Let's Talk About Tech!

Background Artificial Intelligence is now part of our daily technical landscape. It helps us write, summarize, explore ideas, generate examples, troubleshoot code, and structure complex topics faster than ever before. As this blog continues to cover IT, automation, infrastructure, cloud, identity, security, and high-tech topics, I think it is important to be clear about how AI is used in the content you read here. This is why I am introducing an AI Transparency Charter. The goal is simple: when you read an article on this blog, you should have a clear understanding of the role AI played in its creation. Not because AI is good or bad by default, but because transparency matters.

Background I have solar panels on my roof (I already did a nice project  on that topic), but you already know it.  The idea is to use the generated electricity immediately to avoid sending it back to the grid (cost involved). So, I decided to create a little project to show to the people living in my house if this is the best time to use energy-intensive appliances.

Background Since February 2025 , this blog has been very quiet. I had health issues, and I did not give this space the time it deserved. Now I am giving myself a challenge: bring it back to life with practical projects. At the same time, I moved from Domoticz to Home Assistant .  Domoticz served me well for more than 10 years on a Raspberry Pi 3, but I felt I had reached its limits for my needs. I wanted more flexibility and a cleaner path forward. After switching to Home Assistant, one problem remained: I wanted a way to see critical values instantly, without opening my phone or the full HA web interface. That requirement became a project.

Background To the topic of energy consumption and reduction, I always came to the same point : "How can you reduce your energy fingerprint if you have no idea about what your are currently consuming ?!?" This is the reason why I'm monitoring almost every energy I'm consuming. I'm monitoring my water usage, my solar production, and since recently, my electricity usage. I recently been providing by my energy provider with a smart meter and this is a great opportunity to create nice graphs !

Background Starting from macOS Catalina and iOS 13, Apple offers the ability to use an iPad as a secondary screen for your MacBoo k. This is very handy ! Problem ? You need to navigate through the menu and a lot of extra clicks are needed. Can we use some clever tips to automate that ? I think so.

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.