Writeups and random stuff about infosec and life
Intro The Sonoff NSPanel is a fancy little combination of a dual-gang switch and a control panel. In a previous blog post we flashed the NSPanel with Tasmota so we could run NSPanel LovelaceUI on it. In this short blog post, I’ll show you how …
Google Takeout Google allows you to make an export of all data it stores about your account via Google Takeout . This includes Google Drive documents, pictures Google Photos, emails from Gmail, but also (meta)date from products like Google Maps, Fit …
Intro Partaking in the annual tradition of turning October into the Cyber(security) Awareness Month (beware of acronyms!), Huntress organised a month-long [CTF challenge][ctf], releasing a (or multiple) new challenge(s) every day. The challenges …
Intro A cover image is a nice way to draw attention to your blog post when sharing a link via social media. However, coming up with and designing a catching cover image can be difficult. It can also distract from the actual content creation. …
The Sonoff POWR3 I love being able to control power on a circuit using a smart relais. I already have some Shelly Pro devices in my home. But they are limited to 16A per channel. And while that is sufficient for lighting circuits, which are protected …
Hello, is this mic on? Sending a Webmention This page is written purely to test out whether I can send out Webmentions. Following @aaronpk’s awesome tutorial , I put toghether the Webmention below as a test to verify whether I can send out …
Intro I recently joined the wave of people parting ways with Twitter/X and migrating to Bluesky . While doing so, I investigated the options to bridge the multiple online accounts I already created, including the one on Mastodon . Doing so, I stumbled …
Hello Friend Since I started with this blog in 2019, I’ve used the hello-friend-ng theme by rhazdon for this site. This theme is based on the hello-friend and hermit Hugo themes. The theme includes multilingual support, light/dark mode and of …
Introduction Quite some time ago, I came a cross a tutorial by Blakadder on integrating the IKEA Vindriktning air quality sensor into Home Assistant using Tasmota. Last week I finally got the time to make work of this. This blog post is my recap of …
Intro Having played a bit more with my podman and Home Assistant Container setup, I though it was time for an update. Recently I installed the Visual Studio Code (VS Code) container IDE (code-server) as an alternative to my HassConf editor. This …
Intro In 2021 I wrote about some awesome cheap Xiaomi temperature and humudity sensors. They come with a very battery-efficient eInk screen and all you needed to incorporate them into Home Assistant was an ESP32 flashed with the Bluetooth Proxy …
Intro Coming home, I usually park my car in the garage. Sadly, I only have 1 remote left to open it, and it is usually left at home so I don’t lock people out while I’m away. Having recently ordered some of the new Shelly Plus 1 Mini …
No more diabetes updates? I’m doubting whether I should keep posting personal updates on this blog. My initial idea with this blog was to share cybersecurity stuff, like CTF writeups. That already moved towards more Home Assistant and home …
The 2023.7 update of ESPHome added readouts for the Belgian capacity tariff to the DSMR component. As my Slimmelezer+ ’s config didn’t include these sensors, I’ve setup my own config bases on Marcel ’s to add them. Note that the …
First status updates So we’ve arrived at day 2 in the hostpital (if you don’t call the afternoon I got admitted). My glucose levels are still fluctuating and I had my first Hypoglycemia (low blood-sugar) today, yaay :/ Luckily I noticed …
Bad news call So yesterday (Saturday) my General Practitioner (GP) dropped a small bomb on me: I have Diabetes. For the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling tired, I was always thirsty and the frequent drinking meant I very frequently had to go to …
Intro On a random rainy day I was browsing the web and some rabit hole led me to calisthenics and eventually made me end up at DAREBEE . Here I discovered a wide range of fitness workout programs. Their site also features a daily challenge, which is …
Intro Earlier this month, Blakadder did a review of the Ulanzi Desktop Pixel Clock TC001. Not much later, I saw some people on Twitter that were playing with it as well. This triggered me to have a look at this nice desktop clock as well. Not soon …
Intro I recently got an Electric Vehicle (EV) and of course I want to get it integrated in Home Assistant :) Luckily, I found a HACS integration for MercedesME that provides me with a lot of data about my car and allows me to send some commands to it …
Intro I recently got an Electric Vehicle (EV) and of course I want to get it integrated in Home Assistant :) Luckily, I found a HACS integration for MercedesME that provides me with a lot of data about my car and allows me to send some commands to it …
Intro The Sonoff NSPanel is a fancy little combination of a dual-gang switch and a control panel. Out of the box it allows for a lot of customisation via the eWeLink App, giving you control of more than just the 2 devices you connect to its relays. …
Intro From the Podman documentation : Podman is a daemonless, open source, Linux native tool designed to make it easy to find, run, build, share and deploy applications using Open Containers Initiative (OCI) Containers and Container Images. Podman …
Intro You may have purchases some Xiaomi temperature and humidity sensors after reading my blog post from a while back. Since then, Nabu Casa (the organisation behind Home Assistant) has somewhat taken over the ESPHome project and have been doing …
Intro Zigbee is a wireless protocol, like WiFi, but developed specifically for (battery powered) Internet-of-Things devices. Devices connect in a mesh network, where mains powered devices (e.g. light bulbs and smart plugs) act as repeaters to extend …
