https://tinkerman.cat/ Recent content on Tinkerman Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Tue, 30 May 2023 14:00:00 +0200 https://tinkerman.cat/post/smart-cubes-and-wisblock/ Tue, 30 May 2023 14:00:00 +0200 https://tinkerman.cat/post/smart-cubes-and-wisblock/ Ten years ago I had one of those geek urges: learning to solve Rubik's Cube or Magic Cube. Goal was not to do it fast, just to do it. Back then I managed to memorize the 6-7 algorithms for a novice solver and get in done in less than 5 minutes. Not a world record, I know, still I was pretty happy with the experience. These last months there has been some hype around the cube in our local school and my younger daughter wanted to learn to do it. https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-mikrotik-wap-lora8-is-here/ Fri, 07 Feb 2020 22:50:00 +0100 https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-mikrotik-wap-lora8-is-here/ Last week I was at the The Things Conference in Amsterdam with a collegue from TTN Catalunya. You could smell the hype. Most of the big players were there. I had the chance to attend some interesting presentations, talk at the booths with people from PyCom, RAK, WifX or SeeedStudio and meet and devirtualize some people like Gonzalo Casas or Andreas Spiess. Then there were the workshops. You know, I've done a lot of workshops myself and I know that it is hard (if not impossible) to go through a complete workshop without issues. https://tinkerman.cat/post/hacking-the-tti-indoor-gateway/ Sun, 02 Jun 2019 22:08:00 +0200 https://tinkerman.cat/post/hacking-the-tti-indoor-gateway/ [Update 2021-08-11] Added information on how to enable the CP2102N on the TTIG thanks to @_pub_feuerrot. Four years ago The Things Network (TTN) kind of revolutionized the IoT world with their effort to reduce hardware and software costs to implement a commons LoRaWAN network. Their bet was backed on Kickstarter by almost a thousand people with almost 300k€ to help create a low-cost LRaWan gateway (and a platform and end devices too). https://tinkerman.cat/post/analyze-your-antennas-using-an-aai-n1201sa/ Thu, 16 May 2019 12:30:00 +0200 https://tinkerman.cat/post/analyze-your-antennas-using-an-aai-n1201sa/ Following up with the series of affordable RF tools I started with the RF Power Monitor 8000, maybe the N1201SA by Accuracy Agilty (sic?) Instrument (AAI) is one of the most exciting devices around. The device is sold as “RF Vector Impedanze Analyzer” and, although it's not a full VNA (Vector Network Analyzer), it gives you enough information to profile your antennas and, according to some reviews, it's so accurate it can compete with professional equipment. https://tinkerman.cat/post/grove-ai-hat-edge-computing-in-your-hands/ Tue, 14 May 2019 09:34:00 +0200 https://tinkerman.cat/post/grove-ai-hat-edge-computing-in-your-hands/ The industry has been talking about edge computing for some time now. The idea is to distribute the data storage and intelligence in locations closer to where they are needed and only use external services when absolutely necessary. Centralized cloud services have a series of drawbacks for the IIoT world, being maybe latency and security the bigger ones. Some (a lot of?) companies do not want their data to go outside their facilities and critical systems cannot rely on Internet connection. https://tinkerman.cat/post/rf-power-monitoring-tools-on-the-cheap/ Sun, 14 Apr 2019 18:25:02 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/rf-power-monitoring-tools-on-the-cheap/ Recently we at @ttncat had to prepare a crash course on LoRa, LoRaWAN and The Things Network for a professional school in Barcelona. It was a 15 hours course that covered from the very basics to some more advanced topics on RF like link budget, attenuation or impedance matching. It was fun to go back to my years at college and revisit and update some of those topics. And at the same time it was a great opportunity to upgrade my toolbox. https://tinkerman.cat/post/automated-unit-testing-metal/ Wed, 26 Dec 2018 23:32:20 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/automated-unit-testing-metal/ Unit testing your code is peace of mind. It has two main direct benefits that impact on your confidence about the code you are writing: Testing expected behaviors Avoiding regressions (i.e. breaking something that was working fine before) Unit testing embedded systems is a bit more involved since there is the additional constraint of the hardware itself, sometimes more than one device or even different platforms. Quitting (or not even thinking about it) is the easy answer to the problem. https://tinkerman.cat/post/monitor-your-ttn-gateways-with-node-red/ Mon, 29 Oct 2018 22:11:42 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/monitor-your-ttn-gateways-with-node-red/ This time I'd like to write a quick post about a small project we've been working on at the The Things Network** community in Barcelona** (@ttncat). We were worried about the monitoring of the gateways we have deployed, both as a community but also as individuals. Some of our partners have also deployed their own gateways and they are part of the community. The TTNCat gateway at Vista Rica in Barcelona So how do we get (almost) real-time notifications of incidences in the local TTN network? https://tinkerman.cat/post/whitecat-esp32-n1/ Mon, 15 Oct 2018 23:09:49 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/whitecat-esp32-n1/ I do not do reviews usually, but I sometimes do exceptions. In this case, it's worth doing it, due to 4 main reasons: It's a software & hardware open source project It's local (local to me, that's it) It's led by two good friends It's related to LoRa and The Things Network It's awesome! OK, they were actually 5 reasons, but the last one just slipped in. The WhiteCat ESP32 N1 Board The WhiteCat ESP32 N1 Board is a green board in a long-ish form factor, longer than the LoPy or the Chinese ESP32-based LoRa boards. https://tinkerman.cat/post/useful-notifications-from-your-home-appliances-using-node-red/ Mon, 24 Sep 2018 08:11:13 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/useful-notifications-from-your-home-appliances-using-node-red/ Some time ago I worked on a home project to get a notification when my washing machine had done its job based on monitoring its power consumption. There was a good reason for that, the machine was outside the house and I had already forgotten about the laundry several times. And when that happens your only option is to wash it again, because it really smells musty… Monitoring your appliances Use ESPurna :) https://tinkerman.cat/post/rak833-meets-raspberry-pi/ Sat, 07 Jul 2018 11:19:52 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/rak833-meets-raspberry-pi/ You might have heard about The Things Network (TTN from now on) here or somewhere else. If you have not, then it's a good opportunity to visit the project and check if there is a community of users around you. I have been a core member of the TTN Catalunya community for over 2 years now. This year we are working hard deploying several