@tomasmcguinness

  • Solar PV and the Eddi. Should I heat all the water??

    My Eddi has been installed for about two months now. It has been a great addition to my setup quietly mopping up mountains of surplus PV and heating hot water. I installed it myself and documented it over on my YouTube channel, so if you’re interested in that, check it… Read ⇢

  • First sunny month with new solar PV

    With June being the first really sunny month of the year, I wanted to share my thoughts on how well my newly installed Solar PV setup performed. Setup I have two arrays on my house, consisting of eight plans on the main roof of the house, south facing and a… Read ⇢

  • Predicting periods of excess solar power

    My solar PV has been in and working now for several months. We’ve tried to adjust our usage patterns to take advantage of when there will be excess solar after our battery and hot water tank are filled. This has been something I’ve been thinking about for a while and… Read ⇢

  • Wiring for smart lighting with Shelly relays!

    I’m building an extension to my kitchen. As readers of my blog and Twitter will know, I love home automation and building work presents an opportunity to incorporate more of it! My Current Smart Lighting The vast majority of smart lighting in my house is provided by Shelly devices. These… Read ⇢

    Wiring for smart lighting with Shelly relays!

  • Matter, Unifi and mDNS

    I started playing around with the connectedhomeip repository last week in an effort to get a better understanding of Matter and Thread. One of the issues I ran into was related to how Matter uses mDNS and DNS-SD. After hours of messing around with both my nRF52840 and ESP32 boards,… Read ⇢

  • Gas Energy Usage – Nov 22

    With Christmas around the corner, I wanted to post an update on my November 2022 gas usage before I wind down for Christmas. Usage in November last year 292m3, which is around 10m3 of gas a day. That’s about 110kWh per day. November 2022 was a different story. We were… Read ⇢

  • Gas Energy Usage – Oct 22

    As it’s now the first of November and heating season has begun, I wanted to do a quick comparison of my gas usage between Oct ’21 and Oct ’22. In Oct ’21, we used 93.2m3 of gas, which is approximately 1024kWh. We were away for eight day’s that month, so… Read ⇢

  • First Tesla Model Y Road Trip

    Back in 2019, we booked a 2020 trip on the famous Jacobite train, which starred as the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter film series. COVID-19 closed the railway, which meant we had to postpone the trip until this year. The original plan was to drive up to Fort William,… Read ⇢

  • My Mixergy IoT device – The start!

    I’m loving my Mixergy tank, but one of the main issues is that the temp display is connected to the tank by a short wire. My tank sits out in the garage, so without consulting the app, it’s hard to know how much hot water you have. Using my Home… Read ⇢