I’ll soon have lots of new toys to play with but for today I’ll talk briefly about some new AliExpress purchases.. here at Bedrock I have typical Spanish rural electricity – there’s a wisdom that they don’t have live and neutral mains wiring here but thanks to some new toys…
Holidays are Here Again
I’m about to head off for a few days holiday in Segovia in the north of Spain so I thought I’d leave you with some thoughts while I go off in search of culture… Do you get as sick as I do of YouTube headlines which contain “… will change…
Fenvi AX1800 WiFi 6 Adaptor
Well, I was doing some 4G testing (covered elsewhere in the blog) and when I realised that my Windows 11 Beelink Mini-PC was not picking up a very fast signal from the 4G router, I took into account that my WiFi adaptor is an old 2.4Ghz-only USB 2.0 version (I…
BigTimer
Node–RED is a fantastic and powerful yet easy to use programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. For more information on Node-Red go to the Node-Red site. After all, you probably don’t turn the outside lights ON at 6pm!! You most…
The NEW Sonoff iHost Smart Home Hub
Just another Zigbee Bridge? or Bluetooth bridge? No, this looks WAY more interesting. My eagerly-awaited Sonoff iHOST arrived in the post this morning along with a 32GB Kingston “Select Plus” microSD. Now I’m not going to open it up and chance damaging it – thankfully NotEnoughTech as done and so…
Sonoff SNZB-02D Zigbee LCD Smart Temperature & Humidity Sensor
Straight off the bat, I like this new sensor from Sonoff – epecially since it will work with my other Sonoff products like NSPANEL Pro and thanks to the eWeLink plug-in for Node-Red, my own home control setup.. but I have to ask… what is it with some manufacturers that…
The All-New Beryl-AX (GL-MT3000) WiFi 6 Router
Not GL-iNET’s most powerful or largest router, but it is NEW and features WiFi 6 – the BERYL-AX router from GL-iNET looks promising and I have one in my hands at last! Since, years ago GL-iNET brought out their inexpensive, tiny MANGO travel router before I started blogging (the link…
Zhiyun Smooth 5S Gimbal Combo
I have in front of me the best looking smartphone gimbal I’ve come across to date. Also the most complex. If you just want to know about the gimbal without context, skip to “Enter the Zhiyun Smooth 5S”. Why a Smart Gimbal for a Smartphone? As you’ll soon gather, I’m…
The Aqara Zigbee 3.0 Smart Pet Feeder and the TVOC Sensor
As you may know I’m increasingly becoming a fan of Zigbee where possible (as against WiFi) because with the latter, signal quality varies depending on availability of WiFi access points. I manage, but as I’ve fitted more and more Zigbee smart sockets and Zigbee lights around the house – by…
More from AliExpress – Zigbee Electronic Hygrometer
Much as I hate to promote AliExpress, I took a chance and bought one of these devices and it was only €9.19 (Euros) delivered to me in Spain – ordered February 18, 2023, delivered March 2. The chance I took was that it might only work on the Smartlife APP…
More Cheapies from AliExpress and a VALUABLE Experience
I couldn’t help myself – AliExpress had one of those “3 items for a fiver” sales and I simply couldn’t stop myself. The Not Worth-a-Light Solar Grasshopper First on the list – a solar grasshopper. Marvelous idea for a toy to annoy the cats… the grasshopper works (worked) in the…
The Script
Regular readers may be aware of The Script, created and developed over many months to simplify the otherwise often torturous job of taking a basic Raspberry Pi complete with Raspberry Pi OS and installing a bunch of tools and utilities including Node-Red, Mosquitto MQTT broker, graphing tool Grafana along with…
My ESPHOME Adventure
Back in 2021 I wrote about experimenting with the LILYGO TTGO ESP32 development board and my first attempts at using ESPHOME as against my firmware of choice Tasmota. Well, I then went heads-down for several days of learning – with several false starts I may add. The short version of…
New Smartlife Desk/Wall Temperature/Humidity Display from Banggood
This is just going to be a quick one. Not seen much of Banggood recently but now that the Chinese New Year is over and hopefully we’re on the other side of the Chinese Policy reversal on Covid, it seems that Banggood are bouncing back. So here, I have a…
Another Fun Aqara Weekend
I LOVE getting new tgadgets from Aqara. Before I start, lets get this out of the way.. You can skip to New Aqara Devices if you’re familiar with the company, Zigbee2MQTT etc. Aqara Aqara sell IOT products in 192 countries and I was first introduced to them by purchasing (almost…
The Smart Shelly Button 1
And what’s a Shelly Button 1? Not to be confused with the sadly now defunct Shelly Button which was a white plastic case to put around the original Shelly One or similar. I have of course used the Ikea Zigbee Smart button (remember the nice plain button that they stopped…
AliExpress RGB vs Athom RGB Lamps
This post came from my need-to-know why AliExpress-sourced RGB bulbs (E27) were less than half the price of Athom bulbs of the same power. The Athom bulb in the link above is one of several of their 15w models I use around the house and they are pre-programmed with Tasmota…
WiFi 6 GL-iNET AX1800 (FLINT) Router – Ongoing
I know – I wrote about this router model some time ago BUT THERE’S EVEN MORE – READ ON… While I was over in the UK at Christmas (where my first GL-iNET AX1800 Flint router remains, fully operational with firmware v3.2), my Convexa-S here in Spain fell off the wall…
Is ChatGPT the End of Creative Writing and Blogging?
I’m quite new to ChatGPT 3 but have played with several other packages capable of writing code, creating general text and more (I’ve been fascinated with AI before the term was in general use). I have of course played with the various AI programs that create art from simple text…
Blog Newsletter – Starting from Scratch
Hi everyone and let me start by apologising to the many of who you have at one time or another genuinely signed up for the weekly news brief due to a phenomenal amount of spam which started to worry my service provider, I’ve had to wipe the large subscriber list…