This tutorial will guide you through installing Tasmota on Ledvance smart plugs. If you found here, you are likely familiar with all the terms used in this post. However, just for the record, here is what are we talking about. What is Tasmota?Tasmota is a very popular free and open-source firmware for Espressif WiFi devices […]
There is an issue with the Swiss AC power plug type J (T12/T13). One that I was not aware of until very recently. More specifically, it is the arrangement of the three poles in the single vs. the triple sockets that I find impractical. This post explains what the issues with type J plugs are, […]
Let me help you install IOTstack on a Mac Mini. Why? Just because you can? Well, maybe. The true motivation, however, is that I had an un(der)used late 2012 Mac Mini at home that looked to be perfectly suited to run a few Docker containers. The IOTstack README introduces the project like this: IOTstack is […]
The Lovebox is a project I learned about through a Make: magazine article from 2019. A reader notified ThingPulse – of which I’m a co-founder – because the project’s Arduino sketch relies on an open-source display driver provided by ThingPulse. I was immediately intrigued as the project involves electronics, software and classical woodworking. As a […]
In this post I’ll show you how to build a LoRaWAN gateway for The Things Network. While I could talk about what LoRaWAN is or why I think it’s essential that the IoT world fully embraces it I’ll refrain from doing so. Accordingly I won’t be introducing The Things Network (TTN) in this article either. It’s […]
I’m an avid proponent of free and open-source software (FOSS). All the open-source services and applications I offer are of course free but I accept donations (i.e. donation-ware). The inflow of PayPal donations is very moderate but that’s alright. Fortunately I don’t have to live off of that – I would have long starved to death. […]
WeMos D1 mini Lite…again I find myself writing about WeMos IoT products. The D1 mini series now consists of the regular 4MB D1 mini V2.x, the 16MB D1 mini Pro plus the 1MB D1 mini Lite. ESP8285(!) 11 GPIO pins, all except D0 support interrupt/PWM/I2C/one-wire 1 analog input (3.2V max input) 1 Micro USB connection 1MB […]
The ESP8266 chip is specified to support up to 16MB external SPI flash memory. Yet, ever since ESP8266 modules that actually use more than 4MB flash memory became available folks started wondering how to make use of the space beyond the 4MB boundary. The WeMos D1 mini pro you see on the left is by […]
Catch a rare glimpse of the life behind the secrete doors of Espressif, the manufacturer of the IoT rock-star chips ESP8266 and ESP32. My friend Squix and I compiled a list of questions to Ivan Grokhotkov Director of Software Platforms at Espressif. Ivan is one of the main drivers behind the ESP8266/Arduino project. Early in […]
I herewith announce a new GUI tool to flash NodeMCU based on esptool.py targeting Windows users primarily. Self-contained executables are available on GitHub. Motivation This addresses an issue the NodeMCU community touched on several times in the past, most recently in fall 2016. I stated that based on my experience doing NodeMCU user support it […]