Intro If you like designing systems with ESP8266 and ESP32 microcontrollers, definitely check out ESPHome if you haven’t already. By the end of this post, you’ll have ESPHome installed, accessible via the Dashboard and connected to a …
Intro Make sure to backup your Home Assistant install first! Also, it’s a good idea (mandatory, I’d say) to check the Release Notes before upgrading. That way you can prepare for any upcoming changes, especially the breaking type. By the …
Intro The September 2022 update for Home Assistant just dropped, so it’s time to upgrade. Before jumping to upgrading, however, it’s always a good idea to pause and create a backup first. Let’s check out a few options for backing up …
Intro We’re continuing where we left off after Part 5: Node-RED . So far we’ve been editing our configuration.yaml through the terminal. While this definitely works, it does mean we need to open the terminal and SSH to our Docker system …
Intro We’re continuing where we left off after Part 4: Mosquitto Docker Container . In this Part 4, we’ll be adding Node-RED , which will give us a visual and feature-rich method for automating stuff. This is a personal preference and you …
Intro We’re continuing where we left off after Part 3: MariaDB and InfluxDB . If you don’t know what this is all about, make sure you check the previous posts . In this Part 4, we’ll be adding our first add-on. The Mosquitto MQTT …
Intro We’re continuing where we left off after Part 2: Home Assistant Container . In this Part 3, we’ll set up the MariaDB and InfluxDB containers which we’ll use to store the data from the Home Assistant recorder and history. …
Intro We’re continuing where we left off after Part 1: Install Debian, Docker and Portainer . In this Part 2, we’ll setup our basic Home Assistant Container using docker-compose . Install Home Assistant Container docker-compose.yaml This …
Intro I’m setting up a new Home Assistant box as I’m moving from a power-hungry HP ProLiant to a more energy conserving Beelink Mini Series S . After initially installing Proxmox, like I had on my previous system, ready to install a VM …
Intro If you’ve been fiddling with ESPs, you’ve probably been playing with LED strips as well. If so, I can heavily recommend WLED combined with Quindor’s boards . WLED is an awesome piece of software which allows you to control a …
For some reason, OnePlus OS12 added the Discover a.k.a. Quick Glance view to the homescreen. The idea is you swipe right on the home screen to get an overview of stuff that might be of interest to you. Many people, including myself, don’t use …
Intro Starting with the Shelly Pro 4PM and the Shelly Plus 1 / 1PM not long thereafter, Allterco launched a second generation of Shelly devices. These devices are based on the more powerful ESP32 (compared to the ESP8266 in the 1st Gen devices) and …
11-11 (11 November) is Singles’ Day in China. According to Wikipedia , the date was chosen because the numeral 1 resembles a bare stick, which is Chinese Internet slang for an unmarried man who does not add ‘branches’ to the family …
Introduction A few years ago we got some solar panels installed. The installation includes solar panels (duh!), a Ginlong Solis inverter and a Landis+Gyr meter. The meter uploads meter data to the platform of the installer, however it only does so …
Introduction Next to making our lives easier by automating the boring stuff, many people invest in home automation to save money by reducing energy consumption. These savings are achieved by turning off devices not in use, lowering the temperature in …
Introduction One of the nice things about smart speakers is that they can play audio from a wide variety of sources. Combine this with Home Assistant and you have yourself a webradio and custom audio dashboard :) This blog post will explain my setup …
Intro At home we had an old laptop laying around that’s used every so often to do something we couldn’t do (well) on a smartphone or tablet (e.g. creating address labels) or to run a tool that was only available for Windows. However, this …
Pegasus Spyware Pegasus Spyware is allegedly used by the Israeli NSO Group to spy not only on terrorists but also activists, journalists and politicians. This was reported on by investigative journalists in cooperation with Amnesty International. …
Introduction With my desk being located in a more secluded part of the house, I wanted to build something that could notify me of important things. And while having a LED light up – maybe even with different colours – is nice, I wanted …
Introduction As part of automation all my lights in the house, I also automated the lights in my toilet room. To detect if someone’s using the toilet I installed a motion sensor. I initially was planning to do this with a door sensor, by …
Introduction After seeing some videos by DrZzs and others on setting up DIY ambient lighting for your TV, I knew I wanted to have this :) I took some time to find the correct hardware on AliExpress, noting that I don’t want to downgrade my …
Introduction The ESP32-cam is a tiny ESP32-S based board with a OV2640/OV7670 camera module. Its tiny form factor makes it ideal for random placement. It can be used as a cheap low-resolution low-FPS security cam. More oftenly, it’s used for …
In this blog post I’ll discuss the impact of the Shelly v1.10.0 firmware update introducing CoIoT unicast. We’ll quickly go through what CoIoT, CoAP and mDNS are. I won’t go into the nitty-gritty details, mostly because I …
The Shelly Support Group on Facebook is great! It’s a accessible way to quickly get answers to your questions. Since I joined the Facebook group, I’ve seen quite a lot of questions pass by. I’ve also noticed that lots of similar …
The USB Rubber Ducky, made popular by Hak5 , is an amazing little tool. This innocent looking “USB Drive” actually emulates a computer keyboard and is capable of typing at incredible speeds. Plugging this device in an unlocked target …
Here I’m planning to post a list of interesting items in different categories. This list may include affiliate links. These links provide me a kickback without any extra cost at your end. Notice a broken link? Let me know! Want to support my …