There is one oddity, which I have not been able to resolve...

I have fitted a car charger, in my garage, idea is to give the battery
a 15 minute boost once per day. I had this originally working via a
plug in timer, but I have no replaced this with a Smart Plug working
with Alexa/ Smart life. I set it in Alexa to come on at 12:00, off at
12:15 - which works properly, except....

The plug is also switched on at 23:00 - Alexa shows it as on, but there
is no routine in Alexa set to turn it on. As there is no routine to
turn it on, I didn't have one set to turn it back off. As a temporary
fix, I have changed my on/off times to 23:00 to 23:15, but has anyone
any idea why it turns on without a routine at 23:00 please?

The other three Smart Plugs are behaving perfectly, as near as I can
tell.

Next question, also garage related. I have a mains powered air
compressor in my garage, which is quite noisy. I power it up very
ocaisionaly, as needed to check tyre pressure etc.. I used to power it
up, then forget to switch it off, then as pressure in the system was
lost, it would start up maybe in the middle of the night. To stop that
happening, I added a timer circuit - once powered on it remains on for
20 minutes, then turns off.

I'm wondering if I might be able to replace that timer with a Smart
Plug? I ask Alexa to 'turn compressor on', Alexa then turns it off 20
minutes later.

Last question for now - I installed the Alexa PC App on my laptop.
Unless I am missing something, it is of very little use - It allows me
to check the state of Smart Plugs, change the state of them, but that
is all? I cannot see any routines, or edit them. It is unable to
control my Smart TV, or Fire stick/cube/box - it shows all these things
as 'Not accessible from your PC'. The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I
missing something?

I think your pc needs some kind of radio connection. I noted that my phone
regularly uses bluetooth to do stuff, though its not exactly saying what!

It may be that the particular combination of wifi and bluetooth and
permissions on the windows laptop, means parts cannot function. This is
really a question for Amazon though.
On the ghost switch on times, Have you tried moving the switch to another
location and using one of the others to control the charger? At least that
would prove whether its one switch or a bug in the system.


I would not know about the compressor, as long as its in range and can cope
with the load, I'd have thought its no different to anything else controlled
by a plug.
Brian

--
--
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
Harry Bloomfield; "Esq." wrote in message
...
There is one oddity, which I have not been able to resolve...

I have fitted a car charger, in my garage, idea is to give the battery a
15 minute boost once per day. I had this originally working via a plug in
timer, but I have no replaced this with a Smart Plug working with Alexa/
Smart life. I set it in Alexa to come on at 12:00, off at 12:15 - which
works properly, except....

The plug is also switched on at 23:00 - Alexa shows it as on, but there is
no routine in Alexa set to turn it on. As there is no routine to turn it
on, I didn't have one set to turn it back off. As a temporary fix, I have
changed my on/off times to 23:00 to 23:15, but has anyone any idea why it
turns on without a routine at 23:00 please?

The other three Smart Plugs are behaving perfectly, as near as I can tell.

Next question, also garage related. I have a mains powered air compressor
in my garage, which is quite noisy. I power it up very ocaisionaly, as
needed to check tyre pressure etc.. I used to power it up, then forget to
switch it off, then as pressure in the system was lost, it would start up
maybe in the middle of the night. To stop that happening, I added a timer
circuit - once powered on it remains on for 20 minutes, then turns off.

I'm wondering if I might be able to replace that timer with a Smart Plug?
I ask Alexa to 'turn compressor on', Alexa then turns it off 20 minutes
later.

Last question for now - I installed the Alexa PC App on my laptop. Unless
I am missing something, it is of very little use - It allows me to check
the state of Smart Plugs, change the state of them, but that is all? I
cannot see any routines, or edit them. It is unable to control my Smart
TV, or Fire stick/cube/box - it shows all these things as 'Not accessible
from your PC'. The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I missing something?

On Saturday, 19 September 2020 at 07:36:26 UTC+1, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
I think your pc needs some kind of radio connection. I noted that my phone
regularly uses bluetooth to do stuff, though its not exactly saying what!

