With devices such as Philips Hue becoming more common in our homes, I thought it would be interesting to bulid my own. The Hue system relies on a network bridge to interface between the Hue network, and the home network. In my opinion this is an unnecessary additional cost, especially with devices such as the ESP8266 readily available. My lamp will use a set of WS2812 LEDs and an ESP8266 connected via WiFi to Firebase, with a web interface to control the color of the LEDs.

I’ve had a Fitbit Charge HR for 18 months. This model has the usual watch/pedometer features, but adds a heart rate monitor. Despite my first unit breaking within the first year (which Fitbit happily replaced, for free I might add) I’ve been rather pleased with it. With one exception; you can’t do anything useful with the heart rate data.

A while ago I bought some ESP-01 modules. I’d read that the ESP8266 was going to be the next thing, and so I bought a bunch - call it and impulse buy. I intended to try them out in a few projects I had on the go at the time. Looking at the date on that article, I’m a bit behind the curve, but finishing my Masters, moving down south, and starting a new job put that on hold. It was only when I moved flat last summer that I rediscovered the bunch of ESP-01 modules sitting at the bottom of my parts bin.

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