Category Archives: Living in the House

Temperature and Humidity Monitoring in the Outbuildings – Thread Network Range Issues?

Posted on by
Reply

The GL-S20 Thread Border Router and the two original Timmerflotte temperature and humidity sensors have been working fine. Once they came back into stock at the local IKEA I bought two further Timmerflotte sensors. One of those didn’t want to Commission (needs further investigation) but the other one did Commission successfully, at the first attempt, and took the expected firmware update.

While that third sensor has mostly been OK, it’s periodically dropping off the Thread network. The first time that happened I intervened with a power-cycle, which brought it straight back online, but on a couple of other occasions it came back all by itself.

Periodic connectivity drop-outs for the Timmerflotte sensor in the Ground Floor Store room

The main difference from the other two sensors is the distance from the Thread Border Router – roughly 16m, with one 100mm concrete-block wall in the way. Might that be the issue?

Thread networks are expected to operate in a ‘mesh’ topology, with mains-powered Thread devices acting as relays for the radio signals, between the central Thread Border Router and the (battery powered) End devices, so maybe one of those would help?

As a first step I’m going to try moving the problematic sensor a bit closer to the TBR. If that doesn’t work I’ll move the TBR much closer to the sensor (there are limited options because of the availability of wired Ethernet network ports).

Update: Moving the sensor about 1.5m closer to the TBR (but still on the other side of a wall) prompted it to come back online, so now it’s recording readings again. I’ll see if that proves to be a long-term fix.

The implication is that the drop-outs were indeed caused by a Thread network range issue – which implies the plan to locate the fourth Timmerflotte sensor even further from the TBR is likely to be problematic without some sort of network extender device. While not yet available in the UK, the IKEA GRILLPLATS ‘smart socket’ looks like it might be suitable (and not too expensive).

Car Care Facilities

Posted on by
Reply

A day of dry and not-too-cold weather provided a long-overdue opportunity to wash the worst of the building site mud off the BMW i3 and to give it a coat of Autoglym Extra Gloss Protection to try to stop it getting too dirty too quickly again over the Winter.

BMW i3 Outside the Garage
BMW i3 Inside the Garage

The outside space works very well for washing the car, with two outside taps (fed from the rainwater harvesting tank) and the permeable block paving draining the water away.

Even with the boot and bonnet open the car still looks small inside the garage, with plenty of room all around for access – and scope to accommodate much larger vehicles. (The i3 is exactly 4m long whereas larger estate cars can easily be 5m – but the garage is more than 6m, at the insistence of the original Architect.) The lighting works well, with four pairs of outdoor-grade Philips LED fittings – each pair being switchable independently. Each light fitting draws 42.9W so that’s 343W if they’re all on – which seems like a huge wattage for LED lights but the illumination level seems about right (and will improve once the walls get painted white).