It may be that the particular combination of wifi and bluetooth and
permissions on the windows laptop, means parts cannot function. This is
really a question for Amazon though.
On the ghost switch on times, Have you tried moving the switch to another
location and using one of the others to control the charger? At least that
would prove whether its one switch or a bug in the system.


I would not know about the compressor, as long as its in range and can cope
with the load, I'd have thought its no different to anything else controlled
by a plug.
Brian

--
--
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
Harry Bloomfield; "Esq." wrote in message
...
There is one oddity, which I have not been able to resolve...

I have fitted a car charger, in my garage, idea is to give the battery a
15 minute boost once per day. I had this originally working via a plug in
timer, but I have no replaced this with a Smart Plug working with Alexa/
Smart life. I set it in Alexa to come on at 12:00, off at 12:15 - which
works properly, except....

The plug is also switched on at 23:00 - Alexa shows it as on, but there is
no routine in Alexa set to turn it on. As there is no routine to turn it
on, I didn't have one set to turn it back off. As a temporary fix, I have
changed my on/off times to 23:00 to 23:15, but has anyone any idea why it
turns on without a routine at 23:00 please?

The other three Smart Plugs are behaving perfectly, as near as I can tell.

Next question, also garage related. I have a mains powered air compressor
in my garage, which is quite noisy. I power it up very ocaisionaly, as
needed to check tyre pressure etc.. I used to power it up, then forget to
switch it off, then as pressure in the system was lost, it would start up
maybe in the middle of the night. To stop that happening, I added a timer
circuit - once powered on it remains on for 20 minutes, then turns off.

I'm wondering if I might be able to replace that timer with a Smart Plug?
I ask Alexa to 'turn compressor on', Alexa then turns it off 20 minutes
later.

Last question for now - I installed the Alexa PC App on my laptop. Unless
I am missing something, it is of very little use - It allows me to check
the state of Smart Plugs, change the state of them, but that is all? I
cannot see any routines, or edit them. It is unable to control my Smart
TV, or Fire stick/cube/box - it shows all these things as 'Not accessible
from your PC'. The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I missing something?

Many of these smart devices come with their own software which you often have to use to pair with your WiFi before Alexa will discover the device. It is possible to set timers in the default apps leaving Alexa unaware of these actions. It might be that you have inadvertently set a timer in the default app, Alexa will detect the status of any switch or socket even if it does not have direct control of the timer in question. I must admit out of laziness I have often stuck with the default app for my sockets and simply used Alexa as an override.

Richard

On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 06:41:09 +0100, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I missing something?

Trying to use a highly complex and unreliable system that you can't
fully control instead of a couple mechanical plugin time switches
that'll just work year in year out?

OK one will need the feed to the motor moving post the switch to give
the timed on period but that isn't hard. B-)

--
Cheers
Dave.

Harry Bloomfield, Esq. wrote:
There is one oddity, which I have not been able to resolve...

I have fitted a car charger, in my garage, idea is to give the battery
a 15 minute boost once per day. I had this originally working via a
plug in timer, but I have no replaced this with a Smart Plug working
with Alexa/ Smart life. I set it in Alexa to come on at 12:00, off at
12:15 - which works properly, except....

The plug is also switched on at 23:00 - Alexa shows it as on, but there
is no routine in Alexa set to turn it on. As there is no routine to
turn it on, I didn't have one set to turn it back off. As a temporary
fix, I have changed my on/off times to 23:00 to 23:15, but has anyone
any idea why it turns on without a routine at 23:00 please?

The other three Smart Plugs are behaving perfectly, as near as I can
tell.

Next question, also garage related. I have a mains powered air
compressor in my garage, which is quite noisy. I power it up very
ocaisionaly, as needed to check tyre pressure etc.. I used to power it
up, then forget to switch it off, then as pressure in the system was
lost, it would start up maybe in the middle of the night. To stop that
happening, I added a timer circuit - once powered on it remains on for
20 minutes, then turns off.

I'm wondering if I might be able to replace that timer with a Smart
Plug? I ask Alexa to 'turn compressor on', Alexa then turns it off 20
minutes later.


A separate timer the turn on- a mono stable Alexa kicks with a 20 min time
out. A 555 with a relay, perhaps adapt one of the modules off EBay?

