Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

"the Trust Urban Primo 2,200mAh Powerbank, which we purchased from Amazon Marketplace, was so badly put together that when charging, it started to smoke and melt."

Hmm. Did Amazon respond to this?

"Amazon told us that sellers must follow selling guidelines and those who don’t will be subject to action, including potential removal of their account. The products in question are no longer available."

Doesn't sound like they test anything then. So Amazon are basically ebay when it comes to cheap Chinese shit. Awesome.

I wonder how they can sort that out? Not sure it's possible to test all 606,000,000 items that they distribute...

This is a decent one to buy from
https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/torchy

The ebay site of this http://www.torchythebatteryboy.com/p/imr-safe-chemistry-batteries.html

They batch test, they sub-contract testing, they only buy/supply from vendors that have already tested their products. There's tonnes of ways to avoid selling dangerous shit to consumers.

Sure, but not in a way that's not going to affect their bottom line and that's going to be a huge part of their process decisions if they can wiggle away from legal liability.

"if"

That all goes into lawyers territory though so I'm out. I would assume as the seller they're liable, if they're just providing a shipping service for CheapChineseShitLtd then all bets are off.

The reality of this sort of strategy decision is that Amazon will be confident that they can lawyer up and avoid being held liable for as long as possible before actually making any changes. They would probably argue that if the seller claims that the items are compliant, even if it is just a tick box, then they are themselves absolved of liability.

It doesn't matter if they're right or not if they can stick some top level lawyers in the way for a few years. Your opinion is probably perfectly correct. Perfectly correct doesn't matter though if the company in question can kick the can down the road for a few years at the cost of some lawyers bills before being forced to take action.

It likely depends on what's cheaper (possibly less brand damaging) for them. Is it cheaper to sell stuff that doesn't burn people's houses down or is it cheaper to get the lawyers out when they do?

My guess is the latter but I'm dangerously ill informed.

This might be of interest to you

https://www.lidl.co.uk/en/p/christmas-lights-decorations/silvercrest-wireless-socket-set/p27143

Cheers. I bought a set of these to try
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SR3KL8D/

New Dev board with totally different architecture to play with.

I'm finding myself to be a little lacking in C talent. I swear it was easier to switch architectures when I was younger.

This module supposedly has super low sleep consumption and isn't based on esp8266 or ESP32.

1 Attachment

Lube Lell?

Which Cypress WiFi chip is it using? They insist, to me at least, that their WiFi chips are far superior to anything Espressif offer.

Added: it’s just LoRa, no WiFi.

Yup, no wifi.

This board has the best packet radio performance I have seen yet. I wrote my first packet radio applications in the mid 90s and I still have that mindset...to be able to get performance like this straight out of the box with simple code and on such cheap hardware is a real buzz for me.

Ooh, very nice.

I'm kinda regretting my statement that it has the best packet radio performance I have ever seen.

If you are using two identical modules to ping/pong with each other it's fantastic. The problem is I can't for the life of me get these new modules to talk to older versions, even though the radio characteristics are supposedly the same.

I suspect that the ESP32 (old) modules are not transmitting on the frequency they are supposed to. I've got a radio spectrum analyser but I sure as fuck have run out of energy and enthusiasm to play detective any more today.

Did you find anyone to do your Ethernet cabling? Have a very similar need to you.

Any recommendations for external Wifi temperature sensor that is compatible with HomeAssistant?

Nah. I find it never reaches very high on the to do list.

I went down the road of zigbee2mqtt and xiaomi zigbee sensors. It's very simple and the zigbee sensors are very cheap.

The alternative is using an esp32 with esphome and the xiaomi Bluetooth temperature sensor. This would probably be the cheaper option but once you have zigbee2mqtt set up, it opens up a variety of other cheap sensors.

Cheers will look into zigbee2mqtt.

Picked up the Innr smart plugs a couple of days ago.

Smarthings saw them straight away and at £40 for two are cheaper than the Smarthings plugs.

They use zigbee so don't need a separate bridge if you already have a Smarthings hub (although you can buy a Innr bridge and use their App if you want).

So I can now switch on the coffee machine without getting out of bed...

Where from?

Am thinking of getting google home minis to control SmartThings and Bluos

That big, evil, home delivery, Web based company.

(Other big, evil, home delivery, Web based companies are available.)