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 variously 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 alternative...
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...
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 During the summer we...
If you have curiosity and/or paranoia about what can be happening across your network there are tools which can gather information for you. This post will show how installed some tools to start to...
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...
the need for a (nicer) sub-domain: Your home network allows you access to ‘services’ such as an IP camera, the router, Home Assistant, a wi-fi access point, a NAS drive (eg Synology or QNAP)...
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, Time Machine gets it...
a tank level sensor that’s more useful than anything you can buy. This post shows my housing for a sensor that measures oil and water levels. The sensor is a VL53L0X time of flight...
make a heating oil tank level sensor that’s more useful than anything you can buy Background: some homes use diesel oil as a fuel to keep warm in winter. Over the course of a...
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. A way forward is...
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 – you’ll find plenty...
handling data from experiments / home & garden / monitoring at home
by roger · Published Mar 2022 · Last modified Mar 2023
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 some ways to turn...
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 and toe-saving on a...
visitors this year: 674 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: 614 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: 35 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: 871 when you want an e-bike and you don’t want another bike:
visitors this year: 205 , 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: 645 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: 175 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: 9,662 … 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: 13,803 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: 416 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: 219 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: 7,663 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: 195 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: 4,655 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: 14,512 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: 204 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: 529 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: 576 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: 4,421 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: 3,637 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: 120 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: 779 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: 1,739 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: 3,479 A home automation platform, such as Home Assistant, allows you to make temperature v time graphs using sensors that you might place around the home. Monitoring temperatures allowed me to...
visitors this year: 1,536 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: 1,213 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: 2,147 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: 913 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: 434 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: 321 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: 562 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...
visitors this year: 18,404 a project to integrate inexpensive 433MHz RF devices with modern smart devices. We’ve brought all the instructions to get going with RFlink on one page. see also: 433MHz smarter letterbox...
visitors this year: 1,567 In a previous project I set up temperature sensors in my room and sent the data via Bluetooth to Home Assistant, the home automation platform. Home Assistant is software that...
visitors this year: 6,135 Toggling a light switch means that a press of the switch will turn the light off or on depending it what it was last doing. There is nothing clever about...
visitors this year: 1,299 I wouldn’t especially recommend the D-Link DCS-D150 motion sensor but it does have some features that had me buy it. Firstly it plugs into a wall socket above a worktop...
visitors this year: 805 If you could look inside an old replaceable laptop battery pack like this you’d find 4 or 6 cells. Usually the cells are 18mm diameter, 65mm long and are called...
visitors this year: 591 ‘Smart meters’ and metering devices usually measure the electricity used by the whole house*. However I prefer to pay attention to the electricity used by individual devices, such as a...
visitors this year: 4,947 In this project I control a Sonoff light switch using Home Assistant. You can do the same with other Sonoffs. The switch shown here is the T4EU1C wall plate switch....
visitors this year: 845 The regular way to switch a Sonoff relay is to use the official ewelink app. Other ways require you to ‘flash’ the Sonoff device with Tasmota or ESPHome software and...
visitors this year: 3,601 BELOW YOU’LL FIND: 1. Get IFTTT to put the data I send into a Google sheet Go to IFTTT, sign in and add the Webhooks service and the Google Sheets...
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, gadgets and sensors to measure, or understand, what’s going on around him.
To find things the search box, the menu and the keywords work perfectly (and we’re totally free as in advert free).
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.
Please enjoy and share this content. To say hi – there’s a reply button on each page that goes straight to me in Cambridge, UK. Send a private message on this page.
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