Wireless Video Camera Doorbell for Home Security or to give it the full title from the Banggood website, Wireless Camera Video Doorbell Home Security WiFi Smartphone Remote Video Rainproof. I love it already.

This morning I opened up this wireless (433Mhz for the bell, WIFI for the app) gadget and to my surpise, setup was amongst the easiest I’ve done for some time. The doorbell itself came minus 18650 (standard rechargeable Lithium) batteries – it will take three (in parallel) but for now I’ve just fitted one I happened to have lying around and charged.

This one is interesting in that even with postage it is less expensive to get from the USA than China though how that affects any duty will be down to where you live. In the UK it seems to be that most low-value packages from China escape duty. When I’m in Spain, I could not possibly consider ordering from the USA as the courier rip-off plus duty would be horrendous (I have at least two stories about that for another day), on the other hand I’m off to the USA in January to see relatives and you can be sure I’ll be buying gadgets from there en-masse (including another one of these for our summer in Spain next year). Last time I was in Chicago I got a Raspberry Pi WAY cheaper than UK pricing – but I digress.

Ok, so I pluggrd the actual bell into the wall (via a US to UK adaptor (I HATE American plugs with their two-bits-of-tin connectors – but then I hate bulky UK plugs as well. Give me a nice, solid and small European connector any day). It buzzed perfectly first time.

I then turned on the camera which said in a friendly voice that it was ready for pairing. I pressed the volume control on both camera and bell and the two units connected – now for the App. In the little booklet that came with the camera/bell combo, they suggest you scan a QR code depending on which phone you have. I picked the centre Android Play Store code – and within seconds I had the app (XSH CAM) loaded and running on the phone.

With the camera next to the phone, I told put in the name and password of my WIFI access point into the app (no sign up or other nonsense) and that was it.

Now as you can see the main unit is mounted outside the front door at home in the (wet) UK (2 small screws and plastic rawlplugs) – the bell is just behind where that car is – garage direction so good range – and at the BACK of that outbuilding is where I just took this screenshot – could have just as easily taken it at the local pub.

I’d love to write loads about this gadget but it’s all done, now all I have to do is pick a suitable spot for the bell and mount the waterproof camera on the front door. The postman is going to LOVE this (he knows me) – “more gadgets from China, Pete?” – and strangely enough, JUST after I fitted this.. today I’m on my own in my (far end of the building) office and DPD are doing a delivery of another new gadget – so this doorbell is going to come in VERY handy.

Yes, I know I don’t photograph well… no need to remind me. Good gadget though – and cheap.

It’s all working – all I have to do now is figure out how to get the camera to alert me to a visitor when I’m out and about and the phone is in my pocket.

As for mounting – the camera itself has 4 small mounting screws AND double sided adhesive options.

Did I mention USB and micro-SD options hiding in the top of the unit and a security bolt in the bottom. You could of course use cloud storage if you wanted to (or none). For charging, you could feed the unit with AC (16-24v). Thinking about it the batteries will only last maybe 6 months without charging so if you travel a lot, consider AC. The manual (or booklet – it is all in English and comprehensive) doesn’t suggest this but of course if you have a handy DC supply on the other side of the wall able to put out the same voltage as the Lithiums you could always use that. Thinking about it, leaving a Lithium battery running the show with a slow very slow Lithium charger feeding through the wall might be another way around the 6 months battery charge life.

Good gadget. My idea of waterproof might vary from the standard Chinese definition so I may consider a little silicone around the back.

I’m looking for tech info on using the video stream if anyone has this (the link at the start points back to the product). Right now, I have the spec for the camera including: 166 degree angle, 1920*1080 resolution, IR LED, 2-way audio, motion detection.. Not entirely sure why the batteries are reportedly dying after only one day? Maybe I didn’t charge them after all.

The post Wireless Video Camera Doorbell with APP appeared first on Scargill's Tech Blog.

If you’d asked me some time ago which was the best smart watch bar none – I’d have said the Samsung Gear 2 – because (despite its benefits) I never really thought the Gear 3 was quite worth the extra. Then along came the new(ish) Samsung Galaxy watch – even MORE expensive – except when it ISN’T. Black Friday sales at Amazon – just cost me £199 for the 46mm silver model – see composite photo.

LOVELY and I have only several thousand faces yet to go for, not to mention countless apps. I got mine straight from Samsung during the sales – still on at the time of writing. Oh, did I mention messaging, 7-day battery, independent GPS, notifications, Super Amoled, rotating bezel, 4GB storage, WIFI, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, Gorilla Glass, Samsung Exynos 9110…

Don’t get me wrong, this is a big watch and for casual wear out in the sun (if it ever comes back) or working, my favourite is still the little (cheap) Xiaomi Mi 4 – but for a night out or some REAL time-killing – this is the one

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This is interesting – I’m used to Smart Sockets and of course Sonoff and other mains power controllers but this is the first time I’ve come across a Pro looking 4-way socket like this with hardwired ethernet, You may find this interesting. I’ve also included info on their single output MQTT power cable – I’ll deal with the latter as well.

On the underside of the larger unit, the title is NETIO PowerPDU 4C – 10A total, 10A per output which is a little confusing – the PowerPDU is the current product. Made in the Czech Republic.

And here is a link: I simply found this on the bottom of the box…

Rather weirdly, they have (fair enough) placed output connectors, power and the on-off switch (with resettable fuse button – apparently – I’m just seeing an ordinary on-off button) on the back, but then as well as 4 indicators + 4 buttons on the front left (for manually turning outputs on and off) and a nice logo on the right, here we have two RJ45 network connectors, a USB2 and com connector on the front.

On the NETIO 4All which I DON’T have, there is in addition to Ethernet, an omnidirectional WIFI antenna with an RP-SMA connector.

