Posts


Nov. 21, 2024

Using the Pinchflat YouTube Downloader

Are you tired of buffering videos and unreliable internet connections when trying to watch your favorite YouTube content? Look no further! In this post, I’ll introduce you to Pinchflat, a powerful tool that allows you to download YouTube videos effortlessly. Inspired by a mention on the Self-Hosted Podcast, I decided to give Pinchflat a try and share my experience with you.

Sep. 20, 2024

Time to get my “print” on

Exciting times ahead! As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have been eagerly waiting for my new 3D printer to arrive. After much consideration, I decided to go with the Bambu Lab P1S. For now, I opted not to get the bundled AMS unit. In this post, I’ll share why I chose this version over others and my initial impressions.

Sep. 12, 2024

Planning for my new 3D printer

So, I have been 3D printing for a little while now. Not as long as many, but a little while. It has been about 4 years now, when I get my first and currently only 3D printer. So where have I come from and what is next on my 3D printing journey?

Sep. 3, 2024

What is a PV Fireman Switch?

Join me as I dive deeper into my Solar system and learn more about how it works in detail and maintain the system as items age/break (everything breaks eventually), so let’s learn about a PV Fireman switch.

Oct. 17, 2022

Home Assistant Routing

Why do I need to change my routing?

I am a tinkerer by nature and I often need to move my Home Assistant instances around and by this, I mean create new instances and DEV versions. As complication of this, sometimes my UNIFI controller in not available and as such the following components are not available to me.

Mar. 3, 2022

Smarter Washing Machine Notifications

In this post, I show you how I use a Z-Wave Plug (Fibaro) to get more monitoring around power consumption and then use this to drive notifications.

Jan. 17, 2022

Sonoff 4ch Pro R2 with ESPHome

In this post, I am going to talk about the process of converting the Sonoff 4CH Pro R2 to ESPHome and how to now connect it to Home Assistant

Jan. 5, 2021

Shelly Lamps

Use Case

I had been using a WiFi bulb with the lamps to control the lighting, this was working very well. The lights would come at set times and this was great. I even have automation around presence detection and the lights would NOT come on if the house was NOT oocupied. However, them it comes to actual sleep, my wife was unable to switch off the lamp with causing the WiFi bulb to be dropped from the network and then breaking the automation. This was NO good.