[Drezha]

Yeah, that current information is coming from the inverter itself. It sends all the data online so I can view it in an app – the screenshot is from Home Assistant, which I’ve found a plugin which uses an API to pull the data from the app web service. As that works well enough at the minute, I won’t both going out and getting a Zigbee based router to measure the power.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

However to take full advantage of it you really need a battery, otherwise you are guessing at the size and speed of clouds!

We said we’d try the system before buying a battery, as the battery doubled the cost of the system and according to Eon, is greatly increasing the time to install. We were originally quoted 20 weeks wait, but I think it’s perhaps been about 8.

However, we did have a firm call us today to arrange the solar panel install on the 15th – I pointed out that they’d been fitted yesterday and they weren’t to happy. It appears Eon have double booked us with their subcontractors!

We have a more basic display – doesn’t show us anything solar output related. We have the British Gas one here. I have considered getting a third party one that inegrates with Home Assistant, but I’m just using their API at the minute. That only updates every 30 minutes, so it’s a bit laggy on the graph, but it works.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ours has apparently landed in the UK over the weekend and the dealer is now arranging a date for us to collect. Unfortunately, it won’t be this weekend, as I’m driving down to Thetford for a MTB Instructors course (which I’d applied for at the last minute in case the car came in!)

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Dragging this up, but we had our solar panels installed today which has been good – it’s already had the wife approval, as the generated electric this afternoon after they installed was £0.22 for the day, which she was impressed with. Though she got a bit lost when I was trying to explain that we’d have saved more than that, as that was the inverter just telling us what we’d get if we sold all we produced, when in fact we’d used some, so didn’t have to pay the 28p per kW we’d used instead of selling!

It’s kept me interested the last few days looking at automations in Home Assistant so I can set things to turn on when it’s producing most power.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Been subscribed for a few years now – quite enjoy his content. I do skip some of the videos – a number of the laptop reviews I tend to ignore, but there’s usually interesting stuff.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

These latest tests are taken using the router with Three. As I went for the contract in the end.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Current Virgin speed – tested over WiFi.

Hooking up to 5G via the router (this is plugged in via ethernet mind)

If it stays like that, I’ll be pretty happy and will be able to kiss Virgin goodbye! Just need to figure out how I’ll manage in modem mode if I keep this on my office windowsill…

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I ordered it this evening – went through Quidco, even though they didn’t have a specific link for the 5G router, and just had a confirmation email of £60 cash back!

Three had a 30 day money back guarantee, so I thought I’d give it a go. Basically have the first 6 months free if the cash back goes through.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

hey are now attempting to avoid some of these issues by regular offsite meetings where everyone talks about their projects and gets feed-back from the rest of the group. It is often an overnight Holiday Inn do as this allows informal after-work bar and socializing time.

New firm do the same – meet every quarter for an in person time meeting. It also sounds like they have a team meeting every two weeks online to deliver an hour of training (one staff member is given a topic and then plans the presentation) which is to help everyone get chartership, which is what I’m trying to do.

I mean 800Mbps is pretty quick – at those speeds, you’re almost getting to the saturation point for the Gigabit Ethernet on the router!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

@Drezha – I have been trying to use Home Automation to link with our Nest thermostat but that then gets into the mess of 2022 Google integration. I’m completely bogged down because I do not have a domain (a Google Cloud registration requirement it seems). Have you any ideas how one gets around this?

Afraid not – we’ve a Hive, rather than Nest. That needs to have a two factor authenication code everytime the server reboots, which is a bit of a faff.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

wasbit wrote:

Yep. I set the wife’s app to get the weather from RAF Brize Norton which is only a couple of miles away as the crow flies, reasoning that the RAF would probably require greater accuracy

I don’t imagine that the RAF use an app to get weather information 😉

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

JayCeeDee wrote:

Unfortunately they do one for Android but not for browser or I’d have it on permanent display on one of the monitors.😟

From a quick Google, it would suggest that Home Assistant will sort you out there – they have a Growatt integration, allowing it to collect that data. Which appears to be the panels/inverter that feed in to Shinephone.

