I WAS going to incorporate this into earlier Shelly and Sonoff posts but lots going on this weekend gone – so: Let’s get Sonoff out of the way… you may be familiar with the Sonoff Smart Water Valve – and how quickly they updated this to work with Zigbee2MQTT including…
Category: General
Nank OE MIX Earbuds
This one came out of the blue – the company (naenka.com – I’d never heard of them before) contacted me and asked if I’d write about their earbuds. As always “only if you send a set – no conditions”. Ok, so they did and days later, a set of buds…
The Aqara FP1E Presense Sensor
Some time ago I reviewed the Aqara FP2 Presense Sensor. I like it but it keeps seeing 2 people in my office when there is only me – even with the latest updates. So, I thought I’d better try the later FP1E. Here it is straight out of the box.…
TOMLOV HDMI Digital Microscope Model DM9 MAX
OK, not my normal tech stuff – or isn’t it? The Tomlov DM9 microscope came out of the blue – I was not aware of the company until just a short time ago when they contacted me by the contact page in here. They asked me if I’d like to…
SMARTLIGHT.ME, Ethernet Zigbee Controllers and more…
I recently wrote about my first experience with the SMLIGHT SLZB-06 Ethernet Zigbee coordinator given to me by a good friend in the UK (and left there – working well – I’m now back in Spain). That prompted me to contact the company who make them – here’s a link…
ESPresence for Home Assistant Presense Monitoring
The point of this article is/was to show how inexpensive ESP32 boards can be used as ESPRESENSE points in places around the home (for example) for detecting people and animals hopefully better than simple IR units. People carry phones and/or smart-bands – animals can wear tiny, inexpensive BLE beacon devices…
An Exciting Shelly and Sonoff Friday
It’s Friday and I got up VERY early this morning and in this entry I have new devices from SHELLY – a pair of SHELLY MOTION devices (about which I’m quite excited) – and a not-so-new but handy Shelly RGBW PM Led Controller.. but I’ll get to these further down!…
Zigbee2MQTT and the Ethernet SMLight SLZB-06
I’m excited – as you’ll see below I have left my new SMLight SLZB-06 ETHERNET Zigbee coordinator in the UK – working well (but not at all stressed) and I have one coming to Spain this coming week. That leaves the question – what to do with my Sonoff-P and…
Inexpensive Occasional Smartsocket + Low-Bandwidth 4G
I’ve recently hit on a problem in which we have an issue with our oil heating back in the UK while we’re spending by far the bulk of our time in Spain. Despite everything being turned off (hot water off, heating set to OFF – i.e. standby) we discovered thanks…
AWS Polly Speech on RPi4 and RPi5 using Node-Red
AWS Polly is great for adding speech to Raspberry Pi and similar, especially with the “neural” enhancement. Regular readers will know that for years I was a great fan of using Ivona speech on my Raspberry Pi. In Node-Red I used the free Ivona service to provide high quality speech in Node-Red at the heart of…
Water Leak Week – Switchbot, Sonoff and more…
Not sure why two companies I know, decided to introduce water leak sensors in the middle of summer – but I’m happy to do a quick write-up – as it happens I’ve just recently refitted a hot water tank complete with rather large calcium filter and I’m not 100% sure…
And Now – HA TV Lighting Automation
Just a quick one – Having set up all the lighting in Home Assistant including the living room with the TV – my wife had the great idea of moving everything around and I find our chandelier and cupboard lighting totally destroys my TV viewing at night – SO the…
ESPresense and Home Assistant – The Adventure Continues
To avoid repeating myself, look at other articles in here where I realised that Home Assistant was for me to be the successor to my long-cherished Node-Red-based home automation system (especially as they’ve now formally discontinued support for my beloved NR-UI v 1). Little did I realise just how much…
Reolink Argus 4 Battery + Solar 180 degree Camera
I LOVE getting new stuff from Reolink – their WiFi, powered video doorbell takes centre stage on my front door here in Spain and as I’ve recently discovered, integrates into Home Assistant via the Reolink plug-in no problem. It also works on their Android APP, their PC APP and a…
mm Wave vs IR vs ESPresense – Big Decision?
As some of you know, I have a number of radar detectors including those shown here in the form of the Sonoff SNZB-06P, Aqara FP2 and many others. I also have endless simple IR detectors from AliExpress and elsewhere. One of the latter sits next to Alexa in our living…
More Aliexpress Zigbee lights
This week I received a package from AliExpress – some dirt cheap Zigbee E27 lights I ordered on impulse. I instinctively order 12w as minimum as anything lower than that is going to have vrey dim colour LEDs. Ok, you take a chance with AliExpress offers and you have to…
Sonoff SNZB-02D Zigbee LCD Update
Update June 2024: The article below about the SNZB-02D LCD Smart Temperature and Humidity Sensor was originally written in March 2023 – It’s now over 15 months later and the sensor has been sitting on my shelf along with many others on test. A lot has changed recently including my…
The New GL-iNET MARBLE WiFi 6 Router (updated)
I LOVE getting new stuff from Gl-iNet – I’ve been writing about them since the original OpenWrt-based MANGO GL-MT300 router (which recently gave up on me after being dragged from house to house, country to country over the years). For years I was a Draytek fan but once Gl-iNet started…
MORE Home Assistant Learning – Restart Mode
For one of my first automations in Home Assistant (starting to replace my Node-Red home control code) I picked a new Aqara no-neutral switch I’ve just fitted to our just-redesigned bathroom wall – to turn the bathroom light on and off – manually or remotely. I wanted a 20 minute…
Home Assistant June 2024 – Alexa, Google Home and more
I wrote earlier this week about Home Assistant – sorry this isn’t going to be a linear set of articles as I’m not learning linearly – and of course the HA product is changing by the month. Last week I had a pretty boring set of dashboards – still LOTS…