Surfing like it’s 1997
I’ve just been looking at the traffic statistics for my new website – the LightwaveRF Community at http://lightwaverfcommunity.org.uk. Looking at the browser stats there appears to have been during January, believe it or not, a couple of accesses from Netscape Navigator 4 which was released mid 1997. See above for a reminder of what that looked like at the time (and …
The LightwaveRF Forum is dead. Long live the LightwaveRF Forum!
Time to come clean about why I’ve been so quiet of late. I’ve been busy! I’ve decided I needed a new pet project, so, bringing together my love of home automation and web development, I’ve built a new online community around the Lightwave RF product suite and taken over the unloved forum that was once the official LightwaveRF forum at lightwaverfforum.net. …
LED Lighting – Has it finally come of age?
I have been dabbling with LED lighting now for some time. This week, spurred on by a quidco offer to save 10% and get 10% cash back on my purchase, I bought some next generation LEDs from LED hut – a favourite online retailer of mine. With the next generation LED’s now hitting the market, has LED lighting finally come …
Blog Refreshed and Relocated
I have decided that my home broadband link is a little too slow to maintain a live blog on. I have decided to up sticks and host it at a commercial hosting company. I have chosen Tsohost, a UK based cloud hosting provider. At only £14.99 for a year’s hosting, it seemed a bit of a no-brainer to give them a …
First experiments with the Raspberry Pi and its GPIO outputs
I’ve completed my first experiment in building something physical with my new Raspberry Pi. It’s not overly useful, but I’ve built a binary counter using LEDs. The following video explains more… I originally started writing the code in Python. Mostly because many of the examples for controlling the Raspberry Pi are in Python, but having very little experience in Python …
The Pi has landed
The Raspberry Pi has arrived along with a bunch of components to make it do interesting stuff. Watch this space…
Found – Apple wants to create iPhone-based automated, connected homes
AppleInsider is reporting that a new, extensive patent application details how a new iPhone model with a near-field communications chip could serve as the connected centerpiece of an automated digitally connected home. Read more here: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/26/apple_wants_to_create_iphone_based_automated_connected_homes.html
FHEM + PHP
In http://www.cpmills.com/2012/02/24/monitoring-temperatures-using-fhem-rrdtool-php-javascript I have attempted to describe how I am graphing my heating system using PHP, FHEM, RRDTool and JavaScript. It seems that FHEM+PHP is a popular search term landing on my website so I wanted to explain in a little more detail how this part of the system works. FHEM provides a really useful method of pulling out all …
Absent, but not forgotten
Been a bit tardy updating my blog lately. Thats unforgivable and I should be ashamed of myself. So, what’s happened lately? Not a lot really! I’ve bought and installed some more LWRF dimmer modules and they all work fine. However, more importantly, today I ordered a Raspberry Pi (or two ). The expected delivery time is a fair few weeks, …
Western Digital TV Live – Unboxing and Setup
On Saturday I purchased a Western Digital TV Live from my local Currys/PC World. I wouldn’t normally advocate buying anything from there, but it is currently on offer at £76 making the price very reasonable indeed. Link here if you are interested… I have included a gallery showing the unboxing and initial set-up below. First impressions are that it …