Last question for now - I installed the Alexa PC App on my laptop.
Unless I am missing something, it is of very little use - It allows me
to check the state of Smart Plugs, change the state of them, but that
is all? I cannot see any routines, or edit them. It is unable to
control my Smart TV, or Fire stick/cube/box - it shows all these things
as 'Not accessible from your PC'. The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I
missing something?


I think you need to €˜pair the Firestick with the Alexa.

Im sure Ive done it but cant recall the process. I dont use the
feature.

On 19/09/2020 09:12, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 06:41:09 +0100, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I missing something?

Trying to use a highly complex and unreliable system that you can't
fully control instead of a couple mechanical plugin time switches
that'll just work year in year out?


+1

Or write the software end to end, so that you have control and can
understand what to do when it breaks. And can better train other house
inhabitants to do likewise.

This fad for connecting random unsecured devices puzzles me.

If ye must do that, they really need to be their own network, and
firewalled internally if they have (because of cloud connections) to
live in the dmz.

--
Adrian C

On 19/09/2020 09:23, Radio Man wrote:
Harry Bloomfield, Esq. wrote:
There is one oddity, which I have not been able to resolve...

I have fitted a car charger, in my garage, idea is to give the battery
a 15 minute boost once per day. I had this originally working via a
plug in timer, but I have no replaced this with a Smart Plug working
with Alexa/ Smart life. I set it in Alexa to come on at 12:00, off at
12:15 - which works properly, except....

The plug is also switched on at 23:00 - Alexa shows it as on, but there
is no routine in Alexa set to turn it on. As there is no routine to
turn it on, I didn't have one set to turn it back off. As a temporary
fix, I have changed my on/off times to 23:00 to 23:15, but has anyone
any idea why it turns on without a routine at 23:00 please?

The other three Smart Plugs are behaving perfectly, as near as I can
tell.

Next question, also garage related. I have a mains powered air
compressor in my garage, which is quite noisy. I power it up very
ocaisionaly, as needed to check tyre pressure etc.. I used to power it
up, then forget to switch it off, then as pressure in the system was
lost, it would start up maybe in the middle of the night. To stop that
happening, I added a timer circuit - once powered on it remains on for
20 minutes, then turns off.

I'm wondering if I might be able to replace that timer with a Smart
Plug? I ask Alexa to 'turn compressor on', Alexa then turns it off 20
minutes later.


A separate timer the turn on- a mono stable Alexa kicks with a 20 min time
out. A 555 with a relay, perhaps adapt one of the modules off EBay?

Last question for now - I installed the Alexa PC App on my laptop.
Unless I am missing something, it is of very little use - It allows me
to check the state of Smart Plugs, change the state of them, but that
is all? I cannot see any routines, or edit them. It is unable to
control my Smart TV, or Fire stick/cube/box - it shows all these things
as 'Not accessible from your PC'. The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I
missing something?


I think you need to €˜pair the Firestick with the Alexa.

Im sure Ive done it but cant recall the process. I dont use the
feature.



is that a CB antenna M3CLASSBRADIOMAN ?

Actually smart home devices in general are pretty reliable, but one always
needs to realise that any changes at Amazon, in this case could affect a lot
of things, Say if Amazon as they are doing with health now on Halo, started
a premium service that said, OK you can have two devices controllable for
free, but you made to pay an x pounds a month per extra device controllable.
I believe they are doing something similar with music if its different on
two echos etc. I think its only going to get worse when comes in and
everything is directly connected to the backbone internet, and hence your
isp could start charging each one connected etc. Nothing will be for free,
but I'd expect a 'normal' cost as is now to be established with additions
for everything when the saturation of devices gets to a critical mass and
people come to rely on them. Its the old got you by the short and curlies
approach, where the customer pays and pays but never actually controls
anything.
Brian

--
Brian Gaff -

Blind user, so no pictures please!

This document should only be read by those persons for whom Paranoia is
normal
and its contents are probably boring and confusing. If you receive this
e-Mail
message in error, do not notify the sender immediately, instead, print it
out and make
paper animals out of it. As the rest of this disclaimer is totally
incomprehensible, we have not bothered to attach it.
"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
idual.net...
On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 06:41:09 +0100, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I missing something?

