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…
Devices recently connected to the network
Can I give the Raspberry Pi any MORE to do? This started off as a plea for help – as I could not find a way to get reliable reporting of changed devices on my network – as you’ll see, now CRACKED thanks to readers and in particular Mr Shark.…
Espressif ESP-EYE Board
I remember reading, less than a month ago, a blog entry called “The Mysterious ESP-EYE” in which it is stated that there is no information on the Espressif site on this interesting little camera module. Well, I’ll correct that – there most certainly is now and here’s the link. https://www.espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp-eye/overview…
Phone Charging Epiphany 2
Some time ago after using USB chargers (and USB battery units) since late last century and having been constantly disappointed by their performance when charging phones, I started to get very selective. At the risk of boring experts in here, a short history… The first change I started to make…
K88H Smart Watch Heart Rate Monitor
Back in October 2018, I received this lovely, black K88H smart-watch from GearBest. Immediately it looked like one of the better choices for a low-cost smart-watch and here we are, months later – I’ve not changed my view. First of all, it looks lovely. Unlike many smart watches and bands,…
Adjustable Display Soldering Iron
As a DIY type you can never have too many soldering irons and this latest one has some virtues, it is CHEAP at under £18 and it has a nice display and simple temperature controls. It also uses pretty widely available bits. Not excited about the stand but it works…
The A5X MAX Android 8.1 TV Box
Regular viewers may recall I reviewed a rather nice TV Android box some time ago – the H96 Max Plus. I’m particularly choosy about these units, again regular readers will know that I’ve used and tested a number of mini-board level products such as various NanoPC boards and others for…
My New Kinetic Light Switches
Here’s something new (for some of us at least). I’ve been struggling with faulty hall wiring for some time since another room rewire – well, not faulty, more disconnected. The problem is while I can easily seal up the original wiring with just one hole in the (flat roof) ceiling…