I’ve updated this blog entry about the Bakeey E70 IP68 Waterproof Wristband ECG+PPG Heart Rate Blood Oxygen Monitor Smart Watch (which looks lovely) as I think it deserves a second glance because it has now been on my wrist for 7 solid days and the battery is still at 68%.…
Category: General
Raspberry Pi 4 and SSD – Miracles at Last?
I’ve just been watching a video by Andreas Speiss – and I agree with him, USB boot on the Raspberry Pi has taken FAR too long and we are NOT a tiny minority in favour of USB boot, contrary to comments in the Pi forums. The PI3 had USB2 boot…
Blitzwolf BW-HL2 Smart Watch
If like me, you are aware of Blitwolf (actually the name often takes me back to “Wolfensten”) you will probably think of battery packs or even WIFI-controlled power sockets or adaptors…. but here we have a . A classy looking job with “leather” look strap, default classical-looking analog watchface and…
Deerma VC20 Ultra Light Cordless Vacuum Cleaner
Ok, I know this isn’t strictly high tech – but I promised Maureen I’d get her a new vacuum from China and here it is – the This neat cordless vacuum just arrived, having been (almost) delivered at the start of January JUST after we went off to the USA…
Smoke Alarms, Door and Water Leakage Sensors for RF-Bridge
I recently wrote about the Sonoff RF-Bridge – a great device for transferring RF signals from various gadgets to WIFI – well, first things first, I put Tasmota on the RF-Bridge so now, using the free Tasmota Device Manager on it, I can receive information from devices and that gets…
Xiaomi Redme Note 8 Pro Smartphone
This updated blog entry is about the . Ever since Banggood sent off a Bakeey cover for the Redmi Note 8 Pro phone when all I had at the time was the original Note 8 (there IS a difference – both great phones at the price but this one starts…
Bakeey R16 Smart Watch
This is a quick writeup about the Bakeey R16 music control IPS screen smart watch with heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen monioring as well as the usual sports mode, sleep monitoring and more. It is a winner and I’ve no idea why I didn’t blog it when I received…
M5Stack Atom Lite ESP32 Development
Having received the from Banggood, I was faced with the choice of using the familiar Arduino programmig environment (very popular for ESP8266 and ESP32 programming) or the UIFlow environment. As I know NOTHING of the latter, I thought – WHY NOT – and so off I went into the deep…
High Power Mains Switching with Sonoff
I am as most of you know a great fan of the Sonoff BASIC modules – because, in the main, they are cheap and reliable – but increasingly I’ve been faced with challenges that involve the need for isolated contacts – or high power (immersion heating) or both. Well, here…
First Solar Lamp of 2020
Having been through hundreds of PoundStretcher cheap solar lights over the years, most of which manage one UK winter if you are LUCKY, I’ve taken to moving just a little upmarket recently and with some success. This just turned up for me today (Jan 2, 2020) from Banggood – no…
LA104 Logic Analyser by e-Design
It is Christmas and time for some new gadgets. I’ve used all manner of logic analysers from the tiny Salae analysers (and the clones) through to expensive and large ZeroPlus monsters. The former are not really a lot of use due to limited bandwidth, the latter (in particular the big…
Sonoff GK-200MP2-B WiFi IP Camera
To give the camera it’s full title – GK-200MP2-B WiFi IP Security camera, this is a nice camera from Itead. No power supply, just the camera, you need 5v DC (3.5mm x 1.35mm dia – i.e. the smaller type connector) to run it and it handles WiFi or RJ45 connection.…
10 inch 2560x1600P 2K FHD Monitor
This blog entry is about a really NEAT . So what’s good about it?. Surely that resolution in a tiny monitor is useless? Well ,it might be if you could not perfectly scale it down (but if you are mainly watching high quality downloaded movies – why not go for…
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Smartphone
More precisely called the this phone came late last year from Banggood – and Maureen still absolutely loves it. Wonderful – because though lovely and reliable, her little, inexpensive Cubot X19 was not in the same league as the (budget) Note 8, which has (for starters) a 48Mpx camera, all-in…
ESP-GO Xmas RGB Animation and 60-LED Clock
My ESP8266 home control code ESP-GO doesn’t get a lot of attention in 2020 as I’m a “Tasmota” fanatic but that does not mean that ESP-GO is dead – far from it. ESP-GO contains not only RGB code for serial 5v LEDs but also a complete programming setup to generate…
Amazfit Stratos Smartwatch
Up to now, apart from my Samsung Gear, regular readers will have only seen me ranting about low-cost smartbands and will know that my all time favourite up to now is the Xiaomi Mi4. Well, today I’m moving upmarket a little, heading back towards the likes of the Gear and…
Auslogics Disk Defrag Ultimate – Why?
If you are using a WindowsPC and are anything like me you have likely been using Auslogics Disk Defrag Free for countless years as it is so much nicer than the one that comes with Windows. Well, after many years as I was about to move upmarket to Disk Defrag…
RIDEN RD6006 DC Variable Power Supply
This product from Ruideng (no idea why the panel says RIDEN) , a LOVELY 60V, 6A variable power supply arrived today in kit form (their best looking product to date) and I’ve had a great afternoon putting this together with nothing more than a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.…
Netio 4C Smart Socket & MQTT Power Cable
I am of course used to Smart Sockets as well as Itead Sonoff and other mains power controllers but this is the first time I’ve come across a pro looking 4-way socket like this with hardwired Ethernet. You may find this interesting as the NETIO procucts are made not in…
Zeblaze Crystal 3 IP67 Waterproof Smart Watch
The full title for this watch is the and it is USB charging and light-weight – also the straps are detachable and one of the receptacles on the watch for the strap is also a USB plug. Dead easy as is the setup with the freely downloadable app “Happy Sports”.…