Trying to use a highly complex and unreliable system that you can't
fully control instead of a couple mechanical plugin time switches
that'll just work year in year out?

OK one will need the feed to the motor moving post the switch to give
the timed on period but that isn't hard. B-)

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 08:23:10 -0000 (UTC), Radio Man wrote:

A separate timer the turn on- a mono stable Alexa kicks with a 20 min
time out. A 555 with a relay, perhaps adapt one of the modules off EBay?

Far, far, simpler just to move one wire in a mechanical time switch.
No faffing about designing and building the circuit, makeing/adpating
a suitable enclosure, etc.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Harry Bloomfield, Esq. wrote:
There is one oddity, which I have not been able to resolve...

I have fitted a car charger, in my garage, idea is to give the battery
a 15 minute boost once per day. I had this originally working via a
plug in timer, but I have no replaced this with a Smart Plug working
with Alexa/ Smart life. I set it in Alexa to come on at 12:00, off at
12:15 - which works properly, except....

Wouldn't it be cheaper/simpler/more reliable simply to get a battery
charger that can be left permanently connected? They're pretty cheap
now. I have one for my 'bike (which is more likely to be left for
long periods than the cars) and also one for the ride-on mower. They
are both left permanently connected and keep the batteries in good
condition. The 'bike one (on previous bike) was in use for many, many
years and I only replaced the bike battery once in 14 years.

--
Chris Green
·

Brian Gaff wrote:
Actually smart home devices in general are pretty reliable, but one always
needs to realise that any changes at Amazon, in this case could affect a lot
of things, Say if Amazon as they are doing with health now on Halo, started
a premium service that said, OK you can have two devices controllable for
free, but you made to pay an x pounds a month per extra device controllable.
I believe they are doing something similar with music if its different on
two echos etc. I think its only going to get worse when comes in and
everything is directly connected to the backbone internet, and hence your
isp could start charging each one connected etc. Nothing will be for free,
but I'd expect a 'normal' cost as is now to be established with additions
for everything when the saturation of devices gets to a critical mass and
people come to rely on them. Its the old got you by the short and curlies
approach, where the customer pays and pays but never actually controls
anything.
Brian


Then you run your own BLINK server.


Alexa is an enabler, to sell Amazon products. The Smart Home features are a
loss leader to try add get you to buy things. Provided you only buy what
you want they fail and the fools who buy stuff they dont need pay for your
Smart Home etc.

On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 10:10:12 +0100, Brian Gaff wrote:

Actually smart home devices in general are pretty reliable, ...

FSVO "pretty reliable". That for me means at least ten years with no
or very little mainetenace or loss of features.

... but one always needs to realise that any changes at Amazon, in this
case could affect a lot of things, ...

Not just Amazon. Our Panasonic TV was sort of "Smart", it had
iPlayer, YouTube, and a few other things. Panasonic have
dropped/severly reduced stuff they provided and haven't kept up with
iPlayer so even though the screen and picture quality is still as
good as the day it was bought to a lot of people it's now "broken"
and would have to be replaced. Nintendo also dropped their online
stuff for the DS. I expect there are mnay other examples of kit
becoming useless 'cause the make drops the service it relies on.

Anything that relies on "the cloud" and/or an internet connenction to
function is at risk of either just been turned off or getting left
behind for no good reason.

Nothing will be for free, ...

It's not "free" now, google, amazon, etc make their billions by
selling the data they harvest from you in retrun for a few titbits.
You are the product they are selling. Remember these Alex, etc,
thingies chat away to their masters all the time telling them the
what/where/when of *every* event they know about. Some might say who
cares if Amazon know the bedroom light was switched on, which is fair
enough. But we are creatures of habit, once you have enough data
points and start mining/pattern matching allsorts of useful
information can be gleaned. Combine that with physical location
information and information gleaned from other users, your
"anonymous data" is anything but annonymous.

Its the old got you by the short and curlies approach, where the
customer pays and pays but never actually controls anything.

