Thomas shares makes

Home Assistant Zigbee Media Remote

When I started working in my home office full-time during COVID-19 lock down, I wanted a remote control to easily pause my music whenever a Teams call or meeting started.

I had an IKEA 'hockeypuck' ZigBee control laying around that could easily be commissioned onto my home assistant setup, which …

Dated 2020-05-09 23:00 · homeassistant zigbee2mqtt

An improvised door handle

I designed a simple door handle during COVID-19 lock down. After my kids slammed the kitchen door against the radiator a few times, I had to glue the existing handle again and again. I didn't feel like installing a door stop (also, shops were closed) for this old door that will be replaced at one point in the coming years. I did feel like modelling a replacement object...

Dated 2020-05-03 12:00 · 3dprinting 3ddesign

Forest mood lamp build

I built a tree shaped lamp from thingiverse along with extra parts to insert WS2812 (neopixel) strips.

Dated 2020-05-03 11:00 · 3dprinting makes

Mutually Exclusive Media Players in Home Assistant

I have Raspberry Pi's in different rooms, and one thing I use them for is to play music to speakers.

Each of them has two music player services on it (MPD, Spotify), and it's a bit annoying that I have to stop a player when I want to listen to the other one.

Since I'm running home assistant as an automation hub, I wrote two short automations that stop the already playing service when the second one kicks in.

Dated 2020-05-02 20:00 · homeassistant mods

My Prusa Mk3s and setup

In the summer of 2019, I bought my first 3D printer, a Prusa MK3s. I've been super happy with this sweet toy, it works like a charm.

Let me tell you a bit about my experiences with it...

Dated 2020-04-30 20:00 · 3dprinting mods

Housenumber sign

One of the first things I built when I got my 3D printer was a housenumber sign. I made the writing stand out in contrast by using a filament swap at layer height.

Dated 2019-08-30 20:00 · 3dprinting mods

Central Heating sensor manipulation

We used to have a gas-powered central heating system that had no external controls other than radiator valves. It had a sun-exposed exterior temperature sensor on the west side of the house that caused it to refuse to heat in the evening.

I wanted to fix the issue and control it via Home Assistant, and since only the newer models had bus control, I resorted to manipulate the outside sensor readings and designed a man-in-the-middle device.

Dated 2019-07-06 00:00 · arduino mqtt

RFID Card Jukebox with Raspberry Pi

When a friend of mine showed the awesome little wooden Jukebox he made for his kids, I loved the idea, and knew I could make a similar contraption by recycling an old Raspberry Pi 1 I had on a shelve.

Dated 2019-02-01 00:00 · raspberrypi makes linux

EspHome LED Lighting

I hand-built several LED strip controllers with Wemos D1 mini boards and prototyping board. We used them to light our living room.

Dated 2019-01-01 00:00 · esp8266 esphome neopixel ws2811

Home Assistant Touch Screen

My 2017 Christmas present was a voucher for the local electronics shop. I spent it on an 'official 7" raspberry pi touch screen display', which is a nice capacitive touchscreen that you can hook up to a raspberry pi.

I 3d-printed an enclosure from Thingiverse for it, and fitted an RGB LED string around the edges as an extra.

Initially I created an AppDaemon HAdashboard configuration to control my Home Assistant instance with it.

Dated 2018-11-08 23:00 · homeassistant raspberrypi touchscreen

Heat Canon (Salamander heater) controller repair

In the winter of 2016, someone gave me a controller board for a heater. The heater is pretty scary, it burns fuel and blows exhaust and hot air out of what looks like a canon. It has some interesting mechatronics; a fuel valve, an ignition coil, and a fan. It has a flame detection sensor input as well, as a safety feature. I succeeded at repairing the board, but had to write the controller software from scratch.

Dated 2017-03-01 20:00 · picmicro repair

DIY Automatic condensation water pump

In 2015 we moved into a house which had a condensing gas boiler. When the previous owners installed it, they never installed a drain pipe to dispose of the water that it produces. Instead there was... a bucket that had to be emptied every week. I quickly grew tired of emptying the bucket. With no obvious way to direct the water except over the ceiling, I needed a device that would pump the water. This sounded like a fun DIY project, so I ordered some float switches and a 12VDC membrane pump, then got busy and soldered a simple set/reset controller with... Guess which old-school IC...

Dated 2016-10-09 20:00 · makes electronics water

How I get the job done, using Vim

I wrote down tips and tricks I use with VIM.

Dated 2010-01-01 20:20 · vim

Atmel AT91RM9200 Linux DMX Driver

As final project for my Professional Bachelor degree Electronics - ICT, I developed embedded software. I built a custom Linux based device that acts as an 'Art-Net node', converting a serial DMX-512 stream to network packets.

