want to DIY? Because I have daily uses for image-AI, I’ll explain below how I set about installing it ‘for free’ on a pretty good PC made for gaming. AI is mostly not free...
it’s not hard to make use of old or inexpensive 433MHz RF devices so that you can use them with modern smart home devices. For example, a 443MHz bell push button on my desk...
control all your smart thermostats from the Home Assistant dashboard When you have several thermostats there’s a need to see them at a glance. Home Assistant has a ’tile card’ that provides a compact...
This tank level sensor produces surprising detail about my heating oil usage. It’s a bit like a smart meter for oil so I now know say, how many litres I burned each day for...
what you need to set up a Bluetooth proxy A Bluetooth proxy requires almost any of the ESP32 development boards you can find at maker shops or Amazon. You need an ESP32-based board not...
You can connect the Switchbot water leak detector with Home Assistant without the need for a Switchbot hub. The detector uses Bluetooth and wifi to send out its alarms which will be picked up...
The Google Nest thermostat dial can have a wired connection and/or a wireless connection with the Heat Link base. A loss of wireless connection is a rare event and it usually fixes itself. In...
Smart devices often find their best uses in Home Assistant ‘automations’. ‘Automations’ are better known as ‘routines’ and they make quite unrelated devices interact with each other as will be shown below. What follows...
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...
visitors this year: 2,265 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...
visitors this year: 605 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...
visitors this year: 86 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...
visitors this year: 6,011 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...
visitors this year: 3,283 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...
visitors this year: 1,124 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...
visitors this year: 339 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...
visitors this year: 4,771 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: 6,768 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: 2,887 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: 2,401 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: 4,401 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: 559 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: 9,407 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: 1,748 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: 3,922 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: 1,197 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: 954 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: 443 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: 1,191 when you want an e-bike and you don’t want another bike:
visitors this year: 320 , 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: 1,067 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: 286 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: 15,476 … 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: 20,901 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: 636 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: 344 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: 10,041 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: 339 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: 6,345 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: 19,646 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: 287 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: 1,344 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: 859 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: 7,956 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: 4,055 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: 226 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: 1,183 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: 2,201 My other page tells how much heating oil the boiler uses. Here’s how I collect and display energy use measurements around the home. My measurements provide two things – a...
visitors this year: 6,117 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...
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, its coverage now extends to gadgets, home automation, home living and sensors to help understand what’s going on around the house.
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Roger Frost (his cv) has been writing about technology since 1988 and this web includes his articles; tutorials, lesson outlines and radio interviews.
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