new gateways in Barcelona and doing workshops and hackathons with the main goal of helping individuals and social entities to carry out projects around a LoRaWan open, libre (free as in freedom) and neutral telemetry network. https://tinkerman.cat/post/m5stack-node-things-network/ Sun, 10 Jun 2018 10:46:47 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/m5stack-node-things-network/ I have a couple of IKEA-like boxes in my home office labeled “Inbox”. They are full of stuff I buy and store waiting for some free time to spend on them. From time to time I pick one of the boxes and take a look at its contents. They are actually full of “wow” stuff. I would buy again most of the things there but at the same time I fear I'm just collecting stuff that will become junk. https://tinkerman.cat/post/eeprom-rotation-for-esp8266-and-esp32/ Mon, 04 Jun 2018 13:29:47 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/eeprom-rotation-for-esp8266-and-esp32/ The Arduino Core for ESP8266 and ESP32 uses one SPI flash memory sector to emulate an EEPROM. When you initialize the EEPROM object (calling begin) it reads the contents of the sector into a memory buffer. Reading a writing is done over that in-memory buffer. Whenever you call commit it write the contents back to the flash sector. Due to the nature of this flash memory (NOR) a full sector erase must be done prior to write any new data. https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-s31-now-serious/ Thu, 03 May 2018 19:11:34 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-s31-now-serious/ It's not that other Sonoff products are not “serious” business, but there are a number of design changes in the Sonoff S31 that make this new product a world apart. For the functional point of view it looks like a S20 with POW-powers, but they have redesigned the product completely. The result is very very interesting. Revamped case, more compact and sturdy Redesigned PCB, actually 2 different PCBs for main and control Different power monitor chip: the CSE7766 (same as in the new POW R2) replaces the HLW8012 The only drawback: it's only compatible with plug types A & B, tat is central and north-america and few other countries. https://tinkerman.cat/post/geekworm-power-pack-hat-hack/ Mon, 09 Apr 2018 22:22:04 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/geekworm-power-pack-hat-hack/ Sorry for the tongue twister ;) I've been somewhat busy lately and it's been a long time since my last post. I have a few projects on the go but not much time to sit down and write about them… Let's see if this one goes through… I've been lately looking for a reliable UPS system for Raspberry Pi 3. I moved my home server to a RPi a few months ago and even thou its behind an ACS UPS a couple of other projects involving RPis required mobility (one of them) and unassisted power backup (the other). https://tinkerman.cat/post/arduino-mkr-wan-1300/ Mon, 29 Jan 2018 23:19:24 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/arduino-mkr-wan-1300/ I've been testing quite a few LoRaWan nodes lately for TheThingsNetwork.cat, some based on HopeRF RFM95W (over AVR, ESP8266, ESP32,…) others using Microchip's RN2483 (an old friend of mine). I have a RAK811 waiting in the INBOX but the last one I've been playing with has been the new Arduino MKRWAN 1300 (so new there is no product page yet) and I liked it, quite a lot. The device is one of the MKR series Arduino is pushing forward. https://tinkerman.cat/post/pcb-fabs/ Wed, 06 Dec 2017 13:05:16 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/pcb-fabs/ A few years ago (not many) I used to burn copper plates using acetic acid, a.k.a. vinegar. I was somewhat concerned about using stronger acids so it was OK to use another acid, even if it was soooo sloooow. If you were patient you could get to have decent boards using 50mil traces (or even thinner). But it required keeping a good temperature on the copper bath and regulating the ratio vinegar/hydrogen peroxide continuously, adding a little salt from time to time to speed things up. https://tinkerman.cat/post/yet-another-wifi-light-bulb/ Fri, 10 Nov 2017 17:27:32 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/yet-another-wifi-light-bulb/ Eight months ago I reviewed and hacked the AiLight WiFi light bulb by AiThinker. By the time there was a number of people doing the same because of a key reason: it sports an ESP8266 microcontroller and it is based on the OpenLight by Noduino, that had already provided open source code for the LED driver inside, the MY9291. Let time pass and I was doing the same with the Sonoff B1 light bulb by Itead Studio. https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-b1-lights-and-shades/ Wed, 27 Sep 2017 19:35:27 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-b1-lights-and-shades/ Six months ago I was reviewing the AiThinker AiLight, a great looking light bulb with an embedded ESP8266EX microcontroller, driven by a MY9291 LED driver. Just before summer IteadStudio released it's Sonoff B1 [Itead.cc] light bulb, heavily inspired (probably same manufacturer) by the AiLight, at least on the design. Now that IteadStudio has become popular between the home automation community you can also find the Sonoff B1 on global marketplaces like Ebay or Aliexpress for around 13€. https://tinkerman.cat/post/connected-power-meter/ Sun, 24 Sep 2017 16:41:35 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/connected-power-meter/ A few weeks ago a user came with a request to add support in ESPurna to a power meter that had been hacked by Karl Hagström. It is a very cheap chinese power meter with plenty of room on the inside, enough to house an ESP8266 module and a DC/DC power supply and the main IC protocol had been reverse engeneered. There even was a repository by the Harringay Maker Space with sample code for an arduino compatible platform. https://tinkerman.cat/post/hacking-sonoff-rf-bridge-433/ Wed, 13 Sep 2017 11:08:04 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/hacking-sonoff-rf-bridge-433/ Itead Studio has been releasing interesting gadgets for the Home Automation community based on a low price tag and extreme hackability. You can google “sonoff” (the main brand for Itead Studio home automation devices) to get more than a million hits, including official pages, reviews and lots of hacks. The ubiquitous ESP8266 (or its sibling ESP8285) is the core of all those devices, using WiFi instead of the traditional RF messages, replacing a remote with mobile apps or voice commands. https://tinkerman.cat/post/using-google-assistant-control-your-esp8266-devices/ Sun, 03 Sep 2017 16:08:52 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/using-google-assistant-control-your-esp8266-devices/ In my last post I tried to explain how to access your IoT devices at home from the Internet in a secure way using a reverse proxy. Truth is that I had it running since maybe 6 months ago without giving it too much use until recently. Reason? My Nexus 5 had been having serious problems (battery not charging, screen broken, earpiece not working,…) and