28 MARCH 2020
At Christmas we purchased an Amazon Echo Flex which was on special offer at the time. The Echo Flex is a plug-in smart home controller using the Amazon Alexa ecosystem. After having it sitting on the shelf for 3 months,...
03 DECEMBER 2019
In the black Friday sale at Amazon we purchased an Amazon Echo Input which is a small voice-controlled device that requires an external speaker and uses the Amazon Alexa voice command service.
As this is the second Amazon...
10 AUGUST 2019
Following from the Echo Dot 3rd Gen Smart speaker Teardown post we have been exploring how the Echo Dot works and if it is possible to connect it to a computer to replace the firmware or install third party applications.
The...
21 JULY 2019
In the summer prime sale at Amazon we purchased a third generation Amazon Echo Dot which is a small voice-controlled speaker using Amazon’s Alexa voice command service. Part Two of this post is on Echo Dot 3rd Gen...
30 MAY 2018
After the removal of our Raspberry Pi based home data logger and the installation of the Mosquitto MQTT and Home Assistant Data Logging system in March this year we have not been able to monitor the solar hot water pump...
28 APRIL 2018
Over the past few months Andrew has been working on a new circuit for a custom home alarm system to replace our current hardwired commercial alarm.
For the display panel on the new alarm we are going to be using a...
14 MARCH 2018
We have removed the Raspberry Pi based data logger from our home and moved the logging hardware and new software to the Gigabit Internet Gateway Network PC which we installed in December 2017.
The old Raspberry Pi...
10 FEBRUARY 2018
This code example shows how you can use C# in either a Windows application or asp.net website to retrieve data from the Nest API to show information for your Nest Thermostat or Nest Smoke Alarms.
Before starting to write...
16 DECEMBER 2017
Following from our home network upgrade in August 2017 we have been trying to find a way to add global adblocking for the computers, tablets and phones connected to our network and to run additional software.
We had...
30 AUGUST 2017
A few weeks ago, we purchased a tp-link LB130 smart bulb to use with the Home Assistant software we had been trying on the Raspberry Pi. The support for the bulb in the Home Assistant software was limited and so Andrew...