Having satisfied myself that RPI-CLONE does a good job of creating backups of Raspberry Pi (no guarantees you won’t lose data but it hasn’t happened to me yet) I started the search for a solution for other boards. I find the Orange Pi +2E to be a particularly nice piece…
Web Editor for SQLITE
I received a potentially nice tip from Mr Shark today – a web editor for SQLITE (as against PHPLITEADMIN which is not Web based and uses PHP). Beware I found some kind of timeout, the author agreed this was likely some kind of timeout, then closed the issue on Github…
Easy Backups and Webmin
This article started off as two separate subjects – and has now gone SO much further – you really need to read this one… So I’m messing here with a NanoPi NEO PLUS2 (though this applies to other board too) – and I’ve had all sorts of issues getting SSD1306…
Xiaomi Roidmi 3S Bluetooth Music Car Charger
This Xiaomi Roidmi 3S cigarette-lighter-sized Bluetooth transmitter and car charger has two USB outputs totalling 2.4 amps output AND is able to talk via Bluetooth to your mobile phone so that those without Bluetooth on the car radio can tune into a special low power FM transmission and play their…
Node Red Initialisation
This is a post from back in March 2017 – but as I’d forgotten all about it, I thought you might like to share my renewed enthusiasm if you are a Node-Red user. NR introduces non-volatile flow and global variables in version 0.19 but if that doesn’t work for you,…
Xiaomi Mi Band 3 Smart Bracelet
Last month, the mailbag brought a number of goodies including a new smart wrist band for Maureen, the Xiaomi MI Band 3, supplied by GearBest. Several weeks later, this little fitness band is in full time use, as Maureen absolutely loves it. The battery lasts a week or more between…
SD CARD Backup
Update September 2018 I read about the most convoluted ways to back up SBC systems…. some back up only data, some use arcane commands to do the job – few if any are a single click job for a complete backup that can even handle larger or smaller SDs. That…
Orange Pi Plus 2E revisited
Update September 2018: Despite my earlier enthusiasm below, it seems things have changed. The Stretch version of Armbian for this board which I grabbed today has a broken armbian-config and the excellent rpi-clone program produces a read-only version of the operating system. The “bionic” version of Armbian for the board…
Koogeek Smart Light Strip LS1
While we were down at the coast paying a fleeting visit to Gibraltar, a package arrived for me from www.koogeek.com – their LS1 Smart Light Strip – which is available from TomTop – https://www.tomtop.com/p-ls1-1.html Here it is, it arrived well-packed – it is worth noting that apps are available for…
ESP-GO Update–the ILI9340 QD-TECH drivers
There’s a discussion going on in here about the M5 Stack and one of the guys says he wants to use ESP8266 – now then is possibly a good time to announce that I’ve been updating the code in ESP-GO for the ILI9340 and QD-Tech displays. It is all in…
Work in Progress using Docker
Fellow reader and collaborator who has helped me with “the script” over the past two years – Antonio Fragola, aka MrShark has asked me to put up something about his current work in progress. He has begun working on Docker with a view to migrating “the script” to a fully…
Goral S7 0.96” IPS Colour Blood Pressure Watch
Today’s post got off to a good start with this colour sports watch with pulse, blood pressure and blood sugar level indication, but all of that is just icing on the cake – the watch is beautiful. I own a Gear S2 Classic and by comparison, many watches look pathetic…
The M5 Stack
The M5 Stack looks to be a reasonable use of the ESP32 and for those who need to start from a boxed product with display, it might just have a bright future. In a nutshell this is a pretty looking ESP32-based box with display and buttons. Do with it what…
Mini ES120 Motion Control Screwdriver
A long-awaited little tool turned up for me this morning, the ES120 motion control electric screwdriver. The unit operates off an internal Lithium battery and charges by micro-USB. Operation could not be easier. Hold in the button and the screwdriver starts. It is also reverse-able, obviously. Direction is controlled by…
ESP-GO Deep Sleep Experiment
My latest tests – simple Node-Red code to check the ESP-GO updates as of this morning (v2.4.01) to quickly return temperature/humidity etc. after reboot and before sleeping. With static IP I have it down to around 3 seconds including the return MQTT confirmation. Unit can sleep up to 71 minutes.
TV Technology
I constantly have several computer projects on the go at once and thanks to the likes of WinSCP etc I can run several real and virtual computers on the same screen, all fighting for screen area and of course hide-able and re-sizeable. This has been the norm for some years.…
Nano Peripheral Continued Development
Update July 15, 2018 It has been said before and will be said again that I often refer to the Arduino Nano when I mean a copycat Nano board OR copycat Mini Pro. Let’s complicate this a little and add in variations using the 168 and 328 chips.
Blynk update
When I was here in Spain (2018) in April working on the house controller, the mobile control package I keep going back to (Blynk) was improving but the RGB ZeRGBa (RGB)control was acting up when you put two or more on a single mobile screen. I put that to one…
Auto Aligning Solar Tracker
My friend Aidan who many of you will know through this blog, has just put an entry into Hackaday about his self-powered, auto aligning solar tracker. He is building a house in Aragon in Spain with no electricity but he’s compensating for that with lots of solar power – which…
OWSOO 801 1080p WiFi IP Camera
I’ve had security cameras here in Spain and in the UK for many years. My original cameras, low cost Chinese models here in Spain, finally started to give up this year after around 8 years of reliable service. I chose the Owsoo 801 (also referred to as KKMoon) ONVIF cameras…