Ok, first things first, large unit switched on and plugged into the mains only, 4 orange light turned red. Number 2 LED flashed constantly… why? Buttons did nothing. After 5 minutes only the one light (2) was on – red. Still no response from the buttons – so I plugged in the network. No change. I turned off the unit, turned on again, this time one green network light flashed then went solid green. I got straight onto technical support who answered in perfect Enlish that it was possible I got a unit that may have been tested and not factory reset. I did that (power off, hold buttons 1 and 2 until 3 lights flash and then wait, turn off and on – give time for setup).

The units work perfectly. I downloaded the NetIO Discover utility – that was easy. Windows wanted to protect me from running this but I went ahead anyway. NetIO Discover 1.0.13 – of course this wasn’t necessary as the PowerPDU-4C appeared on my network .

While doing this I was also testing the separate product, the single channel Powercable QIG – or as it says on it’s underpanel – the WIFI 01G – which powered up as it’s own access point. Visually it is well made, solid but nothing to get excited about so that;s the last photo of that, a small uni that plugs into the mains power and has it’s own socket. After plugging it in, I told my mobile phone to attach WIFI to the latter – which it did with default username and password admin and admin. Seconds later I had instructed the little unit as to my local WIFI ssid and password and after a reset, I found BOTH of these units magically sitting on my network.

Rarely has life been this simple and all without any cloud nonsense or “flashing” – just straight out of the box. As you might imagine these names could get unwieldy so the FIRST thing I did was rename the units to largeNetio and smallNetio. Power off, power on.

So, largeNetio handles 4 outputs on Ethernet only, smallNetio handles 1 output on WIFI only. Both can switch to https: if you prefer and both can handle MQTT directly without any cloud. BOTH have power monitoring, largeNetio has local on-off buttons, smallNetio does not.

These are WAY more expensive than my normal cheap Chinese boards but then they are boxed, finished products, fully certified and ready to go without any mods, so a different animal to anything else IOT-related you’ll find in this blog. These are clearly meant for long term use and take a couple of minutes to properly start up. They both register as manufacturer Koukam.as

Let’s take largeNetio first… they both have web interfaces and can be accessed by a browser using http: or https: as you prefer. I generally use http: as I use a VPN for external access. If you don’t have this, then https: (secure) is better.

I’ve put the detailed web interface views into a Youtube video on my channel as there are just too many options – I’d end up with an unfeasable number of photos if I showed all the options in here but these products deserve the attention sa far as I can tell in my limited testing. Here is the link to the video in my YouTube channel which also links back to this blog.

I have to say I’m fascinated. I DID have queries for the developers as the manual link featured on various web admin pages goes nowhere – and there seems to be missing MQTT infomation for the PowerPDU 4C such as allowable topics and payloads. I have to say they came back immediately to me with links and within minutes I was up and running.

https://www.netio-products.com/en/application-notes/an12-mqtt-control-of-netio-smart-sockets-using-the-hivemq-broker
https://www.netio-products.com/en/application-notes/an40-getting-started-with-powercable-mqtt-flex-via-hivemq-mqtt-broker-to-mobile-app

Also in glossary are some important links to MQTT topics

https://www.netio-products.com/en/glossary/mqtt
https://www.netio-products.com/en/glossary/mqtt-flex
https://www.netio-products.com/en/download

Here is the link I used to get largeNetio turning things on and off. The end result – simples…

An inject node with this topic:

devices/largeNetio/messages/devicebound/

and payload set to json:

{“Operation”:”SetOutputs”,”Outputs”: [{“ID”:1, “Action”:1},{“ID”:3, “Action”:0}]}

Simple enough – that turned output 1 on and output 3 off. That last PDF link describes how to set up subscribes and commands

devices/largeNetio/messages/events/

Read that last PDF – it is really informative.

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This is one of those sub-£20 gadgets your spouse or partner will say you don’t really NEED but you will probably want anyway! At least the first part is what my wife has told me repeatedly until last night. “You don’t NEED one, she said – but regardless, here it is and I love it – Xiaomi Mijia LCD Writing Tablet with Pen

SO – you’ll see similar cheap scribbling tablets all over but if you move right now, it is unlikely you’ll get a better price/function combo than this Black Friday special at Banggood (I’ll have to update the blog after Black Friday of course).. I think that link takes you to their sale page but then just type in “Xiaomi Mijia LCD writing tablet”.

Read this short entry and tell me if you see my reasoning, please. When the “tablet” turned up in the post, I too started to wonder… do I really NEED this.. it took me 15 minutes of playing to realise… YES – I DO. Here’s the box, pretty average.. nothing special – but it is MI – not some unbranded generic. Do we care? No. Coming up – the reason I need this – in a photo. The “tablet comes with a cute magnetically side-mounted pen, is 24cm (approx) high by 17cm (approx) wide and has a 25cm diagonal working area.

And here it is…

Hopefully the picture pretty much says it all, but just in case… that photo was taken in pretty abysmal lighting, the tablet has no backlight, uses a CR2032 standard battery which lasts for aeons – used and wiped 100 times a day the battery is supposed to last for a year…. under £20 inc shipping… great Christmas gadget or what?

Here comes the stock photo…

As you can see in the stock photo, that case and magnetic pen are white – and the screen turns green where pressed- not lit up but reflective like paper – and in half decent lighting VERY CLEAR (how do they DO that). And I hear you ask, what use is it? Last thing last night I started scribbling on the tablet – aptly helped by my at first skeptical wife Maureen.

Incidentally if you’ve been living in a cave, Xiaomi” is pronounced Show-me” as in “shower”. and they also make (as well as many other things) possibly (IMHO) the best cheap sports band in the world – the Mi 4 band which, you will see elsewhere in the blog, when I’m not showing off my new Samung Galaxy watch, is always on my wrist (with a different watch face every day) – so I had high expectations of this new gadget and I’m not disappointed. But I digress…

I touched the button on the right side to protect the screen (which never “turns off”) from erasure, while letting me continue to write with the included battery-free pen. This morning, after sliding the side switch to allow erasure, I used the button near bottom centre to instantly wipe the lot but not before taking a photo with my phone at 6am again with rubbish lighting.

