A bunch of stuff from eBay turned up at last. I probably won't have to buy a coloured SIL header ever again. More ESP8266s. Some teeny tiny PIR modules which only have a 10mm dia. Some soil moisture sensors and some USB to ttl serial converters.

Made a batch of pea and ham soup. It came out awesome and the kids loved it.

The new circular 7 way WS2812 boards arrived from eBay and they fit perfectly in the top of these solar lights with some small modifications. Click the image to see the other photos.

Sonoffs have arrived from itead.cc to play with!

At last the finished product! Fully soldered with paste and hot air, with terminals mounted and mounted in it's DIN rail enclosure ready to go.

I came across these cheap solar LED garden lights and immediately knew what I needed to do. They needed to be individually addressable, RGB and controllable from IOT and from an app! =) Probably ESP8266 at this stage with ws2812 LEDs.

FINALLY assembled and tested that bbq that I bought and refurbished back in December 2015...

I have upgraded the firmware and buck converter in the PIR plugpack project. The new code makes use of a ws2812 to display it's status. I have run the LED out on a very thin enamelled copper flywire so that I can use the inside of the PIR dome as a diffuser. It sits out of the line of sight of the pyroelectric sensor.

Had a crack at doing some special fried rice at home. It came out awesome. Click the image to see the gallery.

Level shifter powers up. No smoke. Unfortunately it doesn't work correctly because there is more current coming into the base of each transistor than I anticipated. It's enough to hold all transistors on. So I'll try getting some mosfets with the same pinout and seeing how they do.

Playing with the battery powered ESP8266 project again. I've got it down to 9mA. Unfortunately the minium current draw is raised a long way by the buck converter board I have which is rated for 3A - it's much heavier duty than it needs to be and isn't very efficient.

I had a go at some SMD soldering with solder paste for the level converter board. It came out OK.

So I scored a failed Juniper SRX210 off eBay for $1. I figured it was worth a gamble. Well it paid off. After some testing I found that the system was not getting any juice. The input protection diode had failed short. My guess is that someone has plugged in the PSU for the POE version of this firewall (48VDC) into this non-POE firewall (should be 12VDC) and nuked it. I removed it temporarily and powered the unit up on a lab power supply to limit the current. It booted! Score!

The PCB for the 12V to 24V has arrived.

Ebay score: Cisco 1230G access points which will be used to create a wireless bridge.

Cooked up some super yummy pork spare ribs with some honey soy sauce. Had it with some "crunchy" salad.

Prototype 12V to 24V level shifter.

Fabricated some brackets to hold the PIR sensors.

Ebay score. A set of drifts, punches and chisels. Also a small block plane.

While I was a guest I had the opportunity to try out a charcoal BBQ for the first time. After tasting it I can see why people like it. There is a distinct flavor even without adding any extra wood for flavoured smoke. If I di end up getting one, I'll definitely invest in a chimney and fire lighters because it's a pain in the A$$ to light charcoal without them.