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…
Blog changes
In order to minimise spam, I have removes some email subscriptions where the user names looked automated. This process is nowhere near perfect but is essential to protect valid readers/subscribers. I’ve also changed email newsletter requests to double-opt-in – that is, if you newly request emails from the blog, you…
The Summer Begins
We’re back in Spain (Galera) for the summer, time to upgrade my home control setup to the latest ESP-GO and Tasmota versions not to mention some Node-Red and other updates and improvements. More on all of that later, but first things first – new toys on the way soon include…
HC 2020 and ESP-GO
Introduction (Latest update February 01, 2020) Minor update here – I’ve gone back to SDK 2.1 for now as RBOOT will just not reliably OTA on SDK 3.1 – and there is nothing wrong with SDK 2.1 Sick of reading about other people’s home control? Want to make your own?…
Bakeey M30 Smart Watch
Update May 2019: The Bakeey M30 IP67 Smart Watch is a nice watch – BUT unreadable in bright Spanish sunlight.. this watch is cheap but importantly, it looks nice and WORKS A TREAT – in the months I’ve been using it, the M30 is already my favourite inexpensive sports watch,…
Handy Node-Red Date
While working on my thermostat I found myself repeating the same code all over the place – as I use function nodes for inline debugging and info – far more useful at times than the debug output. I’ve now attached this simple code here to a function in my init…
EleksMaker Pro Laser Engraver
Update February 28, 2019 Last year year I put together this excellent A3 laser engraving machine. Originally, a 500mW laser module arrived complete with its own power supply (the laser which was not included in the basic kit). It turns out that was the wrong laser and now I have…
ACEPC Intel Z8350 TV Box with Windows
I recently received a long-awaited Windows TV box in the post from Banggood. Initial impressions? Well, I’m still having fun with it some days later. The ACEPC T9 comes with Intel Atom x5-8350, 4GB DDR RAM and 32GB 5MMC along with 2.4G/5G WIFI, Bluetooth 4.0, USB3.0 and Windows 10.
Digital Mini Inclinometer
Another item in the post this morning – for when the old fashioned inclinometer will no longer do – how about one powered by a pair of AAA batteries… this one came complete with full English instructions from GearBest. A neat little gadget, the “Mini Digital Protractor Inclinometer Angle Gauge”…
BackLit Keyboard Issues
No, not a review, yet… but I can see that coming. This is about PC backlit keyboards and the problems you can have with both cheap and expensive versions. My first gripe is the number of sellers on the web who claim to be UK based, then what you get…
BigTimer and getMoonTimes
I just spent ages debugging issue with theSunCalc module used in Node-Red-Contrib–BigTimer. It turns out that the getMoonTimes module doesn’t seem to handle the alwaysUp and alwaysDown methods the way one might expected – these do not return FALSE if not TRUE – they return undefined – that took some…