After a few months of work, I was able to present a working system, with …

Dated 2008-03-26 00:00 · embedded

SSH MacGyver: Ssh for the Poweruser

Ssh ideas for the power user.

contents

Introduction: Remote Computer Access
Shell access
.ssh/config
File transfer
File sharing with Unix-enabled friends
OpenSSH and... Windows?!
Tunnels

Dated 2008-03-26 00:00 · ssh linux

Debugging the free_ecb_at91 board using JTAG

For a school project early 2007 (a study of embedded Linux on the AT91RM9200 ARM9 processor) I got familiar with the GNU development tools and setup required to run a Linux based operating system.

Using the setup described here I was able to inspect the inner workings of Darrell loader in real time, set hardware breakpoints, step through the program flow and inspect values of program variables while the CPU core was halted.

Dated 2007-01-01 00:00 · embedded gdb linux

Ancient VB6 stuff

Visual Basic used to be an easily accessible programming language for the windows platform. I spent quite some hours and a lot of creativity with it years ago, and the result is a bunch of half-finished programs. I started creating stuff with VB6 out of interest when I was a …

Dated 2006-07-18 00:00 · vb6 visualbasic teenager

Notes about my old LAN server

My old server functioned as an internet gateway and DHCP and masquerading DNS server. The last two are not necessary, but it's always easy if you just have to plug you cable into the LAN, and don't have to configure your network adapters. It also ran an Apache web server …

Dated 2006-07-18 00:00 · linux teenager

PenguinPages Preprocessor

When I started maintaining a personal website years ago, I kept all content in static HTML files which I uploaded. The server didn't support server side scripting and for a while I used a JavaScript to provide a navigation menu.

The JavaScript menu fixed just that, navigation. Devising a publishing …

Dated 2006-07-18 00:00 · php teenager

DenAgenda: De Nayer Timetables

DenAgenda is a webservice written in Python program I hosted on my webserver. It converted my college's online timetable from HTML (screen-scraping) to the iCalendar format, which is a standardized calendar file format.

The obsolete sourcecode is available under GPL 2 license and is available as a git repository:

Dated 2006-06-18 00:00 · teenager

Embedded artists Game/Bluetooth board

I wrote this article on using a microprocessor board with GNU tools for an embedded software class back in 2006. It's written in Dutch.

Dated 2006-01-01 00:00 · teenager hacks

JAL Programmable Logic Controller

When my brother was doing his last year of high-school in electromechanics, he came up with the idea of doing his final project using a homebuilt PLC instead of the usual Siemens stuff. I built the electronics and came up with a framework so he could easily implement his GRAFCET state machine for his part sorting robot for the PICMICRO in the JAL programming language.

This was long before Arduino, long before 'all the cool kids were doing it', and JAL was a free compiler for the affordable PIC microcontrollers. The Arduino of its days.

Dated 2006-01-01 00:00 · pic embedded jal teenager

Linux Screenshots

Here are some screenshots (anno 2006).

Dated 2006-01-01 00:00 · linux

Using a (Qume) serial terminal with Linux

In this text I explain how to configure a Linux server so that it can be used with a serial terminal (like the Qume qvt101). This document is not Linux distribution-specific, and applies to any recent distribution that uses agetty (other getty programs should work too, but program's parameters may differ).

Dated 2006-01-01 00:00 · linux terminal

Skymeter

Tkskymeter 2.1.0 schermafdruk

Skymeter is a utility targeted at Belgacom [1] customers. Belgacom has a very restrictive policy towards the amount of data its customers can download with its broadband internet service.

Skymeter polls the meter webpage of the Belgacom 'Self care' [2] website and presents the useful …

Dated 2006-01-01 00:00 · software obsolete

Vim 8051 assembler syntax file

I wrote this syntax highlighting file for Vim because I had an Intel 8051 course in 2005, and wanted to do my coding in Vim. It's totally optional to have syntax highlighting, but it does give you many advantages. This .syn file will make sure recognised mnemonics and registers are …

Dated 2006-01-01 00:00 · hacks vim

Using your WRT54 to secure your email connections

Fetching POP3 mail over an untrusted WiFi public access point is dangerous, as the password is transmitted unencrypted (in plain text). Anyone with a laptop and a suited program can sniff your password right out of the air, along with your email. Sending mails is also impossible most of the …

Dated 2005-10-26 00:00 · networking openwrt ssh linux

Howto: Intel 8051 assembler .exe onder UNIX

Note

This is a how to about using an 8051 assembler used in a college course with POSIX compatible operating systems using Dosbox. It was only useful to my fellow students at the De Nayer institute, so I wrote this in dutch.

Dated 2005-10-01 00:00 · teenager mods

Download page

I use this spot to put links to miscellaneous binaries I provide on my website.

	Comment	Size
16f84_clock.sch	Pic84 Clock schematic	85715 bytes
16f84_clock.zip	Pic84 Clock Sourcecode + hexfile	14340 bytes
JCS_1.0.6_SOURCE.zip	Jal Code Studio 1.0.6 Sourcecode	852150 bytes …

Dated 2005-01-01 00:00 · teenager

Geek Toys

Gadget-maniac like me? Then how about some electronic junk you hook up to your computer's unused I/O ports? These toys are simple to understand, have few parts and are therefore cheap and easy to build!

Dated 2005-01-01 00:00