4 ms·

About 10 seconds into reading this I got a 'cute' drop-down box that greyed out what I was half-way through reading, and insisted that I attend to a 'Get my wee

by Jedd 5y ago

About 10 seconds into reading this I got a 'cute' drop-down box that greyed out what I was half-way through reading, and insisted that I attend to a 'Get my weekly IoT newsletter' that demanded from me an email address, name, and company details. The unbearable demands of advertising. EDIT (ADD) I've installed a couple of ESP32's with humidity / temperature gauges, in two of my abodes, that feed into a prometheus -> cortex store, so I can then map them on Grafana. This is considered 'excessive' by the family, but for me it's deeply interesting and compelling, and I'll be pushing more of them out over the next few months. But these are very basic devices, with rudimentary access to the local network, and no way (or interest) in phoning out to anything else beyond my router. This is the ideal scenario for these kinds of devices.

jjbinx007 5y ago
Those infernal newsletter nags are fucking insufferable. I haven't even read the damn article yet and now you're trying to get my email address? I generally subscribe with "postmaster@nameofsite". I imagine they break accessibility helpers too. As for smart homes, my toe dipping into them so far has been largely negative. Biggest mistake I've made is probably mixing brands. If I did it all from scratch I'd: 1) find a single brand that does everything reliably and stick with it. This saves having to have a dozen different apps on my phone and somehow tie them all together, not to mention keep track of half a dozen different passwords, as the apps tend to randomly log me out every so often. 2) choose a decent brand. I know pretty much everything is made in China these days but my experiences with my Yeelink light has been much more painful than my experience with Kasa-related appliances that seem to just work (most of the time) and don't need messing with periodically. 3) ask tech people I trust on what to buy and how to set it up. I don't trust advertising/marketing and many review sites have a vested interest in peddling and recommending shit products. and possibly 4) wait until it's a more mature market
- Jedd 5y ago
  Yeah, it's a bit of a mess. Jeff Geerling did a good two-part write up where he went through a lot of experimentation with different brands, which I've still got in an open tab somewhere. The Node-Red / Home Assistant (hassio) stuff I need to really dive into in anger at some point. So far my 'smart' stuff is some google gear + Philips Hue (lighting), and these little ESP microcontrollers. When looking at what vendor to adopt, I've been checking what has the best support by the hassio community - on the assumption they've been down this path already.
mabub24 5y ago
If you are using uBlock Origin, you can turn on the filter for "annoyances" and as far as I can tell it blocks those newsletter popups.
- coldpie 5y ago
  NoScript is also a godsend for making the Internet usable.
- Jedd 5y ago
  Oh, that's an excellent recommendation, thank you. I've never really looked in that menu previously, but, yes, definitely have uBO installed everywhere.
tzs 5y ago
> [...] that feed into a prometheus -> cortex store, so I can then map them on Grafana. I had to Google because I've never heard of any of those. Did I find the right ones? https://prometheus.io/ https://prometheus.io/ https://cortexmetrics.io/ https://cortexmetrics.io/ https://grafana.com/ https://grafana.com/ Mine is much more primitive. My indoor temperature monitor is an ESP8266 that uploads the temperature to a simple PHP page that saves it in an sqlite DB. A cron job runs a Perl script every few minutes that extract the data for the last hour, 3 hours, 12 hours, 48 hours, and since the beginning of time and uses gnuplot to produce PNG graphs. There's a static page on my server that displays those graphs. My outdoor temperature monitor uses a cheap AcuRite 433 MHz indoor/outdoor thermometer I bought. I have an RPi with an RTL-SDR attached spying on the communications between the AcuRite sensor outside and the AcuRite display inside using rtl_433. A script looks at the rtl_433 and finds the AcuRite sensor data and puts it in an sqlite DB. I haven't yet gotten around to making something to graph it. The nice thing about that approach is that it was also easy to add support for other 433 MHz wireless sensors near me, such as the AcuRite fridge/freezer thermometer I have. I can also see a few assorted sensors of neighbors (temperature, humidity, soil moisture, tire pressure, wind speed, wind direction, rain, and a few other random things). If I wanted to it would be easy to add them to the DB. When I made a wireless tipping range gauge recently. I used a 433 MHz transmitter module [1] and added a decoder [2] to rtl_433 that understands my data stream format. That gets my data into the rtl_433 output. No need to futz around with 433 MHz receiver modules which appear to be a pain in the ass [3]. An ATTiny85 counts the tips and runs the transmitter. The ATTiny85, the transmitter module, a battery holder, an RJ11 socket because the rain gauge has an RJ11 connector, a board to put those things on [4], and a small waterproof case is pretty much the complete parts list. I think I'm going to standardize on this general approach. For things that do not have WiFi and only need to report data 433 MHz modules and custom decoders fro rtl_433 on the RPi. For things that do have WiFi, such as any future ESP projects I do, they will just use WiFi to talk to the RPi. If anything needs to get sent outside of my LAN the RPi will handle it. The RPi is also currently controlling a space heater in my living room, getting connection data from my cable modem periodically and recording that in an sqlite DB, and serving a simple web page that lets me quickly change inputs and volume on my Denon receiver and so I'm already pretty much committed to keeping it running all the time. [1] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10534 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10534 [2] Decoders can be specified in a simple text file. Here's the one for my rain guage as an example: decoder { name = TZS Rain Gauge, modulation = OOK_PWM, short = 416, long = 612, reset = 1452, gap = 0, tolerance = 0, sync = 1484, bits = 96, match = {24}0x545a53, get = Tips:@80:{16}, } That results in this in the rtl_433 output (when set to write output in JSON) for my rain guage: {"time" : "1637771949", "model" : "TZS Rain Gauge", "count" : 1, "num_rows" : 1, "rows" : [{"len" : 96, "data" : "545a5304436f756e743a03da", "Tips" : 986}], "codes" : ["{96}545a5304436f756e743a03da"]} [3] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10532 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10532 [4] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZYTZ48N/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZYTZ48N/

