This tutorial serves as an introduction to Home Assistant ‘automations’ where smart devices often find their best uses. What follows can also be done in most other ‘smart home hubs’ such as Alexa, Google...
why the Creality K1C impressed can’t you think of any any negatives? For a critical reviewer, bringing more experience I’d point you to Daniel’s ‘CROSSLINK’ channel on YouTube. This is a search link for...
The situation: in addition to the router that serves your home with internet you’ve another router that could perhaps improve your wireless or wired coverage. The extra router could be any spare wi-fi router...
Remote homes and farms can get their water from a borehole – years ago the owner of my house drilled the garden until they found a water source. Today I see a manhole cover...
why a server? what can I use a home server for? a vpn, a router, an ad-blocker, storage for backups, a photo library, a music server, a printer server, a home automation hub, a...
TLDR: one morning too often I’ve woken to find that my ‘smart’ things has gone stupid and they haven’t turned on because the Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant has gone inaccessible. Your Home Assistant...
With today’s energy issues it feels unnecessary to heat rooms we aren’t using. Back in the day we fitted thermostatic radiator valves (TRV) to radiators in central heating systems. We dial in low temperatures...
My boiler burns heating oil from a tank and unlike the ‘gas’ that most homes burn it’s finite – so when it’s gone I’m cold. Ordering heating oil is tricky because I must say...
I’ve been using the Wireguard or nginx to access my home network* securely and I’ve explained in other posts (links below) how they’re used and set up. Tailscale however is my current go-to method...
WS2812B strip – INMP441 microphone – WLED SR software – ESP32 board shopping list for these motion activated stairway lights – see photos wiring diagram for a microphone controlled LED strip The wiring is...
An LED strip 2 metres long runs beside the staircase. A sensor detects movement which triggers a light pattern along the strip. But if the sensor is a microphone, rather than a motion sensor,...
You can graph temperature on this cute display and use buttons to turn on the heater as needed – the project works with Home Assistant and needs very little else the costs of heating...
If you have curiosity and/or paranoia about what happens across your network there are tools which can gather information for you. This post will show how to install tools to see what’s going on....
Moodle is a web-based platform where you can create learning activities, manage course assessment and pretty much run a school or sell courses. If your needs are small enough, you can use WordPress plugins...
This smoke alarm piqued my interest as a way to create an smoke/fire alert when I might be elsewhere. It’s unbranded and labelled as “C50D/W (1527, can skip code)” which is discouraging, but it...
visitors this year: 3,808 your need for a (nicer) sub-domain: At home you access an IP camera, a router, Home Assistant, a wi-fi access point, a NAS drive (eg Synology or QNAP) or perhaps...
visitors this year: 4,999 Time Machine is a backup utility on the Mac. This can work for years and then one day it doesn’t. If you need a file you had an hour ago,...
visitors this year: 1,856 Here is a tank level sensor that’s more useful than anything you can buy. This post focuses on my housing and the calibration for a basic sensor to measure oil...
visitors this year: 2,141 how to make a heating oil tank level sensor that’s more useful than anything you can buy. This sensor… Background: homes like mine use oil as a fuel to keep...
visitors this year: 3,280 how to make a heating oil tank level sensor that’s more useful than anything you can buy. This sensor… Background: homes like mine use diesel oil as a fuel to...
visitors this year: 383 tips on choosing cameras and using POE / passive POE and waterproofing the connection. how do I record activity from cameras? Buying a security camera system isn’t just for professionals....
visitors this year: 7,411 Let’s start with the reminder that an easy route to a security camera setup is to buy a kit with cameras and a system box to record events on site...
handling data from experiments / home & garden / monitoring at home
by roger · Published Mar 2022 · Last modified Mar 2023
visitors this year: 1,498 I know that I ought not leave things powered on. Knowing that is easier than remembering that an e-bike or drone or laptop battery is still connected. Below I show...
visitors this year: 2,827 The very popular, but hardly-known Xiaomi nightlight, which lights up a dark space when you pass, now has a ‘smart’ version. A night light is nice on a dark stairway...
visitors this year: 985 see version 2 of this project here My initial want was for the stairs to have soft glow lighting … but what the hec, LED strip lights do more than...
visitors this year: 799 A ‘smart scale’ that records my weight to a phone might be seen as ‘gadgety’ and unnecessary but I’m now many months into this and think it’s fabulous. Almost fact:...
visitors this year: 168 GoPro, microphone and camera fittings are so ridiculously different, so here are some pointers to help buy the right bits to mount them. In all cases, even a GoPro (below)...
visitors this year: 1,059 when you want an e-bike and you don’t want another bike:
visitors this year: 254 , If you’re a casual electronics hobbyist like me, the idea of using a LCD magnifier or microscope may seem attractive. For example this music spectrum display kit requires soldering...
