For some reason this morning when I got up – there were more emails than usual – and amongst them – sales – so here’s just a quick set of links – in case you’re after some Christmas presents for yourself = I’m not saying they are good or…
Node-Red and Alexa with Big Timer
I’ve recently updated my setup at home, finally doing away with HA-Bridge and I thought you might like to see this simple setup. So for beginners, HA-Bridge is a piece of software (a very nice piece of software) that runs on for example a Raspberry Pi, who’s job (in my…
Sunday Alexa Post
WELL! You learn something new every day. Just had a call from a pal of mine (we both have multiple Amazon Alexa units around the house). Not only can you now call the thing “computer” – but one can now call the other… so “Alexa, call house” rings the house…
RPI Prototyping
Remember a few blogs back where we were talking about prototyping boards for Raspberry Pi and similar and I showed a sample board and someone came back and said “Ah but you can get cheaper on AliExpress” – well, I bought one… Here’s the link – £1.09 in sterling, free…
Graphing System Info in Node Red and Grafana
We were just talking about getting system info into graphs in the comments in a previous blog entry – and I realised I already had some code for getting that info in Python – and using a library that can provide a LOT more. So – as it was there…
A Weekend of Links
Good morning (11/11)! Well, this weekend I got up early to see what was happening with the 11/11 sales. What’s that you say? Well, if we only knew about British sites like RS components one could be forgiven for thinking that today was just another ordinary day. Fortunately we know…
Waterproof Box
A quiet post day today, some exciting gadgets I’m expecting remain in the postal system… but this little box turned up unexpectedly from Itead… it’s a waterproof box no doubt intended for their Sonoff products – and it would do a good job as their smaller units will fit into…
Enter Monitorix
I recently did a post asking for input about useful tools for the Raspberry Pi and other SBC boards and the first to some out of this is Monitorix. This is just a short blog – I’ve not had enough time to ensure I understand the usefulness of this –…
Your Favourite Pi Things
On the blog here we refer often to “the script” which sets up a whole raft of useful tools on SBCs such as the Raspberry Pi – and we’re always on the look out for new and improved tools. But let’s here from YOU! So we already know from extensive…
Another ESP32
It seems that ESP32 boards are now coming down in price and increasing in number. In today’s mailbag, this little number entitled WeMos® TTgo ESP32 WiFi + Bluetooth Board 4MB Flash UNO D1 R32. This isn’t the cheapest ESP32 out there (though it is not expensive either) – some of…
The Kitchen Sink
This is the story of the evolution of an uninterruptible power supply for the likes of Raspberry Pi etc. It takes over where various posts about UPS leave off, the last (detailed) entry being “The Dog’s Breakfast” – in the search for a low-cost UPS and for individual micro boards…
The Dogs Breakfast
This started off as a simple discussion on UPS for the likes of the Raspberry Pi and other micro boards but developed into so much more. Some great conversation, some ideas – and a project at the end which could fit a lot of requirements at very low cost. Read…
PI BB RPS
PI-BB-RPS – well didn’t I look at this offering from Alchemy Power Inc a while ago and discarded it because I thought it was just a breadboard for the Raspberry Pi !!! Wrong, it is more than that. Anyway, the designer sent me one of these all the way from…
4D Systems Gen4 IOD
My wife’s Chumby is on it’s last legs – and was about to go in the bin until along came a fortunate coincidence to save the day. Some time ago, 4D Systems sent me one of their LCD touch-screens. As many of you know I’m interested in the range of…
YAT and ESP8266
For some years now I’ve been using my own serial terminal for ESP8266 development – not any more! As fervent readers will know, over a period of time I’ve developed software for the phenomenally useful ESP8266 and you can find out more about that, here, suffice it to say it…
More Alexa Marvels
Some of you may recall that in the dim and distant past, Aidan and I wrote a SKILL for Amazon’s Alexa – which let us do anything by simply passing the speech back to Node-Red… and we could sent text as speech to Alexa. Well, that relied on SSL port…
ESP8266 Lies and Deceit
It never ceases to amaze me when looking through Ebay, the level to which companies or individuals are prepared try to mislead the public or at best are simply unable to form sentences correctly. Some even tell outright lies. Let’s take one of my favourite subjects, the ESP8266 boards. Way…
Enter the SHT30
The SHT30 is a chip able to measure temperature and humidity and it is very tiny. It is available on a “shield” board for as little as £1.76 including shipping – and will work with any system able to handle I2c – such as my own ESP8266 kitchen-sink code. Now,…
The Script and RPI 3 Update
Having started putting together “the script” a long time ago, long before the Raspberry Pi 3 came out – and having developed it to handle a wide range of boards and scenarios including of course the Pi3, I found it interesting to return today to installing “the script” on the…
MQTT Broker on an ESP8266
This is kind of interesting – the promise of an ESP8266 MQTT broker (not client – BROKER) able to talk to up to 25 connections. Really? Let’s find out. Go here to get an account (free) and download the .BIN file for your ESP8266. Use something like the NODEMCU flasher…