Category: Electronics

14 February 2025

ESPHome Towel Rail Timer, preparing for offline use

A good home automation system should at least fall back to being an intuitive basic dumb system if offline (as minimum), and some automation features remaining is a bonus.
This was the start of my mission to update a few of the remaining items in my house by giving them some offline functionality, and slightly better than ‘no function’ where I can (for the eventual new home owner).

Categories Electronics/Home Automation/Home Renovations Comments: 0

5 June 2024

mmWave occupancy, ESP32 and LD2410 (UART)

An ESP32 running ESPHome to interface with a LD2410 (with UART/Serial, directly connected and not Bluetooth). Also using a BME280 and simple PIR for additional sensing. This was the second mmWave sensor I played with.

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16 May 2024

mmWave occupancy, ESP32 and LD1125H

Use of an ESP32 running ESPHome to interface with a LD1125H mmWave occupancy sensor, Also monitoring of room temperature, humidity and pressure via the same device.

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30 April 2024

MAME Cabinet Raspberry Pi 4

An old Taito standup arcade cabinet that I’d previously kitted out with MAME, came back from storage and I decided to refit it with something more maintainable. MAME and emulation should be a lot simpler now than it was back then shouldn’t it?

Categories DIY Projects/Electronics/Entertainment/IT & Networking/Projects/Technology Comments: 0

31 August 2022

Vehicle 12V Battery Monitoring with ESP8266 and ESPHome

Using the Analogue input on an ESP8266 and voltage divider to monitor the status of a 12V battery in a car.

Categories Electric Vehicles/Electronics/Home Automation/Vehicles Comments: 14

24 July 2022

1956 La Gloria Imp: NZ Made Valve Radio

Whilst on holiday in the South Island, we came across this 50s Valve Radio, which was a good price. Research showed it was made in Otahuhu by DRECO. This La Gloria Imp was the first model in a line of 18 models up to the late 60s.

Categories Electronics/Retro Caravans Comments: 0

8 July 2022

WB3S replacement for Home Automation devices

More and more home automation devices from China are coming with no ESP8266 module, especially the TUYA based ones. Some are coming with a WB3S (which is different to the TYWB3S), but this can easily be removed and replaced with a cheap ESP12F (or similar) module.

Categories Electronics/Home Automation Comments: 6

27 May 2022

Jaycar Duinotech ESP32 Wearable Board Fix

I couldn’t wait for some cheap ESP32 Dev boards from China, and Jaycar happened to have some half price ESP32 boards (Duinotech wearable ESP32 Development Board) so I grabbed a couple to play with. Unfortunately I had a couple of issues flashing them and keeping them stable so had to find a solution.

Categories Electronics/Home Automation Comments: 0

2 August 2021

Viewsonic Touch Screen for Home Assistant Display

Use of a pretty old Viewsonic All-in-One computer as a home automation display. I picked a couple of these up for around NZ$40 each, however found the touch screen didn’t work out of the box as drivers were missing from Linux.

Categories Electronics/Home Automation/Home Renovations/IT & Networking/Projects/Technology Comments: 0

27 July 2021

Home Automation of Rinnai Gas Heater

Our Rinnai heater is a wall mounted/flued gas fire. Current control is via a large LCD remote control that also acts as the temperature sensor, and thermostat. It has some auto timing capability via way of programming the remote, but it is a bit clunky and not intuitive. The goal was to enable a better PID control of the temperature, and switch off/on control (occupancy, remotely before arrival, voice control, better scheduling etc). This shows how I connected to it with Home Assistant.

Categories Electronics/Home Automation/Home Renovations/Projects/Technology Comments: 0

27 May 2021

Kogan Smart Plug: No Esp8266? (Tuya WB2S)

It is getting more and more common to get smart devices that have chips other than ESP8266 in them, and these chips are usually not flashable with the likes of Tasmota, espHome etc. This Kogan power monitor had an Tuya WB3S

Categories Electronics/Home Automation Comments: 3

12 May 2021

Kogan Smart Plug and Tuya Local Notes

It is better to replace the hardware and run all devices locally, which is what I did, However, before I did that, I wanted to see what was involved in running tuya local in home assistant. I have not given much detail here, but my YAML setup is below for reference.

Categories Electronics/Home Automation Comments: 0

13 May 2020

Setting up Alt-f Firmware on Dlink DNS-320L NAS

These are cheap 2-bay NASs with replacement open Firmware install.

Categories Electronics/IT & Networking/Technology Comments: 0

28 February 2020

Yunshan HW-622 Network Relay Module

Setup of a HW-622 Relay Module from AliExpress and other places. Approx NZ$6 with free shipping at the time (end 2019)

Categories Electronics/Home Automation Comments: 0