Amazon Alexa is a fun little bit of kit. But it can be tricky getting it to work with all your smart devices. Not every company has an Alexa skill - just like not every company has an app. Using Flask-Ask it is possible to bring Alexa smarts to a range of previously mute devices. Alexa coding works on "intents" - the following is a simple intent. That is, you can only ask the skill one…
Continue reading →
I can now query my solar panels via my Alexa Amazon Dot Echo thingie (why so many names?). https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/VID_20170501_161804.webm I flatter myself as a reasonably competent techie and programmer, but fuck me AWS Lambdas and Alexa skills are a right pile of shite! Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, but they're a pain in the arse to get anything done. I…
Continue reading →
I'm probably not the first to do this - but it was a fun way to learn just how tricky it is to control a cheap quadcopter even in mild weather. This video has no sound. Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video tag. Good enough quality to make sure the panels aren't covered in bird-mess, leaves, or anything else which might block their efficiency. Thanks to Jack Franklin for the…
Continue reading →
Always a delight to be interviewed by the BBC again. This time, talking about our Solar Batteries. You can listen again on the BBC iPlayer. The solar stuff starts at 14m 30s, with my interview at 17 minutes. You can also hear my electric car being charged :-) Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentBeing interviewed by a nice man from the BBC about @Edent_Solar, @OxfordSolarLive and…
Continue reading →
Even in the depths of British winter my solar panels'll still happily convert what little sunlight we get into delicious, free-range, organic electrons. Nice! Most of our domestic energy use is in the evening. So, when I'm out at work I can schedule the tumble dryer, robot vacuum cleaner, and WiFi rice-cooker to consume energy when the sun is shining. The rest is sold back into the grid for…
Continue reading →
(To the tune of the popular Mary Poppins song.) How much does it really cost to drive an electric car? Well, I've had my BMW i3 for a few months, so I thought I'd crunch the numbers. As part of the UK Government's OLEV scheme, there's a subsidy for installing car charging points at home. One of the conditions of the subsidy is that a smart meter is installed which reports back details about…
Continue reading →
Regular readers will know that I have solar panels and an electric car. Is there any way to hook the panels up so they directly charge the car? Can I set my electrical system up to divert surplus electricity into the car when my house isn't using it. This is what I do with my hot water iBoost - when household energy usage is low, it automatically switches on my immersion heater. Can I rig up…
Continue reading →
The headlines were clear - Upcoming solar eclipse to wreak havoc on Germany's solar power output screamed the headlines. Although the reality was slightly more prosaic. Although it's only one data point, I'd like to show you what happened to our solar panels during the eclipse. The full day graph shows a clear dip during the eclipse. As the eclipse drew closer, my minute by minute tracker…
Continue reading →
It's been a full year since we had solar panels installed on our semi-detached house in Oxford, UK. By coincidence, the panels were switched on during the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. So, how have they performed? Tracking Solar Performance - The Easy Way The solar panels have a generation meter. It tracks every kWh the panels produce. As of today, it stands at 4,061kWh. …
Continue reading →
I've been playing around with PVoutput.org - it's a community site which lets you quickly and easily publish live details of your solar panels. I couldn't see a pre-built library for my model of Solar Power Inverter - the Fronius - so I thought I'd build one. Important: the PVoutput API doesn't run over HTTPS. All of your communications with it are in the clear. While there's a limit to the …
Continue reading →
As regular readers know, we've installed solar panels on our house in Oxford. The panels were originally installed on 17th December 2013 - that's pretty close to the winter solstice, where the UK experiences the lowest hours of sunlight. Today is the summer solstice. Time for Druids to dance around Stonehenge as we celebrate the longest day of the year. And time for me to celebrate half a…
Continue reading →
I looked at my Solar Generation meter and winked. My new Google Glass snapped this picture 116 days ago, on the darkest day of the year, we had our solar panels installed. They have just ticked over the 1MWh mark. The average British house uses about 10kWh a day. By our estimates, our house uses 8.5kWh - thanks to LED lighting, a new TV, and efficient computers. Basically, at this point in …
Continue reading →