I decided to replace it with a new mobile phone and the new one has Google Assistant built in. https://tinkerman.cat/post/secure-remote-access-to-your-iot-devices/ Sat, 02 Sep 2017 23:05:10 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/secure-remote-access-to-your-iot-devices/ When you are hacking with IoT devices at home you get to face the challenge of accessing remotely to them, that is from outside your home network. I'm not saying your home network is a safe place, beware. But that thing outside, you know, “the Internet”, it's so scary… Unfortunately, most IoT devices are just not ready for the jungle. Neither the commercial ones, nor the hacked ones you might have. https://tinkerman.cat/post/embed-your-website-in-your-esp8266-firmware-image/ Fri, 21 Jul 2017 11:22:30 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/embed-your-website-in-your-esp8266-firmware-image/ A few months ago I wrote about the process I was using to optimize my website files for SPIFFS prior to upload them to the ESP8266. The goal was to reduce the number and size of the files to help the microcontroller to cope with them in an easier way. Smaller size mean faster downloads and less files mean less concurrency. The process is done using Gulp, a tool to automate processes, and defined in a javascript file. https://tinkerman.cat/post/itead-studio-sonoff-sc-revisited/ Wed, 28 Jun 2017 23:04:32 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/itead-studio-sonoff-sc-revisited/ A few months ago I wrote about the Sonoff SC sensor hub by Itead Studio. It's a device with a Sharp GP2Y1010AU0F [Aliexpress] dust sensor, a DHT11 humidity and temperature sensor, an LDR as light sensor and a mic. The sensors are driven by an ATMega328P microcontroller but there is also an ESP8266 on board for WiFi communication, a pretty standard set up when you have several sensors and the ESP8266 GPIOs are just not enough. https://tinkerman.cat/post/solr-digital-wrist-watch/ Sat, 17 Jun 2017 22:11:25 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/solr-digital-wrist-watch/ 15 months ago. This is when I started working on this project. The Solr digital wrist watch is a clock that won’t work without a battery but it will neither work without sun. Even more: the vintage display is really cool but it’s hard to read outdoors. A complete nonsense. It is almost a joke and some might easily file it under the “useless projects” label. But it's still quite useful. https://tinkerman.cat/post/grid-eye-camera-sliced/ Sun, 28 May 2017 23:25:25 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/grid-eye-camera-sliced/ Tindie is a great place to find uncommon electronic components or weird/interesting boards. I use to stroll around it's products to basically see what's new. It's like Kickstarted but for real. One such uncommon and new electronic components is the Panasonic's Grid_EYE AMG88 [datasheet, pdf] infrared sensor. And I first learn about it through Peasky Products breakout board at Tindie. And if you have been reading me lately you might know I'm going through my own LED fever. https://tinkerman.cat/post/closer-look-h801-led-wifi-controller/ Sun, 21 May 2017 21:07:53 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/closer-look-h801-led-wifi-controller/ Some weeks ago I talked about the Magic Home LED Controller as I was adding support for it in my ESPurna firmware. At the time a user pointed me to the H801 Led WiFi Controller by Huacanxing. The user in question (Minh Phuong Ly) even did a pull request with some preliminary support for it. So I decided to give it a go. The H801 is a 5 channels controller that you can find for about 9-10€ at Ebay or Aliexpress. https://tinkerman.cat/post/maker-faire-barcelona-2017/ Fri, 19 May 2017 22:13:30 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/maker-faire-barcelona-2017/ I'm having some busy weeks again and the blog is suffering from my absence :) I had a bunch of comments to accept (please remember all comments are being moderated). And even more projects pending (including a new version of the ESPurna firmware). But I just wanted to let you know that I will be at the Barcelona Maker Faire next June 17 & 18. Hope to see you there, it will be fun for sure! https://tinkerman.cat/post/slices-of-a-clock/ Tue, 02 May 2017 09:33:56 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/slices-of-a-clock/ There are so many ways to tell the time. DIYers have been doing clocks since the Ancient Egypt (obelisks lacked portability, thou). Every modern maker has a clock amongst her first projects. I have done some myself, including a fibonacci clock, a wordclock with a fancy green matrix effect and an unreleased project that hopefully will see the light someday soon. But recently I came back to the idea behind the wordclock before, to extend it in different ways: https://tinkerman.cat/post/fenderino-arducaster-the-coolest-guitar/ Sun, 23 Apr 2017 00:22:42 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/fenderino-arducaster-the-coolest-guitar/ Last February 7 I attended a workshop at a the SokoTech in Barcelona to assemble my own Fenderino, the coolest guitar ever (my knowledge about guitars is very limited, so take this sentence with a grain of salt). The guitar is actually a shield for the Arduino UNO and has been designed by the people at abierto.cc, an initiative aimed to provide open(-sourced) tools for educators, created amongst others, by David Cuartielles, co-founder of Arduino. https://tinkerman.cat/post/espurna-smart-socket/ Sun, 09 Apr 2017 21:33:08 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/espurna-smart-socket/ After a busy month I decided to spend some energy on doing hardware instead of software and the result was the ESPurna board I posted about just yesterday. The goal was to have a device based on the ESP8266 I could fit into my house wall gangs, with an SPDT relay to work with multi-way switches and power monitoring using the same IC the Sonoff POW uses: the HLW8012. As a side project today I've been searching on the box of the TODO projects and I have rescued a KEMO STG15 [Ebay] plug housing with socket. https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-espurna-board-a-smart-wall-switch-with-power-monitoring/ Fri, 07 Apr 2017 23:07:28 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-espurna-board-a-smart-wall-switch-with-power-monitoring/ If you have read me, you might know I have a firmware for ESP8266-based smart switches called ESPurna. The firmware integrates with Alexa, Domoticz, Home Assistant and about any other service that supports MQTT or HTTP REST APIs. It supports a variety of devices, including almost the whole Sonoff family by Itead Studio, but also some other commercially available boards and light bulbs, and open source hardware projects as well. https://tinkerman.cat/post/magic-home-led-controller-espurnad/ Sun, 02 Apr 2017 19:15:17 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/magic-home-led-controller-espurnad/ Following the bright path (sic) of the Ai-Thinker AiLight / Noduino OpenLight I wrote about