- Raspberry Pi 4 – Blinking patterns of green ACT LED
On a Raspberry Pi 4, the green “ACT” LED indicates boot errors using certain blinking patterns. The following table shows what the different patterns mean (source of the table is the official documentation). Hint: In case your LED does not flash, or turns completely of after some flickering, your EEPROM bootloader might be corrupt.Continue reading “Raspberry Pi 4 – Blinking patterns of green ACT LED” - DIY Temperature Logger with DS18B20 and ESPHome / HomeAssistant
I needed a simple way to measure and log the temperature of the heating pipes in our house. The DS18B20 is a well-known and commonly used temperature sensor, and I already have Home Assistant running. So in this post, I want to guide you through the build of a temperature data logger that canContinue reading “DIY Temperature Logger with DS18B20 and ESPHome / HomeAssistant” - Setting up Home Assistant with two MQTT brokers (using MQTT bridge)
Home Assistant only supports subscribing to one MQTT broker. This is a problem, if you get sensor data from multiple different brokers and want to display them in your dashboards. So in this post, I will show you a solution on how to configure one of the brokers as an MQTT bridge. By doingContinue reading “Setting up Home Assistant with two MQTT brokers (using MQTT bridge)” - Migrating a simple server from VMware ESXi to Proxmox PVE
I just migrated a rather small server from VMware ESXi 7.0 to Proxmox 8.1.3 hypervisor. The server had two virtual Windows 10 machines. I document the steps here, in case it might be helpful to someone in the same situation. Step 1: Install a new, empty drive Insert a fresh SSD in the serverContinue reading “Migrating a simple server from VMware ESXi to Proxmox PVE” - Blinking patterns of Philips Hue Dimmer Switch V1 (RWL021)I currently own two Zigbee-based dimmer switches from Philipps Hue (the old V1 version). I was always wondering what the different blinking patterns of the LED indicated. Understanding them was not too straightforward. So here is a quick summary: Blinking orange The device is currently in pairing mode, waiting to be paired. A hard-resetContinue reading “Blinking patterns of Philips Hue Dimmer Switch V1 (RWL021)”
- How to flash Sonoff TX Ultimate with ESPHome
In today’s blog post, we’re focusing on the Sonoff TX Ultimate Smart Touch Wall Switch – a concealed installation switch with features that go beyond the basics. It is equipped with a large touch area, 28 LEDs for various lighting purposes, a speaker, vibration feedback, and gesture support. While these features offer great flexibility,Continue reading “How to flash Sonoff TX Ultimate with ESPHome” - DIY wireless camera with ESP32-CAM
Having a watchful eye on your surroundings that you can view from your smartphone, for as cheap as 16$. Sounds great? Whether you’re looking to monitor your home, office, or any cherished space, you can do so with the ESP32-CAM module. We all know the ESP32, a very versatile microcontroller that can be usedContinue reading “DIY wireless camera with ESP32-CAM” - Running piper and whisper for Home Assistant on Proxmox (LXC-based)
Piper and Whisper are Home Assistant add-ons needed for creating voice assistant pipelines. Piper is a local text-to-speech engine (TTS), and Whisper is a speech-to-text engine (STT). By using these, we can get rid of cloud services such as Google or OpenAI. If you have installed Home Assistant on Proxmox using the LXC version,Continue reading “Running piper and whisper for Home Assistant on Proxmox (LXC-based)” - Running Docker containers on Proxmox
Proxmox Virtual Environment is a great way of hosting virtualized resources (virtual machines and LXC containers). But setting up such an LXC container, and then running Docker, is not too easy for a beginner. In this post, I will list the steps to get it running. Basically, these are the main steps to take:Continue reading “Running Docker containers on Proxmox” - Proxmox: Configure a network bridge for internal networking
Usually, you want to cluster your Proxmox containers and VMs in subnets that are different from your real local area network, e.g. because some services should only be accessible inside of Proxmox. But after initial installation, Proxmox has one network bridge interface called “vmbr0”. It provides a virtual switch which connects all VMs andContinue reading “Proxmox: Configure a network bridge for internal networking” - On energy consumption of different wireless protocols and modulations
Introduction As time moves on, more and more wireless communication protocols and modulations are being developed. They all have their own area of application and some suit certain applications more than others. In this post, we want to look at different factors that influence energy consumption of some of the widely used protocols. Particularly,Continue reading “On energy consumption of different wireless protocols and modulations” - Wireless Communication Technologies for IoT Projects
Exploring Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and LoRa Introduction In the realm of embedded systems, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have revolutionized the way we interact with our surroundings. With a plethora of sensors and devices at our disposal, it’s crucial to understand the various wireless communication technologies available for IoT projects.Continue reading “Wireless Communication Technologies for IoT Projects” - What is IoT?
IoT is short for Internet of Things. Internet is the worldwide electronic network connecting computers that we all know, but also people and society. And “things” in this case, are products or objects from everyday life, that get “augmented” by adding some form of smartness to them using a microcontroller and network connectivity. IoTContinue reading “What is IoT?” - Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana with docker-composeDocker is a great and easy way to run software in containers. Docker compose is a nice extension which allows to run whole systems composed of multiple containers in one command. This post shows you how you can set up a so-called “TIG” stack consisting of the open-source tools Step 0: Install Docker IfContinue reading “Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana with docker-compose”
- What is Docker? How does it work?
In short: Docker is a platform and toolkit to develop applications that consist of multiple small containerized components that can be started, updated and replicated independently from each other. How it came to be Factor 1 – Monoliths are hard to handle Humans develop software since the early days of computers. Programming languages haveContinue reading “What is Docker? How does it work?” - Headless setup of a Raspberry Pi 4 on macOSThis post explains how to setup a current Raspberry Pi 4 with the most recent version of Raspberry Pi OS (most recent = at the time of writing: January 2022). Some details can also be found on the official website. Step 1: Download the image For Raspberry Pi 4, if you want to installContinue reading “Headless setup of a Raspberry Pi 4 on macOS”
- 720×720 LCD screen using DPI on Raspberry Pi 4
Some weeks ago, I bought a 4inch square LCD screen with 720×720 pixels from Waveshare. However, they did not provide any documentation at all for this specific display, but there was more than enough documentation for all the other displays, e.g. this rectangular one. Thus, I decided to document here how to get thisContinue reading “720×720 LCD screen using DPI on Raspberry Pi 4” - WS2812B vs. WS28123 – Determine the type of LED strips
There are many different types of LED strips out there. What type do you have? This post gives you hints on how to determine this. LED types These are the types of SMD LED components that you might find on LED strips: 3528: single color, non-addressable, very low power 2835: single color, newer thanContinue reading “WS2812B vs. WS28123 – Determine the type of LED strips” - What platform should I use for my IoT project?
There is a large choice of platforms, embedded microcontrollers and breakout boards available for prototyping your projects. I want to show you some aspects, that might help you to device what platform you should choose. First of all, answer the following questions for yourself: Do I need WiFi connection, or is some other wirelessContinue reading “What platform should I use for my IoT project?” - Subscribe to The Things Network (TTN) using MQTT
The Things Network (TTN) is an open platform for creating a worldwide LoRaWAN network. You can install your own LoRa gateways and register them on TTN so that other TTN users can use your gateways. If you have devices or sensors publishing data over LoRa, you can receive this data using an MQTT brokerContinue reading “Subscribe to The Things Network (TTN) using MQTT”
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