Rather than re-invent the wheel, I’m including a link to a Smart Home Junkie YouTube video which does a good job of explaining how to add a card reader to Home Assistant.. Ok, so above, Smart Home Junkie has taken someone else’s work, made modifications and created a video on…
The New Aqara LB-102E Smart Light
I have to say this one caught me completely off-guard. The light turned up today – pretty box and very nice looking lamp though it looked small enough to be not that bright – wrong! The box says “Protocols: Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth”. As I’m not into Bluetooth and know zilch…
Sonoff BASIC Gen 5 Revisited in Matter
After passing remarks about some new Sonoff kit and Matter – and while awaiting feedback from Sonoff – I’m reminded that I have a BASIC Gen 5 lying around – linked to eWeLink as I’ve always done in the past (if not tempted to TASMOTA the product). Ok, here it…
The LattePanda IOTA SBC
So, you’re thinking – something to do with coffee? Nope – the LattePanda IOTA board is an SBC with 8GB RAM, 64GB eMMC and a host of available accessories. And I know this how? Because a big parcel just turned up from DHL with several nicely-packaged boxed boards inside. In…
New Ikea IOT products: revolutionary or hype?
Not a review of IKEA products. This is more of me asking questions in the hope of getting responses from people. I’ve just watched a video announcing a new range of IoT products from IKEA coming out in January 2026 i.e. next month. There are something like 20 products or…
The New Sonoff Airguard TH Sensor
This should be an easy one- the new sonoff AirGuard TH is a desktop LCD Temperature and Humidity Sensor – decent size – showing maximum and minimum values as well as current values. Other than that, nice but nothing outstanding – looks good – ignore that line in the right…
More Sonoff Goodness – Mini-Duo, Mini Duo-L etc
Sonoff continue to bring out well-priced new products – I just received the Mini Duo (Zigbee), Mini DUO-L (Zigbee) and Mini Duo (WiFi) – all of the above are part of the Sonoff Mini Extreme series. I originally wrote this blog on December 8th, but here we are on December…
More WLED – or Christmas Time Part 2
I just finished updating my previous Christmas Time Again blog entry and pretty much exhausted the subject of which ESP chip to use – but I’m on a roll now. It occurred to me that I have a living room cabinet with RGB WLED lights on the back (lighting up…
Christmas Time Again – Which ESP?
Once again it’s time to put up the Christmas lights on this year. I’m fitting those lovely string WS2812 LED lights to the tree. 400+ of them. Of course it’s 2025 and so we’ll be using WLED as usual – but this time with a sparkly new miniature and trendy…
Nous AZ7 Smart Zigbee Socket
Not a lot to say about the Nous ZigBee socket AZ7 except to say it’s a fairly normal looking smart socket with a button on the side for manual override on/off. It’s designed to run on ZigBee 3.0 (not WiFi) and handle 3680w load – that would be resistive load…
Nous Zigbee Household Combustible Gas Detector
The Nous E9 Gas Centre Spec reads as follows: Network Zigbee 3.0, operating voltage 100-240 volts… HOLD THE PHONE… it’s Zigbee. Why do we want 240 volts? OK, I’ve recovered from the shock. 240 volts it is – so it’s not only a sensor – it’s a Zigbee router. There’s…
The Nous L14 Zigbee Smart Water Valve
You might want to look up my Sonoff BSP article in here for comparison – as the L14 device is in many ways similar to the BSP. The Nous L14 is a Zigbee smart water valve. It is compatible with Zigbee2MQTT, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa. Regular readers will know…
First Xmas Gift – The Apollo H-2 2025
If you’ve read my other Apollo blog entries, you’ll know I’m very impressed by their presence sensors and other ESP-based gadgets. This morning in the post arrived a small box from Apollo containing the Apollo annual holiday light-up, music-playing Xmas tree. Sadly, the Spanish post office didn’t believe the Apollo…
The All-New Sonoff Orb 4-in-1 Zigbee Button
Multi-scene buttons are not new, especially Zigbee. I have one or two from Aqara but this new Zigbee “scene switch” has a couple of features worth noting. It runs on a CR2477 battery and has four actual buttons in the one round removable button, which simply magnetically mounts to the…
NanoKVM Pro – Another new contender
Unlike the JetKVM, this new NanoKVM Pro, on connecting USB power and which came from the target machine, and the HDMI, this time a full-size HDMI connector, the target PC came up in my main PC browser (I found the address of the KVM from my router – I could…
Is it possible that speech recognition has finally matured?
I shouldn’t do this, but I’m going to. I got an ad this morning for a company selling speech recognition stuff that claims that now you can type as quickly as you can think. So I’m using it now, I’m not doing any corrections, so you won’t see this blog…
Text Adventure – Only 40 Years Too Late
You’re right – I’m bored – I’m waiting for a load of new toys to arrive to write about. I’ve just spent the day at the coast with an ex-Microsoft pal of mine, avoiding crappy weather inland and on my return home tonight, my Bengal cat was deeply involved in…
An Exciting Shelly and Sonoff Friday
It’s Friday (August 2024 – see October 2025 update at the end) and I got up VERY early this morning and in this entry I have new devices from SHELLY – a pair of SHELLY MOTION devices (about which I’m quite excited) – and a not-so-new but handy Shelly RGBW…
Cheap USB Cameras – any good?
I generally use a OBSBOT Tiny 4K Webcam – and lovely it is too. But today I was trying to download a manual for another product (Switchbot Smart Wall Panel) and as I could not on this occasion use my phone camera and the only way to get the user…
Dual Control Made Easy: Zemismart’s SRS01-P2TW
Zemismart is back with the SRS01-P2TW dual Wi-Fi switch. Easy to set up, packed with features, and fully compatible with Home Assistant—here’s what you need to know.