And so the point? This is all I could think of at the time, I’ve since thought of lots more used but here are the ones in the photo (minus the “hangman”). Messages for the postman and other deliveries (I’m thinking a couple of very THIN magnets for the door and tablet), menus, todo lists, shopping lists, reminders, appointments and for me as someone going (successfully) through the long term aftermath of a stroke (and as a computer user who is alwys running out of screen space for notes even though I have two large screens) – regular writing practice. I also have a memory like a sieve – and scribbling on my phone in the car on bumpy country roads (as a passenger) is a non-starter – every time we leave the house to go shopping, my wife tells me something I have to remember when we get back (and I rarely do).

I mean.. the uses for this at the price are just about limitless. You may notice in the photo, I griped about the pen being magnetically attached to the right side (I’m left handed) – but of course I could simply turn it upside down… nothing like a spot of lateral thinking. In future I’ll refer to the “erase” button as being on the top.

No memory but capturing complete sets of notes for posterity is why god invented mobile phone cameras

The post Xiaomi Mijia LCD Writing Tablet with Pen appeared first on Scargill's Tech Blog.

The full title for this watch is the Zeblaze Crystal 3, 1.3 inch Heart Rate Blood Pressure  Smart Watch and it is USB charging and light-weight – also the straps are detachable and one of the receptacles on the watch for the strap is also a USB plug. Dead easy as is the setup with the freely downloadable app “Happy Sports”. The presentation box is really nice.

The watch has a range of 4 watchfaces, handles pulse rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, sleep monitoring and tracking, various sports (step count) functions and calories. The slep info is broken down into deep and light sleep. I found it simple to set up and simple to use.

The watch has high precision sensors and up to 7 days battery life (I’ll confirm that later). Did I mention rmote photogrsphy, music control, smart alarm clock, real-time weather and a timer along with bluetooth 4. Charging takes around 2 hours. The manual (unlike some) is readable in English.

Possibly most importantly this is sub-£19 right now with free shipping. Take a look (it’s all in the link at the top).

I must say that like many othr smart watches, the display would not be too visible in bright mid-summer Spanish sun but other than that it is fine. Certainly in typical weather in the UK and some European countries it should be good to go. Note how the strap tucks in – a neat trick which others should use.

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Call me slow (and I’m sure someone will) but I’ve had a POW R2 unit lying around for ages and never gotten around to using it. Not only does this unit handle 15 amps (non-reactive – is there such a thing as a non-reactive 15 amp load?) but also does power monitoring.

I’m as averse to using another cloud and another APP as the next techie, probably one reason why I left this board on the shelf. But recently after a love-affair with firmware ESPURNA I’m back to Tasmota – Theo Arends’s increasingly useful open source software which now works on a big variety of devices – more on that elsewhere. Now before we get started, Itead sent me this ages ago to play with and no we do not do tracking or affiliate stuff – or anything at all, they just occasionally send me bits for honest review and I can honestly say this is the first Tasmota conversion I’ve done where the power monitoring actually works. I’m quite chuffed though a 15w lamp is hardly pushing the boat out. (See later – I have a REAL job for this unit).

Someone said “can you test it on a tungsten lamp”- I’ve not had one of those for the best part of a decade. I was lucky to find an old compact fluorescent.

Recently, having grabbed the POWR2 board and plugged in my handy FTDI (serial programmer) into the PC and loaded up ESP8266Flasher.exe, I grabbed the latest sonoff.bin and flashed the board. Within minutes I had a working board with no cloud, no APP and my web browser was soon talking to the board via it’s web interface. MQTT will be next, as usual. Do NOT copy my rig – we’re looking at lethal voltages here and I’m using very thin wires because I’m lazy and they were handy.

Oh yes, as well as installing the basic SONOFF.BIN software (see Oct 31, 2019 update in here – the file is now called “TASMOTA”), this one liner is needed… In the Tasmota configuration OTHER web page, drop in this, activate and save. Aftr a reboot you should be all done.

{“NAME”:”Sonoff Pow R2″,”GPIO”:[17,145,0,146,0,0,0,0,21,56,0,0,0],”FLAG”:0,”BASE”:43}

Please note, as of the November 30, 2019 update here, Tasmota is now up to version 7.1.0 and I’ve updated the blog accordingly. Also, the software now has an online manual to replace the old WIKI – that should be worth a look. There is also a new FLASHER based on nodemcu-piflasher – all in THIS seems to be the place to go now for Tasmota documentation.

For a second when checking that board out in late October, I panicked as the output voltage in the web display showed zero, then a friend (ok, Antonio in Italy who also alerted me to the latest Tasmota updates) pointed out that I had the output turned off – silly me…. so off I went in search of a test bulb – the result after turning the output on? – not only did the bulb light up but I could watch it’s power consumption on my never-to-be-copied, unsafe test rig. Power monitor calibration will follow – but let’s not get boring. Next step after wiring this up properly and checking the 15A relay with a 2KW heater, I would soon add MQTT and Alexa – 30 seconds-worth. I’m talking 240v or so, not 110v where you would need higher current capability to handle such a heater.

Yes, I know much of Europe is 220v, but where I live in the UK we get up to 250v.

The box says 3500W max (resistive load) so I’m guessing my office 2KW electric heater should be ok as that is around 8 amps for us of reactice load and the POWR” relay is rated at 15A non-reactive. In fact I’m 100% confident it will be ok. For those who don’t know, heaters ARE reactive loads so don’t go trying a 3.5Kw heater on this.