We should have done it last year when we had a quote but we delayed and now we’re in a 20 week queue. British Gas, our current supplier, fit our mains isolator next Saturday and then we await Eon to install. Only a 5.5p feed in tariff. However, I’ve taken a new job that will see me working from home 5 days a week, so the estimates that Eon drew us up will be wrong anyhow (assumed we would only use 27% – I think we’d have been higher than that anyhow, as my wife is home two days a week anyhow, so we had occupants in the house 4/7 days and they assumed 2/7).

We’ve omitted the batteries now as we didn’t want the ones that Eon would install (I don’t think they supported powering the house during a power cut) and we’ll see how we get on during the first 12 months or so and will likely then fit a battery if it looks worthwhile. Chances are after some further research, it could be worthwhile.

Our average use appears to be about 8kWh, so I’m hoping we’ll be OK – another Home Assistant plugin is able to estimate solar output and suggests that today we would have produced 17kWh.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

It’s great – I use it to bring my smart devices together under one app. But the data collection aspect is the aspect I’ve embraced the most – I’ve linked it to my smart meter so it’s showing me my energy usage across the day – I’m also looking forward to getting my solar panels and linking them to the system as well.

It also gets wife seal of approval as she only has to do the one app now for controlling lights and other devices!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

That’s the weather source for the default weather integration in to Home Assistant. Seems to work reasonably well from what I’ve seen so far.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

Did you order the Hybrid version?

No other option – they’re only selling it in their Mild Hybrid version according to the website.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Saw a lady with a 22 plate Puma out in town yesterday and stopped to ask her how long it had taken from ordering to receive it – she’d ordered in September last year and received in March this year. So with that time frame, we’re probably looking at August or September before we get ours – and that was before Russia invaded.

Certainly no manufacturing date from the dealer yet.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Microsoft had a special deal on recently on the Surface Duo, which almost tempted me.

The finger print reader in the power button is quite good – works well on the MacBook and the iPad mini I’ve got, so these are good locations for them in my mind. Certainly works better when wearing a mask than the FaceID that my work iPad Pro has, which meant that the smaller iPad was used more often for inspections during my work over the pandemic.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

There are 5 x HP ProDesk 400 G1 – SFF – Pentium G3220 3 GHz which I am bumping up to 8GB, installing a 128GB SSD for W10 and including a 500GB or 1TB spinner. They can take an i3 or i5, £20 and £35 respectively on EBay. If anyone’s interested let me know. I’m not after huge amounts of money, £50 + P&P, it’s more about keeping them out of landfill.

 

I’d have bitten your hand off last weekend, but I ended up buying one on eBay and then sending it straight back unopened durting the week after the seller ended up buying me a power supply from another eBayer to ship to me and therefore hadn’t had the original power supply (or any power supply as stated in his description) and then purchased me a power supply that only had half the leads required. When it arrived back with them yesterday, they had the gall to say I hadn’t sent the hard drive back (we’d agreed not to send one as part of me making an offer for the PC). Frankly, it was the worst exprience I’ve had on eBay to date as a buyer.

In the end, I bought a cheap Chinese PC on Amazon which was delivered in time for the bank holiday weekend and I was able to setup and play with Home Assistant over the extra day off.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

keith with the teef wrote:

WTF is going on with usb cables these days they are all shyit.

Personally I put it down to the Oculus and Oculus software rather than the cable. Though could be because it’s a 5m cable.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

The only problem with VR is that people wearing them look like dorks to others. Maybe something like this Samsung plus some CPU peripheral priority is really the way to go!

In my reasonably limited experience so far with it on the PC, it’s mainly been down to getting Oculus trying to find the device actually connected! I’ve a recommended cable (an Anker one, not the grossly mispriced Oculus one) and it’s still hit or miss whether the software detects it attached or not. When I’ve tried it, it’s been relatively good, though I was looking to play Star Wars Squadrons on it, and where is falls down is the vast amount of buttons that game can use and you not be able to see your keyboard to press them – or perhaps my desk isn’t big enough for my HOTAS, keyboard and the dangling headset wires!

However, I’ve a few days off at the end of the week where I’ve got no-one else in the house, so I might well finally try Fallout 4 in VR. Just make sure I clear the toddler toys out the way first…

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Author]

Posts