Let's Talk About Tech!

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.

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.