There’s a photo here from the little manual that comes with the product – for those who don’t want to go down the DIY route.

I started this with Tasmota 7.0.0.1 and at the end of this I’ve upgraded to Tasmota 7.0.0.5 (November 20, 2019) and I just had a thought, it has escaped me up to now… The most powerful item in my office is that electric heater, everything else should pale into insignificance – even my reversable air-con which I seem to recall uses no more than maybe 800w to generate 3 times that amount of cool or heat – well I read that ages ago, now is the time to test… I’ll try sticking my POWR2 device inline with power coming into my office… that way I can prove once and for all how much juice all my little toys take. It may be prudent to keep the heater off initially (I do have a radiator running through here from the house). But I need another POWR2 just in case… more when I get one.

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Just a quickie – MrShark got hold of me last night to tell me that Theo Arends’s eagerly-awaited Tasmota is now running at version 7.1.0 – the version now called BETTY – I checked and this morning updated my various home control gadgets some of which run Tasmota… and it is working just fine. The new Tasmota DOCS site replaces the older WIKI and there is a new FLASHER utility. Thanks for the link, Antonio (Mr Shark). All in, I think it is going to be a busy weekend for Tasmota fans – and then we have Cyber Monday… though apparently, Banggood’s Black Friday is still ongoing (Saturday Nov 30). Not sure what’s happening over at Amazon.

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If you are using a WindowsPC and are anything like me you have likely been using Auslogics Disk Defrag Free for countless years as it is so much nicer than the one that comes with Windows.

Well, after many years as I was about to move upmarket to Disk Defrag Pro (to get proper scheduling etc), I discovered Disk Defrag Ultimate – yes it IS different… and as I write this, there is no financial reason NOT to go to the Ultimate version. I’ll leave it to you in case you are interested to check the link for comparisons… while my PC is being optimised. (well, it keeps me busy now the Black Friday sales are over).

Think it is no good for SSD drives? Best read the info on their site – they might disagree,

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To those of you who have been doing IOT (home control etc.) for some time, the Sonoff Basic mains control units need no introduction – especially the older models – but the price right now for those models is worth noting – ordered directly from China (link above), free post, you could be looking at getting these for Christmas depending where you are? and for £3.52 each in pounds sterling or whatever equivalent you have? The sale is on until the end of December 2019 – I’ve taken advantage before they run out.

The original Sonoff Basic is a simple WIFI remote control unit as you see in the image, nothing special and not quite as pretty as the latest model but at this price do we care? The units are basic IOT bread and butter, with 10A max switching capability – and of course if you don’t like the on-board firmware these are easily converted to use Tasmota which is documented elsewhere on this blog. That’s what I’ll be doing with mine.

Two of them just turned up from Banggood… one has a dark blue end on the box, the other a light blue end. Both had quality ontrol stickers which said QC Pass but then the rest was in Chinese – not one of my strong points:-)

The instructions came in a range of languages. They are both the type with the two thick wires inside and the 2 way set of holes on board or programming.

So off I went to get the Flasher to program these new boards. I grabbed the Windows executable of the brand new “Tasmotizer” along with the latest Tasmota.bin image and with a couple of minutes I had two new working Sonoff Basics complete with Tasmota 7.1.2.2 – there’s nothing like being bang up-to-date..

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My ESP8266 home control code ESP-GO doesn’t get a lot of attention in here as I’m a “Tasmota” fanatic but that does not mean that ESP-GO is dead – far from it. ESP-GO contains not only RGB code for serial 5v LEDs but also a complete programming setup to generate and loop sequences… and so with merely one wire and VERY  little work, we end up with some fancy animation.

I wrote the original version of the code for this beautiful Christmas decoration in December 2017 – when we lived in a different house with a completely different WIFI setup and of course I put this gadget in the loft and forgot all about transferring the Node-Red code across to the new house Raspberry Pi (at the time I was a little busy having an ischaemic stroke). So today when I powered up the ESP12 and nothing happened I got very close to throwing the lot in the bin. As I had an hour to spare (there is an issue with the present development release of Tasmota so I’m having a half-day break to avoid frustration) I put an FTDI on the generic ESP12 board (inside the decoration) and put in my current WiFi and MQTT credentials.

The only things that changed were WiFi ssid and pass, along with the IP address of my local MQTT broker. Thankfully all else remained the same. Thank heavens for the blog.  I’ve made tiny changes to the Node-Red function to reflect a more modern way of using global variables – otherwise this is the 2017 project and it works a TREAT..

Here we see an old, gutted plastic Christmas window decoration which WAS originally filled with pretty grim, old fashioned white lights but now has a string comprising a 94 (5v) serial LED string running animation around the inside.

For anyone using my ESP-GO software and wanting to knock up a quick Christmas animation – here it is…

My code lets you refer to a string of RGB lights – up to 300 of them and do things like:  make the first 10 LEDs RED and pause them for a second, then make the second 20 LEDs GREEN and wait for 5 seconds, clear the lot, wait 1 second. 

That sequence will then continue  forever in a loop – and that’s just a trivial example – here in THIS decoration I set up a nice colourful display (the actual plastic unit is white – no colour at all and the cat has nothing to do with anything but in 2019 she’s still here, still needy and still keeps us up at night).

This is now INCOMPATIBLE with  pre-2017 code so if you have something already running from 2016 when I FIRST wrote about this idea, you’ll need to add a new first parameter (1) to keep compatibility.

