Ideal resolutions

Since I picked up the dell latitude d820 laptop with nvidia quadro nvs 120m. I made sure that the laptop display was as maxed out as it could be.

After using various different resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 on a 15.4 inch LCD display. I decided that the only useable resolution that doesn't make you totally blind is the 1680 x 1050.

Although I did manage to use 1920 x 1200 for the longest time until my wife complained she was going blind surfing, i suddenly realised that going slightly lower still allowed great productivity space without having to sit 6 - 10 inches sometimes.

As i mosly make assumptions on whats on the screen, it didn't affect me that much, however maybe its time to revisit some emails :P.

As for a desktop, just max out your monitor. With 1680 x 1050 now, I guess i wouldn't be able to vnc my desktop without scroll bars ;)

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Multiple Broadlink RM mini 3 integration using MQTT

Broadlink now has quite a lot of integration options almost out of the box. If you enable Broadlink IHC, you can directly link it to Alexa by giving the device a unique name.

There is a homebridge plug in for homekit integration but I haven't tried or tested this. https://lprhodes.github.io/slate/

I wanted to put the device in domoticz so I can have more control over what can trigger my broadlink. I decided to use broadlink-mqtt for this, which is a fairly easy method to trigger from any source.

Setup Instructions for broadlink-mqtt

1. git clone https://github.com/eschava/broadlink-mqtt

2. vi /home/pi/broadlink-mqtt/mqtt.conf

3. Update the mqtt.conf file with the device type set as multiple_lookup

device_type = 'multiple_lookup'
mqtt_multiple_subprefix_format = '{type}_{mac_nic}/'
4. Start the python script and check that it started and detected all the RM devices.
Check the log file to see what the IP / MAC addresses are. DEBUG Connected to RM2 Broadlink device at …

Fibaro HCL Virtual Device Slider

How to setup Fibaro home center lite (HCL) slider for virtual devices.

As the Fibaro HCL does not support LUA. The question was how to update the number value of the slider to send to the HTTP string. Thanks to this site which is a really good reference https://www.vesternet.com/resources/application-notes/apnt-88/

The 2 use cases here are;

Sonos HTTP API Volume

To allow for volume control for all Sonos devices, add a virtual device with the IP address for SONOS HTTP API and specify the default port to 5005. Create Slider and put the following text into the string.

GET /volume/_sliderValue_ HTTP/1.10x0D0x0A0x0D0x0A

Domotiz Virtual Devices

GET /json.htm?type=command&param=switchlight&idx=XX&switchcmd=Set%20Level&level=_sliderValue_ HTTP/1.10x0D0x0A0x0D0x0A

Replace XX with the device ID.

Restart Fibaro HCL when it stops working automatically

It seems that the Fibaro HCL seems to hang every now and then. Instead of trying to restart it regularly, which doesn't really work, as it's almost impossible to predict when this will happen.

This method checks that the HCL is actually running and in the event it stops working, trigger a script that will restart it.

1. Get a non Fibaro controlled power plug and scripts to control it.

I used a wifi smart plug, TP-link HS100 and downloaded the scripts from

https://blog.georgovassilis.com/2016/05/07/controlling-the-tp-link-hs100-wi-fi-smart-plug/

2. Create a bash script to restart the Fibaro, e.g. restart_fibaro.sh

#!/bin/bash

ip_addr=
scripts=

$scripts/tplink-smartplug.py -t $ip_addr -c off
sleep 10
$scripts/tplink-smartplug.py -t $ip_addr -c on

3. Create a test global variable in the Fibaro HCL

Go to the variables panel and create a test variable, e.g. Test

4. Add a cron entry to test that the Fibaro API is still working and restart if it's not.

The cron script is scheduled ev…

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