Inspect My Gadgets – Page 4 – My adventures of Home Automation and other tech toys.

H801 vs Arilux/MagicHome LED Controller Review

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”

Adding Cruise Control to a Fiat 500

I recently purchased a Fiat 500 as a run about car. Being a 2014 model it has most of the modern conveniences that you would want on it with the exception of cruise control. Oddly, at least for the Australian market, cruise control was not even an option you could order from Fiat. This is strange as in modern cars with electronic throttles adding cruise control can be as simple as adding the switch and enabling the option in the cars’ computer. Manufacturers love this as it’s a $20 part that you can retail for $700. Continue reading “Adding Cruise Control to a Fiat 500”

The Sonoff 433MHz RF bridge with Home Assistant

The sonoff RF bridge
If you have played with home automation for some time, you are probably aware of 433MHz devices. They are generally a device like a wall plug relay that is controlled by a small radio remote. While very cheap, their popularity has begun to wane in the past 8 or so years as more and more smart outlets hit the market. While these smart outlets are way better in terms of functionality and reliability, maybe you may have a bunch of 433MHz things lying around that you would prefer to put to a good use if you can do so cheaply. This is where this post comes in.
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Broadlink RM mini IR blaster with Home Assistant

If you have been following my blog you may remember one of my earlier projects where I created an IR blaster with a Wemos D1 mini that I use to control my TV via Home Assistant. Today I am going to list the steps use an off the shelf IR blaster with Home Assistant. The main reason to use an off the shelf device is that the hard work has already been done for you and it is in a neat attractive box rather than a led stuck in front of your set. Continue reading “Broadlink RM mini IR blaster with Home Assistant”

Local WordPress development with a Wamp Server

If you have ever done any website development you are bound to come across WordPress. What started out as a blogging platform now powers the over 35% of the websites you may visit. While its advantages over creating sites with static html files include the vast amount of templates and plugins available there is one minor drawback when it comes to developing with it. That drawback is that if you want to make huge changes to a template or a transfer a site from static files to WordPress there maybe a downtime of your site if you are doing it all live. In the old days you could develop your new static html files locally and ftp them when you were happy to go live with your new site. Fortunately there is a way to develop with WordPress offline and that is to set up a local WAMP server on your PC. Continue reading “Local WordPress development with a Wamp Server”

A DIY semi smart Lockwood lock

There seems to be a new smart lock on the market every week and while they interest me I do have a few issues with them. Firstly the options where I live (Australia) are a bit limited and are also crazily expensive and secondly I am not sure I want really want to have the lock to my house available on the internet (although I am more likely to be broken into via a brick to the window over someone hacking me). Anyhow, what I really want from a smart lock is knowing that I have not accidentally left it in the unlocked state. So that got me thinking maybe I can cheaply modify my classic Lockwood 001 deadlock to tell me the state it is in.

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Rubbish Bin Reminders with Home Assistant and Google Calendar

My kitchen has under bench LED strips that are connected to Home Assistant. The first automation I set up with these was to turn on when I entered the room and turn off when I left the room. I have motion sensors in each room so this was pretty easy to set up.

My next automation was a bit of fiddling around but has well been worth the effort. Basically I wanted the lights to change colour the night before rubbish collection day so I know what colour bin to put out. I have done this via Home Assistant’s Google Calendar integration, this allows me access two recurring calendar events I have created in my calendar called yellow and green. My setup and automations on how I have done this are listed below. Continue reading “Rubbish Bin Reminders with Home Assistant and Google Calendar”

Setting up Home Assistant supervised on an Ubuntu Desktop

If you have ever played with home automation at all you most likely would have come across the software Home Assistant, Think of it as a hub like Smartthings or Vera that you build yourself. The most common way to do this is with a Raspberry Pi and a SD card loaded with the Home Assistant image (previously known as the Hass.io image) and soon you will be set to start connecting to the smart devices around your home and automating them. Continue reading “Setting up Home Assistant supervised on an Ubuntu Desktop”

Cheap RGB LED light strips with Tasmota firmware

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”

Set up and secure the SynoCommunity Mosquitto broker

If you have ever played with DIY home automation before, chances are you may have come across MQTT. MQTT is a protocol that many home automation systems use to communicate with is, as it is fast and lightweight.

To use MQTT, you need a MQTT Broker on your network for all your devices to talk to (think of the broker as the chat app for IOT devices). My home automation system (Home Assistant) has a MQTT broker add on available that works quite well, but recently I decided to move the broker off my Home Assistant Raspberry Pi and onto my Synology NAS. The Synology also has a popular broker available known as Mosquitto, but it took me some time to figure out how to secure it with a username and password. After a bit of research, I have successfully moved my MQTT broker over to my NAS, which I have documented below.

Continue reading “Set up and secure the SynoCommunity Mosquitto broker”