I have officially started my new job!!!

Guess my learning to code project is going to have to go on the back burner…

I got a fantastic phone call on Sunday evening letting me know that the Vodafone store in Bridlington still wanted me to be their assistant store manager and that I could start this week. So as of Wednesday, I will once more be gainfully employed! How amazing is that? I really can’t say much more about it at the moment and I’m not sure what I’ll be able to say in the future.

This will most likely have a bit of a knock-on effect with this blog as I won’t be able to write daily as I have for the past three months, well except the few odd days where I either thought I had enough posts prepared or couldn’t find anything I could share with you all. I’m still planning on keeping the blog updated but posting may become more sporadic though I will try and write a least one post a week.

If at all possible, I shall try and post reviews of some of the gear that we stock so you can see my honest opinions about the latest tech out there. If not I’m sure I’ll be buying a few more bits and pieces over the coming months. I know there are a few things I want to play with when I get the opportunity such as:

The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 8GB of RAM

I’m interested to see what I can do with this tiny ARM-based computer. It already has more RAM than my Mac Mini and I can get a 256GB Micro SD Card for £27 and have the same amount of storage. I chuck on Home Assistant and the Portainer plugin for Docker and I have myself a nice little virtualisation and smart home setup.

YAGLA Mini Plugs (4 pack)

I found these a few weeks ago after trawling through the Blackadder Tasmota Device Repository to find some smart sockets I can control via MQTT. I think I’ve said it before but I don’t want my devices having to connect to a server halfway across the world to work properly. Not only does that give my information to someone who doesn’t need it but if our internet goes out for whatever reason we won’t have a smart home.

TCP Smart 4 gang Extension Lead

Another product on the Blackadder Tasmota Device Repository and great for those places where I can plug in a smart plug and need more than one socket, like behind the cupboard the fish tank is on. All four of the sockets can be controlled separately. The only downside is all of the USB ports are controlled together but at least the can be remotely operated too.

Sonoff iFan03 Ceiling Fan & Light Controller

This little gadget will go nicely with the ceiling fans that I have in mind for the Living room and bedroom. Not only does it act as a light switch (that I’ll probably leave either turned on or unconfigured and just use smart bulbs) but it also controls the fan speed pair that with the next gizmo on this list and I can have it automatically turn on the fan if it gets too warm.

Sonoff RF Bridge

This little doodah will receive signals for various RF devices such as wireless doorbells or certain smart plugs etc. My plan with this is to have is send me a notification via Home Assistant when the doorbell is rung. I’ll eventually be replacing the doorbell with a smart one at some point in the future but I’ll still keep this thing around as the remotes that come with it can be used to control scenes set in-home assistant. For example, if I set up a few scenes for the living room such as daytime, evening, reading and movie I could push one of the buttons on the remote and the scene would activate.

Tuya RM Mini IR Remote Control

These are similar to the Sonoff RF Bridges except the control Infrared devices instead. As you can imagine I’ll be popping one of these in almost every room. Yes even in the kitchen, we have a smart speaker in there that is controlled by a remote. Imagine just being able to tell Siri to play your cooking playlist and it automatically turns on your speaker and starts playing your music. I’ll be piping one in the living room too so we can turn on the TV and soundbar in one go rather than waving the soundbar remote around for 10 minutes to try and get it to turn on.

As you can see the first few things I want to buy on my list are all smart home-related but I do plan to buy some other things for the house first like a new TV for the living room (the one we have is borrowed from Abi’s folks as the cats broke the last one), a dishwasher (which could mean a slight remodel of the kitchen) a new sofa and a few other things I’m sure Abi has on her more sensible list of things. I am hoping to get the Raspberry Pi soon though so I can start playing with it and hopefully convert the Mac mini into just a file server, though that does mean I’m going to have to find a couple of Thunderbolt 2 hard drive enclosures and some USB 3 hard drive with decent capacity as both my network drive and the USB drive I currently have seem to be on their last legs. I just hope that can last alit longer so I can get the data off them.

I hope to see you soon in Vodafone’s Bridlington store, just give me a bit of time to get through my training, make sure to let me know that you read my blog. I won’t be able to get you a discount but I’ll make sure to get you the best we have to offer in-store and it’ll be nice to meet you all the same.

Thank you again for your support of the last three months and I look forward to bringing you my thoughts in the future, even if it’s not quite as often.