TL;DR I built an Ambilight clone that listens for MQTT messages over WiFi when it’s not receiving serial data. This allows it to be controlled by Home Assistant and vicariously the Google Assistant. The code lives at https://github.com/heathbar/tv-backlight. Board Swap My first Ambilight clone served me quite well. I started with a system like the one…
Basement Accent Lighting: The Software
I previously posted a buildlog of my adventures in creating the accent lighting for my basement. The software to run the lights has been a bit of a journey that is only now nearing something resembling stability. The Hardware The system is driven by an old Raspberry Pi 1 B+. The plus is important because…
Migrating a large subversion repo to git in small chunks
I recently needed to migrate a relatively large repository from SVN to GIT. For simple applications, this migration is done easily with git svn clone https://… However, due to the large repo size, or a shady network, or the fact that I was running on windows, the clone failed repeatedly. The work around is to…
plum-lightpad Node.js API
I created an npm module to interact with plum lightpad switches. NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/plum-lightpad GitHub: https://github.com/heathbar/plum-lightpad-js Vendor: https://plumlife.com/…
Vizio SmartCast Node.js API
I have begun work on a Node.js module to interact with Vizio’s SmartCast devices. Please report issues on the GitHub issues page. NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/vizio-smart-cast GitHub: https://github.com/heathbar/vizio-smart-cast Made possibly by the reference guide here: https://github.com/exiva/Vizio_SmartCast_API…
Multiplank in elementary OS Loki
I have updated my multiplank tool to work with Loki. Thanks to some improvements in plank, multiplank is now more efficient by only needing to run a single instance of plank. The installation/usage instructions have not changed from the original post…
Making Amazon Echo Alexa Sing to openHAB2
Update OpenHAB2 has an official Alexa Skill. You should use that instead. https://community.openhab.org/t/official-alexa-smart-home-skill-for-openhab-2/23533 Preface The documentation on openHAB2 is somewhat lacking and scattered. But I was able to complete my journey so I thought I’d add another article to the noise. There are a number of approaches to integrating the Echo with openHAB. I have tried some…
Basement Accent Lighting
When I built out my basement man-cave, I wanted to do something unique with accent lighting. I designed and built three light boxes that I attached to the ceiling. On the bottom are dimmable warm-white LEDs, randomly dispersed to mimic stars. This creates a great ambiance for watching movies. Around the edges of the top…
Making Squeezelite play well with KODI under Linux
The default settings for Squeezelite on Linux require it capture your sound card and hoard all audio for itself. This can be frustrating when the computer’s audio is shared with other programs. Sharing is caring The good news is that the latest version of Squeezelite (1.8) can be configured to release the sound card when it is not…
Multi-Planking in elementary OS
A comment on my original article, combined with a holdiay, created an opportunity for improvement. While my previous post provided a method to manually specify 2+ docks, this was not ideal for situations where the number of monitors frequently changes. With that in mind I created a small app that automatically starts a new instance…
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