@tomasmcguinness

  • LED Clock, Part III: Alexa?

    Whilst I await delivery of more WS2812 LEDs, I wanted to start investigating how I can leverage the Alexa Gadget Toolkit integration, so that when I set a timer using Alexa, my LED clock can show the countdown. Amazon make an Echo Wall Clock which does just that. I found… Read ⇢

  • LED Clock, Update!

    I managed to rework the time calculation and hour hand movement! I removed the RTC component and just let the loop run, with simple counters to simulate the passage of second, minutes and hours. I think the transition of the “hands” needs to be smoother, more analogue. I’ll have to… Read ⇢

  • LED Clock, Part II: Tick, Tock

    In Part I, I covered the basics of controlling the LEDs. This covered the hands of the clock. The second part of my investigation covers time and how to make the clock tick. The ESP 8266 I am using for this prototyping work doesn’t include a Real Time Clock, so… Read ⇢

  • LED Clock, Part I: Hands

    The first part of making an LED clock was actually learning how to control the LEDs in the strip. I had experimented with the LED strip before, flashing a rainbow, before realising I had no practical use the damn thing. At the time, I had used a Neopixel library. Upon… Read ⇢

  • Lockdown LED Clock

    A year or two ago, I picked up a WS2812B LED strip, but, for the life of me, could never think of anything useful to do with it. Recently, however, I came across these LED powered clocks. This feels like a project that will combine a few things: ESP MCU… Read ⇢

  • Do we have any hot water?

    A common occurrence in our house is bath time. Another common occurrence is not having enough water for afore mentioned bath. Our hot water is provided by a system boiler/unvented cylinder arrangement and I use a Nest to control the hot water (more on that later). The current schedule has… Read ⇢

  • Wiring a Shelly 1 Relay to a traditional pendant light.

    With Den Automation facing immanent demise, I’ve been looking at alternatives. I came across the Shelly 1 relay, quite by accident, whilst looking at some Sonoff stuff. It immediately piqued my interest, mostly because it taught me that I didn’t know anything about lighting circuits in the UK. I’ve installed… Read ⇢

  • Den Automation and the Cloud

    A few months ago, Den Automation Ltd appeared to drop off the face of the earth. My hub disconnected from the internet and the Den app would only work whilst I was at home. I should point out that I invested in Den via Seedrs. Continued Operation is possible I… Read ⇢

  • Xiamo Aqara Wall Switch

    With news that Den Automation were likely going into administration (due to massive debt) and the discontinuation of their Cloud services, my dreams of adding more Den switches were well and truly dashed! I’d added a few Aqara temp sensors and contact sensors to my Home Automation setup and I… Read ⇢

    Xiamo Aqara Wall Switch