Building My Super DoorBell – Part 1 Integrating Home Assistant Notifications via Amazon Alexa with TTS and Alexa Media Player

Note– Amazon Alexa now requires 2FA App Integration. This tutorial is accurate at the time of authoring (January 2024). If you have Google powered voice assistants, this post could be applied to Google NEST by using Onju Voice My humble doorbell has been a journey, yes it still rings a traditional doorbell chime (16V AC) … Read more

Flashing Tasmota on a Sonoff Basic R4 & Configuring for Home Assistant

In October of 2023 Itead released their latest Sonoff Basic appliance module the Basic R4. It is now based off an ESP32 chip, versus the ESP82xx of prior models and provides increased load capabilities at 2400w. This appliance module is cheap and is perfect for attaching to a desk lamp, inline in a power board … Read more

Beyond Speed and Specs – Why Genuine SBC and MCU’s are the right choice for your project

Decisions, we all make them. You may make a decision based on specifications, performance, time to value supportability and so on. There are many dimensions, and we all have choice. In the last 15-20 years I have been an avid user of both SBC’s (Single Board Computers), PLC’s (Programable Logic Controllers) and MCU’s (Micro Controller … Read more

Aesthetically Clean Remote Switching Using MQTT with Sonoff and Shelly Modules

Automation and technology are amazing, modern advances allow us to automate almost everything in our daily lives, before we get into this post, here is an end-2-end example of this solution, enjoy. So now you know what we will be building, lets get in to it. There are almost no systems in my house that … Read more

Monitoring Solar Consumption With A ESP32/8266 and LED Lights

Since having a PV (Photo Voltaic) solar array installed on my roof earlier in the year I have become a more aware of the energy consumption of my house. In my post ‘Making Data Driven Decisions With A PV Array, Home Assistant and MQTT‘ I am leveraging consumption data to make decisions in my house, … Read more

Automagically Keeping Cool In Zwift

Cycling has always been something I have been passionate about. With the COVID-19 induced lockdowns I finally decided to purchase an indoor trainer (Garmin TACX Neo 2T) and like so many people around the world, I use Zwift as a means to hit my distance targets each week. Spoiler – Want to see a demo? … Read more

Making Data Driven Decisions With A PV Array, Home Assistant and MQTT

I have been always wanting to add a Solar PV array to my house and recently, it made sense and I purchased a modest (7.5kw) system for my house. It has been as much of an IT journey of integration and extracting value from disparate systems has it been of reducing my carbon footprint. When … Read more

Bridging Mosquitto MQTT into Azure IoT Hub with an Arduino based ESP32

I have been on a journey to explore Azure IoT and push the thousands of events that flow through my local MQTT broker (Mosquitto) in to Azure IOT. After my last post in using the Azure IoT SDK for Python conjunction with Paho MQTT I thought my work here was complete, but have just recently … Read more

Bridge Building – Mosquitto MQTT to Azure IOT Using Paho MQTT and the Azure IOT SDK’s

I have been on a journey to explore Azure IoT and push the thousands of events that flow through my local MQTT broker (Mosquitto) in to Azure IOT. From direct connection to Azure IOT-Hub (via MQTT and SAS tokens) through to Azure IOT-Edge running locally with MQTT. I have been able to achieve my goals … Read more

Publishing & Subscribing to MQTT Topics Using Mosquitto Client Tools & Microsoft Azure IoT Hub

Public cloud brings a paradigm shift in what can be done, the art of the possible is possible and in the context of this post, I am planning to replicate ~250ish MQTT topics running in a Mosquitto MQTT container in to Azure IoT Hub. From ML (Machine Learning) through to anomaly detection and everything in … Read more