Our heat pump was installed in December, so I’ve got figures for the first six months of the year. We live in a five-bedroom, detached house that was built around 1990; it’s the same type you see on housing estates right across the country. We made sure that the loft Continue Reading
Banging in the night
Do you know what this is? Well, as you know we are right-on, eco-warrior types (aka, cheapskates) and we have a variable electricity tariff so it’s cheaper (and greener) for us to run our appliances in the middle of the night. Our washing machine and dishwasher aren’t terribly hi-tech, but Continue Reading
Mixergy Hot Water Cylinder
This is our beautiful, new, super-smart hot water tank. It’s from an innovative British firm called Mixergy and it’s the last step in our renewables and energy efficiency journey. It does some clever stuff… Unlike a regular cylinder (which heats the entire tank) this heats the water from the top, Continue Reading
TalkTalk Business Full Fibre PPPoE Details
It looks like the router PPPoE sign-in details for TalkTalk Business (TTB) Full Fibre are… Username: autoconfig@talktalkbusiness.net Password: ttb1234 I don’t want to use the TTB-supplied router, so I need these details to connect my router to their PPPoE-based full fibre service.
I Fixed My Pycom Helium Miner
I fixed my PyCom helium miner, but only with the help of this article… The author had his apart, found the console/SSH login credentials (user: ubuntu, password: ubuntu) and then dissected the Linux installation. Here’s what was the matter with mine, when Docker tried to start it moaned about… 3 Continue Reading
146km/90mile Helium IoT Connection
I’ve been working on an integration between an Browan GPS tracker and Azure. The Browan TBOL100 tracker is only a little thing and it looks like this… My integration simply logs tracking data into an Azure SQL table via an Azure IoT Hub and an Azure Function. The table includes Continue Reading
Internet Explorer Mode in Edge
You may be aware that Internet Explorer as a standalone application is going away later this year (15th June 2022), which means Microsoft will no-longer support it on business desktops and no-longer offer updates and security patches. This should be fine as IE11 is very old and isn’t used by Continue Reading
Optical Distribution Nodes
On a recent visit to Dartmouth in Devon, I noticed these black boxes screwed to the walls of the houses and shops in the village… I think they are some kind of optical distribution node for BT OpenReach’s ultra-fast broadband service. As a broadband nerd, I found it interesting to Continue Reading