Weeknotes 230

My advice, never get sick.

Another example of a broken web. Why do you go to IKEA’s website? Is it to read the latest news on the world famous IKEA meatball (that is a real example!)? No, it’s to browse and purchase the products IKEA sell. Which part of the home page loads last on ikea.com? You guessed it, the link to their online store. Absolute madness.

Once again, you are welcome.

I purchased a Tapo C110 camera this week for £16.99. I was astonished at how cheap it was. I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s genuinely fantastic for the money. It was easy to set-up, streams great via their app, has night vision, and you can access the camera streams via RTSP should be so inclined (which I am).

I was tempted to buy another, but the price shot back up to ~£23 until it then plummeted back down to £15.99. Yes, please! Snapped up another.

Zicada - DIY Zigbee Multisensor – this is a very impressive project.

Zicada is a DIY Zigbee sensor based on Nordic’s nRF52840 SoC. It combines a temperature and humidity sensor with a hall effect switch, making it suitable for both climate and door/window monitoring. Zicada is optimized for ultra-low power consumption, running at just 6µW in standby. This allows it to operate on a rechargeable AAA battery for 2 years or longer. It is fully compatible with Home Assistant (ZHA) and Zigbee2MQTT.

Designed an electronic circuit. Designed a PCB and had it manufactured. Hand soldered. Built, designed and 3D-printed an enclosure. Wrote the software from scratch. Impressive stuff ✅

I might try and build one of these one day. It might be a fun addition to my Home Assistant shenanigans.

Would you believe it, the people who were ignoring my emails are now trying to be my best friend with multiple emails from them in quick succession. The system works.

PayPal with credit card hooked up is my new jam for certain purchases. According to Monzo you get 120 days to claim a chargeback from a company, something I’ve never done, but it’s nice to know you might able to.

Complaining is easy and I do it often. Here is an example of good service: Fastmail support. They got back to me quickly and were helpful. Even if the solution to my problem was “turn if off and on again” aka uninstall/reinstall the app. It is possible.

(Still managed a small complaint 😉)

There was bloomin’ snow this week. It was a shock to go from unseasonably (is that even a thing any more?) warm weather for this time of year to “feels like” temperatures of -7. I even wore my thermals!

The best gets better - Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2

The easiest way to start with Zigbee or Thread just got even better, with Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2. This USB adapter plugs into your Home Assistant system and opens up a world of smart device options.”

I have no use for this at the moment but it looks like an low effort way to get into Home Automation with Home Assistant.

Europe’s cookie nightmare is crumbling

The sheer amount of cookie pop-ups across Europe means people often just click any button to get access to a website, simply because of the annoyance instead of worrying about their privacy. “This is not a real choice made by citizens to protect their phones or computers and to choose what happens to their data,” says the European Commission.”

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Please make the popups stop. Anything to make them stop.

(And before you say, use this browser extension or that - when a website doesn’t work for no apparent reason in six months time, do you remember that it might be your popup killer? I don’t)

Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 – Don’t unwrap your production code, kids (nice explanation from ThePrimegean).

The combination of Black Friday, Amazon, and the discovery that you get a 2% discount for “no rush delivery” might not have been good for my wallet, but it is good for my inner prepper. Let’s just say we’ll be happily washing our dishes and clothes into April 2026. And the cost per wash is a regular calculation I am now very familiar with.

It happened. I bought a 3D printer. Fuck.