cpmills.com

Household Temperature Graphs Updated

Chris — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:05:49 +0000

I have updated the page showing my household temperature graphs. Previously I was logging data to the cloud using Pachube and while this works well, the tools available for graphing the information are not great. As the number of readings increased, the tools I was using to render the graphs became slower and slower. What’s more the graphs used flash which wasn’t particularly helpful if I wanted to view the graphs on my iPad. I have now reverted to some home brew data logging using RRDTool. Data is stored in a Round Robin Database and then rendered using some more …

Netflix UK on Wii – Quick Review

Chris — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:52:44 +0000

I’ve recently taken a free trial from Netflix UK with the intention of evaluating it as a replacement for Sky Movies. I have a couple of devices I can play it on, but last night I chose to try it on my Wii console (because I couldn’t be bothered to connect my laptop to the TV). I am thinking it is time to shift my TV to Virgin Media (due to my flaky Sky+HD box) and VM want a wallet busting £30 per month for the Sky Movies Collection. If new movies are what you are looking for, then Netflix …

Fourth LightwaveRF Dimmer and Good News on LEDs

Chris — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:47:47 +0000

I have just fitted my fourth Lightwave RF dimmer. This time in the living room and on the same fitting as the one I have recently replaced with LED lamps. The dimmer works fine as I would expect and is actually much better than the home easy dimmer it replaced. The LED lamps dim much lower than they did with the home easy dimmer. I recently robbed an LED out of the fitting to demo it to a friend, while I was fiddling, I put this LED back in. The even better news is that the Lightwave RF Dimmer was …

Update on hammering TRV – 2

Chris — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:10:22 +0000

I spent some time yesterday clearing my garage a bit. While doing so, I found the original head to the new TRV I’ve had fitted to my bedroom radiator. Previous visitors will be aware from here and here that the TRV was sounding like a jack hammer. My plumber thinks this is due to the radio controlled actuators I have fitted. The following video proves this isn’t the case as it does exactly the same with the original head on it. Sorry I filmed it with my iPhone in portrait mode! It looks to me like it is definitely a …

DemoPad controlling LightwaveRF

Chris — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:22:31 +0000

Its the wee small hours and I really should be in bed but I have just installed DemoPad on my iPhone (and iPad) and been playing with trying to get it to control my LightwaveRF installation. It works! What I needed to do was find out the actual IP address of my LightwaveRF WiFi Link (because DemoPad doesn’t currently support UDP broadcasts) and I had to run DemoPad on a device already authorised by the WiFi link (i.e my iPhone rather than iPad). I added a couple of simple buttons to the screen, configured them to send the correct UDP …

New telephone system

Chris — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:52:51 +0000

I now have a full Voice Over IP setup at home that I am happy with. I will blog technical details later, but I wanted to put something up about what I have. At the core of the system is a Trixbox virtual machine running on my VMWare VSphere server in the loft. I currently have four handsets connected to this. A Grandstream GXP2000 Enterprise IP Phone upstairs which is connected to a Power Over Ethernet switch, one downstairs (connected via the wireless network) a bog standard analog handset connected to a SIP ATA (more about that in a sec) …

GU10 LEDs – First Impressions

Chris — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:50:10 +0000

Its been a while since I posted something and today I have reason to correct that. I have just taken delivery and fitted what I hope is the first of many LED lamps. After much research, I decided to take a punt on these: http://www.ledhut.co.uk/spot-lights/gu10-led-bulbs/gu10-smd-led-220-lumens-45-watts-equiv-best-internet-price.html Despite the URL, these claim to be 50 Watt equivalent 320 Lumen GU10s running at 4 Watts each. In this post, I will document my first impressions (and those of the better half). At £9.95 each (when opting for the dimmable option) they are not cheap, but four of these will consume 16W of electricity …

Cloud Logging

Chris — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:48:29 +0000

I have been playing with logging this week. FHEM now automatically records the measured temperature, the desired temperature (set point) and actuator levels for each room to Pachube.com (pronounced Patch Bay). With the data held on Pachube, I can do various things like build dynamic graphs for display on this site. At the moment, I am using a Pachube app which displays the graphs using flash, but being an iOS user, this is less than optimal. You can view the current temperatures in my three bed terrace by clicking the following link: Household Temperature Graphs

Ouch!

Chris — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:50:57 +0000

I have just found out the hard way what happens when you accidentally touch the exposed wires sticking out of a broken fairy lamp while decorating the Christmas tree. They were 240V lights too! Perhaps I should not have had the lights on while doing it, or perhaps it was better that I did – had the little one found it later it could have been far worse. Obviously being the geek that I am, the (unbroken) lights that are now on the tree are remote controlled using a spare LightwaveRF appliance module.

LightwaveRF WiFi Linked

Chris — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:02:04 +0000

Finally my local B&Q have taken delivery of the LightwaveRF WiFi Link and I popped in earlier to pick one up. You can order one here through Amazon if you wish: Buy LightwaveRF WiFi Link on-line through Amazon. The packaging is the usual high quality I have come to expect from JSJS Designs and was a bugger to get into due to it being sealed inside a plastic tray. Included in the tray is the WiFi link itself, a pretty bog standard wall-wart power supply and a short Ethernet cable (incorrectly referred to as an RJ45 cable in the …