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Category: General

Bakeey 8-in-1 USB-C Hub Docking Station Adaptor

January 3, 2021January 3, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneralLeave a Comment on Bakeey 8-in-1 USB-C Hub Docking Station Adaptor

This inexpensive Bakeey Adaptor does everything – HDMI out, RJ45 network out, TF, SD, a pair of USB 3 outputs and two USB-C outputs – one of which is for power charging (PD – or POWER DELIVERY). This slim unit has USB-C input. In fact the only thing wrong is…

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RGB Smart Socket – EH?

January 3, 2021January 3, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneralLeave a Comment on RGB Smart Socket – EH?
RGB Smart Socket

I think I’ve seen it all now. What’s an RGB Smart Plug I hear you say? Well, it is just what it sounds like. It’s a smart socket – 3840W (resistive) max with power monitoring – so nothing new there, but they’ve added RGB LEDs inside the socket itself for…

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Athom Smart Socket pre-Tasmota’d and Smart Light

January 3, 2021January 3, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneral21 Comments on Athom Smart Socket pre-Tasmota’d and Smart Light

I’m so excited about this so I’ll dive straight in. The company is called ATHOM and they make smart sockets and lights pro-programmed with TASMOTA. I took the smartsocket out of the box, plugged it into the mains, told my phone to look for access points and it found “tasmota_D3F950-6480”.…

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Second 2021 Treat – a New Doorbell

January 3, 2021January 3, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneralLeave a Comment on Second 2021 Treat – a New Doorbell
Doorbell from Banggood

Regular readers may recall one of last year’s blog entries called “A ZemiSmart Weekend” in which I wrote about, amongst other things, my new (at the time) doorbell, a simple kinetic door push (no batteries) with a UK-plug-based “bell”. This was back in April 2020 and I bought it from…

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NodeMCU 10-pack Bargain – first treat of the New Year

January 2, 2021January 2, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneral5 Comments on NodeMCU 10-pack Bargain – first treat of the New Year

My first January 2021 present-to-me arrived between Christmas and NYE while we were hiding at the coast – and I’ve just made a start at testing this pack of ten inexpensive ESP8266-based NodeMCU boards. If you’re not familiar with these and similar products, they are a very popular and generally…

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Merry Christmas and a New Poco X3

December 26, 2020January 7, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneral7 Comments on Merry Christmas and a New Poco X3
Poco X3

First things first – I hope all of my subscribers and new readers had a wonderful Christmas – I’m sure it will be FAR from the best on record but hopefully Santa brought you some new gadgets as he did for me. Top of the list for me HAS to…

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The rugged Doogee S68 Pro with Titanium Sides

December 26, 2020January 11, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneral4 Comments on The rugged Doogee S68 Pro with Titanium Sides
S68 Pro

This is a happy story as I’m sure you’re all sick to death of hearing about everyone’s favourite virus – far better to read about great gadgets… This first part is about the new phone I recently received from Banggood, the Doogee S68 Pro (Global version) Smartphone. Is this a…

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The YeeLight and node-red-contrib-yeelite-compat-hue

December 17, 2020December 17, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral5 Comments on The YeeLight and node-red-contrib-yeelite-compat-hue

My first 9W E27 RGB+White WiFi Yeelight from Banggood arrived this week. The plan is to run this on Tasmota firmware but as I’m having trouble (as are others) with my Tuya-convert hardware at the moment I ran it initially on the Android YEELIGHT app. Not ideal but they allow…

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Smart Devices for 2021 and Beyond

December 11, 2020December 26, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral19 Comments on Smart Devices for 2021 and Beyond

As most of you will know there are a large number of Smart devices out there today -for example – smartplugs which can be run over Zigbee or WiFi – I’ll concentrate only on WiFi in here. Smartplugs vary from 10A capacity which are good for lighting but only useful…

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USB-C to USB 3 Adaptors

December 9, 2020December 9, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral2 Comments on USB-C to USB 3 Adaptors

Seen these? If not, you might find this useful. Sure all the new portable kit today comes complete with USB-C – but what if your computer isn’t 100% up to date? Still using USB 3? I am, so when I found myself with a spare 7-in-1 USB hub, I figured…

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VIGOTEC VG-L7X 20W Laser Engraver for Christmas

December 8, 2020January 20, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneral20 Comments on VIGOTEC VG-L7X 20W Laser Engraver for Christmas
The completed laser engraver

The full title of this engraver on Banggood’s site is the Vigotec VG-L7X 20W Laser Engraver CNC Router Desktop Automatic Here below is the mandatory box photo complete with thin “manual” which to be fair is generally in decent English. On first opening the package, I found this initial installation…

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The Sincerest Form of Flattery

December 6, 2020December 6, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral8 Comments on The Sincerest Form of Flattery
LED Clock

I just happened to be looking at Tasmota – in particular the WS2812 addressable LED drivers – specifically using the TASMOTA-DISPLAY.BIN file – and noted the CLOCK mode complete with example. It works – and works well.. Up to now I have a 60-LED addressable strip clock, a Dallas temperature…

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FriendlyArm NanoPi R4S SBC

December 5, 2020December 5, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral5 Comments on FriendlyArm NanoPi R4S SBC
NanoPi R4S

My Raspberry Pi4 is in the process of upgrading to today’s NEW upgrade to Raspberry Pi OS, the artist formerly known as BUSTER. Done – and in case you are wondering – here is the post-upgrade login message in the console. “Linux rpi418buster 5.4.79-v7l+ #1373 SMP Mon Nov 23 13:27:40…

