Some time ago I looked at an air quality monitor but this was not cased and though it worked perfectl I had to hide it in my l;ab to avoid wife comments. This PM2.5 unit from Banggood on the other hand is ready to go and looks the part. Complete…
UUGear RasPiKey eMMC module for RPi4
Arrived this week and now checked out – The UUGear RasPiKey. While a far cry from an SSD speed-wise, the RasPiKey seems like a nice alternative to an SD when running a Raspberry Pi 4 or similar because RasPiKey uses eMMC, which, while more expensive than SD, gererally has an…
BigTimer
Node–RED is my own fantastic (well, I would say that) 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. BigTimer is the the most powerful and best-ever,…
SQLITE3 Raspberry Pi Problems and Solutions?
I KNOW I’m not the only one who has issues with SQLITE3 in Raspberry Pi and Node-Red, so next time it happens to you… here is some invaluable info… I just used the lines below on my second Raspberry Pi 4 which had been upgraded to Raspbian Buster (from Raspbian…
LAOTIE N7S 3-Mode Foldable Electric Scooter
I’ll grant you the LAOTIE N7S 300W 36V 10.4Ah 3 Mode Foldable Electric Scooter is a little out of the ordinary for this blog – but when Banggood asked what I thought about the idea, I simply could not help myself as I’ve never owned an electric bike/scooter of ANY…
EDUP MESH WiFi Routers
I have a couple of rectangular EDUP EP-AC2937 Wireless Mesh Routers in my office on test… Easy to use and with English instructions, the first of these neat, inexpensive 12v-powered routers hooked into my network immediately, providing WiFi connectivity immediately as well as high speed Ethernet output. These devices are…
Tasmota – TDM, Tasmotize and TasUI
This is a never-ending story about Theo Arends’s much-loved alternative firmware for IOT (http://ota.tasmota.com/tasmota/tasmota.bin.gz) as Tasmota is now at stable release version 8.5.1 “Hannah” (update October 2, 2020) and development version 9.0.0.1 – I’ve upgraded my various ESP8266-based devices including Itead Sonoff BASIC, TH10, 4CH Pro, ProR2, Powr2, Shelly One,…
Raspberry Pi 4 plus SSD Case
Right now this is a request for ideas from readers – hopefully someone will have answers and I can then write about them here. Having recently gotten to grips with and blogged about Rasberry Pi 4 and the speed benefits of using an SSD drive via a USB3 to SATA…
PiSugar 2 and PiSugar 2 Pro
I’m now the proud owner of both the PiSugar 2 and PiSugar 2 Pro These are un-interruptible power supplies for the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi (3A, 3B, 3B+, 4B. Both of these boards come complete with magnetically attached Lithium battery – 1200maH capacity in the case of the…
Carku 64B versus D28A Portable Car Jump Starters
I have a couple of cars, one of which has a battery in doubtful state afet being flattened a few weeks ago. It works perfectly but knowing car batteries and their ability to recover from being flattened (or not) I at first figured I’d buy a battery charger – and…
Mikato S2 Smart PIR Toothbrush Sterilizer
It seems like an age ago that I wrote about the Soocas X3 Electric Toothbrushes.. and yet in fact it was just a couple of weeks ago – and now THIS – the Mikatu S2 Smart PIR Induction Electric Toothbrush Sterilizer Holder (to give it the full title). I was…
Laser Engraver Coming Up
I’m currently awaiting delivery of my new laser engraver but in the meantime, down at San Jose (the original one in Spain) on our weekend off, I just picked up this wonderful USB desk light – I could not resist showing it to you guys – as it occurred to…
The IOTCRICKET from ThingsOnEdge.COM
Of course we’ve all seen this form factor before – ESP8266 on a board with power and antenna, FLASH etc.. The ESP-12 is only one of many and now we have a new one… The biggy here is that the IOT Cricket, I have it on good authority from Sylwester…
GL-iNET Brume-W Travel Router
I’m currently playing with the Brume-W (GL-MV1000W) “Edge Computing Gateway”. To test, I turned on the virgin Brume – and connected the WAN to my network via a handy network lead. That’s it – nothing else – not a single extra step. I then pointed my phone to a new…
Lilygo TTGO ESP32 T-Watch-2020
OK, that’s a mouthful… The Lilygo watch is particularly interesting to us technical folk as it runs on an ESP32 processor. I’ve been after one of these for ages for those tech moments – i.e. for the few times I get to go drinking with other technically minded folk who…
The value of 5Ghz WiFi Adaptors
So, I just started using my TP-Link router and my new Spitz router on 5Hz – mainly as it is a pain to wire up our place in Spain. Thinking my PC had no WiFi at all, I sent off to AliExpress for a cheap dual-band USB3 WiFi adaptor. Today…
Xiaomi Mi Band 5
Back in 2019 I wrote about the wonderful Xiaomi Mi Band 4 and it is no secret, despite owning and reviewing many smart watches and bands in detail, that the Xiaomi Mi 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watches remain my favourites – one or the other being in use every single…
False Review Epidemic
You HAVE to see this. Blackview company just sent me emails promoting their new products – they wanted me (and others) to follow their official store – so being me, I sent back an email to suggest that if they wanted to ship one to me, I’d have a play…
Eachine E520S GPS WIFI Quadcoptor
I started this blog entry to tell you a little about the nice-looking Eachine E520S GPS WIFI FPV With 1080P HD Camera Quadcopter which I received from Banggood Back in June (but read on) – I’ve added some VERY short videos further down – and I have an upgrade. My…
7 LED Solar Landscape Lamp
The original version of this lovely garden light came in June 2019 and was a a staple part of our garden edge lighting here in Spain for around a year, until some nasty piece of work stole it. I have yet to find out who it was who took the…