My adventures of Home Automation and other tech toys.
With a lot of talk around air purifiers in the news lately, I decided to purchase my own. While I often look for some smart device, I found that the range of smart air purifiers way too expensive for what I wanted to spend, so I went for two good value Ikea products that I planned to make smart via Home Assistant with a bit of hacking and a smart plug. Continue reading “Making Ikea’s Air Purifier and Air Quality sensor smart”
I recently had one of my Arilux LED Controllers die on me, When it came to buying a replacement I found my favourite controller the H801 was out of stock, so I went on to purchase a new model known as the W03 and test that out. Below is my experiences on using it and flashing it with Tasmota.
Continue reading “Flashing the W03 LED Controller with Tasmota”
A quick post today to show off my latest 3D printed design, a battery box to replace three D cell batteries with one 18650 lithium-ion rechargeable cell that is charged by a cheap onboard charger and step up circuit board. Continue reading “Replacing D cells with an 18650 Battery Cell”
My day job see me working for a few large corporations who generally love Cisco network gear. On the odd occasion I have been asked to swap out a Cisco Aironet 2600 WiFi access point. These solid looking devices are very common around corporate offices and shopping centres etc. In these applications the devices run a lightweight firmware that is all controlled centrally by the Cisco wireless LAN controller, so these devices are useless by themselves unless you upgrade the device to Cisco’s autonomous firmware. Continue reading “Converting a Cisco Aironet AP to Standalone Autonomous Mode”
Another follow on to a few earlier posts today. I previously documented flashing my Arilux/Magic home LED controllers with Tasmota and also did a comparison review of the Arilux vs the H801 controller. Today’s post is a quick update on a few gotchas I found when flashing the H801 with Tasmota compared to my previous effort of flashing the Arilux/Magic Home device. Continue reading “Flashing the H801 LED controller with Tasmota firmware”
So this post is kind of a follow on from my earlier post where I flashed my Magic Home Led controller with Tasmota firmware for use in Home Assistant. I wanted to create a few more LED strips and this time I chose a H801 controller from Banggood. Both the Magic Home and H801 controllers are similar ESP8266 based devices with a few key differences. Both have their pros and cons that I will try and demystify below while proving a review into their usability with Home Assistant. Continue reading “H801 vs Arilux/MagicHome LED Controller Review”
I always have liked LED strip lights and if I am going to have some they have to have smart home capabilities. Philips sell such a strip with their Hue range but the price is crazily expensive where I am from. Fortunately there are a bunch of cheap controllers and led strips that are available from chinese retailers such as banggood or aliexpress that will connect to wifi and integrate with my smart home controller, Home Assistant.
Continue reading “Cheap RGB LED light strips with Tasmota firmware”
Until recently Tile trackers only came with non-replaceable batteries, which means every 12 months or so you have to pony up another 25 US bux to replace the whole tile instead of just the battery which can be purchased for only a few dollars. With the help of a 3D printer, a battery holder and a few tools I have been cracking open my old tiles and repurposing them with a new case that has a replaceable battery. My new chunky tile only costs a few dollars and is perfect to thrown in a suit case or laptop bag.
Continue reading “Tile Mate (Gen 1) Battery Replacement”