Oh yes, get 'em hooked and reel 'em in.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 19/09/2020 10:51, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 10:10:12 +0100, Brian Gaff wrote:

Actually smart home devices in general are pretty reliable, ...

FSVO "pretty reliable". That for me means at least ten years with no
or very little mainetenace or loss of features.

... but one always needs to realise that any changes at Amazon, in this
case could affect a lot of things, ...

Not just Amazon. Our Panasonic TV was sort of "Smart", it had
iPlayer, YouTube, and a few other things. Panasonic have
dropped/severly reduced stuff they provided and haven't kept up with
iPlayer so even though the screen and picture quality is still as
good as the day it was bought to a lot of people it's now "broken"
and would have to be replaced. Nintendo also dropped their online
stuff for the DS. I expect there are mnay other examples of kit
becoming useless 'cause the make drops the service it relies on.

Anything that relies on "the cloud" and/or an internet connenction to
function is at risk of either just been turned off or getting left
behind for no good reason.

Nothing will be for free, ...

It's not "free" now, google, amazon, etc make their billions by
selling the data they harvest from you in retrun for a few titbits.
You are the product they are selling. Remember these Alex, etc,
thingies chat away to their masters all the time telling them the
what/where/when of *every* event they know about. Some might say who
cares if Amazon know the bedroom light was switched on, which is fair
enough. But we are creatures of habit, once you have enough data
points and start mining/pattern matching allsorts of useful
information can be gleaned. Combine that with physical location
information and information gleaned from other users, your
"anonymous data" is anything but annonymous.

Its the old got you by the short and curlies approach, where the
customer pays and pays but never actually controls anything.

Oh yes, get 'em hooked and reel 'em in.

hate amazon because of their prime crap

On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 10:29:51 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

Wouldn't it be cheaper/simpler/more reliable simply to get a battery
charger that can be left permanently connected?

Or one of those small solar panels. Have one (about 4 x 12") for the
genset battery, keeps it topped up even in winter with the panel
facing east.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In article l.net,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 08:23:10 -0000 (UTC), Radio Man wrote:

A separate timer the turn on- a mono stable Alexa kicks with a 20 min
time out. A 555 with a relay, perhaps adapt one of the modules off EBay?

Far, far, simpler just to move one wire in a mechanical time switch.
No faffing about designing and building the circuit, makeing/adpating
a suitable enclosure, etc.

In the days when drill etc chargers weren't smart I did build a timer to
switch off the entire charging station I have in the workshop (a small
area on a shelf where the chargers live) With a few presets, including one
for basic Ni-Cad charging times. It's still in circuit - but not really
needed now.

--
*A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

on 19/09/2020, Chris Green supposed :
Wouldn't it be cheaper/simpler/more reliable simply to get a battery
charger that can be left permanently connected?

I have got numerous chargers and smart chargers, the thing is - even a
smart charger or controlled charger will cause evaporation of the
electrolyte. I have had batteries wrecked before, when left on smart
chargers. So I now bring batteries up to a full charge, with a
controlled charger, but on a regular schedule.

Tricky Dicky laid this down on his screen :
Many of these smart devices come with their own software which you often have
to use to pair with your WiFi before Alexa will discover the device. It is
possible to set timers in the default apps leaving Alexa unaware of these
actions. It might be that you have inadvertently set a timer in the default
app, Alexa will detect the status of any switch or socket even if it does not
have direct control of the timer in question. I must admit out of laziness I
have often stuck with the default app for my sockets and simply used Alexa as
an override.

The default App is one called Smart Life that had an on and off timer
set for 20:15 / 20:30, from when I was messing with it. The are both
disabled, still there but grayed out - I have yet to find a way to wipe
them completely. I just have one on, one off set in the Alexa app.

Smart Life is also the name of the Alexa extension for my Iphone, which
interfaces Alexa to work fully with the plugs.

- Maybe that is what is missing from the PC, to enable Alexa to gain
full control of the plugs?

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 06:41:09 +0100, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I missing something?

Trying to use a highly complex and unreliable system that you can't
fully control instead of a couple mechanical plugin time switches
that'll just work year in year out?

