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…
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…
The 2020 Node-Red Thermostat/Timer
Back in 2017 I wrote a blog entry called “A Thermostat Weekend” – some weekend that turned out to be. Well, to cut a long story short, the stat worked but I was at the time just finding out all about NEST and other modern stats and so my ESP-GO/Node-Red…
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 many others). 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 PlayStore 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
Many moons ago I just happened to be staying overnight with my pal Jonathan and he had some surplus (and so free) Byron 433Mhz wireless doorbell-pushes to demonstrate. He showed me a universal RF 433Mhz receiver board he purchased with which could look at the signals from the various kinds…
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 from Banggood, this is a great boxed gadget from 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. While I’m here,…
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…
A Blitzwolf Blitz with Tasmota and Tuya Convert
Some time ago I wrote about Blitzwolf battery packs and mentioned the Blitzwolf BW-SS1 – a small mains power controller. Well, the company has a RANGE of such controllers including the BW-SHP6 and BW-SHP7 Smart Plugs as well as the new BW-SHP10 (3680w power monitoring in one version). I have…
Sothing PTC Shoe Drier and Diodoriser
Something new… when you are stuck in the house for weeks on end with no sun (Northeast of England – under lockdown) and instructions to wash clothing and hands whenever you are planning a grocery shopping trip, it certainly comes in handy (and cheap) to have something to dry your…
H96 Max Android TV Box
After a while all of these Android TV boxes begin to look and sound alike – but are they? What about picture quality? I just received a new Android 9 TV box from Banggood – and we did not get off to the best start. On opening the box, hidden…