visitors this year: 843 topics on this page: what do I eat? how does my weight change? do I get enough sleep? where did I go today? how does my body react to exercise?...
visitors this year: 233 If you’re looking for a smartwatch, look at the Huawei Watch / Huawei Band 6 / Huawei Watch Fit New wearables If you’ve yet to get yourself a smartwatch I’ll...
visitors this year: 13,268 … I can now see my Huawei health data in Google Fit and Google Drive. The Health Sync app acts as a go-between, and connects Huawei health to several other...
visitors this year: 18,648 Why do this? At an early point on the journey to network heaven you may have a need to connect from some holiday location say, to a camera, your computer,...
visitors this year: 548 two meanings of getting out of sync: Scenario one: You’ve two independently controlled table lamps which you’d prefer to turn on or off together. The lamps could be smart lamps...
visitors this year: 275 What’s going on? Hec, I’m in a room with robot arms and fingers twitching as they respond to social media. THIS can only be art but it’s art powered by...
visitors this year: 9,096 The Netgear Nighthawk r7000 is a router, switch and powerful Wi-fi access point in one unit and even in 2021, years on from when it was made it still offers...
visitors this year: 262 There are LED strip lights where every LED can be doing something different with the result that you can create peculiar effects. You can start with a commercially available kit...
visitors this year: 5,739 The Home Assistant home automation hub is more useful if you can access it remotely. In addition to having anywhere access with a browser URL, there’s an excellent phone app...
visitors this year: 17,664 If you need to access Home Assistant remotely away from home, skip this page and instead go to access your Home Assistant remotely using DuckDNS, Letsencrypt and the nginx SSL...
visitors this year: 240 Your smart bulbs, switches and door bell all come with a useful manufacturer’s app – over time you’ll accumulate many such apps. While Home Assistant might make them redundant, here...
visitors this year: 986 The digits at one end of a large LED clock displayed much more dimly than they ought. I’d say they were about half the brightness – and it was quite...
visitors this year: 736 If you need to know when a device, like a dryer or washing machine has finished working, get a ‘smart plug with energy monitoring‘. Amazon list many of them but...
visitors this year: 6,371 This ceiling ‘coffer’ is lit by four 5m LED strips – each is cut to fit the space. When my kitchen lights turn on they fade up in a few...
visitors this year: 3,791 If you use Home Assistant you can show temperature, time and other sensor entities on this cute display. The inspiration for this mini-project came from a need to display my...
visitors this year: 151 Without copying a screenshot to or using a USB stick (no!) All the day I capture useful or interesting images from facebook, instagram, desktop apps and web pages. I copy...
visitors this year: 1,011 Ovens may have digital controllers or analogue temperature controllers and cooks seem to have blind faith in their settings. In this household the cooks were burning food so I checked...
visitors this year: 1,986 The measurements that I take around the home provide two things: – a picture of a moment in time – a room temperature for example. – how something changes over...
visitors this year: 5,068 A home automation platform, such as Home Assistant, allows you to monitor temperature on graphs using sensors placed around the home. Monitoring temperatures allowed me to turn on/off my heating...
visitors this year: 1,987 Yes. Below you’ll see how to control HomeEasy devices through Home Assistant and the RFlink receiver/transmitter. (This also controls other manufacturers’ wireless sockets). You’ll be able to create timers and...
visitors this year: 1,452 or how to selectively expose Home Assistant entities to Alexa with emulated hue Home automation platforms like Alexa, Google Home and Home Assistant show major differences in the devices that...
visitors this year: 2,657 If you want to use a GitHub project with Arduino software follow this step-by-step guide. We’ll make an ESP32 camera web server using the Github code from ‘easytarget’. An ESP32-CAM...
visitors this year: 1,475 I discover my bicycle headlamp wasn’t working because some 18650 batteries have a button top. Oh my, that was embarrassing to admit The 18650 ‘battery’, like many batteries, is named...
visitors this year: 531 Here’s what to do when a restaurant asks you to scan a QR code for their track and trace (written in 2020). And here’s how to identify a plant, an...
visitors this year: 393 The need: you use a table light for watching TV and a main (wall) light at other times and you want a coffee table button to switch between one or...
visitors this year: 692 a 3-gang wall switch for your home automation – using eWelink, T4EU1C and Home Assistant I got to a point where I had plenty of ‘smart’ lights and gadgets but...
Roger Frost has been writing about technology since 1988 and this web includes articles; radio interviews with scientists and tutorials to use technology at home and the classroom.
rogerfrost.com is a compendium of ideas for using technology with sciencey questions in mind. Started in 1995 to offer ideas to school science teachers, Roger Frost expanded the coverage to home automation, lifestyle topics, handy gadgets and smarthome sensors to measure, or understand, what’s going on around him.
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