Here is how to make a Christmas light as above with yellow-white-blue-ish flashing tips…

if (msg.payload=="reset") .global.set("stepper",0); 

var steps=[
"{rgbstop}",
"{rgbstart:12,94}",
"{rgbadd:1,8,22,255,0,0,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,36,24,255,0,0,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,66,20,255,0,0,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,0,8,0,255,0,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,86,8,0,255,0,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,0,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,255,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,80,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,150,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,150,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,80,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,255,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,0,200}",

"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,0,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,255,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,200,40,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,150,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,80,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,120,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,200,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,30,200}",

"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,0,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,00,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,200,80,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,130,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,200,200,150,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,180,80,200}",
"{rgbadd:1,60,6,255,255,200,5}",
"{rgbadd:1,30,6,255,255,0,200}" ];

msg.topic="xmas/toesp";
msg.payload=steps[global.get("stepper")];
global.set("stepper",global.get("stepper")+1);
return msg;

In the node-Red code above, I wait for the ESP21 board to login as usual – and when it does I sent it a sequence of instructions, once, which will set up the display. Once set the code will do nothing more. Purple nodes are MQTT talking to the display unit which is called “xmas”

That function that says “Continue until end of array is merely this..

if (msg.payload!==undefined) return msg;

I’ve also included an “inject” mode for manual testing. It merely sends out text with the word “reset” in the payload.

Looking at the list above, the first command stops anything already running. The second sets up 94 LEDs on GPIO12 (count is the second parameter).

An example of a simple light up is the third instruction – code 1, from LED 8, light  up 15 LEDs in RED (255,0,0) for 5ms.

The other instructions are the same, lighting up segments of the display for X amount of time, I do the tips of the candles in white, wait a while then change them to yellow – the rest of the display is static – of course one could be a HELL of a lot cleverer than that. This is all noted in the WORD document for the ESP-GO code on BitBucket.

There is also a command 4 which means END – you’d only use that if you wanted to perform a series of loops and then stop permanently. That has no parameters.

Assuming you’ve used the latter and have a sequence which does whatever and then stops – it might be nice to store this in FLASH and recall it when needed. There are four non-volatile buffers available to store this information.

{rgbstore:X} where X is 0-3

You can play back any of these as below, again assuming in this case GPIO12 and 12 LEDs. Set X to be 0-3

{rgbrecall:X}
{rgbstart:12,12}

The above will play back a stored sequence immediately.

The code is in the usual place and available via the OTA. See Home Control blog.

As you can imagine – you could set up a LOT of this stuff as the code is only sent out once.  Limits are 1 strip of up to 300 RGB serial LEDs per ESP8266.

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Up to now, apart from my Samsung Gear, regular readers will have only seen me ranting about low-cost smartbands and will know that my all time favourite up to now is the Xiaomi Mi4. Well, today I’m moving upmarket a little, heading back towards the likes of the Gear and here’s a good example. The Amazfit Stratos Sports Watch which came all the way from Banggood – they might sell more of this excellent watch by providing more face examples – I can’t be the only sucker for a good range of watchfaces.

The original of this blog entry was written on Nov 4 2019. I still love the Amazfit watch – but since then I sold my Samsung S2 and S3 and bought the Samsung Galaxy in the Black Fiday sales. With only one left wrist available, Samsung wins but not by a lot.. Samsung battery life is rubbish – but watch faces are fantastic. In both cases we are talking top notch watches here.

So – to the Amazfit – at first sight I thought “that’s not very bright” – but the thing is it is “not very bright” i.e. just enough, in every light condition I’ve put it in so far, which is more than can be said for some. So indoors you might think “well, that’s ‘ok’ but I’ll bet it is unreadable outside” – wrong.

On the principle that a picture is worth 1000 words, see combo photo at the top, various shots from my wrist this morning and yes, I know, only 80+ steps, it is Sunday – and it is early. Initial pairing with my Pocophone was so easy I didn’t bother to take notes. When the Gear came out, it was one of few with a choice of watchfaces (and it does have a massive library of faces) but now others are catching up…

I think the plastic band on the Amazfit will have to go in favour of a leather one as the watch isn’t the smallest in the world, but that’s easy to fix. Check out the link above for all kinds of detail and glorious photos, spec etc. See a random sample of available Amazfit faces, no doubt in the coming weeks I’ll spend FAR too much time downloading more.

One thing I DO find annoying – and if someone steps in here maybe we can help others, is the Amazfaces APP. I used this with my Xiaomi Mi band until one day Xiaomi Mi changed the way they do thgs and all of a sudden the AmazFaces app had to change. Now I’m trying to use it with the Amazfit Stratos watch and I simply cannot get my head around the app.

Amazfaces will from time to time say “Check your Inetrnet connection, and try again” (two mistakes in there, both theirs). The Amazfaces app also wants me to ensure I have AmazMod on my phone (I grabbed that) and on selecting one of the many faces available will (after I press “download”) say “Update Service” indicating a need for watch service application version 12 or higher. I downloaded the latest version from their link and no change. They really need to think about their handling of users. But to be fair that’s an extra, the main watch app works just fine.

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It had to happen – I was all set to write about something different for Christmas – a little while ago I ordered a small, neat cordless vacuum (house/car) from Gearbest – mainly as I was working on my heating system and router here in the UK, one in a ceiling height kitchen cupboard, the other in the loft (200 year old house so you can imagine the state of the loft).

As many of you know I spend my summers in Spain and winters in the UK… the plan was to have a small vacuum I could lug up the stairs into the loft without breaking my neck to clean the place as I went along (I HATE getting covered in cobwebs). I WILL do a little writeup on this in the not-too-distant future, however, I screwed up and didn’t update Gearbest with my change of address to the UK for the winter.

