It’s been a while since I’ve had any Orange Pi products (earlier) (even earlier) to play with, but last week in the mail arrived a package comprising Orange Pi RV, Orange Pi RV2, a “5.1v5A GAN” USB-C power supply and a small packet which took me a few minutes to…
Meross Smart Switch, Presence Sensor and More
Every so often I get a bunch of stuff from Meross (no payment or commitment – just stuff to play with) and today in the post, a package via CTT courier arrived. I opened up the package and… Meross Smart WiFi Switch MSS815 If you’re new to Meross – another…
Home Assistant at long last BUST?
Sorry, I could not resist at least one of those stupid end-of-the-world headlines so popular with children disguised as adults who seem to dominate YouTube…. So the very much abbreviated story is this: Months ago, I put Home Assistant on a cheap miniPC for speeding up my HAOS installation –…
Automatic DHCP and Home Automation
This is SO obvious once you grasp the idea – for some reason it missed me for the longest time. Let’s say you have a load of devices on your home control network… we’ll ignore Zigbee devices here as they don’t have IP addresses – as they work on a…
Aqara G4 Video Doorbell and FP2 Presense Sensor – Updated
Important April 2025 update – see FP2 section further down…. Jan 2024: I just received my first packages of the new year, a duff screen protector from AliExpress, some USB shelf-lamps from the same (more on that later) meanwhile from Aqara, my eagerly-awaited Aqara G4 Smart video doorbell and their…
Home Assistant Tuya Socket Woes
In my Home Assistant set-up – HAOS on a mini-PC, documented elsewhere in here, I have an AliExpress-sourced cheap WiFi Tuya (Smartlife) socket controlling a salt light and as it is part of my livingroom lighting set – I have an HA entity change helper turning the socket entity into…
New Sonoff Goodies – Plug and Thermometers
In today’s postbag, a new Sonoff Zigbee smartplug – S60ZBTPF type F/E – so an EU plug… nothing special to look at – just an EU-fitting Zigbee 3.0 smartplug with no lights anywhere – not on the manual on-off button, not around the frame… for testing you can just hear…
M5Stack DIAL V1.1 in Brief
The M5Stack Dial is a small (45mm hole dia) USB-C-connected rotary dial with touch-sensitive LCD display. Here it is – short video…. And here are a couple of links with potentially useful information on using the M5stack Dial – ESPHOME 1 and ESPHOME 2
Zigbee2MQTT Lights – A Quick One
Some weeks ago in an order to AliExpress, I included a Zigbee E27 220v light bulb. It works perfectly in Zigbee2MQTT (in Home Assistant). Perfectly that is except for one thing – the default state setting does not work and in the event of a power failure and subsequent reconnect,…
Seeed Studio 60Ghz mmWave Sensor
Billed as a “Breathing and Heart Rate Sensor (reference MR60BHA2)” this new device from Seeed Studios got me quite excited…. the device arrived on April 2, 2025 in a well-packed large box maybe 10cm*9cm*13cm. Inside, a small box (9cm*2.5cm*2.7cm) containing the sensor and a double-sided business card pointing the buyer…
Whatever happened to everlasting solar garden lights?
I have MANY years experience of solar garden lights from the cheapest rubbish to quite expensive… what happened? Well, price – greedy importers out to make a quick buck is what happened – along with the public’s need to get something for nothing. The result is that the manufacturer builds…
Aqara FP1E Revisited Briefly
I’ve had an Aqara FP1E movement/presense sensor for some time and for some reason, only checked movement sensing. Today I plugged the unit in and Home Assistant remembered it perfectly from my last tests back in August 2024. This time I went to my Zigbee2MQTT panel which I get to…
Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition vs Google
Home Assistant Voice – Preview Edition is a small USB-powered unit made by the Open Home Foundation and supplied to me by SEEED. It is common knowledge that I hate to read instructions, so I took the unit out of the very nice box and plugged it into a handy…
Home Assistant to NAS to Mini PC – The Sequel
Mid last week, I wrote about the latest updates in my quest for an ideal Home Assistant (HAOS) setup -and I’d reached the point of using my Synology NAS (DS720+) for HAOS – this is the sequel featuring the Turewell HSI-N95 mini-PC. Firstly, no doubt about it the Synology is…
M5Stack Goodness
It’s quite a while since I heard anything from M5Stack but today I have some new goodies from them. First off – this handy little ESP32-based mini-camera: CamS3 5MP Camera. The device came complete with lead and USB-C adaptor. It costs something like $17 US dollars from their site –…
Apollo Temp-1 Sensor Unit – Apollo Automation
I’ve written elsewhere about Apollo Sensors but this weekend they sent me a set of updated Temp-1 and Temp-1B sensors so I thought I’d give them a quick entry. I’ll leave the Temp-1B to the end as it is similar but primarily battery driven and NOT a cheap battery at…
Home Assistant – Synology DS720+ The Story So Far
More reviews and gadgets coming up soon including the new SEEED Human Breathing + Heartbeat sensor (I can’t wait) and the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition – and look out for the upcoming sequel to this post – meanwhile… Regular readers will know that I’ve been a fan of Raspberry…
The Ridiculous Windows 11 “Show More Options” and How To Bypass
I’m taking no credit for this one which I originally published on December 3, 2023. EVERY time I go to right-click a Windows Explorer window on a new PC, from as simple as DESKTOP to my SCREENSHOTS folder – I invariably want to COPY something… is it there? NOPE. I…
Reolink RLC-823S2 IP Camera – it’s a MONSTER
Well, this came as a surprise – I was expecting a WiFi new camera from Aqara to arrive this week, when this large box arrived – came as something of a surprise that the Reolink arrived first. The Reolink RLC-823S2 is a 12v or POE camera (POE adaptor not included…
The new Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro
The Aqara Hub G5 Pro runs over WiFi and is not only a full true-colour night vision camera (image sensor 1/1/1.8″ – aperture f/1.0, resolution 2688*1520, field-of-view 133 degrees diagonal) but also a hub. It runs off 5v at up to 2A and handles both 2.4 and 5Ghz WiFi. Other…