Today we can flick a switch remotely and get numbers from thermometers miles away. Here are my projects that aim to connect devices so that we can save energy and gain security from knowing what’s happening around the home. Almost everything here is connected by ‘Home Assistant’ running on a Raspberry Pi and we’ll show how it’s configured and what there is know.
visitors this year: 40 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...
visitors this year: 63 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: 67 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: 687 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...
visitors this year: 406 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: 313 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...
visitors this year: 824 make a heating oil tank level sensor that’s more useful than anything you can buy can measure oil level in any unit – litres, kWh, gallons or days until I...
visitors this year: 81 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: 2,685 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: 796 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: 1,169 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: 376 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: 13 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: 671 when you want an e-bike and you don’t want another bike:
visitors this year: 155 , 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: 518 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: 142 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: 6,821 … 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: 9,568 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: 274 what do we mean by getting out of sync: Scenario one: You’ve two table lamps which are controlled independently either because they’re smart lamps or because you’ve two regular lamps...
visitors this year: 195 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: 6,404 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: 155 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: 3,773 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: 12,250 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: 179 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: 333 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: 469 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: 3,168 This ceiling ‘coffer’ is lit by four 5m LED strips cut down to size fitted in 2017. If you wanted really, really bright light, these analogue white LED strips were...
visitors this year: 3,245 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: 104 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: 672 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: 1,533 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: 2,664 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: 1,331 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: 1,034 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: 1,815 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: 643 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: 395 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: 277 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...