Oh, check out the video – in the link below for Gearbest. I think someone needs to work on their English.. “Round nozzle for cleaning big dirty thing”. One could have a field day with that statement but as this is a family channel, I won’t

Thankfully one of my friends back in Spain sent me a Facebook message to say that there was a parcel for me in the “florist near Dia” (grocery store) in the next town (Huescar in Southern Spain) according to a pal of hers. Not only did I fail to give Gearbest the right info – but DHL (never ones to worry unduly about getting things right) were ready to hand it over to anyone called Peter. My friend’s friend’s son was in the store and they said there was a package for Peter. Thankfully he spotted the surname and put them right. Subsequently my next door neighbour picked up the parcel for me (with a copy of my passport). At £30 all in for the unit, it isn’t worth shipping from Spain to the UK when I’ll be back there soon. The cobwebs won’t mind the delay. What I CAN tell you is that the unit has a large battery and a washable HEPA filter.

Anyway, this is NOT a review, I’ll do that when I’ve given it a hammering in April. My neighbour reports that it lights up nicely and was well packed and that’s about all I can tell you for now. Here’s the link: Alfawise Vacuum Cleaner from Gearbest. It is in with a good chance of being a winner as other Alfawise products I’ve had from Gearbest have been good including the really neat IP camera I blogged about some time ago which is in daily use in my office.

For now, I hope all of you have a great Christmas.. I’m not done for the year but I thought I’d sneak that in.

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This blog entry is about a really NEAT 10 inch 2560x1600P 2K FHD Monitor from Banggood. So what’s good about it?. Surely that resolution in a tiny monitor is useless? Well ,it might be if you could not perfectly scale it down (but if you are mainly watching high quality downloaded movies – why not go for gold). The monitor also has 2 nice speakers built into the back, will run from 12v or 5v USB C (I’m running it off the latter), has “Display Port” and HDMI connectors and a 3.5mm jack for audio. When is low voltage and small size better? When you are short of room or on the road of course. The unit can also handle sound through HDMI in case that is your only source.

I can use this with my laptop/tablet as a second monitor or my Raspberry Pi – even in the car (not when I’m driving I may add), something that would be unfeasable with my massive mains powered monitors. I like it already. In fact I think I WILL put my Pi3 inside – but make the connection to hdmi switchable between two soueces, the PI or an external PC.

I’ve seen other reviews showing the USB-C connector as an output – trust me, I’m using it as an input right now though the next stage might be to hook the monitor into the car 21v and use the USB-C to power my RPI3. The options here are endless.

The monitor comes with a bolt-on base with adjustable angle – or you could use the 4 mounting holes on the back as an alternative. I’m thinking – back of car seats (not recommended in your dad’s car). The mounting base has optional double-sided adhesive pads (included in the box).

It would seem you can even fit an RPI3 inside the casing – and if the monitor will power the PI – WELL, there’s an application in itself.

I’ve some way to go on this… my PI is set to text prompt mode, I need to re-enable graphical (Buster) desktop. Meanwhile I am enjoying trying different screen modes in Windows 10 (using the little screen as a second monitor) with nothing more than the normal right-click on the Windows 10 desktop, This is fun.

On the Pi I had to make a change to /boot/config.txt – at least to get TEXT mode working. Here is what I am using.

hdmi_pixel_freq_limit=300000000
max_framebuffer_width=1920
max_framebuffer_height=1080
hdmi_cvt=2560 1600 56 5 0 0 1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87

I probably don’t have that quite right (it’s just a simple text file) – but it is working. The PC requires no such messing around. The monitor is able to handle 2560px wide, on a 10″ screen, my eyes are not. I will soon put this to good use – more in here when I do.

Next job – find out how much power the monitor has to spare.

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To give hte camera it’s fulll title – GK-200MP2-B WiFi IP Security camera, this is a nice camera from Itead. No power supply, just the camera, you need 5v DC (3.5mm x 1.35mm dia – ie the smaller type) to run it and it handles WiFi or RJ45 connection. It can also store video on a standard, local (not supplied) microSD (tf) card – use class 10 or better.

To start the camera initially I had to use the”eWeLink” App – I used “sound pairing” which involved listening to an English voice and entering the details of my access point, adding password, enabling RTSP and that was about it but from there on I quickly moved to my favourite ONVIFER app which runs several of my cameras from different suppliers. That required entering the password I’d put into the camera earlier as well as it’s ID number.

Both the output volume and mic volume can be adjusted and also there are indoor and outdoor mic sensitivity controls. Qouted temperature range ias 0-55c – fine for Spanish summers if you choose to put it in a sheltered spot outdoors – not sure about UK winters which can get WAY below zero C. Fine indoors of course.

So – if you wish to use third party software, enable RTSP protocol on the APP – this also enables connection to an NVR device. I’ve not done the latter.

The camera isn’t the smallest I’ve come across at 109mm x 109mm x 120mm but gives a good HD 1080p result and no problems. It also has 340 degree pan, 120 degrees tilt and (accurate) motion detection along with 2-way audio. It is built for indoor use but looks like it would handle a shower if you taped over the SD and RJ45 connectors at the back.

Up to now, no complaints and generally Itead stuff works so I don’t expect any problems. The camera has IR night vision and can be mounted on desk, wall or ceiling. Last time I checked it was UK price £22.40 inc UK plug.

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This item turned up for me on my return from the USA late 2018: The K2 OLED Bluetooth Smartwatch. Then I did an updated version on June 2019 of the original December 2018 blog entry as I had just successfully updated the app and watch firmware – and now here we are in Dec 2019… I have newer watches and I’ve sold several meanwhile… but despite limited faces I just can’t seem to part with this one and keep coming back to it.

The watch has magnetic charging and an App for iPhone and Android – I used the Android version called “iband”. The app is referred to in the 12-sided booklet that comes with this inexpensive watch and it all works well. I had no difficulties at all pairing the watch to my Pocophone F1 smartphone, a process which thanks to the use of a QR-code took moments only.  Unlike some other smart-watches out there which die after a day or two even if not used, the stand-by time of this watch is very long – I can leave it on my desk for weeks without the battery dying. A year later and there is only a slight mark on the screen – strap looks perfect despite being lugged to Spain and back this year.