If you take this smart plug apart you'll discover it's simply an ESP8266
microcontroller and a relay (and a power measurement chip if it supports
that). If you install open source firmware like Tasmota on it, you still
get a wifi-remote-controllable, timer-able, plug. You just lose all the
layers of apps and cloud services and APIs that serve to make these things
extremely fragile. And whenever Tuya or Amazon get bored it'll stay
working.

The only thing that doesn't give you is control of things 'from the cloud'
when you're away from home. A VPN or tunnel will fix that.

Theo

Dave Plowman (News) laid this down on his screen :
In the days when drill etc chargers weren't smart I did build a timer to
switch off the entire charging station I have in the workshop (a small
area on a shelf where the chargers live) With a few presets, including one
for basic Ni-Cad charging times. It's still in circuit - but not really
needed now.

Well, perhaps not, but I still have a time-clock powering my multiple
chargers. It comes on for 20 minutes each day, just to top their
batteries up. One of the batteries is a combined starter, tyre
inflator, which is 20 plus years old and its SLA battery still tests as
100%.

I never charge my tractor mowers battery, when it is turned off, it is
really turned off. Besides, it is a long way from mains power. Always
starts at the first attempt in spring.

Harry Bloomfield wrote:

- Maybe that is what is missing from the PC, to enable Alexa to gain
full control of the plugs?

The tuya servers are in control of your plugs, the alexa servers ask the
tuya servers to do things that you set via the alexa app on your phone.

Sounds like there are still some settings on the tuya servers that the
alexa servers are unaware of.

Harry Bloomfield, Esq. explained :
The default App is one called Smart Life that had an on and off timer set for
20:15 / 20:30, from when I was messing with it. The are both disabled,

I have managed to delete those now. You just slide across to the left,
and a red delete then appears.

In article l.net,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 10:29:51 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

Wouldn't it be cheaper/simpler/more reliable simply to get a battery
charger that can be left permanently connected?

Or one of those small solar panels. Have one (about 4 x 12") for the
genset battery, keeps it topped up even in winter with the panel
facing east.

Didn't work with my neighbour's car.

--
*Time is the best teacher; unfortunately it kills all its students.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Harry Bloomfield wrote:
I have got numerous chargers and smart chargers, the thing is - even a
smart charger or controlled charger will cause evaporation of the
electrolyte.

Simply not so with a properly designed one.

--
*Xerox and Wurlitzer will merge to market reproductive organs.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Well, perhaps not, but I still have a time-clock powering my multiple
chargers. It comes on for 20 minutes each day, just to top their
batteries up. One of the batteries is a combined starter, tyre
inflator, which is 20 plus years old and its SLA battery still tests as
100%.

That rather gives the lie to your view that all chargers damage a battery
if left on. Since the amount an unused lead acid would loose in a day so
tiny as to be very difficult to measure. And since that self discharge is
so low, why on earth would you need to charge it at all every day? Once a
month would be more than enough.

--
*WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) pretended :
That rather gives the lie to your view that all chargers damage a battery
if left on.

Not really. It was only on a quick 20 min charge, once per day.

Since the amount an unused lead acid would loose in a day so
tiny as to be very difficult to measure. And since that self discharge is
so low, why on earth would you need to charge it at all every day? Once a
month would be more than enough.

Simple - 20 years ago how easy was it to find a time-clock which came
on just once per month? I suppose I could have cascaded time-clocks to
achieve it, but then it becomes awfully complicated. 20 mins per day,
just brought my batteries nicely up to a full charge.

Dave Liquorice pretended :
On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 10:29:51 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

Wouldn't it be cheaper/simpler/more reliable simply to get a battery
charger that can be left permanently connected?

Or one of those small solar panels. Have one (about 4 x 12") for the
genset battery, keeps it topped up even in winter with the panel
facing east.

Not really, my car is parked in a dark garage and most of my batteries
needing charging are also in my garage/workshop.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote :
Simply not so with a properly designed one.


We will have to agree to disagree on that one.

On 10:51 19 Sep 2020, Dave Liquorice said:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 10:10:12 +0100, Brian Gaff wrote:

Actually smart home devices in general are pretty reliable, ...

