Stories
Two ongoing experiments
A decade of tinkering, written up as it happened — a smart static caravan on the North Norfolk coast, and the house it all started in.
A new home for the blog — and a voice update
After years on WordPress the site's been rebuilt as a fast, local, static build — and 2026 has turned into the year voice control got interesting again, with Alexa+ landing in the UK and Home Assistant's local voice finally coming of age.
The great van upgrade.
Having run the van from 2x Pi 4 (2Gb) for two years, I decided it was time for a refresh. I wanted to bring the whole setup to…
It's a lab in a box
Something I've wanted for a while is a mobile lab. Something in a flight case. Mainly because it would be cool, but also it would be nice to…
Canary Light & Power Cuts
This post is going to be quite wordy! We've had a number of powercuts recently and like any smarthome my house takes time to reboot. There have been…
New Home Smarts Update
It's been a while since I did a blog post. I didn't realise how long until I saw the last update! Well since May 2021, I've moved house,…
Yummy, yummy Pis - June 2022 Update
Yummy, yummy Pi's - June 2022 Update I've decided this will become a running update of the Pi's I am using and what I am doing with them.…
June Update
This one is going to be wordy... I’ve done a few upgrades and changes to the smart static since setting it up and using it for every day…
Living the dream
Eufy Camera Success! We've managed to spend a couple of nights in the van, it all works well, Alexa for the music and the Roku / Plex combo.…
I must be nuts...
Safe shutdowns... and startups I have not idea how stable the power is at the static, but most of the time we will be turning it off when…
I got the power...
TP-SF1005P v2 Thinking Infrastructure Something I hadn't really given much thought to until this week was how I was going to power the smart static infrastructure, 2 Pi's…
Home, sweet home... assistant
The next challenge was to address two big problems 1. 1. Offline Smart Static 2. Physical Switches The first issue is how will everything work if the caravan…
Lights, plugs, action!
Smarting the appliances When I first started planning before buying the 'van I thought I would smart everything up. Replace the plug sockets with USB ones, add smart…
Adventures in Static Caravan World...
In the Spring of 2021, my partner and I bought a static caravan by the North Norfolk coast. It's an older 2007 Delta Santana. We have so many…
Smart Static - Hardware
I have a page on my smart home blog that covers the hardware currently in use (and retired). I thought I would do the same for my smart…
Smile... Cameras... Action...
I don't need any cameras at the 'van, but it's something I've been wanting to explore for several other projects I've been thinking about... Can I get a…
Static Pi... Yum!
Pi 4 in it's pretty case I decided early on that the caravan needed a brain for the various things I wanted to try. I had a spare…
WiFi, APs and LTE oh my!
Where to start The first thing on the list for the smart static is to get an internet connection with enough bandwidth to hopefully be able to stream…
Migrations & Pi KVM
Over the last month I have migrated my home server from a Gen 8 HP Microserver to a Lenovo P500 workstation. There are many reasons for my migration…
November 2020 Update
The new echo has arrived it's another decent iteration on the echo line up and has replaced the main echo in the living room. The old echo is…
October 2020 Update
I have added home assistant to the mix, after years of watching from afar, the IFTTT subscription and eWeLink subscription finally pushed me to install it on a…
June 2020 Update
The year is now 2020 and things have changed in the smart home. After a lot of soul searching I decided it was time to remove lightwave from…
December 2018 Initial Post
My Smarthome Adventure I have been thinking about writing a blog post about the smarthome things I have been doing for a while. When I sat down to…