I’m prepared to guess that a good half of my Windows-using blog readers are either home users, self-employed or otherwise simply do NOT have an administrator other than themselves. In order to rename a drive on my Windows 11 Pro machine, I’ve just had to bypass a warning telling me…
Category: General
Sonoff Cam Slim 2 WiFi Smart Security Camera
Regular viewers may recall, back in August 2022 I reviewed Sonoff’s Cam Slim, described as an FHD Smart Security Camera, a neat little job I’ve since called Cat Cam as it watches our cat litter tray. It’s worked perfectly and talks to Home Assistant – that’s how I use it.…
NSPanel Pro 120 USA
Haven’t I already written about the NSPANEL PRO? Yes I have here.. but this is slightly different, instead of the square form factor – this one is LONG. For the USA (why the USA, no idea, I’d have thought we in Europe would be just as keen – but what…
SEEED Wednesday
I didn’t get any delivery notices yesterday yet we arrived back from the market to find a package from China with SEEED written all over it. Inside, a SEED “Mono Enclosed Speaker 4R 5W” – not sure what any of that means – 5W in a tiny speaker with the…
Sonoff ZBMiniR2 Extreme – Why Another Power Controller?
Why indeed – Sonoff will release the new ZBMiniR2 (Extreme) on 19th September 2024 – the last one I owned was (is) the ZBMini L2 – this new device is named ZBMini Extreme on the top of the box and ZBMiniR2 on the side). So what’s new – and why…
The storm before the break – HA and Air Conditioning
I just had some root canal work done and it didn’t go too well (understatement – I currently look like the original Godfather). We’re off for a few days break this coming week so I planned on doing nothing at all until then – but life doesn’t work like that.…
HamGeek Zigbee Gateway V1.5
If you’ve been reading the blog (I hope you have) recently you’ll know I’ve reviewed the SMLIGHT SLZB-06 and SMLIGHT SLZB-06p7 Zigbee Coordinators which can also VERY EASILY be used as Zigbee routers. You may also have noticed that I’ve converted the odd Sonoff Zigbee Coordinator to be a router.…
Apollo MTR-1 and MSR-2 Sensors
Elsewhere I’ve written about the new Apollo Air-1 gas sensor for Home Assistant (based on ESP-home). In that blog I also mentioned their DEV-1 ESP32C3 board. As the blog entry was starting to get a little long, I decided to separate out the MTR-1 and MSR-2 sensors – so here…
Shelly and Sonoff Shout-out
I WAS going to incorporate this into earlier Shelly and Sonoff posts but lots going on this weekend gone – so: Let’s get Sonoff out of the way… you may be familiar with the Sonoff Smart Water Valve – and how quickly they updated this to work with Zigbee2MQTT including…
Nank OE MIX Earbuds
This one came out of the blue – the company (naenka.com – I’d never heard of them before) contacted me and asked if I’d write about their earbuds. As always “only if you send a set – no conditions”. Ok, so they did and days later, a set of buds…
The Aqara FP1E Presence Sensor
Some time ago I reviewed the Aqara FP2 Presence Sensor. I like it but it keeps seeing 2 people in my office when there is only me – even with the latest updates. So, I thought I’d better try the later FP1E. Here it is straight out of the box.…
TOMLOV HDMI Digital Microscope Model DM9 MAX
OK, not my normal tech stuff – or isn’t it? The Tomlov DM9 microscope came out of the blue – I was not aware of the company until just a short time ago when they contacted me by the contact page in here. They asked me if I’d like to…
SMARTLIGHT.ME, Ethernet Zigbee Controllers and more…
I recently wrote about my first experience with the SMLIGHT SLZB-06 Ethernet Zigbee coordinator given to me by a good friend in the UK (and left there – working well – I’m now back in Spain). That prompted me to contact the company who make them – here’s a link…
ESPresence for Home Assistant Presence Monitoring
The point of this article is/was to show how inexpensive ESP32 boards can be used as PRESENCE points in places around the home (for example) for detecting people and animals hopefully better than simple IR units. People carry phones and/or smart-bands – animals can wear tiny, inexpensive BLE beacon devices…
Zigbee2MQTT and the Ethernet SMLight SLZB-06
I’m excited – as you’ll see below I have left my new SMLight SLZB-06 ETHERNET Zigbee coordinator in the UK – working well (but not at all stressed) and I have one coming to Spain this coming week. That leaves the question – what to do with my Sonoff-P and…
Inexpensive Occasional Smartsocket + Low-Bandwidth 4G
I’ve recently hit on a problem in which we have an issue with our oil heating back in the UK while we’re spending by far the bulk of our time in Spain. Despite everything being turned off (hot water off, heating set to OFF – i.e. standby) we discovered thanks…
AWS Polly Speech on RPi4 and RPi5 using Node-Red
AWS Polly is great for adding speech to Raspberry Pi and similar, especially with the “neural” enhancement. Regular readers will know that for years I was a great fan of using Ivona speech on my Raspberry Pi. In Node-Red I used the free Ivona service to provide high quality speech in Node-Red at the heart of…
Water Leak Week – Switchbot, Sonoff and more…
Not sure why two companies I know, decided to introduce water leak sensors in the middle of summer – but I’m happy to do a quick write-up – as it happens I’ve just recently refitted a hot water tank complete with rather large calcium filter and I’m not 100% sure…
And Now – HA TV Lighting Automation
Just a quick one – Having set up all the lighting in Home Assistant including the living room with the TV – my wife had the great idea of moving everything around and I find our chandelier and cupboard lighting totally destroys my TV viewing at night – SO the…
ESPresense and Home Assistant – The Adventure Continues
To avoid repeating myself, look at other articles in here where I realised that Home Assistant was for me to be the successor to my long-cherished Node-Red-based home automation system (especially as they’ve now formally discontinued support for my beloved NR-UI v 1). Little did I realise just how much…