The watch has a decent display (but like others of this kind, don’t expect miracles in bright summer sunshine – and be sure to set the brightest screen levell in the iBand App) and the band is replaceable, being standard in size. On the underside of the watch is the usual optical pulse-rate sensor. There are no buttons on the watch, instead, the working face is touch-sensitive (very sensitive – single point only). By end of day 4 of using the watch, I originally noted that the charge indicator still showed round 80% – that was a really good start.

Not only that but a quick check in the Android App produced updates for not only the APP but also the watch firmware so I quickly brought everything fully up to date. That was back in December 2018 – I’ve just done the same again (June 2019) and both APP and watch updated to the latest versions without issue.

Here’s the link: K2 OLED Swimming, long stand-by-time Smart Watch — https://goo.gl/FkDeTi  – I note (Dec 2019) that Bangood have them on their end of year sale – £22.69 to the UK (for example) with £1.06 postage

The K2 watch claims to be IP68 waterproof with polished sapphire glass. The 200maH battery claims to give 25-30 days standby or 10-15 days general use per charge – time will tell. Heart rate monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, pedometer, sleep monitoring, message synchronisation, incoming call reminder and more. The unit takes around 3 hours to fully charge, actual time will vary depending on your charger. The watch merely comes with a magnetic USB lead. The watch arrived will packed and presented.

I like it and it seems to do what it claims. Mine came with the red-black 2-tone strap. Other colour combinations are available.

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It’s Chistmas and time for some new gadgets. I’ve used all manner of logic analysers from the tiny Salae analysers (and the clones) through to expensive and large ZeroPlus monsters. The former are not really a lot of use due to limited bandwidth, the latter (in particular the big 64 channel job) are at least for me, way overkill. I just need something to help me with my little ESP8266 and Raspberry Pi projects with reasonable speed and accuracy while not taking up a lot of room. I do like Ikalogic kit but like the Salae units, the small size is a tad deceptive as you still need a PC or tablet for the display.

And so in comes the LA104 – a 100Msa/s (max sampling) neat, self-contained (complete with display) pocket Logic Analyser that ticks the above boxes and more. The unit arrived in a nice box, fully charged and with a spare set of leads. No USB charge lead was provided but then – microUSB leads – there anyone who doesn’t have at least one lying around? And thanks for rthe feedback guys – I’m adding this link to the firmware page – https://github.com/gabonator/LA104

I noted that the Mini DSO LA104 isn’t particularly cheap on Amazon but from Banggood, it is quite reasonable. Mine took a couple of weeks to arrive.

Not only is the LA104 thin, it is also lightweight and the 320×240 2.8″ screen is sharp and easy to read. Logic input range is 0-5v so no problems with 3v3 or 5v logic.

At this point, the mandatory specs… but first a summary – this pocket size uit is great for checking out I2c, SPI and UART signals as well as “user-defined” protocols. My own interests are mainly limited to the first two.

The adverts claim the unit comes with English manual – in fact, it has a folded sheet of card, one side of which is in English, the other in Chinese – HOWEVER, here is THIS PDF manual with 22 small pages all in English…

In case anyone is wondering about packaging – quite substancial – and arrived in perfect condition.

And so to the spec…

Overview:

LA104 is a 4 channel logic analyzer with a built-in screen and battery. The shell is made of a CNC machined aluminum alloy. With its compact and portable design, this unit provides a versatile and powerful solution to your analyzing needs!

Specifications:

● Storage: 8MB USB flash disk memory
● Screen Size: 2.8”
● Screen Resolution: 320 × 240
● Battery: 500mAh
● Dimension: 100 × 56 × 8.6mm
● Weight: 83g
● Certifications: CE, FCC

Input:
● Channels: 4
● Max Sample Rate: 100Msa/s
● Minimum capture pulse width: 10ns
● Input impedance: 1MΩ

Output:
● Channels: 4
● Mode: SPI, I2C, UART
● 3V output Channel: 1

Included:
1 x LA104 Digital Logic Analyzer
20 x DuPont Wire
5 x Probe Hook
1 x English “Manual”

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I JUST received my neat little Sonoff RF Bridge. It took all of 30 seconds for the brand new (and surprisingly small and neat) unit to connect to Sonoff’s EweLink app and then a few seconds more to upgrade the firmware. How easy was THAT. The only info I gave it was my WiFi username and passwork – and when it came up with a rubbish name I hit EDIT and called the unit BRIDGE. That’s it.

The sofware revision immediately went from 2.7.0 to 3.3.0 – mind you, that didn’t last long. As soon as I got used to the RFBridge I put Tasmota on it. Firstly the latest release 8.0 then the latest DEV update 8.1.0.2

This will be ongoing – I needed this as I want to be able to add the odd 433Mhz device to my home control – and monitoring smoke alarms etc on my mobile when I’m over in Spain is a must. I’m wondering if I’ll need two of these as from my home to the home office comprises several inches of solid stone wall… I don’t suppose there have been any miracles in RF technology recently.

Anyway as you might imagine I very quickly tired of the standard software and went off here for Tasmota. Flashing the ESP side of the RF Bridge takes no time with the latest release of Tasmota. I used my normal 3v3 FTDI – and hence did not need any mods on my “Board R2 V1.0” Bridge. As you might expect to flash Tasmota onto the Bridge.

