And only days after I wrote that, we’re well over 6,200 of you, registered in here and climbing! Thanks to everyone and especially those who’ve submitted great feedback over the last year.
(Update June 2017: That figure is now approaching 7,500!)
A quiet New Year’s Eve – out with friends after wasting a couple of hours having seen “Ubuntu in Windows 10” which then turned out to be a beta, which then turned out to be very old and breaks when you upgrade it to the latest stable Ubuntu – I should know by now not to use Microsoft Betas – thanks Microsoft.
Right so coming up – a couple of new boards from FriendlySoft, one being 64 bits! and I’m looking forward to a new DIY Amazon Alexa – using Google’s APIs – more on that in the new year.I’m just about to get to test my 250w solar panel having bought a couple of 12v 7amp batteries and an MTTP 20 amp controller – just waiting for some power converters to turn that 24v back into more useful 12v/5v. Assuming all goes well I’ll write that up soon.
Awaiting new software for the Orange Pi Zero which is working well with Xenial and the new script (which seems to be fine now – no gripes for a day – if anyone has ideas for useful APT-gets to add in there do let us know (but only things that work rock-solidly and are genuinely useful please).
Lots more planned for the new year – for now – hope you all have a great evening.
A couple of useful links from chat with Antonio this morning..
A neat-looking stand-alone ESP8266 Thermostat
Testing various temperature/humidity sensors
Oh and more updates to the kitchen sink script – just tested on a Debian VM – went straight through – now has proper timings so you can see how long everything takes – typical Raspberry Pi might be an hour to run the lot… OVH VM running the script – 8 minutes !!!
Pete
Happy new year Pete.
I see that this article has been updated. I followed the link for the thermostat and found a reference to a company that I had forgotten about – Olimex. I’ve bought a few PIC development boards from them in the past. I see that they now make boards for the ESP 8266 and the ESP 32. http://www.olimex.com
Not Chinese prices but not UK eBay either!
Hi Keith
Yes looked at Olimex – they’re postage is expensive for my tastes but thanks. This for example – https://www.olimex.com/Products/Power/PWR-90-240V-5V1A/ – I paid £4.95 from China for this a while ago.
The Olimex price is similar – but unless you pay courier delivery which makes the costs utterly unfeasible, you are talking 1-3 weeks to the UK which is little better than China – and still at a higher cost.
Happy New Year Pete.
Thanks for all the time you invest in this superb blog!
And looking forward to see it all trough 2017, (I have all the spare parts now: RPI3, Wemos D1, power supplies, Electrodragons, ec. etc, so no more excuses for a new ESP8266 Home Control near Buenos Aires!)
a bit late but been busy with a new 3d printer that won’t..
So it’s a happy new year to all, keep up the great posts Peter.
Now have a few Sonoff’s running lights I need a dedicated display so that the wife can turn things on & off without going to a web page. looks like a larger nextion display is on the cards once I get to grips with the printer.
Nei
an old smartphone or tablet, or even a cheap new one, will do the job… without requiring additional programming, just a browser… my friend has one attached to the wall, always powered on via charger and with an app to leave screen always on, to check his solar panels…
Pete – HNY!
If you are messing with solar and batteries etc have you looked at the Victron kit. They have a very useful set of small charge controllers which have a Bluetooth interface. There’s an android app to get access. Saves having a separate interface to see what’s going on. http://www.victronenergy.com/solar-charge-controllers/mppt7510
I’ve used one to put a 100W panel on our campervan. Extremely impressed with the quality.
Simon
PS I found a supplier in Cambridge via eBay. Very helpful people.
Thanks for that – interesting. Just bought the controller – and now had a change of plan and decided to go to 12v. Got a high powered down-convertor coming to bring the 24v solar panel down to something reasonable for a 12v system.
Happy New Year, Just found this site and thanks for the great work, been playing with some Node-Red, MQTT, ESP8266 & and Xmas present Echo Dot from my wife, Must say a great replacement 🙂
I really enjoy Node-Red the Dash board is great for sensor type display and switches but what I am looking to try and do is a landing page with information from Node-red with news feeds “RSS feed built in is nasty” and some calendar reminders sort of like a smart mirror but using a tablet.
I looked at open hab and must say it’s like you need to be a coder to get anywhere maybe I am just stupid. Node-Red is my style of programming. will you be doing any of that type of post in the near future?
Indeed yes I plan to do more Node-Red articles this year.
Happy new year Pete.
UWS isn’t so bad, useful for doing some bits and pieces of Linux’y on Windows when out and about. I live on my Surface Pro 4 so having a “proper” Linux command line to hand can be useful. Most stuff works well & I’ve had no problems running updates on it – what broke?
The latest reason for using it is to integrate the remote Pi command line with my Windows terminal. I use cmdr (http://cmder.net/) to get a nice, tabbed, command line on Windows and I have a setting that lets me start a new tab that goes direct to the Pi using SSH on UWS.
As an aside, I have another tab that gives me a remote command line on the new LINX Windows 10 tablet I’m setting up to replace the digital picture frame on the landing. This tab uses PowerShell and gives me a remote PowerShell command line on the tablet.
A Happy New Year Peter.
Thank you for sharing your interest.
May the ‘IT Gods’ shower blessings upon you.
Happy New Year Pete!
I’m a “newbie” at most IOT’s, and I am very impressed with what I see here. Please keep it up.
All the best in 2017!
Happy New Year, Pete, Thanks for making 2016 so very interesting.