by Jedd 5y ago

jjbinx007 5y ago

Those infernal newsletter nags are fucking insufferable. I haven't even read the damn article yet and now you're trying to get my email address? I generally subscribe with "postmaster@nameofsite". I imagine they break accessibility helpers too. As for smart homes, my toe dipping into them so far has been largely negative. Biggest mistake I've made is probably mixing brands. If I did it all from scratch I'd: 1) find a single brand that does everything reliably and stick with it. This saves having to have a dozen different apps on my phone and somehow tie them all together, not to mention keep track of half a dozen different passwords, as the apps tend to randomly log me out every so often. 2) choose a decent brand. I know pretty much everything is made in China these days but my experiences with my Yeelink light has been much more painful than my experience with Kasa-related appliances that seem to just work (most of the time) and don't need messing with periodically. 3) ask tech people I trust on what to buy and how to set it up. I don't trust advertising/marketing and many review sites have a vested interest in peddling and recommending shit products. and possibly 4) wait until it's a more mature market

Jedd 5y ago
Yeah, it's a bit of a mess. Jeff Geerling did a good two-part write up where he went through a lot of experimentation with different brands, which I've still got in an open tab somewhere. The Node-Red / Home Assistant (hassio) stuff I need to really dive into in anger at some point. So far my 'smart' stuff is some google gear + Philips Hue (lighting), and these little ESP microcontrollers. When looking at what vendor to adopt, I've been checking what has the best support by the hassio community - on the assumption they've been down this path already.

mabub24 5y ago

If you are using uBlock Origin, you can turn on the filter for "annoyances" and as far as I can tell it blocks those newsletter popups.

coldpie 5y ago
NoScript is also a godsend for making the Internet usable.
Jedd 5y ago
Oh, that's an excellent recommendation, thank you. I've never really looked in that menu previously, but, yes, definitely have uBO installed everywhere.

tzs 5y ago

> [...] that feed into a prometheus -> cortex store, so I can then map them on Grafana. I had to Google because I've never heard of any of those. Did I find the right ones? https://prometheus.io/ https://prometheus.io/ https://cortexmetrics.io/ https://cortexmetrics.io/ https://grafana.com/ https://grafana.com/ Mine is much more primitive. My indoor temperature monitor is an ESP8266 that uploads the temperature to a simple PHP page that saves it in an sqlite DB. A cron job runs a Perl script every few minutes that extract the data for the last hour, 3 hours, 12 hours, 48 hours, and since the beginning of time and uses gnuplot to produce PNG graphs. There's a static page on my server that displays those graphs. My outdoor temperature monitor uses a cheap AcuRite 433 MHz indoor/outdoor thermometer I bought. I have an RPi with an RTL-SDR attached spying on the communications between the AcuRite sensor outside and the AcuRite display inside using rtl_433. A script looks at the rtl_433 and finds the AcuRite sensor data and puts it in an sqlite DB. I haven't yet gotten around to making something to graph it. The nice thing about that approach is that it was also easy to add support for other 433 MHz wireless sensors near me, such as the AcuRite fridge/freezer thermometer I have. I can also see a few assorted sensors of neighbors (temperature, humidity, soil moisture, tire pressure, wind speed, wind direction, rain, and a few other random things). If I wanted to it would be easy to add them to the DB. When I made a wireless tipping range gauge recently. I used a 433 MHz transmitter module [1] and added a decoder [2] to rtl_433 that understands my data stream format. That gets my data into the rtl_433 output. No need to futz around with 433 MHz receiver modules which appear to be a pain in the ass [3]. An ATTiny85 counts the tips and runs the transmitter. The ATTiny85, the transmitter module, a battery holder, an RJ11 socket because the rain gauge has an RJ11 connector, a board to put those things on [4], and a small waterproof case is pretty much the complete parts list. I think I'm going to standardize on this general approach. For things that do not have WiFi and only need to report data 433 MHz modules and custom decoders fro rtl_433 on the RPi. For things that do have WiFi, such as any future ESP projects I do, they will just use WiFi to talk to the RPi. If anything needs to get sent outside of my LAN the RPi will handle it. The RPi is also currently controlling a space heater in my living room, getting connection data from my cable modem periodically and recording that in an sqlite DB, and serving a simple web page that lets me quickly change inputs and volume on my Denon receiver and so I'm already pretty much committed to keeping it running all the time. [1] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10534 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10534 [2] Decoders can be specified in a simple text file. Here's the one for my rain guage as an example: decoder { name = TZS Rain Gauge, modulation = OOK_PWM, short = 416, long = 612, reset = 1452, gap = 0, tolerance = 0, sync = 1484, bits = 96, match = {24}0x545a53, get = Tips:@80:{16}, } That results in this in the rtl_433 output (when set to write output in JSON) for my rain guage: {"time" : "1637771949", "model" : "TZS Rain Gauge", "count" : 1, "num_rows" : 1, "rows" : [{"len" : 96, "data" : "545a5304436f756e743a03da", "Tips" : 986}], "codes" : ["{96}545a5304436f756e743a03da"]} [3] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10532 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10532 [4] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZYTZ48N/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZYTZ48N/