a few weeks ago, now it's turn for one of those devices you purchase but once they arrive they are stored in the TODO box until they eventually come back to life. The Magic Home LED Controller [Aliexpress, also available from Ebay] is an ESP8266 based single-color RGB(W) LED strip controller. It works with every 5050 LED strip [Aliexpress] out there. https://tinkerman.cat/post/playing-slow-catch-with-the-bean/ Sun, 02 Apr 2017 10:23:56 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/playing-slow-catch-with-the-bean/ A while ago I wrote about how to use PlatformIO with PunchThrough Lightblue Bean in a post here on how to use the new Bean Loader CLI from PlatformIO. Of course the reason for that was not merely being able to do it, but having a agile development environment to do something useful with them. I've been looking for a paper I had read a few weeks before I started playing with the Beans. https://tinkerman.cat/post/kk2015-based-ai-light/ Thu, 30 Mar 2017 16:33:51 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/kk2015-based-ai-light/ Really busy these days. I have some drafts ongoing but I wanted to publish this short post right away. One of the readers of this blog, Michel Clavette, sent me these pics just yesterday. He bought 5 Ai Light bulbs and to his surprise two of them do not have an ESP8266 microcontroller but instead this IC labelled KK2015. KK2015 powered Ai Light. Picture by Michel Clavette It looks like a drop-in replacement for the ESP8266 since it has the same footprint and all the other components are (apparently) the same. https://tinkerman.cat/post/ailight-hackable-rgbw-light-bulb/ Sun, 26 Feb 2017 23:18:16 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/ailight-hackable-rgbw-light-bulb/ Some weeks ago a tweet by Manolis Nikiforakis (@niki511) with the #ESP8266 hashtag drew my attention. Manolis had just received a “smart lamp” branded by Ai-Thinker, the AiLight. Yes, the same Ai-Thinker that has sold millions of ESP8266 based modules. Chances were it had an ESP8266 microcontroller inside. Too good not to buy one and take a look at the inside. Manolis shared the link where he bought his at Ebay for a bit more than USD 10 plus shipping. https://tinkerman.cat/post/smart-wall-switches-and-push-buttons/ Wed, 15 Feb 2017 12:00:17 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/smart-wall-switches-and-push-buttons/ One might think that one of the typical uses for a smart wireless switch (like Sonoff devices) is to be embedded behind a normal wall switch so it becomes a “smart” wall switch. It may seem obvious but it's not that straight forward. There are several things that get in the middle. Most (all?) the boards have momentary push buttons while wall switches are (normally) toggle switches Most of the available boards in the market are SPST, even those with SPDT relays often only provide terminals for COM and NO, not NC. https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-mysterious-ic/ Mon, 13 Feb 2017 22:14:16 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-mysterious-ic/ Sometimes Chinese manufacturers throw a mysterious, unlabelled, IC into their designs so we can spend a few hours trying to figure out what they are and what they do. It's such fun! I've been playing with one of those this afternoon, trying to answer those questions but also trying to understand why! Why is that chip there? Why did someone decided she needed that chip there? Some weeks ago a user of ESPurna asked me if the firmware supported Itead's 1CH self-lock/inching board. https://tinkerman.cat/post/power-monitoring-sonoff-th-adc121/ Wed, 25 Jan 2017 00:19:04 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/power-monitoring-sonoff-th-adc121/ Lately I've been quite busy with the ESPurna firmware. It's growing bigger and gaining some momentum. It's really fulfilling to see other people using it and reporting back. But at the same time it's very time consuming. Last Saturday I released version 1.5.0 with some new functionalities and bug fixes and I decided to use some of my free time over the weekend to work on a project that's been waiting for a month in the shelf. https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-sc-with-mqtt-and-domoticz-support/ Tue, 10 Jan 2017 15:04:18 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-sc-with-mqtt-and-domoticz-support/ Last December Itead Studio updated their Home Automation product line with a new and different product. The main difference is that it doesn't have a relay and it's mainly sensors and no actuator (if we don't define a notifying LED as an actuator). The Sonoff SC is a sensor station that packs a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor, a GM55 LDR, an electret microphone with an amplifier circuit and a Sharp GP2Y1010AU0F [Aliexpress] dust sensor in a fancy case that looks like it was originally meant for a speaker. https://tinkerman.cat/post/low-power-in-lorawan-world-meet-the-rn2483/ Sat, 17 Dec 2016 02:29:23 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/low-power-in-lorawan-world-meet-the-rn2483/ I'm working on a project were I have to build a network of battery powered sensors over a territory the size of a small town.The sensors will monitor power consumption, temperature and humidity in energy poor households. Often the families in that situation can't afford an internet connection at home so WiFi is out of question. GPRS would be an option but lately other radio technologies have come to my interest. https://tinkerman.cat/post/moteino-energy-monitor-shield/ Wed, 14 Dec 2016 17:59:19 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/moteino-energy-monitor-shield/ Moving from the ESP8266 world I've been diving lately I still love the simplicity of battery powered Moteino nodes. You might know I'm migrating my XBee-based sensor network at home to an RFM69 one. So long I have changed my door monitor and my weather station. They are sensing and reporting to my RFM69GW, an ESP8266 bridge board using a custom firmware. Time to go for the power monitor. A long time ago (actually 2 years but it really feels like a century ago) I was living in a big city and we had one of those fancy “smart meters” with a LED pulsing 4000 times every kWh. https://tinkerman.cat/post/esp8266-multi-relay-boards-sonoff-dual-electrodragon/ Wed, 07 Dec 2016 13:03:12 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/esp8266-multi-relay-boards-sonoff-dual-electrodragon/ November was a busy month and the Sonoff Dual that IteadStudio kindly sent me to review was bored in a box waiting for some free time. But it was just fair that another board that has been waiting in the boards-to-review box for longer had it's chance to have some fresh air too. So here we have the Itead Studio Sonoff Dual and the Electrodragon ESP Relay Board face to face. https://tinkerman.cat/post/emulate-wemo-device-esp8266/ Mon, 21 Nov 2016 00:13:08 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/emulate-wemo-device-esp8266/ My daughters love to talk to (or with) my Amazon Dot [Amazon US] in their funny English: “Alexa, hello!", “Alexa, li-on!” (actually “light on”). It's so easy to use it to switch on/off things at home using the fauxmo python script by Maker Musings. In his post about Amazon Echo and Home Automation more than a year ago he explains how he reverse-engineered the protocol of the WeMo switches that Alexa (Amazon Echo [Amazon US] orAmazon Dot [Amazon US]) supports. https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-sonoff-pow/ Sat, 12 Nov 2016 15:44:10 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-sonoff-pow/ Some months ago I wrote about a hack I did to one of my Sonoff devices to be able to use a simple current sensor to monitor my washer machine process and alert me whenever my laundry was done. A few weeks ago Itead Studio released two new models for their Sonoff line, the POW and the DUAL. And the POW is Itead's answer to my hack. I'm not saying they copied me, just that the Sonoff POW makes my hack utterly unnecessary. https://tinkerman.cat/post/hlw8012-ic-new-sonoff-pow/ Tue, 08 Nov 2016 14:11:56 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/hlw8012-ic-new-sonoff-pow/ The HLW8012 is single phase energy monitor chip by the chinese manufacturer HLW Technology. It features** RMS current**, **RMS voltage** sampling and **RMS active power** with an internal clock and a PWM interface in a SOP-8 package. You can buy it at Aliexpress for less than a euro a piece and the necessary components are fairly easy to source and quite cheap. All in all it looks like a great IC to include power monitoring in your projects. https://tinkerman.cat/post/controlling-diablo16-picaso-displays-python/ Wed, 19 Oct 2016 10:09:41 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/controlling-diablo16-picaso-displays-python/ A few week ago I had a really good time testing 4DSystems 4Duino-24 board. One of the things I noticed is that the Serial Command Set interface is really flexible. You can easily drive the display from an 8-bit microcontroller. But you can also use more powerful controllers like an ESP8266 or an ARM machine like a Raspberry Pi or even my laptop. 4DSystems provide libraries for all those platforms and others. https://tinkerman.cat/post/low-power-weather-station-bme280-moteino/ Sun, 09 Oct 2016 22:44:04 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/low-power-weather-station-bme280-moteino/ A few weeks ago I wrote about my new door monitor. It was the first step towards migrating my XBee based wireless sensors network to RFM69 radios using Moteino platform by LowPowerLab. I was truly impressed by the low power consumption so I committed myself to keep on working with them. Coincidentally Felix Russo, the guy behind LowPowerLab, released the new version of it's Weather Shield for Moteino. So it was time to update (or completely revamp) my trusty Arduino FIO based weather station… and last week I received a parcel from LowPowerLab with a pair of shields to play with: the new WeatherShield R2 and the PowerShield R3. https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-th10-th16-sensors-displays-actuators/ Wed, 05 Oct 2016 00:03:08 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/sonoff-th10-th16-sensors-displays-actuators/ Itead Studio keep on creating interesting products for the hacker community. A few weeks ago a new version of the already classic Sonoff TH came to life. This new version comes in two flavours: the Sonoff TH10 and TH16 and you can buy them at Aliexpress: Sonoff TH 10A/16A Temperature And Humidity Monitoring WiFi Smart Switch. In this article I will briefly talk about what's new in this device to quickly go to explore one of those novelties: it's external interface. https://tinkerman.cat/post/using-new-bean-loader-cli-platformio/ Mon, 03 Oct 2016 20:56:55 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/using-new-bean-loader-cli-platformio/ Last Thursday PunchThrough, the people behind the LightBlue Bean and Bean+ boards, released their new Bean Loader, the application that allows you to upload new sketches to your beans. The great news about this is that, for the first time (!!!) the Bean Loader supports Linux!!! Yeeeha! So I quickly looked for my 4 Beans that have been sad and forgotten in a components box for the last 2+ years and put them to work. https://tinkerman.cat/post/4duino-24-upside-down/ Tue, 20 Sep 2016 22:02:49 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/4duino-24-upside-down/ A few weeks ago the 4D Systems announced one of its latest products: the 4Duino-24, an Arduino compatible display module with built in 240x320 resolution TFT LCD Display with Resistive Touch and an ESP8266 ESP-06 module on board. it looked like a great product for a home automation control panel, although the screen could have been bigger. Anyway I contacted the people at 4D Systems and they were kind enough to send me a sample to review, and hack! https://tinkerman.cat/post/manage-and-persist-settings-with-embedis/ Fri, 16 Sep 2016 22:35:51 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/manage-and-persist-settings-with-embedis/ For months I've been searching for a settings manager for my Arduino and ESP8266 projects. There are basically two issues to take care of: On memory settings or** how do you access to the configuration values** from your code Persistence or how do you store the configuration across reboots For the first issue common solutions in high level languages are key-value solutions in the form of containers or hash arrays. https://tinkerman.cat/post/mqtt-led-matrix-display/ Mon, 12 Sep 2016 23:01:40 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/mqtt-led-matrix-display/ My MQTT network at home moves up and down a lot of messages: sensor values, triggers, notifications, device statuses,… I use Node-RED to forward the important ones to PushOver and some others to a Blynk application. But I also happen to have an LED display at home and that means FUN. LED displays are cool. Your team's score, your number in the IRS queue, the estimated arrival time for your next commute,… Now that TVs are replacing LED displays (like the later did with the electromechanical ones) they have acquire an almost vintage-status. https://tinkerman.cat/post/optimizing-files-for-spiffs-with-gulp/ Fri, 02 Sep 2016 00:06:34 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/optimizing-files-for-spiffs-with-gulp/ The ESP8266 flash layout defines a series of blocks of memory for each “partition”. There is a block for the user code (the “sketch”), there is a block for the OTA update file, another one for the emulated EEPROM, another for the WIFI configuration and one for the File System. This last one uses Peter Andersson's SPIFFS (SPI Flash File System) code to store files in a similar fashion our computers do, but taking into account the special requirements of an embedded system and a flash memory chip. https://tinkerman.cat/post/moteino-door-monitor/ Fri, 26 Aug 2016 21:50:19 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/moteino-door-monitor/ Some days ago I posted about the RFM69 to MQTT gateway based on the ESP8266 