FSVO "pretty reliable". That for me means at least ten years with no
or very little mainetenace or loss of features.

... but one always needs to realise that any changes at Amazon, in this
case could affect a lot of things, ...

Not just Amazon. Our Panasonic TV was sort of "Smart", it had
iPlayer, YouTube, and a few other things. Panasonic have
dropped/severly reduced stuff they provided and haven't kept up with
iPlayer so even though the screen and picture quality is still as
good as the day it was bought to a lot of people it's now "broken"
and would have to be replaced.

Won't an Amazon Fire TV stick provide a good quality iPlayer as an
alternative?

Nintendo also dropped their online
stuff for the DS. I expect there are mnay other examples of kit
becoming useless 'cause the make drops the service it relies on.

Anything that relies on "the cloud" and/or an internet connenction to
function is at risk of either just been turned off or getting left
behind for no good reason.

In article ,
Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) pretended :
That rather gives the lie to your view that all chargers damage a
battery if left on.

Not really. It was only on a quick 20 min charge, once per day.

With a crude charger, that could very well do more damage than a decent
one left on 24/7.



Since the amount an unused lead acid would loose in a day so tiny as
to be very difficult to measure. And since that self discharge is so
low, why on earth would you need to charge it at all every day? Once a
month would be more than enough.

Simple - 20 years ago how easy was it to find a time-clock which came
on just once per month? I suppose I could have cascaded time-clocks to
achieve it, but then it becomes awfully complicated. 20 mins per day,
just brought my batteries nicely up to a full charge.

With my jump start pack/tyre inflator I simply charged it after a few
uses. You soon get to know how often it needs charging when used for
tyres. And it was pretty old, but the charger showed when the battery was
full.

--
*Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 06:41 19 Sep 2020, Harry Bloomfield, Esq. said:


Last question for now - I installed the Alexa PC App on my laptop.
Unless I am missing something, it is of very little use - It allows me
to check the state of Smart Plugs, change the state of them, but that
is all? I cannot see any routines, or edit them. It is unable to
control my Smart TV, or Fire stick/cube/box - it shows all these things
as 'Not accessible from your PC'. The Alexa Iphone App works fine, am I
missing something?


On Android and perhaps your laptop try:

Alexa app more add a device tv Fire tv

Alexa app devices + add device tv Fire tv

In article ,
Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote :
Simply not so with a properly designed one.


We will have to agree to disagree on that one.

I'd suggest you measure the float charge on the smart Lidl car battery
charger - which costs about £14. It is hardly difficult to design for any
float charge you want - from a fraction of an mA upwards.

--
*Your kid may be an honours student, but you're still an idiot.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 13:10:57 +0100, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

Or one of those small solar panels. Have one (about 4 x 12") for
the
genset battery, keeps it topped up even in winter with the panel
facing east.

Not really, my car is parked in a dark garage and most of my batteries
needing charging are also in my garage/workshop.

The panel could be remote from the charging station or even
outside(*). This genset top-up panel used to be ina north facing
window with a nice view of trees, it doidn't work very well there.
B-) Moved it to this east facing window with a fairly clear view of
the sky and it's fine. It's had the (energy wasting) flashing blue
LED moved to a surface box with switch that the flying lead that
plugs into the genset is connected. Probably on 8 m of 2.5 T&E,
current is so low there is negliable loss.

(*) Though how long it would last I'm not sure, it's probably only
IP44, though when I opened one up there was silicone sealing things.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 12:37:05 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Or one of those small solar panels. Have one (about 4 x 12") for
the
genset battery, keeps it topped up even in winter with the panel
facing east.

Didn't work with my neighbour's car.

Did for mine when I went to Rio in 2016 for 5 or 6 weeks. Did connect
it direcctly to the battery though, no point in using the ciggy
socket as that gets switched off fairly early on in the car falling
asleep...

As it's getting to winter I really ought to drag the genset out and
run it into a fan heater for an hour or two to make sure it will
start from the battery. B-) Being a diesel pull starting it is hard
work, and not something I'd like to be doing in **** poor windy
weather.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sat, 19 Sep 2020 13:41:31 +0100, Pamela wrote:

Not just Amazon. Our Panasonic TV was sort of "Smart", it had
iPlayer, YouTube, and a few other things. Panasonic have
dropped/severly reduced stuff they provided and haven't kept up
with
iPlayer so even though the screen and picture quality is still as
good as the day it was bought to a lot of people it's now "broken"
and would have to be replaced.

