Well finished watching New Amsterdam and I can say it’s absolutely brilliant. Looking forward to the continuation of the series as it seems to be on a half season break.
So watching this has made me want to rewatch House. I was big into it years ago but never completed it. So I’ve started it again today.
Had forgotten about the clinic bits mixed in to the main story. Always make you laugh. The whole thing is a good mix of comedy, drama and the medical science is very intriguing.
Long couple of days at work. Had good news today that I got star of the week. That means I get an extra £100 in my pay this month. I do believe it’s because I stayed out an extra day to complete a delivery. It’s nice to be appreciated.
As always Romeo is happy to see me. He misses me when I’m away as do I miss him.
Not sure what I’m going to do this weekend. I always plan lots of things in my head but never actually do most of it. I could really do with sorting some stuff out and doing some tip runs. But I will probably end up just watching TV. Haha. Chow for now.
One great thing about my job is I get to see all different parts of the UK. Never been to Hull before a few weeks ago and now I’m here again for the third time since.
I actually enjoy staying out in hotels too. Most of the time it’s a Travelodge which are pretty nice. Always know what your getting. I carry a Roku stick on my travels too so I can watch streaming services. Which these days is mainly Amazon Prime. Used to be Netflix mainly.
Well hello everyone. So it’s the end of 2019. This is the first year in my whole life I am bringing in the new year alone. I don’t know how to feel about it as I’m not really fussed about New Year as a thing but I’ve always had people to share it with and it’s never really about the event for me as it is spending time with friends, family and partners.
I have been addicted to home made chips lately and been either having them with pepper, salt and vinegar or gravy but got myself some chip shop curry sauce. Think I made it a bit too thin but was still nice.
So hoping for a great 2020 and hope all my friends and family also have a great year!
So it’s been a long time since I’ve wrote on here. My partner of 5 years split up with me and I’ve been very down and lonely. I’ve picked up a lot since compared to how I felt when it first happened.
So what have I been up to since being single…. I’ve done a little bit of sorting. We started watching Lost but only got to season 2 so I’ve watched all of them starting from season 2. Lost is a FrigginAwesome TV show and those of you who have never watched it should give it a go. Their all on Amazon Prime.
Also watched season 4 of the Expense. That was great but was only 10 episodes long. I’m going to rewatch them again soon. But right now I’m watching New Amsterdam. I am really loving this show. I like how it’s 22 episodes long for season 1 just like shows used to be. Hope season 2 is the same.
Work has been good and had an appraisal lately which went very well. Getting good appreciation in the job and got some great colleges too.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with Romeo now I’m single. My good friends Liz and Dan looked after him for me while I was away this last time. But I think I need to find a family member to look after him for me.
So that’s it for now. I’m going to try and update this more. Oh and it’s nearly New Year, so Happy New Year everyone. Hope you all have a great 2020.
I’ve wanted to have my central heating controlled from MQTT for a while now to save me hunting around for the remote wireless thermostat timer.
The unit I currently use is a Honeywell CM67. It is pretty good and allows 7 day programming of the CH with up to 8 temperature setups per day. It remotely controls the boiler unit, shown below, which is hard wired to the mains and the boiler contact terminal for the CH demand.
All the boiler needs is for two contacts to be closed to activate the CH. This is normally bridged when using an internal timer or onboard switch. The bridged is removed for remote timers, thermostats or frost protection to be connected.
In my case I have modified my Sonoff to be just the contact switch I need without bridging mains to this input.
I removed a corner of the Sonoff to remove the tracks connecting the neutral bar and the live to the relay. This then leaves the input only connected to the onboard power regulator which feeds the ESP8266 and the low power side of the relay.
I then only needed to solder a bridge from the live input of the relay to the remaining neutral bar.
I have made a crude diagram of this below.
I could have easily done the same with a Sonoff SV and an external PSU but this will be a lot neater install.
Pics of the modified board will be up soon along with installed pics next to boiler.
This now will enable me to control the boiler CH demand state with a simple MQTT topic 🙂 Excellent.
Now initially the only functionality I would lose would be to be able to have the CH come on or off dependant on temperature as the digital thermostat timer would no longer control the boiler CH demand. But I could still run timers (more accurate and complex if need be) and have manual control over it.
I will be adding temperature sensors to my Home Automation at some point in the future to each room. This would give far more control over the heating of multiple rooms and corridors rather than just the room the thermostat is in.
I have been working on home automation bits and pieces for a little while now and I’m finally getting a few things done.
I started off with a USB Energenie (https://energenie4u.co.uk/catalogue/product/ENER011) which has six sockets, 4 of which are controllable via USB. There is also an ethernet version which I don’t have sadly. I had originally controlled it with a Linux software called SIS-PM which provides a simple WebUI or control from the command line.
As I had started to get more into it I decided to go down the MQTT route for comms between devices and front ends. So I setup Mosquitto. I found a bridge for the Energenie which subscribes to an MQTT topic and then allows control of the 4 sockets via MQTT messages. Great!
Well my latest thing now is a small device called a Sonoff. These devices have an ESP8266 controller, which is Arduino compatible, connects over wifi and controls a relay all in one neat little package.
They come with their own software on them which is cloud based but you can upload Sketches via the Ardino software just like you would with an Arduino. So I have a sketch written by Jonathan Oxer who runs the Youtube Channel SuperHouse and also Director at Freetronics. http://www.superhouse.tv/17-home-automation-control-with-sonoff-arduino-openhab-and-mqtt/
I now have more control over home stuff and can go about wiring up items with these devices.
Had an interview yesterday for a position at Worcester Majestic Bingo. Interview went pretty good. Hoping that I will get the position and be moved there.
Here are some pics of the Bingo.
Well I’ve been promising myself to update my blog for ages but have not got around to doing it. So here is a PIC of our dogs sleeping.
Hey all. Been watching Doctor Who a lot lately. Especially when I’ve had two days off in a row with katie. We have watched the 9th and 10th Doctor and we are now a few episodes into season 6 with the 11th Doctor. I had already watched them all before. But it’s nice watching them with Katie.
Once we have finished with the current Doctor we are going to start on the Doctor Who Classics starting with the 1st Doctor until the 8th Doctor.
For those interested below is how long it would take to watch each Doctor.
As you can see that’s a lot of hours of Doctor Who. 🙂