Customer Comments

Here's the latest comments from our customers, if you've got comments that you think would be useful for others to read, you can also make a comment on the individual product or blog page.

Hadley Rich - Monday, 25 March 2013 on product Easy-Off Remote Controlled Wall Outlet
Here's an Arduino Library to help with hacking these; https://code.google.com/p/rc-switch/
Hadley Rich - Thursday, 21 March 2013 on product USB to RS232 Converter
I'm not aware of anything off the shelf, you could possibly do it with an Arduino and USB Host shield but that's not as simple as you were asking for.
Eric Richards - Thursday, 21 March 2013 on product USB to RS232 Converter
Hi I should of asked this before is there a device that will connect to a standard USB keypad and convert the signal to "simple RS232" (been only 0 to 5 volt range) suitable for the display you sent yesterday. this is so I can change the default baud rate to a different baud rate.

Of course such a unit might need a power source.

eric.richards@gmail.com
Mike Field - Saturday, 16 March 2013 on product pcDuino - Dev Board
My pcDuino arrived this morning, and a few hours later I've already had both Linux and Android running. Runs very nicely indeed!

Very nice little board - now to start playing with the I/O...
Hadley Rich - Tuesday, 26 February 2013 on product Stepper Motor - 125 oz.in (200 steps/rev)
Hi Bevan,

We've just got the three stepper motors that are shown on the website at the moment.

Cheers,

Hadley
BEVAN WEAL - Tuesday, 26 February 2013 on product Stepper Motor - 125 oz.in (200 steps/rev)
FL86STH118A-22-CLF
1.8 4.2A
CAN YOU TELL ME DO YOU HAVE A STEPPER MOTOR THAT WOULD LINE UP TO THIS IT IS OFF MY CNC ROUTER MACHINE the motor is 85.6 square as 8 wires and a 14mm shaft
hope you can help
Bevan
Hadley Rich - Wednesday, 16 January 2013 on product Siemens Gigaset A580IP
Hi Mark,

Skype is a proprietary system which works differently to normal VoIP connections. Unfortunately that means Skype won't work with any of the phones we sell.

Cheers, Hadley
Mark - Wednesday, 16 January 2013 on product Siemens Gigaset A580IP
Hi, We currently have a "softphone" I think its called, through our computer and skype for our phone line. We are wanting to bypass the computer, so would this be the correct type of phone, or does being with skype mean we will always need the computer going? Thanks.
Mark Beckett - Wednesday, 26 December 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
Good work Hadley.
Just a warning to stay on the right side of the electrical regulations though.
Low voltage wiring, should 50mm away from 230v wiring.

You can use mains rated sleeving, or use a piece of light mains flex, in order to obtain the protection needed.

The reason is the 230v can't break through the insulation into the board or anyone holding onto them.

Mark
Andrew Huxtable - Saturday, 22 December 2012 on blog post Home Automation with Arduino MQTT
Hadley, I'm very interested in the scripts you have for a MQTT web interface if you are still keen to share.
Andrew
Hadley Rich - Friday, 21 December 2012 on product EasyDriver Stepper Motor Driver
Hi Martin,

Thanks for your note, I've added that now.

Cheers & Merry Christmas.
martin - Friday, 21 December 2012 on product EasyDriver Stepper Motor Driver
Please add a reminder that headers are not included. Thanks :)
Hadley Rich - Monday, 26 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
@Ron Wilson - Great work, solar is loads of fun.

@Rob Connolly - Nice little MQTT broker box you put together there, neat idea.

It sounds like I need to do a post with the server side of things. I'll try and put something together. The script I put together using redis as a backend was more of a temporary solution. Keeping all that data from every 5 seconds in memory for years isn't a great use of resources. I'll probably move to MongoDB or SQL for the long term solution.
Hadley Rich - Monday, 26 November 2012 on product Magnetic Card Reader
Hi Kawharu,

This is just a reader unfortunately.

Cheers,

Hadley
Kawharu - Sunday, 25 November 2012 on product Magnetic Card Reader
can you use the reader for writing magnetic cards??
Volker Kuhlmann - Sunday, 25 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
Hads,

I know that ripple controller you have in the middle from previous properties. Meridian replaced the meter twice (with a dumb meter), now what you have in those 3 boxes is all in one box. Expect that for anything newer. As the box looks just like the ones on your left/right I'll save myself posting a photo.
Rob Connolly - Saturday, 24 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
Hi Hads,

I would also be interested in hearing about the server side. I was thinking of building my database logger around MySQL so would be interested to hear about the Redis setup.