Won't an Amazon Fire TV stick provide a good quality iPlayer as an
alternative?

Donno, wouldn't want Amazon to be logging what we watch anyway. Got a
Humax DSAT PVR that has iPlayer (and I think several of the other
"catch up" services).

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 19 Sep 2020 11:26:37 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

Trying to use a highly complex and unreliable system that you
can't
fully control instead of a couple mechanical plugin time switches
that'll just work year in year out?

If you take this smart plug apart you'll discover it's simply an ESP8266
microcontroller and a relay (and a power measurement chip if it supports
that). If you install open source firmware like Tasmota on it, you
still get a wifi-remote-controllable, timer-able, plug.

Oooo, didn't know you could do that. Sort of surprised that Amazon
haven't locked things down. Not that I have need of such a device,
have ordinary wireless remote plugs that fullfill the ocasional need.

You just lose all the layers of apps and cloud services and APIs that
serve to make these things extremely fragile.

All the stuff I don't want...

And whenever Tuya or Amazon get bored it'll stay working.

Even better.

The only thing that doesn't give you is control of things 'from the
cloud' when you're away from home. A VPN or tunnel will fix that.

The only thing I'd possibly like to control remotely is the outside
light so it's on when I get home. Ideally automatically. Half toyed
with the idea of having something to detect the car's Bluetooth.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On 19 Sep 2020 11:26:37 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

Trying to use a highly complex and unreliable system that you
can't
fully control instead of a couple mechanical plugin time switches
that'll just work year in year out?

If you take this smart plug apart you'll discover it's simply an ESP8266
microcontroller and a relay (and a power measurement chip if it supports
that). If you install open source firmware like Tasmota on it, you
still get a wifi-remote-controllable, timer-able, plug.

Oooo, didn't know you could do that. Sort of surprised that Amazon
haven't locked things down. Not that I have need of such a device,
have ordinary wireless remote plugs that fullfill the ocasional need.

These plugs aren't made by Amazon, they're made by a no-brand Chinese firm
using a software platform from Tuya (the 'Smart Life' app and firmware to
connect to it). There's a variety of open source firmwares for the ESP8266,
of which the one I've used is Tasmota (only chosen since it was the default
of a tool called tuya-convert and it's 'good enough'). More recent Tuya
firmware has locked down things a bit more against firmware replacement, but
the solution to that is not to run the Smart Life app which updates the
firmware. In the worst case you can just take it apart and access the
ESP8266 programming pins - the firmware can't defend against that.

The only thing I'd possibly like to control remotely is the outside
light so it's on when I get home. Ideally automatically. Half toyed
with the idea of having something to detect the car's Bluetooth.

I've been playing with a Raspberry Pi, a £6 DVB-T dongle, and a program
called rtl_433 which talks to 433MHz remote control things (among other
frequencies). The purpose of this was to read the level of the oil tank
sensor to keep track of the oil level. As it happens, while it's happily
reading that, it's getting spammed by Toyota TPMS messages from the tyre
pressure sensors on the car. That could be a way to detect car presence.
although it would depend on the update rate - not much good if it's only
every 10 minutes. I don't know if the TPMS message frequency changes if the
wheel is rolling.

Theo

Dave Liquorice brought next idea :
Oooo, didn't know you could do that. Sort of surprised that Amazon
haven't locked things down.

They maybe would, if they were Amazon plugs. Several companies make
them.
Not that I have need of such a device,
have ordinary wireless remote plugs that fullfill the ocasional need.

Those are what I am moving away from.

Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling,


won't be long now....but instead of a nuke it will be a virus....

Dave Plowman (News) has brought this to us :
With a crude charger, that could very well do more damage than a decent
one left on 24/7.

It was a very impressive charger, of a type I have never come across
before. It was built into the unit and once the battery hit a full
charge, a relay would click and isolate it from the charger.