Banggood Round-up
First item in today’s postbag – my new Lithium-powered, 2700v Mosquito Swatter. And what’s special about that? We have a mains powered mosquito/fly killer which sits in front of the bedroom and runs all night – had it for some time now – we also have disposable battery-powered swatters which…
Aqara Opple – Learn with Peter
Anyone here old enough to remember the BBC show “Watch with Mother”? Well, I just acquired a pair of Aqara OPPLE wall switches from Banggood – 1 panel – 2 buttons – Zigbee (3.0) – no wires, Chinese-only instrucions – so why not “learn with Peter”!! First things first, above…
Banggood Fun – Aqara Opple Triple Zigbee Switch
Aqara Opple 6-button Wall Switch offers a total of 30 actions – very useful