Airthings makes some fantastic sensors. These disc-shaped little ufos have helped me monitor and investigate issues with stuff like Radon and CO2. I’ve posted about the sensors before here: https://www.koskila.net/how-do-airthings-sensors-work-with-home-assistant/ This time, I’ll write about their battery life, which certainly could be improved… In the picture below (a screenshot from my Home Assistant), I’ve tracked […]
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Worx Landroid support – is it any good?
I’ve now had Worx Landroid autonomous robot lawn mowers since 2019. And I’m using plural, since I really do have 2 of them! They’re busy trying to mow my lawn the best they can, and while they do struggle greatly (and I’ve covered some of that on my other website: Worx Landroid L2000 (WR155E) – […]
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Site5 (finally) abandoning Europe
This article is a continuation – well, hopefully the ending chapter – of my 10-year-long relationship with Site5. I first migrated to Site5 in 2013. To my misfortune, already in 2015, EIG acquired the company and started tearing their service down. I posted about my experiences here: With uptime of 80% and constant “server updates”, […]
Alright, this one might be a bit contentious. I use Akismet, but it is not perfect. It lets a lot of stuff through, so I make a couple of adjustments to block the rest of the spam. Namely, I block a list of most typical words and letters that are in spam comments. Below, I’ll […]
In this article, I’ll share my experiences with 2 cheap eWelink-compatible wall light switches I’ve had and used for a while now. New ones are probably coming in occasionally – will post about them later. Background I’ve ordered different, Sonoff/eWeLink -compatible light switches (also called “wall switches”) for my lighting needs around the house. These […]
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Sonoff S26 R2
I already have a number of Sonoff wifi plugs, and they’re great. But I read that the Zigbee plugs also work as Zigbee routers, and I really, REALLY need that 🙂 So I ordered a couple of them – the availability seems awful right now, but I found a couple of AliExpress. It’s available on […]
I recently purchased Splenssyy eWelink-compatible smart thermostat. The thermostat looks like it’s working, and its temperature readings show properly – but where it should read “heating”, it just says “E2”. What do? Problem Status (or error code) “E2” means “External sensor needed”. So either your external sensor (NTC thermistor) is not installed or it doesn’t […]
This Sonoff-compatible thermostat is worth every penny. Mainly because it’s incredibly affordable for the feature set. At ~40€, it costs about half the price of most comparable options, and compared to Western brands like Honeywell, you save about a hundred bucks. This is a super short review of the product. Experiences I’ve used the thermostat […]
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What’s AliExpress’ IOSS number?
This short article will answer that burning question you must be asking if you have ordered stuff from AliExpress, and suddenly got a threatening letter from your Customs office, demanding you pay VAT for the gadgets you bought from AliExpress. For about a year now, any package entering the European Union’s VAT zone needs to […]
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Purpose of this website
So, I maintain a few different websites. This one is for my purely gadget-related posts – because I’ve got a few, and I don’t want them messing up my main website (www.koskila.net), where I mostly write about Software Development -related topics. At first, I’m sure this site will just act as a notebook for my […]