You might also be interested in this, which I was working on the other week: http://webworxshop.com/2012/11/03/tiny-mqtt-broker-with-openwrt

Cheers,

Rob
Ron Wilson - Friday, 23 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
I have just installed a big solar system to stop the high power bills. Only been in two months but in that time elements in cylinder have not turned on once. Hooray I am going to drive the power company out of business <g> use Current Cost to monitor power and to graph the results
Hadley Rich - Friday, 23 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
Very interesting.

We have a separate ripple control box here which turns on and off the night rate meter.
Volker Kuhlmann - Friday, 23 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
My dumb meter (I have yet to see a smart meter - my ArcInnovations job is so dumb, when I complained, Meridian had to install an attachment with buttons and LCD so I could see when the night rate is on) has only one blink LED, but no visual indication of whether the day or night rate is in effect.

I plan on using an AC output plugpack with a bandpass filter to obtain the ripple control bit stream used for switching rates, street lights, and a few other things. I designed the filter, and the bitstream shouldn't be that hard to decode. Documentation is on the Orion website. The downside of this system is that it only works on the Orion network in Christchurch that uses this encoding. Some Plains parts use a different encoding, which is however also documented. Dunno about other parts of the country.

If anyone has other suggestions for obtaining the night/day information I'd like to hear them.

-Volker
Hadley Rich - Wednesday, 21 November 2012 on product Energy Saving 6 Outlet Powerboard
Hi Tim,

I should have mentioned that in the product description. I believe it's 30W on the master socket that is the trip point for on/off.

Cheers,

Hadley
Tim - Wednesday, 21 November 2012 on product Energy Saving 6 Outlet Powerboard
Does this product turn the slaves off when the master drain is zero ? or below a certain level.

For example my TV has to have some power to detect the on signal from the remote. Will this device work as described when my tv is the master and i turn the tv "off"?
Hadley Rich - Tuesday, 20 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
Hi Wayne,

No worries, send me through an email and I'd be happy to share, it's all in a state of flux for now.

Cheers,

hads
Wayne Ingram - Monday, 19 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
Hi Hads,

Would you consider posting your server side? Been tossing up what I would do on the there side. Currently I just have been logging MQTT to a text file using a bash script and python + redis sounds much nicer ;)

Wayne.
Spudooli - Wednesday, 14 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
If that's your total hot water usage I need to move my family to your place, because we use way more than that.
Hadley Rich - Wednesday, 14 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
Hey Spudooli,

Thanks for the comment. Those two red blips are the hot water usage for an entire 24 hours. Our hot water is on night rate so only comes on at 11pm and switches off at 7am.

Cheers,

hads
Spudooli - Wednesday, 14 November 2012 on blog post Electricity Meter Usage over MQTT
Hey Hads, interesting stuff. We've got the smart meters too but no flashing led unfortunately.
I'd love to see your hot water usage over a full 24 hour period though.
I've got a Currentcost meter connected to our hot water cylinder too. I'd be interested to know if our power usage is similar to yours. See the charts on the bottom of http://www.spudooli.com/house.php
Even though our cylinder is wrapped it still cycles on and off about 3 times an hour. It does it all through the night when we're not using any hot water. I think there must be something wrong but have nothing to compare it to.
Chris Manning - Friday, 09 November 2012 on blog post Giving away a Rapsberry Pi tomorrow!
Also not into that whole twitter thing, but a raspberry pi would be pretty fun to play with.
Carey Bishop - Thursday, 08 November 2012 on blog post Giving away a Rapsberry Pi tomorrow!
They're pretty cool little devices
Graham Rye - Thursday, 08 November 2012 on blog post Giving away a Rapsberry Pi tomorrow!
What's the difference between the new 512MB Raspberry Pi units and the 'old' ones? Just the memory?
David Zanetti - Monday, 05 November 2012 on blog post Milking Cows with Arduino - Part 3
I think the one major thing I learnt from working on that board is the value of simulation and proper load testing. At least the fix was not too complex, but it would have been nice to not require it.

I should work on test tools a lot more, to validate the designs really do what I think they should!
cyclicredundancy - Saturday, 22 September 2012 on blog post GPRS with the SM5100B Arduino GSM Shield
Thanks for the great tips! I was finally able to get a TCP connection to this shield working.

The most important part I was missing was:
"encode the data to HEX and set the correct length - of the HEX encoded data"
Hadley Rich - Thursday, 13 September 2012 on blog post WorldxChange Xnet VFX
Hi Matt,

That's correct.

