What’s your favourite text editor? In a recent blog entry I updated “The Script” for IOT fans and as usual, got myself incredibly frustrated with the lacklustre “Nano” editor that comes with Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi, only to discover that my backup editor “MCEDIT” is really only marginally better…
Sunday Filler – Alexa for the Bone Idle
Well, it is Sunday, after all… so, while I would never actually rely on Alexa or other personal assistant to control my home or office, precisely because of their reliance on the cloud, there is no getting away from the simple fact that they can make life easy for techies…
New for 2020 – Bluetooth 5.0 Earbuds and much more
Having spent much of January 2020 visiting family in Chicago, USA – I came back to the UK full of enthusiasm for new product testing. Here’s a quick update on the first new toy I opened on my return to the UK (and its eventual demise). First, the back-story: On…
Safekeeping
A new lock-down gadget to play with! The Vecta Personal Safe is designed in the UK, manufactured in China and mine came direct from Vecta Safes (UK) Ltd. The safe is suitable for storing money, keys, passports, keys etc and despite it’s small size is rock solid. For sizes, see…
Ravpower PD Pioneer 65W 2-Port Wall Charger
The important bit here is 65W PD – model RP-PC133. The new charger from Ravpower has both USB C and USB3 outputs and is able to deliver up to 3.25A at a range of voltages suitable for high speed charging phones and tablets. The first photo depicts the USA version,…
Lucky Weekend
Despite abysmal weather here in lockdown Northeast of England, it’s been a good weekend. One of my biggest daily challenges when running the blog is effortlessly, wirelessly transferring image from my Android phone to my PC for inclusion in the blog or elsewhere. As many of you will know, the…
Xiaomi ZAJIA Auto-sense IR Induction Water Saver
I LOVE getting new toys. This one was sent to me in January 2020 by Banggood and it turned up in the UK in February. The battery-powered, USB-charged Zajia clips straight into the tap in the kitchen or bathroom to provide proximity-controlled water. If you are on a water meter…
Mosquitto and Aedes on Raspberry Pi 4
I currently have The Eclipse Mosquitto MQTT broker running on the Raspberry Pi 2, 3 and 4, Buster Raspbian, not to mention countless other variations of Debian and Ubuntu on various boards used at one time or another in the past (Orange Pi, various FriendlyArm boards and far more). Below…
Cutting or Bleeding Edge – RGBCCT Lamps and Tasmota
I’ll let readers decide if we are on the cutting or bleeding edge here. Having received a 6-pack of ZemiSmart new GU10 Smartlamps to test, I installed them in my kitchen where I have a pair of ceiling 3-lamp non-smart fittings and duly replaced the six normal GU10 LED lamps…
T95 MAX+ Android TV Box
I could not tell you how many TV boxes I’ve had over the years. I’ve had ROKU 2 (no VPN, restricted, takes over everything), “proper” “Android TV” boxes with pathetically restricted PlatStore and severe limits on what you can install, through to a range of “full Android” TV boxes and…
RFLink – 433Mhz Remote Control and Node-Red
In the comments below you’ll see reference to an ESP8266 to MQTT Gateway – at one time I thought that this would be ideal as it would be all in one little box – whereas I needed to stick something like a Pi on the end to generate a wireless…
The Predictable End of Free Apps – eWeLink?
I read today that eWeLink, the app used by Itead for their Sonoff products, is looking to offering a “paid” option. “What!?!” I hear you say? But we already paid for the hardware… Well, for some time now, I and others have been writing about taking the time and effort…
A ZemiSmart Weekend
Today, I received a shipment of goods from ZemiSmart including a small but surprisingly bright 5W E27 RGBW Smart Bulb, a WiFi Smart Socket (max load 16A – 1875W (non-inductive)) with twin USB (5v@2A) and a really neat battery-free (yes, battery-free bell-push) Smart Doorbell. The WiFi Smart Bulb Well, I…
Weather Data using Node-Red and APIs
With the forthcoming descent of Dark Skies into an Apple-Only universe (a sad loss for the rest of us) I’ve been looking into alternative APIs to use for grabbing weather forecasts and related data. While I struggle with the MET Office behemoth, here’s a little information on yr.no I’d not…
Scargill’s Covid-boredom-fighting Idea #1 Smart Kettle
My friend Antonio just pointed me to an expensive Australian “Smart” kettle which heats up coffee in the morning for you. All very nice but not cheap AND not ACTUALLY available right now.. also, simple timers assume you always get up at the same time of day – right now,…
Ravpower PD Pioneer 61W Wall Charger RP-PC112
Wall chargers for phones are not something I generally get excited about but as this handles “Power Delivery” (a new standard for charging) for phones AND has enough power for a Raspberry Pi 4 or modern tablet/notebook, here goes. The RP-PC112 UK version is a white, neat-looking USB-C wall charger…
Sonoff Mini with Tasmota versus the competition
You can’t get away from it, the iTead products are inexpensive – and sometimes that is very important. But are they the best solution for Home Control? Well, that depends… I think they are very good… Sonoff products have always been inexpensive. But bear with me. At one time the…
Sonoff RFbridge 433
I just received two neat little inexpensive Sonoff RFbridges from Banggood, this is a great boxed gadget from Itead for converting 433Mhz RF signals from various devices into WiFi. The POINT of 433Mhz RF sensors of course is that they are very cheap and run for long periods on battery.…
Tasmota – TDM, Tasmotize and TasUI
This is a never-ending story about Theo Arends’s much-loved alternative firmware for IOT as Tasmota is now running at development version 8.2.0.1 “Elliot” (update March 22, 2020 – I’ve upgraded my various ESP8266-based devices including Itead Sonoff BASIC, TH10, 4CH Pro, ProR2, Powr2, Shelly One, Blitzwolf and others). (Warning, there…
NanoPi R2S OpenWrt miniRouter – where’s the WiFi?
The new FriendlyElec R2S is more fully described as NanoPi R2S: a Raspberry Pi alternative that incorporates two Gigabit Ethernet ports. That’s not strictly true, it is not even remotely like an alternative to the Raspberry Pi 4, for example, but with 1GB RAM it runs OpenWrt – the FA…