Hickey's Tech Adventures

Well it's been quite some time has passed but I've finally got around to finishing this up and have now released the devices on Tindie and my own personal store. I have setup a discord server to discuss the board and if people have any feature requests or other feedback they are more than welcome.   Discord Link This is the latest release and represents a shift from the passthrough method to a new style of the ESP8266 extracting the data which is viewable locally but then is also possible to post this to an MQTT broker or influxdb database.   For flashing i would recommend using the application esphome-flasher which is a great tool for writing the firmware and it has a version for most OS's.  It can be downloaded from  Link The firmware is available from  Link I have created a 3D printable case which is on thingiverse.  It's a snug fit but once it's in there it won't shift and the RJ45 socket ends up nice and flush with the case. You can download it at the follo

First off thank you for your purchase!    I made this device for working with small devices to keep powerbanks/power supplies alive as they can frequently auto shutoff if they believe the device is not on as it is drawing so little power.  Once assembled the device shall look as per below (resistor colours may vary and also the case colour may vary if you've ordered one) The 3D case design is on Thingiverse Once inside the case the assembled unit shall look as per below So enough of the end product, lets look at what the kit shall look like I have where possible labelled the parts in the packaging but the current shipping parts are coloured as above which makes identification easier.   Assembly notes The resistors have no polarity so can be placed in either direction. The capacitors have a polarity which can be identified in two ways.  The longest leg is the positive side and also the negative side has a white strip down that side.  On the PCB the positive is labelled and also the

How to get started with your RS485 to Wifi adaptor You shall need to use a standard RJ45 network cable, make sure it's not a crossover. Once it's connected you shall need to connect and configure your WiFi so the adaptor can connect to your network.  I am using my phone and on searching for networks you shall see a new network beginning with ESP : - On connecting to the network you shall have to open a browser and manually enter the ip address http:/192.168.4.1 note on most devices you won't need to enter the http:// Once connected you shall see the connection screen which details the IP address of the connected network. We have no connected network so the address is 0.0.0.0 To configure your network you shall need to select your network and then input your WiFi password.  The device shall then connect to your network and when you go to the main page you should see the IP address your device has been given. Your device

I've been experiencing some issues as i foolishly shut it all down completely over the winter but there must have been some parasitic draw from a device and it get extremely low and i have resurrected it however one cell is low and has been getting to around 2v during the night so the powerwall is going to be pulled down and rebuilt i think, going for a different design this time. I previously used Paul Kennets design which was a 24p packs which were then put in parallel with 3 other packs to create a 96p pack however this has a lot of interconnects so i think going for big 80p packs as many others have done shall be the best way forward.  To do this however i will need to strip all the cells out and retest everything and leave them for a few weeks to test for self discharge and then use repackr to assemble. That is a lot of work!!!

I setup reporting for my EPever solar charge controller a while ago using  using the following guide at  sporadic projects .  It works but have been hankering for something a little more/different and saw a posting recently of someone using grafana and influxdb to report on their PIP based solar setup so i set about recreating this and in all honesty it wasn't as bad as i thought and after a few days i've gotten something up and running. The first step was setting up my pi, i decided to reuse a aging pi1 which caused some issues as i couldn't install things from the standard repo's so it needed a little more tinkering.  I documented this as i went so i hope this helps others using it on a pi1 also. The below shall download a precompiled influxdb setup and install it.  It will then add a custom repo to your sources list and install grafana and then start it up and enable it at startup.  Lastly it shall install php and the curl library for php and then install the