After a few Amazon Prime Day purchases this is what’s in my Aladdin’s cave of goodies….
Before I start though, I have to re-iterate that everything here has a purpose – some things were bought on a whim but others most definitely weren’t – and even those there were, there was an idea in my mind that they could be used with something else….
Latest Stuff
Pride of place goes to my Amazon Echo Show – this has replaced a not-so-long-ago acquired Amazon Echo Spot, (which although a marvellous device was hampered by its small screen and has now been relegated to an alarm clock-cum-media player in a bedroom). As well as the usual Alexa responsibilities, this will be my test device when I expand my Alexa Skill knowledge from the Audio channel to Audio and Video – watch this space!
MF RC522 RFID Reader Three Pack – want to build your own Oyster Card reader system. This is what you need. Separate blog on this soon….
Raspberry Pi Zero WH – this is Pi #8 in my house, love the two Pi Zeroes and Pi 3B I have (plus four venerable Mk 1 Model B’s from 2012 gathering dust). This is a game-changer for home automation and other tinker jobs needing some processing power – needs nothing more than a phone charger to make it fly. More about this later.
600 Pack of Resisters and 40 pack of jumper leads – having scratched around for old resisters and bits of wire sor hanging stuff of my Pi’s I’ve bit the bullet and orders some proper gear. More in a later blog about what its being used for.
Existing Stuff
CEL Robox 3D Printer – this is the jewel in the crown – nearly 4 years old now but still pumping out great prints and so easy to use. This is the closest you’ll get to a Commodity 3D Printer that is as easy to use as a Commodity 2D Inkjet Printer
Parrot Bebop 2 Drone – OK I lied. This is the jewel in the crown… well at least it is on a sunny day. Video quality is ‘just’ good enough but its the views you can get from up on high that make this my equal-favourite gadget. I paid extra for the FPV pack which brings a Playstation Like Controller and a useless pair of Goggles (useless with the Parrot but perfect as a Google Cardboard replacement). Twin batteries give me nearly 45 minutes flying time, enough to exhaust internal 8GB memory card but carrying a laptop with me solves this issue
Raspberry Pi’s 5, 6 and 7 – having jumped on the Raspberry Pi Wandwagon right from day one in 2012, interest waned for me a couple of years ago as my four original Raspberry Pi Model B’s with 256Mb RAM could no longer cope with any significant processing, leaving R2 soldering on behind the TV and R1, R3 and R4 sat like ornaments
Google Cardboard – spent ten quid three years ago on this and paired it up to the Rollercoaster App – its no Occulus Rift but sit yourself down on a swivel chair, fire up the Roller Coaster App, stick your phone in the Cardboard, stare at the start leaver and be prepared to be amazed!
Leap Motion – sadly all the cleverness is in the Windows Software which, despite its very very clever capabilities, limits its use for me – not been able to get it to tie up to Google Cardboard / Phone App so not getting much use
Philips Hue – wonderful smart lighting system which works effortlessly with Alexa and is also trivial to drive from a Raspberry Pi – actually in the office is just one £50 Hue Colour bulb but almost the entire house is “hue’d” (or “innr’ed”) now – the intention ultimately is to combine them with my pair of Sonos Play:1’s to create a house variation of the Tesla Model X Celebration mode – am going to have to get some hefty stepper motors on the full length opening windows upstair mind!
TPLink / Sonoff Plugs – can’t fault the TPLinks HS100 smart plus one bit (apart from the Kasa app crashes on my phone) – currently deployed as ‘lamp’ and ‘fan’ – I think you can guess how you use them with Alexa! The Sonoff is a bit less user friendly and quite frankly is better suited to mounting direct into your electric system given that it comes with no plug, no socket and cables to connect to the two pairs of L N E terminates on it
Go Pro 4 Sliver – an awesome still, timelapse, nightlapse and video camera. Has been around the world and delivered some fantastic results. What its really good at though is time and nightlapses – best footage came from Atlantic City, a starswirl nightlapse and motion timelapse using my home built timelapse motion rig – I’ll post a blog about that some time.
Not so useful Stuff
Here’s where the bought on a whim stuff lives. Some of it has never been out of the box, most of it only been used once or twice and is now gathering dust, in the hope one day that it’ll find a use again….
Maplins Robot Arm with USB interface – I’ve had this for a few years now – it got used once to feed the dogs treats driven by commands from a Mk 1 Raspberry Pi. Sadly code all lost a long time agore, and so it sits on the shelf.
Kodak Pixpro SP360 – relegated to the not-so-useful group now because sadly the quality is really poor. Bought it to do 360 (actually 210) degree videos for use in and around the truck. Does the job reasonably OK, despite poor conversion/upload software but the video quality is just rubbish compared to any of my three dashcams or the epic Go Pro. One on the list to replace it will be a full 360 4K camera if I can get one at the right price….
Amazon Dash Buttons (5 off) – with the use of a Raspberry Pi showed great promise as the ultimate no-power physical sensor – a boot up and broadcast time of about 2 seconds is ‘just’ too slow. They may get themselves off this list if I can find a new use case for them.
Energenie Smart Plugs (and Pi Hat) – these compared to the TP Link Smart Plus are, on the other hand, a crock of sh*t – originally designed for use with a dedicated remote control, I bought the version with the Pi Hat so I could link them to the Weimo Plug emulator software on Pi R2. Why Wemo Plug emulator? Guess with Amazon product knows about these and is happy to respond to a ‘Alexa, turn on the weimo-emulated-device-name’ …. Something screwy with the remote recognition so never got it working and now, like my Robot Arm and Dash Buttons are relegated to my own personal Room 101, otherwise known as ‘The Hole’, otherwise known as the ‘Cupboard over the stairs’!
Makey-Makey – this is what you build a banana piano with – once I realised it just simulated a USB keyboard with about 12 keys on interest dimmed somewhat…
Nest Thermostat – arrived as a freebie after an energy supplier change 18 months ago. Still waiting for me to have the balls to fit it to the central heating boiler – which I really must do as I believe I can get Alexa to control it… one day.
WiFi Smart Net Camera – bought to use as a petcam cheap as chips off ebay – sadly couldn’t crack the API to it so, you guessed it, off to Room 101!
Nikon Coolpix 5900 – to be fair this was an epic little £17 ebay purchase, only not used because the Go Pro does what it does so much better. This was the cheapest camera I could buy that could be driven by the gphoto2 package sat on a ubiquitous Raspberry Pi telling it to take a photo every 30 seconds…
And finally the boring stuff…
Yep theres a couple of laptops a couple of flat panel displays and an HP Inkjet Printer!