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My wife asked for a sensor that would inform her of the next bus here in Ottawa. Turns out they have an actual API! Someone had tried this on the forums before but said the API had changed¹.

I’m pretty happy with my SensorPush outdoor temperature/humidity/pressure sensor. It’s not cheap but it is calibrated to work in a Canadian winter (most of it, at least). Their BLE adverts are automatically detected by HomeAssistant and decoded.

Sometimes it appears to have a bit of a nap, adverts stop arriving (and I’ve checked with other BLE receivers) until the Android app wakes it up, probably the direct Bluetooth connection is all it wants.

Also, the battery voltage doesn’t appear to be broadcast. SensorPush do actually publish an API but they only show the GATT characteristics that require active scanning. Also my readings don’t agree with their statement that I can read battery temperature. The Android app happily returns 20.9C (which seems high!), raw values seem to float around 0xffff.

So, rather than try to get an ESP32 to lock up its active connection, draining the battery to see how quickly the battery is draining, I’m going for something more intermittent.

A nerd friend bought me a LILYGO E-paper display¹, in the exact hope that I’d end up going down the rabbit hole of Smart Things. I have gone down this bloody rabbit hole. I’ve always been a sucker for data, and I aspire to heating my home more efficiently by measuring temperatures round the house and seeing how they change as I change demand.

This is not a place of honour. It’s a place of a lot of YAML and black magic. It’s pretty cool when it works though:

• The board is a micro with Wi-Fi and a big-enough E-Paper Display (EPD)
• I can reconfigure it via context-aware text editor in the browser
• Push updates (also from the browser)
• Do some reasonably complex data processing and image/text rastering on the micro itself
• Control it from either a self-hosted server on the micro or from Home Assistant

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are exploring a brand new mystery island in the Cirle Sea. They’ve landed with Spiral and his servant, and are in an abandoned village. Strange and wondrous things exist here, but the only person is Tim, who thinks they’re the other side of the Circle Sea.

He’s also reporting being chased by mysterious creatures.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are exploring a brand new mystery island in the Cirle Sea. They’ve landed with Spiral and his servant, and are in an abandoned village.

The year tradition continues - time for another round of “what I want to play next”! So, good news, I managed to play The Black Hack, I’ve been using it in my UVG campaign. Admittedly, not playing quite as written (as it’s bodged over UVG 1e rules), but I’m still counting it. Bad news, three of these haven’t changed from last year. CY_BORG. Last year I said I wanted to buy it, and, uh, well I bought it.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua want to sail away to a mystery new island in the Circle Sea. They’re going to see if a friend will take them.

For the last ten months I’ve been trying to run a tabletop RPG at work over lunch. Specifically, a small group of people, 45m sessions, weekly.

I did not think it would be easy.

It was not easy.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are back in Violet City and looking for excitement. Or a boat, at least.

This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are seeking ancient truth in the scrolls of the Lime Nomads, in a pink Routemaster autogolem. Joshua wants to cross the Final Barrier and be able to raise the dead.