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Seeed Studio WT32-S1 Module for Ethernet to Serial

December 4, 2020December 14, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral6 Comments on Seeed Studio WT32-S1 Module for Ethernet to Serial
Seeed Studio WT32-ETH01

The WT21-S1 is an ESP-32-based embedded serial to Ethernet module. The module includes a full TCP/IP stack – etc etc – basically you can use it to program boards normally programmed serially – where that is not practical, by plugging this board into Ethernet via RJ45 and the relevant IO…

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My Node-Red Dashboard Controls for 2021

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral20 Comments on My Node-Red Dashboard Controls for 2021
Node-Red Dashboard with custom coding

Some of you may recall my work on Node-RED Dashboard buttons which all started in 2016 and which then (after a health-related break) received an update at the end of 2019 as I started to get to grips with dashboard templates. Well, I’m back to it again and this time,…

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Elegoo Uno Super Starter Kit

November 21, 2020November 21, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral8 Comments on Elegoo Uno Super Starter Kit

Just a quicky: possibly you know Elegoo.com for their 3D printers? That’s how I know them – however, they just sent me their Uno R3 Super Starter Kit – which includes an Uno and a shedload of sensors, wires, buzzers, motors, a CD with sample code and libraries… and more…

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MaticBox Raspberry Pi 4 Case and accessories

November 19, 2020November 26, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneralLeave a Comment on MaticBox Raspberry Pi 4 Case and accessories
Leapmatic MaticBox

I’m including a quick writeup on the DIN-rail mounting MaticBox because Leapmatic just sent me a couple of samples in the post today. The company are a little unusual in the Raspberry Pi case arena because they claim that “LeapMatic LLC is a high-tech company founded in 2015 by a…

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Raspberry Pi 4 Cloning Challenge

November 18, 2020November 18, 2020 Peter ScargillGeneral9 Comments on Raspberry Pi 4 Cloning Challenge

As regular readers may know, for backups I swear by rpi-clone for making backups which can instantly take over in the case of a failed SSD or SD main drive on the RPi4. But there is a little more to it. For unattended operation I’m not aware of any current…

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Creative Outlier Air V2 Earbuds

November 15, 2020February 6, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneral5 Comments on Creative Outlier Air V2 Earbuds
Creative Outlier Air V2 Buds

My most enduring memory of Creative is the Soundblaster from last century. Since then I’ve not really thought of them very much even though they still do a range of soundcards, speakers, gaming headsets and more – but they just sent me their Outlier Air V2 Earbuds and I just…

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Anycubic Photon Mono 3D Printer

November 5, 2020March 3, 2021 Peter ScargillGeneral6 Comments on Anycubic Photon Mono 3D Printer

The Anycubic® Photon Mono 2K High Speed Resin 3D Printer looks like it has possibilities – but unlike my Crealty LD-002R who’s operation was immediately obvious and which works very well, the starting point with the Anycubic suggests I have a faulty unit – as I develop this blog entry…

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I'm Pete and this is my (big) technology blog.

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Recent Posts

  • IMPACT Personal Alarm Torch
  • Xiaomi Mi Band 5
  • ESCAM QF260 WiFi Solar Camera
  • First of the Summer Toys – Solar RGB Owl
  • More Itead Goodies – the Sonoff DIY DualR3
  • New Goodies from Itead (Sonoff) – Worth the Wait?
  • More Trivia – Blitzwolf BW-FUN11 Humidifier
  • Foaming Soap Dispensers for a Covid-Stricken World
  • H801 LED RGBWW Strip Controller + 4-relay ESP8266 Board
  • Baseus T2 Wireless Smart Tracker
  • Thursday Gadget Roundup and More Displays
  • Netac N930ES 512GB SSD and Enclosure
  • Chuwi Larkbox – Windows + Celeron Mini PC – Update
  • The IOTCRICKET from ThingsOnEdge.COM
  • Banggood 1.3″ OLED I2C Displays
  • Banggood 30W DIY Laser Engraving Machine
  • Raspberry Pi Pico – would you bother?
  • More Printing Goodness – and now the Crealty LD-002H
  • HK1 RBOX R1 5G WiFi Android 10 TV Box
  • More New Year Gadgets – 12 Inch LED Ring Wall Clock
  • Bakeey POCO X3 NFC Case
  • Bakeey 8-in-1 USB-C Hub Docking Station Adaptor
  • RGB Smart Socket – EH?
  • Athom Smart Socket pre-Tasmota’d and Smart Light
  • Second 2021 Treat – a New Doorbell
  • BigTimer
  • NodeMCU 10-pack Bargain – first treat of the New Year
  • Merry Christmas and a New Poco X3
  • The rugged Doogee S68 Pro with Titanium Sides
  • The YeeLight and node-red-contrib-yeelite-compat-hue
  • Crealty 3D LD-002R LCD Resin Printer and MORE
  • Smart Devices for 2021 and Beyond
  • USB-C to USB 3 Adaptors
  • VIGOTEC VG-L7X 20W Laser Engraver for Christmas
  • The Sincerest Form of Flattery

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Disclaimer

As I have no idea of your level of technical skill or the requirements of your country laws in terms of electricity supply etc, I accept no responsibility for any damage attributed to following advice in these pages.

When dealing with wall outlet (high) voltages you should satisfy yourself that whatever you are doing is safe and if unsure, seek advice from someone who is sure.
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