Weeknote 3: There's no place like home

Posted 2023-01-22

I did some more smart home stuff and managed to not electrocute myself 👏

Very quick (and late) weeknote for this week as I’ve been busy writing my slides out for State of Open Con.

What have I been up to this week?

Smart home

Remember that Lanbon L8 I installed a few weeks back? I’ve already replaced it 😂. There’s nothing wrong with it. I just discovered a better smart panel that suits my needs better. The Lanbon will still be useful for me to play about with. I’m thinking about flashing it with some custom firmware next.

Instead I’ve installed the Sonoff NSPanel Pro as a control panel for all the smart things in my office. It’s not your typical smart control panel as it doesn’t come with relays to act as a switch for the lighting circuit you hook it into, but that works fine for me as the lights in my office are individual colour changing smart bulbs that are “always on”.

I should also note that, as you’ve probably noticed from the screenshots, I’m not running the typical Sonoff control panel app. Thanks to some guides provided by Blakadder’s Smarthome Shenanigans, I managed to gain access to the Android backend of the control panel and install the Home Assistant Companion app to give me a greater degree of control over the controls shown on the screen. I’d recommend checking out his blog. In particular, I used the following articles when I was configuring my control panel:

Also, did I mention you can play Pokémon on it? 😋

Jack Gilmore

Weeknote 3: There's no place like home

What have I been up to this week?

Smart home

What did I read/watch this week?