I am working on. Over these days I've been fine tuning the gateway at the same time I was migrating one of my home sensors to Moteino: the Door Monitor. The previous version was based on an XBee radio and has been on duty for almost 3 years and a half. Real life battery time has been around 3 months for a CR2032 coin cell, which is not bad at all, but still… https://tinkerman.cat/post/new-firmware-for-the-slampher/ Tue, 23 Aug 2016 16:39:27 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/new-firmware-for-the-slampher/ Some weeks ago I received a parcel from Itead. Previously, I had written about the Sonoff and they were kind enough to send me two more of their home automation products for me to review: the S20 Smart Socket I wrote about two weeks ago and the Slampher. The Slampher comes in a simple cardboard box with no documentation at all... just visit their wiki! The Slampher is kind of a Sonoff RF that sits before any light bulb with an E27 screw. https://tinkerman.cat/post/rfm69-wifi-gateway/ Fri, 19 Aug 2016 21:00:13 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/rfm69-wifi-gateway/ Some 3 years ago I started building my own wireless sensor network at home. The technology I used at the moment has proven to be the right choice, mostly because it is flexible and modular. MQTT is the keystone of the network. The publisher-subscriber pattern gives the flexibility to work on small, replaceable, simple components that can be attached or detached from the network at any moment. Over this time is has gone through some changes, like switching from a series of python daemons to Node-RED to manage persistence, notifications and reporting to several “cloud” services. https://tinkerman.cat/post/esp8266-calling-home/ Wed, 10 Aug 2016 20:42:17 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/esp8266-calling-home/ Firmware over-the-air (OTA) is great. It makes you shiver whenever you throw an update to one of your devices. The ArduinoOTA library for ESP8266 is so easy to use it's almost magic. But once you have several devices deployed you start to think one step further. Here I'm going to talk about two different options: writing an automated deployment script that performs OTA updates or giving your device the ability to call home querying for new updates, downloading them and flash itself into the latest version available. https://tinkerman.cat/post/your-laundry-is-done/ Sat, 30 Jul 2016 14:29:58 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/your-laundry-is-done/ Have you ever forgotten your wet clothing inside the washer for a whole day? I have. Even for two days. They smell. You have to wash them again and you know you might end up forgetting about them again! Actually that is happening to me since me moved to an old house in a town north of Barcelona. Instead of having the washer in the kitchen, like we used to, now we have it in the cellar, in a place I don't normally pass by to notice the laundry is done. https://tinkerman.cat/post/s20-smart-socket/ Thu, 28 Jul 2016 22:41:10 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/s20-smart-socket/ Since I discovered the Sonoff I've been thinking about embedding it inside a switch. I started looking for old power meters, timers,… I had at home but the Sonoff is a bit too long. Why didn't they design a square board? I event bought a bulky Kemo STG15 case with socket. Next I decided to design my own board. It is meant to be the “official” hardware for the ESPurna project so it's called ESPurna too. https://tinkerman.cat/post/iteads-evolution/ Thu, 28 Jul 2016 13:45:41 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/iteads-evolution/ I was not the first to arrive at the party but since I discovered the ESP8266 I've been enjoying it. Then I stumbled upon the Sonoff and dude was I amazed. They are cheap and so very hackable you cannot help buying them, tear them open and customize them. Sure they are not CE or UL compliant, yet. My previous post about adding a custom RF module to a Sonoff HT got some visibility as it was published at hackaday. https://tinkerman.cat/post/adding-rf-to-a-non-rf-itead-sonoff/ Thu, 16 Jun 2016 23:56:11 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/adding-rf-to-a-non-rf-itead-sonoff/ Yes, sure! You can buy a Sonoff RF and you are good to go, I guess. But I didn't and I was not so sure about the no-named RF receiver so I ended thinking about adding my own. But first things first. The Sonoff is an ESP8266 based smart switch by ITEAD which comes with custom firmware that communicates with the manufacturer cloud to provide “smart” capabilities like remote switching or scheduling. https://tinkerman.cat/post/wordclock/ Thu, 26 May 2016 08:50:05 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/wordclock/ Clocks are top projects for the maker community. There are tons of different ways to show or tell time. Or write time. Wordclocks are a subset of them by its own. You can find other wordclocks at instructables, for instance, or buy one from thinkgeek or from a local jewelry for just 450€. Mmm… well maybe that's a little bit on the expensive side… Recently I've been doing things with clocks and WS2812 LEDs (a. https://tinkerman.cat/post/pcb-milling/ Thu, 01 Oct 2015 16:16:14 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/pcb-milling/ it's been a while (ok, more than a whole year) since my last post. I could say I've been busy and it'd be true but I regret myself not writting here for so long… Anyway if you want to know what I've been doing just visit my family blog (only in spanish, sorry). Blue footed boobies (yes, I know). Nothing to do with this blog but part of our family trip. https://tinkerman.cat/post/9600bps-clock-source/ Tue, 05 Aug 2014 09:50:33 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/9600bps-clock-source/ Quick post from an old draft, mainly as documentation. A 9600Hz oscillator circuit based on a 2.4576MHz crystal and a 74HC590 binary counter. The idea was to reproduce the set up from robotroom.com site with a bar crystal but I had some trouble making it work. The solution came from this document about crystal oscillator circuits that describes different circuits depending on the crystal frequency. Here you have the schema and a picture of the circuit: https://tinkerman.cat/post/pcb-etching-at-home-using-vinegar/ Wed, 23 Apr 2014 23:29:53 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/pcb-etching-at-home-using-vinegar/ PCB etching is another big topic in the electronics DIY world. It's something every electronics tinkerer ends up trying sooner o later. Even thou it's a fairly simple procedure it requires some self confidence (or bravery) since it involves strong, smelly and hazardous chemicals. Any etching procedure you read about can be described in 5 different steps: designing, transferring, etching, assembly and reuse or disposal. For every one of these five steps there are different options and there are thousands of web pages with instructions, recommendations, how-to's… well, this is yet another one of those pages :) https://tinkerman.cat/post/rentalito-goes-spark-core/ Wed, 02 Apr 2014 22:50:24 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/rentalito-goes-spark-core/ The Rentalito is a never ending project. It began as a funny project at work using an Arduino UNO and an Ethernet Shield, then it got rid of some cables by using a Roving Networks RN-XV WIFI module, after that it supported MQTT by implementing Nick O’Leary’s PubSubClient library and now it leaves the well known Arduino hardware to embrace the powerful Spark Core board. Spark Core powered Rentalito - prototype Spark Core The Spark Core is a development board based on the STM32F103CB, an ARM 32-bit Cortex M3 microcontroller by ST Microelectronics, that integrates Texas Instruments CC3000 WIFI module. https://tinkerman.cat/post/light-table-a-family-project/ Mon, 24 Feb 2014 00:34:49 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/light-table-a-family-project/ My older daughter (she's 4 years) loves drawing. My younger daughter (she's 1 year old) loves doing whatever her sister does. So last Christmas the three wise men carried a new kids table for them. The “old” one was quite abused already. You get to know how tough things are when you let a kid play with them for a while… Anyway we had already thought about a second life for it. https://tinkerman.cat/post/building-spark-core-firmware-locally/ Sat, 22 Feb 2014 01:23:14 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/building-spark-core-firmware-locally/ I have recently started a couple of projects based on the great Spark Core board. Hopefully I will be able to talk about them here soon. The Spark Core (courtesy of spark.io) The Spark Core is a development board based on the STM32F103CB, an ARM 32-bit Cortex M3 microcontroller by ST Microelectronics (the same you can find in the new Nucleo platform by ST) that was crowd-funded through a kickstarted campaign. https://tinkerman.cat/post/ciseco-xrf-modules-and-llap-protocol/ Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:19:57 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/ciseco-xrf-modules-and-llap-protocol/ In my last post about counting events with Arduino and PCF8583 I talked about this “yet another weather station” project I was working on last summer. The station was deployed in the garden of a cute apartment we rented in an old “masia” near Olot, 100 km north of Barcelona. It is in the mountainside, surrounded by woods and 10 minutes walking from the near town. It has a beautiful garden with plenty of space. https://tinkerman.cat/post/counting-events-with-arduino-and-pcf8583/ Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:04:57 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/counting-events-with-arduino-and-pcf8583/ Hey! I've been away for some time. It's not that I had stopped tinkering, but work and laziness have kept me away from the blog. During these months I have been working mostly on a new weather station (yes, yet another weather station or YAWS). The project was a step forward in a lot of aspects, from carpentry to remote reporting hacking cheap chinese routers and 3G dongles, from new libraries for Arduino to a bidirectional HTTP to MQTT bridge in node. https://tinkerman.cat/post/geiger-counter/ Thu, 23 May 2013 22:14:42 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/geiger-counter/ My last project is a über-cool Geiger-Muller Counter. Final box, with a LCD showing the last average CPM every 6 secons and sending the info to the server every minute... Hardware: Radio Hobby Store Geiger Counter Radiation DIY Kit (second edition) Some weeks ago I suffered a radioactivity fever, so to speak. I backed the APOC Mini Radiation Detector at Kickstarter and also bought a Geiger Counter Radiation Detector DIY Kit from Radio Hobby Store at Ebay. https://tinkerman.cat/post/weather-station/ Tue, 14 May 2013 22:25:47 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/weather-station/ Keeping on registering data from different sensors my next project has been the all-time favourite weather station. This time I wanted to build an 100% autonomous outdoor sensor. To achieve this goal I started playing with a LiPo battery and a solar panel. The Arduino Fio looked like the perfect out-of-the-box platform to be the center of the project. It's a ATmega328P (the same micro as the UNO), has a connection for a LiPo battery, a charge circuit based on the MAX1555 (with an USB connector) and a socket for an XBee radio module. https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-rentalito/ Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:37:02 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/the-rentalito/ “Say Hello to The Rentalito!” That was the first message The Rentalito displayed almost 2 years ago. The Rentalito means something like “small rental monitoring thingy” (free translation from “rental” and “ito”, which is the suffix for “small” in Spanish). It was born to display the rentals in a VOD project my team was working at that time. The Rentalito displayed total rentals, rentals by day and it beeped every time a new rental showed up in the database displaying the movie that was just rented. https://tinkerman.cat/post/door-sensor/ Sun, 03 Mar 2013 22:01:31 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/door-sensor/ UPDATE: check my post about my new Moteino based door monitor. In the past I've been monitoring my home door with an IP camera and the motion software in my server. Whenever something was moving in the camera range the server saves a little footage, takes a snapshot and calls a couple of scripts I use to send notifications via NMA and email. The problem with this set up was that it had lots of false positives. https://tinkerman.cat/post/decoding-433mhz-rf-data-from-wireless-switches-the-data/ Thu, 28 Feb 2013 23:09:27 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/decoding-433mhz-rf-data-from-wireless-switches-the-data/ [UPDATE 2013-03-01] I have added links to the encoder chips these two remote use and removed some miss-assumptions for the Noru remotes. The explanation now is simpler, but the main questions about the Noru codes remain. In my previous post I explained how I decoded the data from two wireless outlet remotes using a couple of libraries for Arduino and a Bus Pirate in logic analyser mode. Now I want to go more in-depth, showing the captures from OLS and the data I obtained. https://tinkerman.cat/post/decoding-433mhz-rf-data-from-wireless-switches/ Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:35:27 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/decoding-433mhz-rf-data-from-wireless-switches/ [Update 2013-03-01] I have added more documentation on the codes these remotes use in a different post. I'm starting to move towards not only gathering information but also acting. My first project in this subject will be controlling some lights and the house heaters. So last week I visited the urban market of “Els Encants” in Barcelona and bought some very cheap wireless outlets. Two different remotes I bought two sets of three wall plugs, each set with it's own