I’ve been playing (as you’ll know if you’ve read previous blogs here) with moisture sensing. It’s easy really to do this – you just put a low voltage through a couple of bits of metal and sense the current going through. All things being equal, the more current, the wetter…
Deployment Beckons
I’m now getting dangerously near the point where I have to DO something with all of this ESP8266 control stuff. We’re at our Spanish cave and I’ve a watering system to sort – a simple example – so one of the ESP12 boards has a relay on it and another…
ESP-12E with Extra Pins!
Here’s the picture. £2.25 including post – what more could you want! So this is like an ESP-12 – already the best of the bunch – but with more IO – specifically 6 more IO lines… this just keeps on getting better – whatever next, built in Bluetooth?? Well that’s…
Raspberry Pi I2C and the Real Time Clock
I’ve been wondering how to detect an I2c device attached to pins SDA0 and SCL0 on the Pi – now I know – easy.. https://learn.adafruit.com/adding-a-real-time-clock-to-raspberry-pi/wiring-the-rtc
The Worlds first $9 Computer
Oh yes, I like this.. By the look of it not available until next year – a tiny board with the power perhaps of something like a Raspberry Pi but tiny and lower cost (well, that’s IF the postage doesn’t kill it). I’ll be keeping an eye on this one..…
DIL Adaptor for ESP07 and ESP12
So what started me off on this journey which led to a kluge fix for the ESP SDK 1.01 (YES!!) was a parcel which appeared yesterday from Baoshi (which in Chinese means “gem stone”) containing 2 of his ESP-07 ESP-2 adaptor boards which he very kindly sent me. The boards…
ESP8266 FLASH SIZES and SDK issues
Below you will see the MAKE file used in Windows for compiling ESP8266 code for, for example TUANPMs MQTT software which I often use as a base with the Eclipse programming environment. My code is routinely compiled and run on ESP-12 boards and some time ago when I upgraded…
Using Skype
For those used to seeing me rant about micro-controllers this may seem a little odd, but I thought I’d drop this in here as a diversion to give others the benefit of my experience as IT Chairman of a fairly large national organisation. About 14 years ago the organisation decided…
Using GroveStreams
No sooner did I finish the blog on my new GroveStreams Node than I was faced with the question “how do I use GroveStreams?” Well, that’s generally up to you – but I will start you off on how I use GroveStreams – and the ridiculously simple setup (once you…
A GroveStreams Node Red Node
One of the more obvious things to do with a home control system is to capture information like temperature and humidity – and to graph it. For example I spent part of my time in the UK and part of it in Spain. When I’m not in Spain it is…
To GIT – or Not to GIT
For years I’ve been using DropBox on my various Windows PCs to make shared file access easy… and at work, my PA and I have shared DropBox folders for just as long. And that’s fine for lots of things, it certainly makes access when on location easy, but it is…
Lots of Users
I was just looking at the stats for the blog and in the short time this new version has been up and running I’ve something like 1300 subscribers – which is nice – but only a small percentage talk to us! So – obviously you’re here because you are into…
ReadyNas Duo Power Up Revitalised
I have had a NetGear ReadyNas Duo lying around for longer than I care to imagine… not because it is slow (and it is). not because I have something better (I do) but because for some reason well beyond my understanding the designer, when putting it together never wondered “what…
Freebies
So – would you like to play with Node-Red for free without even running it on your own PC? Check out FRED for Node-Red on Google . You just don’t get any easier than this! Also this morning I stumbled across KODING – an online environment for HTML, PHP, PYTHON etc. …
Notepad++ for Arduino
Anyone tried the Arduino Notepad plugin yet? Essentially lets you use Notepad++ to edit your Arduino files while in the Arduino environment – with syntax highlighting etc… looks like a good idea to me.
Raspberry Pi Processor Monitoring Widget
Don’t you just love it when people produce really useful tools for free!! And so it was that I got up early this morning to get a little Arduino/ESP-01 research done and got side-tracked by Google+ And the result – this baby. This is a tiny piece of software that…
The Oak by DigiStump
One of our readers has rightly pointed me to this new Kickstarter project – The Oak by Digistump (http://digistump.com/oak/) which has a number of things going for it – potential approval, secure WIFI interfacing and programming and Arduino compatibility. Indeed it is hard to fault this device other than when…
In a Far Distance Galaxy
A long, long time ago in a far distant…well, world, when I was pretty much using Arduinos for everything, the ESP-01 came along and my friend and colleague Aidan made a little board to handle a relay, an LCD display and.. an ESP-01. At the time we had no use…
External Drive for Pi2
I’ve read many articles about serious use of the Raspberry Pi and I’m now convinced that there is very little chance of mounting a Pi in a cupboard with MSQL and other write-intense programs – and expecting it seriously to last for a year or 3 because of the limited…
Web Sockets Web Page Part 3
For this to make sense you should look at Websockets Web Page Part 1 and Websockets Web Page Part 2 first. In this final section I add styling to the page and also change the code so that you can send a partial message i.e. {“my_input”:”Hello”} without affecting other parts…