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…
The 2300mW Laser for EleksLaser
This is definitely looking like a good day… here’s the second item in today’s post, the long-awaited laser for my EleksMaker Laser Engraver…. See updates to original EleksMaker engraver blog entry for more. I am SO excited that this blue laser has turned up complete with upgraded 2.5A power supply…
ISDT Smart Charger C4
As you can imagine, I’ve looked at many chargers, lots of them have proven to be disappointing, many are just plain boring. Early days but this ISDT C4 charger (from Banggood) looks neither. Indeed it looks marvellous. From initial impression through to operation this looks like a complete winner to…
The Tattu Wall Charger
Full of excitement, I opened the mail this morning to find my shiny new TATTU wall charger from here https://www.genstattu.com/tattu-qc-18w-usb-ac-adapter-wall-charger.html The excitement took a momentary hit as I soon discovered that my Qubot Note+ smartphone does not handle the high speed Quick Charge 3 option which would have been indicated…
NanoPC T4 from FriendlyArm
I’ve been itching to say SOMETHING about this new SBC board from FriendlyArm. This clearly is not meant to compete with the Raspberry Pi – not at the price –it is meant to blow it away. The NanoPC-T4 is “by far the smallest RK3399 based high performance ARM board with…
DSO Module for LAP-C
Some of you will recall that last year I wrote about the excellent ZeroPlus Logic Cube PC-based logic analyser – part of their LAP-C series. To make life easy, here’s the original article – https://techspecialsdaily.store/zeroplus-logic-cube/ The Logic Cube is a great all round logic analyser in a handy case and…
Inexpensive 200W Car Inverter
I just bought this unit for the car from Ebay – 200w mains out and 6.8a total over 4 USB sockets, small and light, too. A far cry from inverters of only a few years ago and for a measly £20 + post.
Allmaybe USB Wall Charger
The last item (or pair of items) today are the strangely named Allmaybe USB wall charger (American fitting) complete with universal mains adaptor (US/EU/UK). Maximum USB rating 3.5 amps total from the dual outputs. Granted the name is odd, but this equipment packs plenty of power and looks well constructed.…