Let's Talk About Tech!

Background In a previous post related to the thingspeak integration for my solar panel production monitoring , I created some basic dashboard showing the production throughout the day. I wanted to see what was the production since the beginning of the day. Since ThingSpeak is part of MathWorks (MATLAB), I have a good feeling that some strong formulas were available for our creativity. 

Background I'm about to have some workers at home constructing some fun stuff in the garden. It would be nice to "survey" the progress with some cool progress video. Why not a timelapse ? But How can I do this ?

Background I've been suspicious about the air quality in my direct environment, my home office, the basement, my pergola, the living room where I have my wood fire. Since my recent Arduino experience I was thinking at creating a all-in-one device that can monitor the ambient air quality. This was before I discovered AirGradient.

Background Ever since I can remember, I've been fascinated with the idea of developing an IoT device capable of responding to my inquiries whenever I seek specific information. Initially, I was under the impression that establishing an API endpoint or server would be a highly complex task, possibly beyond my current skill set. However, I've discovered that this assumption was misplaced. The process is not as daunting as I had imagined.

Background Have you ever had the need to properly erase HDD or SSD before disposing them ? Or selling them ? You do not want to have someone else playing around with your data right ? What we usually do is using a bootable Linux Live CD and use dd style command to write random data on the disk right ? But what if you have 10 disks in your machine ? What if you need a report to proof the world that wiping is a success ? I came across this challenge recently.

Background In 2021, I was introduced to the PaleBlue brand and their groundbreaking approach to rechargeable Li-Ion batteries, designed to supplant traditional single-use batteries. The concept and the product resonated with me deeply. You can revisit my initial article on PaleBlue [ here ]. Now, PaleBlue has taken strides in enhancing their offerings in several key areas. Let's delve into these developments.

Background In a previous article , I demonstrated how to control Somfy devices using php and the Somfy API. Now that it's working, we need to identify some useful activities related to this new functionality. Why not begin integrating it into a Home Automation platform like Domoticz? Let's dive into it.

Background I recently bought a pergola with solar blinds, dimmable LEDs and a orientable roof blades. This is great to enjoy the summer without getting too much hot air or direct sun. It is coming with a Somfy Tahoma controller box that allows controlling the different devices with a SmartPhone. How cool is this ? Ok, but how does it work ? Can I control this myself with my own scripts and integrate it into an home automation system ? Let's have a look !

Background I've spent few years creating PhP functions to help with my script journey, but since few releases, Rubrik is pushing to switch the API auth to service account and tokens which means many of my functions are about to die. It was a massive work, I do not want to lose the benefit of it.

Background Sometimes, when using a self managed counter, you are getting fancy values. Could be test, could be an error, could be wrong value read from a sensor .... Basically, it happens. This is a problem since it is faking your statistics. There is a way to remove those values but it does not always work. Let's find out how to solve this problem.