I had to hold the one and only button on the board while powering up the FTDI (that’s after setting the onboard switch to OFF). I flashed the software, cycled the power, set the onboard switch back to ON and that was Tasmota up and running. I tried loading the config at the same time but messed up my WIFI password. NO matter the board came up with it’s own local web server and so using my phone I connected to that – and then put in my WIFI credentials – and gave the board a name “bridge”. From there the board appeared on my network. Using the address (in my PC browser) I filled in the MQTT details and friendly name “bridge” and tried an experiment in MQTT that worked. With a topic of tele/bridge/RESULT the board, on getting an RF signal from my handy Itead 8-key remote, returned:

tele/bridge/RESULT : msg.payload : string[109]”{“Time”:”2019-12-30T23:39:38″,”RfReceived”:{“Sync”:7330,”Low”:250,”High”:730,”Data”:”1FCD68″,”RfKey”:”None”}}”

At this point I’m still clueless bu that “data” reliably returns a value for each of the keys on the iTEAD remote and a fire alarm I’d grabbed as it claimed to be RF Bridge compatible ALSO returned a reliable result. As I unerstand it there are severe limits as to how far one could expand this using the iTead RF software so my next job will b to grab the (also) free “Portisch” firmware and add that to the mix. This apparently will greatly extend the number of devices the Bridge will talk to and also allow the bridge to SEND commands itself. More on that later. NYE trip coming up which will stop me for a couple of days.

Ok, I’ve hit the limit without other RF software – I have a couple of Byron SX35 433Mhz pushbuttons (actually I have about 100) – and out of them… nothing.

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Let’s hope it’s a good one. Having been through hundreds of PoundStretcher cheap solar lights over the years, most of which manage one UK winter if you are LUCKY, I’ve taken to moving just a little upmarket recently and with some success. This 100-LED Solar Motion Sensor light just turned up for me today (Jan 2, 2020) from Banggood – no way to tell how long it will last yet but I have other not-unsimilar models which are on their second or 3rd winter already.

Currently the lamp is £8.52 (freepost) to the UK, no doubt the website will detail other countries including the EU and America. This light is fairly small but powerful, took 4 weeks to get here in the UK (free postage) and up to now looks good – it is BRIGHT (movement triggered, stays on for 15 seconds after movement stops – unlike the Poundland specials which barely light anything other than themselves and insist on staying lit (even when there is no-one there to see them) so much so that for me, one every 3 metres or so would do nicely.

My one tip for every light of this type is to WD40 or similar WHEN NEW and every few months (everything else Ive tried fails to keep damp out – and peels anyway after a while either through sunlight or cold). Usually the first thing to go on the cheapest units is caused by PCB corrosion or poor battery contact. On lamps I have similar in style to this, the seal behind the lights fails and the odd LED corrodes and fails. My hope is that WD40 from day one will minimise this.

Over time once this is up on my office wall, I’ll update the blog to let you know how it does. I’m hopeful.

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And why would anyone write abut a power supply? Not the most interesting subject, but like many boring things such as backups, essential. I created a short video last month about the Owon P4603 – a single channel job of particular interest as it has a “proper” toroid instead of relying on a tiny switched-mode supply.

Well, THIS ONE is a true MONSTER. I could not believe the size of the box it came in – and the weight? No chance of this getting damaged in the lab. It is ROCK SOLID. The ODP3033 is an “accurate, professional power supply capable of delivering 195w”. Precision is claimed to be up to 1 mv and 1 ma with noise as low as 2 mVpp.

Both RS232 and USB connectors are available on the back as well as RJ45 LAN. The supply is able to program arbitrary waveforms with up to 100 points which means it can be use as a basic waveform generator. Presets can be stored in up to 10 groups for quick switching between different voltage and current levels.

I’m a little confused as to the layout choice, the (480×320) display shows channels 1, 2 and 3 in left to right order whereas in reality they are CH3, CH1, CH2 in that order with CH3 being more limited than the other two. Overall however it makes a great addition to my desktop.

Not cheap, this is a professional supply and though not obvious in the photo, size is 250mmx158mmx358mm (ie deep) hence my use of the term MONSTER. The supply weighs 9.8kg and comes complete with USB lead, power cord (mine came with an EU cord, easily replaced), spare fuse and manual.

As you can see, two of the outputs can be grounded to +V, -V or not at all. All channels offer up to 3A output, channels 1 and 2 can run from 0 to 30v, channel 3 from 0 to 6v. Maximum overall power is 198w

The unit hsa an automatic cooling system – so no noise on low load – that’s handy – more later…

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I am as most of you know a great fan of the Sonoff BASIC modules – because, in the main, they are cheap and reliable – but increasingly I’ve been faced with challenges that involve the need for isolated contacts – or high power (immersion heating) or both.

Well, here is my solution – which remains really low cost. The Sonoff BASIC (last but one version) is REALLY cheap at Banggood – and like most other Sonoffs (and other similar devices) it tops out at 10 amps maximum. There are a few devices like Blitzwolf and others which handle up to 16A MAX… but even then, one immersion heater I’m controlling, heats for example the Sonoff TH16 up a little too much for my liking when in a warm cupboard.

Also few if any of these devices have completely isolated contacts (I need that for my thermostat) and all of them switch only the LIVE wire. The answer to all of my problems has been staring at me all this time and I didn’t see it.

Simply take the cheapest option, Sonoff BASIC – and add a 25 AMP contactor from AliExpress – 220v coil (American readers can use 110v verions of all of this)…. 2 poles in my case so you get live AND neutral switching from one Sonoff and one dual contactor – £3.85 + free post for the contactor – right now the v2 Sonoff BASIC is under £4 – I just grabbed some. Add a short piece of DIN rail if you like. That’s what I am doing. It is possible for £1 ($1.40) more to switch up to 63A – I didn’t need that.

You could probably (I will try) make the Sonoff BASIC a bad fit onto the same piece of DIN rail…. the advantage of all of this in my case is 2 screws into the pasterboard wall for the DIN rail, the rest mounts on the rail. If you have a larger set, how about a Sonoff 4CH Pro – which is DIN mounted with isolated outputs – adding in a breaker if and where needed for the extra power.

I’m ordering this stuff up now so it will be here when I get back from a short visit to the USA. What fun.

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