Automation – One Project At A Time
It’s the start of the year and I am between jobs. Most people have multiple devices, but I don’t. I am not one to have a device for this and a device for that. I live and breathe off one device and this is by choice. So whilst I am between jobs, I still need … Read more
Are QNAP NAS’es trying to destroy all Synology NAS’es? Hang on let me explain, but before I do that a NAS is a Network Storage device, that typically today runs an embedded Linux OS, has a variety of applications and provides storage in the form of NFS, SMB and other protocols (even ISCSI) to devices … 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
Let me ask you some questions… If you answered yes to all of the above questions, then read on. This website and other services I rely on daily, is hosted from my house and yes, my IP address changes from time to time, but my services are reliable. From my VPN to Home Assistant, this … Read more
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
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, but is automation in your mind the basics, such as lighting, you might ask Alexa or Google Assistant to turn on something. These are science experiments, purely because it involves an utterance, the magic in automation is when it ‘just’ works. No asking, just like Event Driven Architecture, it happens … 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
The right tool for the job can make any job enjoyable. I often get sense if happiness using quality tools that make a job easy and painfree. Tools change, I am not just talking in the physical world. Take example my world, cloud computing, look at cloud networking, how we architect connections in the cloud … Read more
TLDR – You can test my implementation at https://privategpt.baldacchino.net. If this appears slow to first load, what is happening behind the scenes is a ‘cold start’ within Azure Container Apps. Cold Starts happen due to a lack of load, to save money Azure Container Apps has scaled down my container environment to zero containers and … Read more