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…
Category: General
KSGER T12 Soldering Station
A quick writeup about the 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 (takes seconds) and running – I put…
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 (GL-X750) is LOVELY. Check pricing in your area. Tiny and open-source,…
Blitzwolf BW-UP2 USB 3.2 Flash Drive
This morning in the post, arrived a . 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 a file of 925.2MBytes. And then, something…
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 – . 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 comes with 18 month warranty. The…
Single-Use Disposable Masks
Ok, I know, this is a tech blog – but given the heat we have in Southern Spain right now, sometimes the best thing to do is either soak in the pool, write reviews or better – both at the same time. Right now I’m catching up with a backlog…
FriendlyArm R2S and NEO3
After writing a less than stellar report on the original FriendlyArm Rockchip RK3328-based R2S and giving the board to my Italian friend Antonio, he managed some success with the board but not without it suffering excessive heat. Well, it looks like the company have been working on that and have…
Argon ONE Case for Raspberry Pi 4 Updated
The Argon ONE case is very pretty (but then it is not cheap so you’d expect that). It has variable control over the built-in fan and I had to ramp up the settings as the fan was initially off even though the case was very warm – now the whole…
SSD Cloning on Raspberry Pi 4 Updated
The subject of this blog entry is, in the main, about cloning (for backup mainly) from one Solid State Drive (SSD) on the Raspberry Pi 4 (RPi4) to another SSD. Why SSD? These “drives” are MANY times faster than SD, as low as twice the price of SDs and are…
Alexa Comprehension Issues
I’ve been meaning to write this down for some time. Has anyone else noticed similar issues with Alexa? I just said “Alexa, turn on, erm, mancave” – where “mancave” is a group of lights. The “erm” threw Alexa off-course as you’d expect. “What would you like me to turn on?”…
New Blitzwolf Lights from Banggood
The first of the two new lights I’ve just received is the . Ok, so its a bulb… so what? Well, not only is the white very bright, the colours are bright, too. All too often with RGB bulbs, the individual colours are pathetic – not these. There is only…
USB Charged Electrolytic Disinfectant Generator
Something new! To give this gadget its full title: this product from Banggood generates disinfectant liquid from nothing more than common salt and water using a process called electrochlorination. Given the rather unique circumstances we find ourselves in today – I thought it worth putting something in the blog on…
Blitzwolf BW-SS5 1-Gang Relay
With so many smart switches and sockets out there, how do you differentiate your product? It looks like Blitzwolf have done just that. Small enough to fit inside a back-box and comes complete with a detachable clip–on bracket – the at first glance has a future in my home. This…
PC Security and Gatekeeper
Not something you’d really expect to see on my blog (Nov 2020: and unlikely to be repeated – read on..) I’m writing this short piece on the Gatekeeper product by Untethered Labs as I spend more time than I like to think about, keeping my equipment safe from outside intrusion…
RX-3 Lite V2 Body-worn CCTV Camera
ReWire Security recently sent me their model RX-3 Lite V2 Body-worn CCTV Camera. In case you’re wondering what that is – it’s a small body-worn audio-video-recording camera weighing less than 150g (plus harness) – offering 11 hours of HD video recording on a single charge. Yes you could record yourself…
A Better Raspberry Pi Case?
Over the years I must’ve had every cheap plastic case going for my various Raspberry Pis, from clear cases through bright red expensive looking perspex, black, orange, you name it. Until now, sizes were pretty much universal and would even fit some of the Not-Raspberry PIs. But now, all change.…
More Zigbee Learning (or not)
Elsewhere I’ve just started to write about Zigbee – the low-energy RF communication alternative to WiFi and 433Mhz radio control of various smart devices. To make a start, I’m using my normal Raspberry Pi arrangement with the addition of a small pre-programmed dongle from Itead which works with the widely…
Blitzwolf BW-SS4 1-2-way Smart Switch
Maybe I’m just fascinated with the name Blitzwolf but here I am with another gadget from the company – I use lots of Blitzwolf gadgets – I didn’t even bother with the Blitzwolf APP which will do exactly what you expect of a smart controller, Instead I took a chance…