The I7E Fitness Tracker bracelet is my second bracelet of the day – this one came from Gearbest and comes in an adequate if basic case. As you can see, the bracelet is quite attractive. The App is the freely downloadable Zeroner Health Pro app available in both the Android…
Alfawise T9 Bracelet
To give it the full title, this entry is about the Alfawise T9 Body Fat Fitness Tracker (or Smart Bracelet). With a 0.96 inch screen, the T9 uses an App (Android or IOS) called Gloryfit (I use the Android version from the Playstore). The bracelet uses an NRF52832 CPU and…
QC 3.0 Car Chargers
That’s it, all my “normal” USB chargers are gone – worse than useless for charging modern phones – and today the mail brought the second of a pair of purchased QC3.0 car chargers – I believe from AliExpress or Banggood. Look up this model in their ads based on price…
SD Speeds and Reliability
For years I’ve been promoting Samsung and Sandisk cards for use with SBCs such as the Raspberry Pi and similar. This article checks out ne A2 class cards and seems to come to the conclusion that the latter hold no benefits – indeed that the Samsung Evo+ in particular is…
Umidigi S3 Pro Phone
The Umidigi S3 Pro smartphone arrived for me today from Banggood – and very nice looking it is. This large (6.3” FHD – 2340x1080px) phone is inexpensive but sports some great features such as 48Mpx camera images. But here’s a point – it is common to get maximum resolution out…
Raspberry Pi 3/4 Power
For one of my (up to date) Raspberry Pi (SBC) installations, I have a 5v supply able to deliver sufficient power i.e. over 3 amps… I don’t need a full uninterruptible supply, but I thought it would be nice to use one of my USB battery packs in between the…
Raspberry Pi 4 Arrival
My 2GB Pi4 arrived from the UK. My good friend sent me a micro-HDMI to HDMI adaptor along with the Pi and a 3d-printed case he made – except he didn’t…. the adaptor is a micro-USB to HDMI adaptor – NOT what the RPI4 uses. Because I’m impatient I’d already…
Alexa NotifyMe Skill + Node Red
Here’s another winner for Raspberry Pi (though not specifically) and thanks to my good friend Aidan Ruff for taking time out of his busy schedule and bringing this to my attention. As regular readers know, I try to use Node-Red for just about every aspect of my home control here…
Charger Doctor
No doubt you’ve seen ads for the little “Charger Doctor” gadget from China – well, my advice is to avoid it like the plague. I have two of them, I’ve used them in the past but never on a Raspberry Pi. It turns out that given a 5.2v input, one…
Raspberry Pi 4 + Buster
The new Raspberry Pi 4 is out and about. The new model has something folk have been screaming for i.e. 2GB and 4GB RAM options, not only that but BUSTER, the new version of Raspbian which is not only supported but recommended – and it is backward compatible. In my…
Samsung Galaxy and Gear Watches
So the latest is that the new Gear 4 watch won’t be called that at all, just Samsung Galaxy watch – and for anyone who has been living in a cave for some time(I have, but a cave with WIFI) can there be any doubt that this is the best…
Owon B35T+ Meter Revisit
Regular readers will know that back in December 2017 I had a very full postbag one day and lumped several items together including the Owon Bluetooth multi-meter. Well, I’d planned to give some of the items more coverage but again, regular readers will also know that shortly thereafter I had…
Brave Browser and Annex WIFI RDS
Well, not THAT new, “Brave” has been around for long enough to reach the release version (which apparently came out in April 2019) and it appears to work well. It isn’t so much about a stunningly different browser as the fact that we’ve had the same choices now for a…
The Umidigi F1 Smartphone
Updated June 14, 2019: So many phones out there, so much choice, so much rubbish. When it came to updating my own phone last year, I took advice from my friend Antonio (Mr Shark) and went for the Xiaomi Pocophone F1 and as it turns out, it was good advice…
Sonoff S26 Wifi Smart Plug
You may well have seen plenty of reviews and adverts for the Sonoff S26 WiFi Smart plug so I won’t go into too much technical detail here other than to say this VERY inexpensive wall socket can easily be re-flashed to run alternative software for those not to keen on…
ESP GO update and more
A minor update for ESP-GO – still working on the Espressif SDK 3.1 version as RBOOT is still not OTA-ing reliably (everything else does)– but the SDK 2.1 version is working a treat – very reliable. There WAS an issue due to some recent updates, with the web setup –…
Brelong HT033 Desktop fan with Time/Temperature
The “Subute 4 inch display fan” is a USB-powered fan which tells the time and temperature using a set of LEDs on one of the blades – and I have to say it does it very well. Instructions came in English and Chinese and all you have on the back…
21st Century Mosquito Killer
In today’s post, a simple insect killer. When I say simple, it has a couple of things my old fly killer didn’t – indeed it LOOKS a lot better than the last one. When I say “fly” I mean of course flying insects and here in Southern Spain, some of…
The Thermostat Continues
Hard to believe the amount of time I’ve spent on this thermostat and the backup unit. I’m still too deeply buried in R&D right now to fully develop another full article but here is some information to add to the previous blog entry on the subject. My Node-Red/ESP-GO thermostat is…
Homecube 1.5w Solar PIR Garden Floodlight
This understated gadget turned up for me a few days ago from China (free postage to UK and other places – see link below) – I figured now is as good as time as any to start updating my solar lighting here in Spain. As happens, the usual cheap solar…