remote. https://tinkerman.cat/post/storing-and-publishing-sensor-data/ Sat, 19 Jan 2013 06:03:31 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/storing-and-publishing-sensor-data/ Now that I have started to monitor some magnitudes at home, like power consumption or the front door opening, I have to do something with this information. The sensor information can be useful for two purposes, mainly: analysing it to know more about your environment or your life-style patterns (like when and how you spend the money you spend on energy) taking real-time actions based on events from your sensors (open a light when you pass by a dark corridor at night, receive a notification when someone enters your house,…) To analyse the information you will first have to store it in some way you could retrieve it later, graph it, summarize it, perform different time range roll ups or moving averages or detect time patterns,… whatever. https://tinkerman.cat/post/smartmeter-pulse-counter-4/ Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:41:56 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/smartmeter-pulse-counter-4/ This is going to be the last post for the smart meter pulse counter setup series. I want to wrap up several things like the final hardware, the code and the data visualization. Final hardware This is what the pulse counter sensor looks like, almost. The final version that's already “in production” has a switch to hard-reset the radio from outside the enclosure. Nothing special otherwise. Everything goes in a socket so I could reuse the components, the photocell probe connects to the 3. https://tinkerman.cat/post/xbee-to-mqtt-gateway/ Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:11:21 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/xbee-to-mqtt-gateway/ So far I've posted about hardware and theoretical stuff like network architecture or naming conventions. I think it's time to move to the software side. The core of the sensor network I'm deploying at home is the Mosquitto broker that implements MQTT protocol. It manages the messaging queue, listening to messages posted by publishers and notifying the subscribers. I've been working in parallel to have at least some pieces in place to get and store information from the pulse counter sensor. https://tinkerman.cat/post/smartmeter-pulse-counter-3/ Sun, 06 Jan 2013 22:39:37 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/smartmeter-pulse-counter-3/ Thesmartmeter pulse counter will be the first standalone sensor I will deploy so power economy is a requirement. I will have to power an Arduino Pro Mini and an Xbee radio. I plan to power the Xbee from the 3V3 regulated output. The Arduino VCC output can provide as much as 200mA which is far enough to power the Xbee. The built-in regulator requires at least 3.35V and up to 12V so 3 AA cells will provide enough potential to drive the whole setup. https://tinkerman.cat/post/mqtt-topic-naming-convention/ Thu, 13 Dec 2012 21:25:38 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/mqtt-topic-naming-convention/ Naming stuff is one of the core decisions one has to take while designing an architecture. It might not look as important as utilising the right pattern in the right place or defining your database model but my experience says that a good naming convention helps identifying design flaws. In a previous post I introduced the network I'm building for my home monitoring system. As I said it will be based on MQTT, a lightweight messaging protocol. https://tinkerman.cat/post/smartmeter-pulse-counter-2/ Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:06:25 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/smartmeter-pulse-counter-2/ This week I have had some spare time - well, I should say I've borrowed some time from my sleep - to work on the smart-meter pulse counter setup. In my last post about this I analized the signal from my photocell sensor. My conclusion was that the signal was clean and neat, even before throwing in a schmitt trigger to make it more “digital”. I have found out that it is also very dependent on the environmental light so I good isolation is a must for the sensor. https://tinkerman.cat/post/home-monitoring-system/ Sun, 11 Nov 2012 05:09:47 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/home-monitoring-system/ All of us tinkermen eventually end up working on a home monitoring/automation system sooner or later. And that's for me the big background project at the moment. I have already some of the pieces in several stages of readiness but I was lacking an overall view of the system as a whole. My initial approach was to store everything in a MySQL database and develop a web application to graph the time series values. https://tinkerman.cat/post/smartmeter-pulse-counter-1/ Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:40:22 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/smartmeter-pulse-counter-1/ Endesa has recently updated my home energy meter to meet new UE and Spanish regulations. The new meter it's a smartmeter by Meters and More and it basically provides the means to perform remote meter readings and supply changes. The goal of the new regulation is to provide better and more accurate information to final customers regarding their energy consumption habits to promote energy efficiency and saving. The reason I'm writing about this is that the meters has two communication ports on the front side, an I/O optical port with unknown protocol and a simple LED labeled “4000 Imp/KWh”. https://tinkerman.cat/post/electronics-jewelry/ Sun, 21 Oct 2012 20:02:53 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/post/electronics-jewelry/ Funny how this has ended up being my first post… It has recently been our 12th anniversary with my wife and as it always happens you feel like socially impelled to give her a “material” present, although there is no better present than a night out together or a romantic weekend out of the city. But anyway, since it was supposed to be something personal and since I've been tinkering with electronics for quite some time now, I though about putting something of my hobby into it. https://tinkerman.cat/aboutme/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/aboutme/ About me My name is Xose Pérez and I live in Sant Pol de Mar, a small town near Barcelona. I studied Astrophysics but computers have always been a passion. For years I worked for different companies in different sectors of the web development world, from geographic information systems (even before Google Maps crashed in) to home theater media players, from financial sites and e-commerce to social networks. In 2014 I quit and we, as a family, started a new life. https://tinkerman.cat/categories/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/categories/ https://tinkerman.cat/contact/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/contact/ https://tinkerman.cat/search/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/search/ https://tinkerman.cat/tags/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://tinkerman.cat/tags/