Written because it pissed me off. I hope this helps you in your hour of need. You have to do one bulb at a time. If you plug in multiple bulbs and try to pair them, it won't work. I don't know why. You will need a portable lamp - or some other way to bring the bulb as close as possible to the hub. Open the Hue app, go through the "Add Device" sequence. The app changes regularly and may be…
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I unashamedly love my smart-meter. Rather than having my energy provider guesstimate my bill, or having to send manual readings each month, it automatically beams them back to its mothership. It also enables interesting things like variable energy tariffs. By design, the smart-meter is limited in how much data it can send back. You can choose to have readings sent monthly, weekly, daily, or…
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Summer is coming. The best time to buy air-con is before it gets blazing hot. So, off to the Mighty Internet to see if I can find a unit which I can attach to my burgeoning smarthome setup. I settled on the SereneLife 3-in-1 Portable Air Conditioning Unit. It's a small(ish) tower, fairly portable, claims 9000 BTU, is reasonable cheap (£160ish depending on your favourability to the algorithm), …
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Another blog post which is a long and complex search query. I have a bunch of smart plugs. Some use WiFi, some use Zigbee, some use Bluetooth. None of them use PowerLine Ethernet. Why is that? I have a bunch of PowerLine Ethernet adapters. They let me use my home's electrical wiring as a network. They also let me plug electrical items into them. But none of them can be controlled remotely. Why…
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They say that The Best Camera Is The One That's With You - the same is true of Raspberries Pi. As much as I'd love a 4B, they seem permanently sold out. So I dug through my scrapheap of old tech and resurrected an ancient Pi2. It's old, outdated, slow, with limited RAM, and has a bunch of much-abused GPIO pins. But it works and - crucially - is still supported by Home Assistant OS. Well...…
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I've been experimenting with Far Infrared heating. The panel itself is fairly boring technology. A large solid-state "thing" which turns electricity into Infrared energy. But what's the "smarts" in it which allows it to be controlled? TO THE SCREWDRIVERS, ROBIN! There's a single board hiding in the boring grey shell. It's a QNQ010W - which doesn't have any publicly available data. KB-5150…
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All gadgets have to include WiFi now. That's the law! Does your home smell horrible? Would you like it to smell lovely? Well, friends, the good folk at Asakuki think that I'm the sort of person who knows lots of putrid people. So they sent me this Essential Oil Diffuser. It's pretty plug-and-play. Pour some water into the supplied jug, tip it into the unit, shake in a few drops of your…
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What with the situation in the world, I've been trying to reduce our domestic gas consumption. Looking through our smart meter readings, our biggest usage is heating (in winter) followed by hot water (showers and baths) then cooking. We have a Tado smart thermostat which turns the heating off when we're out - but I wondered if there was something more efficient we could do. Burning gas to heat…
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After my rant a few weeks ago, I finally found a cheap WiFi smoke alarm. A few disclaimers before I get into this review: It was shipped from China, not from the UK as stated. The device doesn't exist on the manufacturer's website. Stock on Amazon keeps appearing and disappearing, so may be difficult to get. If you're happy with those limitations, let's crack on! This is the CS01W /…
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I've had a Nest smoke alarm for about 7 years. It connects to my WiFi network and occasionally pings a message to my phone that I've burnt my toast. Nifty! But, due to planned obsolescence regulatory requirements, it needs to be replaced. Back in 2014, the Nest cost £100. In the exciting world of 2021, it costs... £100! WTAF? Surely a combination of market capitalism and Moore's Law means t…
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Five years ago, I wrote that I had 30 connected devices at home. How has that changed over the last half-decade? Some of my devices have consolidated. My Eufy security cameras have a hub - so despite having more cameras, They're using fewer IP addresses. Similarly, I've replaced most of my LIFX bulbs with Zigbee which also use a hub-and-spoke model. So these are the devices I currently have…
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I have a new Smart Meter to measure my electricity and gas usage. It's the Honeywell AS302P. It's a SMETS2 meter, which means it has a number of interesting features. ALCS (Auxiliary Load Control Switch) - this means that a car charger can be remotely started and stopped based on network demand. DCC connection - this means it can report back to my energy supplier every 30 minutes, and I can…
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