Automation – One Project At A Time
I am the kind of person who operates on data. I also like tools and want to maintain them well. For many of my small engines I use hour meters to provide me the data to indicate when to perform maintenance . I was looking for a project of late and thought, what could I … Read more
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
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
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
In a prior post I discussed how you can connect a 1602 LCD screen via i2C to an Arduino compliant MCU, with the aid of MQTT and C++ to display metrics that matter. But I realised, other than wanting to know the temperature and metrics around energy consumption there was another key piece of information … Read more
A few months ago, I solved the problem of having to use a Home Assistant dashboard to view power related metrics that matter to me by using LED’s embedded into my desk. You can read about it here, and these LED’s work really well. The LED’s have saved me looking at Home Assistant, and they … Read more
[RELEASING IN MAY 2023] Work In progress Are you familiar with an interlocks? Interlocking is a safety measure designed to prevent signals and switches from being changed in an improper sequence. Interlocks are a staple of our modern lives, they exist in places you would or perhaps may not expect. In their most basic form, an interlock … Read more
Throughout my automation journey there is one thing I always strive for, that is full duplex communication. The ability to send a message, but also receive a message from a device. This need, often in many cases influences technology choices. Which TV will I buy? Why will I build an irrigation controller over buy? Automation … Read more
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