ELIQ Energy Online: first impressions

Since we moved in a house, the electricity bill became something unpleasant that appears to worsen during the winter... The electricity company we have signed with, does not provide any detailed information about the consumption (except of a printed graph with the bill for the monthly consumption compared to the previous year) and the uncertainty to plan is a bit too sour to my inexperienced taste... Brief search on the NET brought me to the device I am using right now: ELIQ Online


Brief info about the product:
There is a wireless sensor that one can easily attach to the blinking LED on the energy meter.
The receiver needs to be connected to power and to your router to access Internet. The receiver collects the data and uploads it to a dedicated server. You need to create an account to access the collected data from your device. The provider is localized for Sweden (with interface in English and Swedish), that is suitable for the local market. The best price for the product I found at Kjell&Company.
If you provide more information for your household, you can get detailed comparison to similar households in 6 minutes and 1 day resolution interval.

NFC tags - are they really worth it?

Let me say this immediately - I really like the idea. And how it works...  ...almost...

So, recently I got Nexus 5 replacement for my old Android phone and it comes with NFC capabilities. I thought that this is great idea and almost immediately bought four NFC stickers to play with. And everything was so exciting until I realized that to read the NFC tag the phone needs to be screen-unlocked. I do understand the reasons behind this restriction but it essentially renders my NFC solution worthless since if I have may screen on (most probably just unlocked because I want to read a tag) I am just one click away from a Tasker icon that can start whatever I want...

Battery maintenance - Lenovo

Proper battery maintenance is still an issue nowadays and I am still not completely sure what is the best practice. I know how to properly store the battery (point 3 below) but what about the one I use...? Well, most of the time I have my laptop on AC power...

Recently I got a new laptop Lenovo T440s that has an internal battery that makes everything a bit more complicated. So, I sat down and red a bit more on what Lenovo suggests. Here is what I found in the "Power Manager" help.


Your Lenovo battery is a consumable component that decreases in performance over time. Here are some tips to help you maximize the lifespan of your battery: 

Voltcraft charge manager 410

CM-410 on the left and IPC-1L on the right

Well, as usually, I will only add my personal opinion and the information that usually is not provided.
Some time ago, I bought Voltcraft IPC-1L and wrote about it. Since then (about 3.5 years) I remain more than satisfied from the product.
Recently, I bough some cheap rechargeable batteries (not the ones shown on the picture) that for some reason stopped charging before they ware completely full. I thought that the charger might be broken or about to get broken... So, I bough an upgrade: Voltcraft CM-410. There is (perhaps) better version CM-420 but I was uncertain about some small details.

Raspberry Pi and IR remote control with LIRC

I have been planing for a while to add an IR remote control to my RPi and the day came with the discovery of a IR set with remote control sold by Kjell&Company for a symbolic price.

First step first. I have added the receiver part since it does not require soldering at all. I have followed this manual to set and test LIRC on RPi with one exception - I use GPIO 18 as input from the IR detector. The set does not include any manual, so some research was necessary. The example code is for Arduino without any references to the specific hardware. Anyway, here I found the most relevant information. One can find example lircd.conf for some similar remotes but they did not work with the one in the package with label KEYES and distinct key pattern.