Cheers,

Hadley
Matt Woods - Thursday, 13 September 2012 on blog post WorldxChange Xnet VFX
Hi Im assuming I replace my sip_contact_user with my own number ?
Thankyou!
Terry Cox - Wednesday, 25 July 2012 on product Cisco SPA112
Great service from nicegear; product arrived fast, nicely-packed and easy to install. Good job guys AAA
Hadley Rich - Thursday, 19 July 2012 on blog post How to program 55 Arduinos and stay sane
Thanks very much John :)

Should have mentioned you can also do exactly the same thing with avrdude directly which I did earlier but Ino is such a great tool I've been using it more and more.

hads
farmgeek - Thursday, 19 July 2012 on blog post How to program 55 Arduinos and stay sane
That is a very nice solution! Going straight to my tool kit for future use.

Can't wait to see the project blog too :)
John
Belvan Cutonev - Thursday, 19 July 2012 on blog post Distinctive Ring on Yealink Phones
I will immediately grab your rss feed as I can't find your email subscription link or e-newsletter service. Do you've any? Kindly let me know so that I could subscribe. Thanks.
Hadley Rich - Wednesday, 11 July 2012 on product Siemens Gigaset A580IP
Hi Ross, I don't beleive the A580IP does support SIP/TLS unfortunately.

Cheers, hads
Ross Williamson - Wednesday, 11 July 2012 on product Siemens Gigaset A580IP
Do you know if the A580IP base supports SIP over TLS? If so, how is this configured in the GUI?
Hadley Rich - Wednesday, 27 June 2012 on product Siemens Gigaset A58H
We don't sell them so don't know much about them but it appears to be standard GAP DECT so it should work fine.
Ben - Wednesday, 27 June 2012 on product Siemens Gigaset A58H
Will this work with a fritx box 7340?
Brett Davidson - Tuesday, 12 June 2012 on product Solid State Relay (SSR)
Look there for a datasheet Ben...you may want to include these details Hads...
Jonathon Clarke - Tuesday, 29 May 2012 on product Cisco SPA122
Hello Hadley. Thank you for your time on the phone earlier today to tell me about IP phones. I forgot to ask you about 'Analog Telephone Adapters' which will enable me to keep using my existing equipment. So, question:
1) is this [Cisco SPA122] compatible with 2talk services? &
2) does this just sit on my existing office LAN, or does it replace my existing router / modem / wireless link?
Many thanks, regards, Jono (j.clarke@solpont.co.nz)
Hadley Rich - Thursday, 03 May 2012 on blog post Analytics Q1 2012
Yup, iPad, Android then iPhone, in that order.
Ed - Thursday, 03 May 2012 on blog post Analytics Q1 2012
I'm picking "others" is probably largely iOS/Android
Hadley Rich - Thursday, 03 May 2012 on blog post Home Automation with Arduino MQTT
Hi Shane,

Thanks for the suggestion that's great, I'll have to hunt that down and have a look. Real world usage is certainly the best thing and what I'm lacking right now.

Cheers,
hads
Shane Harrison - Thursday, 03 May 2012 on blog post Home Automation with Arduino MQTT
Hi Hadley,

A number of years ago the UK home automation group developed a protocol with similar aims to MQTT and were hoping that it would take the world by storm. The protocol was called xAP. Unfortunately (IMHO) it splintered and a similar but different variant called xPL was also developed. I actually use xAP at home.

However reason for posting is not to encourage xAP but rather to state that they did put quite a bit of thought into schemas and developed both specific and a general (basic I think they called it) schema. Specification documents are available publically and might be worth a look to see if any of their thoughts could be a stimulus for your schemas, especially since theirs are based on a reasonable amount of real world usage, albeit in a smallish community.

Cheers
Shane
Hadley Rich - Tuesday, 01 May 2012 on blog post Home Automation with Arduino MQTT
Hi Marek,

By the way I have some initial (Python) code to bridge between MQTT and websockets on the server, this should make building a responsive web interface for tablets/computers/etc. pretty straight forward.

I'll elaborate on that in a future post.

hads
Hadley Rich - Tuesday, 01 May 2012 on blog post Home Automation with Arduino MQTT
Hi Marek,

Thanks for your comment. I agree about the mount_points architecture, I think this is a good idea.

Regarding the MAC addresses, I can see where you're coming from but, taking the Arduino for example, it makes deployment an issue.

I would rather not have to code a unique identifier into each device when programming for deployment, what if I'm doing 50 or more of them?

With the MAC address I can either randomly generate a MAC on first boot, or as Jon Oxer has done, use a DS18B20 and generate the MAC from the unique ID of that.

Cheers,

hads