I have previously written about modifying cheap £10 smartplugs to run open source firmware. Now I have quite a number of them I needed an efficient way to update them. In this article I document how to do
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Posts Categorised: SmartHome & IoT
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Old Foscam FI8918W in Milestone XProtect
I’ve recently been on a tool buying spree and decided I now need a degree of security for my garage. I also have an old VGA foscam camera sat unused in a box and a functioning CCTV server system, so I figured I might as well set the foscam up inside the garage — not only would it help identify anyone who was in there who shouldn’t be, it will also help me know where I left that tool I just can’t find, and if the neighbours cat has got locked in there again
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2Embed a live RTSP stream in a webpage
I have recently been working on my smarthome setup and one of the things I’ve been meaning to get set up is a tablet with a touch-screen web interface to manage my smart home. One of the first problems I had to crack was how to stream my cctv feed to a web browser…
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0Getting the most out of HikVision Cameras
I have a 4Mpix HikVision mini dome camera for CCTV on the house. It provides a pretty reasonable picture considering the price, but the management interface is a bit rubbish and getting it set up with anything is a bit of a nuisance, so heres some notes on getting it working…
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Setting up an XBee ZigBee repeater
As part of the gradual expansion of my smarthome (might as well do something during lockdown right?) I decided to set up an XBee to improve the reach of my SmartThings hub. Good information for total beginners is a bit of a mission to find so I thought I’d put together a basic summary to start with.
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Expanding smarthome on the cheap
As I’ve written about before, I have begun to experiment with the world of smarthome devices, and currently use a smartthings hub and a google home mini. So far these have just turned on lamps and other “plugged in” devices via smartplugs, but with more compatible devices at reasonable prices finally starting to appear I wanted to start documenting more of what I’ve tried
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3Cheap WiFi SmartPlugs with SmartThings
SmartThings compatible smart plugs are annoyingly expensive — typically around £40. This is far too expensive to consider buying many of. There are however WiFi plugs available online for around £10 that don’t officially work with SmartThings. Most of them are based on the ESP8266 chip which can be reflashed with new firmware that will work with SmartThings. Below I document my trials and tribulations with hacking these plugs
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Energenie Mi|Home
I decided to try expanding my smartHome setup with some cheaper smartplugs from Energenie. Below I summarise my findings so far.
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2Connect SmartThings to Windows PC’s and Kodi
I have several windows PCs in my house that run Kodi. I wanted to connect them to SmartThings for a range of purposes. There are various things that can be done depending on the functionality you want.
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Set up “home assistant” on a windows PC
As I’ve written about before I have a range of “smart home” devices that I’ve been gradually experimenting with. One of the greatest frustrations of linking some of them is that many force you to go via “the cloud” which even with high speed internet can lead to delays of multiple seconds for some tasks (“ok google, mute kodi”) for example. I’ve decided to give the free “home assistant” a try. As usual with anything linux based, getting it up and running just isn’t straight forward. Here’s how…
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“I've been on this hunt a few times myself. I still have my Aluminus ultra in black (only 5 5.25…”