Monday Update

Node-Red-Contrib-UI: Just a quick update … not heard anything from Andrei re: node-red-contrib-ui recently – I could not get his experimental version to work and I’ve heard nothing since. I do hope the project is still alive. I have high hopes for it but right now the display is a bit messy.

Blynk:  the one remaining issue with that UI for me was the fact that when paused it was unaware of changes to your target board. So my assumption is that the designers figured you would ONLY control, say your Arduino or ESP from Blynk itself – the reality is that you might have a second user on Blynk – or a completely separate set of control instructions going on – so in my case I have Node-Red controlling the boards – and talking to the local Blynk server. The SERVER is aware of changes – as logging into the APP updates the display – but when the app is paused it seems unaware of changes when brought back online.  I say WAS – because as of this evening – there is an update to the APP – and you need the updated server.jar file if you’re using a local server. I’ll do a new blog on this but it all seems to work just fine… Could this be the one??

Coming soon a review of the Roseapple Pi which looks to be very powerful with 2GB of RAM and USB 3!

And that’s it for now.

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17 thoughts on “Monday Update

    1. Not any more it doesnt’ – renamed it back to Monday because if I change the permalink then links to it won’t work – but really, it was Tuesday 🙂

    1. price must always compared with the benefits you get… if it works (and months of the free app prove that), and price is reasonable, i’ll buy it… what’s wrong in paying what’s useful?

      1. Totally agree – *IF* it works, and in my experience it was far from stable. Which was a shame because it has the potential to be a really great app.

  1. Re. keeping Blynk in sync when you have multiple apps controlling stuff, I use a Blynk value widget lets say V20 (I am usually using a value widget some were on the app to display a temperature or whatever it doesnt matter) if you set the frequency on the value widget V20 to say one second then in node-red connect a read event node to V20 when the Blynk app is active it will send a payload = 20 to the V20 read event node each one second, its then a simple case to make a function node to increment a counter and trigger your esp via mqtt (Blynk is connected) to send the latest values, I decrement the counter using a inject node set to send a different number each say 3 seconds so when the Blynk app is not active and the counter reaches zero mqtt tells the esp (Blynk is not connected).

    Hope that make sense to you.

    Toshi

    1. Hi Toshi

      It is not multiple units that is the problem – it is that the App does not check the server when restored after a pause – and hence does not know if anything has changed. The designers acknowledged this a couple of weeks ago and could reproduce it. I was half expecting a fix by now and contacted them the other day – they wrote back to suggest that although it was “not a priority” – which I find to be a strange thing to say to a user, they would possibly get an update out about now. I’ve not checked

      The fix for this has, as promised, now been released – along with other fixes in the latest update – I’ve just put this on my phone now…. I will report back.

  2. I see that the RoseapplePi is HK$461.35 about £40, so not a price point challenge to the OrangePI.

    1. Certainly not price wise – but it’s in a different league I think with twice as much RAM and USB3 (which opens some doors). We’ll soon see.

      1. And let’s not forget that despite advances thanks to hard work by a small number of external people we still have ZERO support from Orange Pi themselves – I can’t even get answers to emails from them and many of their old crappy images are still on their site.

        1. My Orange Pi PC mind you has now run without issue for 3 days so that’s a start. Even with changes and a heatsink you could still boil an egg on the chip.

          1. Meanwhile my Pi Zero that has no heatsink and is in a small unventilated black plastic box in the airing cupboard (that’s also home to the hot water tank) is running at around 39.5 degrees with the occasional peak of 40.5…..

          2. @David Miles
            yeah, that pi zero that has exactly ZERO comparable factors to the OPiPC, as no network, no real use for what Peter make on this site… it’s good only for retropie and mediacenter, all the rest requires way more additional equipments that drive the price way beyond the price of the OpiPC… come on, don’t compare pears and apples…

          3. @mrshark My Zero is actually running pretty much all the same stuff that Pete’s running. I got it for free and the only thing I’ve added is an Ethernet adapter (£10 but could’ve got it cheaper if I’d been more patient) and a plastic box that was about £1 from China.

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