Building a kick-ass home automation by reflashing the Sonoff devices with Tasmota and getting it all working with hass.io

For some time I have been gradually bringing more devices to my house, which are either designed or having features allowing these to be integrated to a home automation system.

In spite of all the concerns that can arise from bringing smart/connected devices to the place where you expect personal privacy to exist, the convenience of having these ends up speaking louder overall..

It all started with having a set of unrelated devices in the house, each featuring connectivity and some cloud-based features provided by the vendor. This is the case for the Xiaomi Rockrobo vacuum cleaner, the Sonoff switches, the multimedia devices such as the TV set (an LG smartTV), and also the Google Chromecast and Assistant devices.

Consumer grade WiFi gear - when fixing the root cause is not at reach

Some time ago, I had to improve the performance and coverage of my home network, so as to be able to use the several devices around the house flawlessly, regardless of the location. Some of these devices have a certain demand for consistent bandwidth, as is the case of the SmartTV for watching IPTV and Netflix, and others such as the smartphones and tablets.

As always I tend to be frugal with spending money in hardware, trying to go with what performs well and is just about enough for the job.

This led me to aim for WiFi gear that would both be somewhat popular and low cost, while at the same time having some hope of being hackable and reflashed to OpenWRT in the future. This was the reasoning when I decided to buy a couple of TP-LINK TL-WR841N routers (with v9 hardware at the time).

At first I set these up and played with the stock firmware, configuring one to play the roles of  NAT, DHCP, DNS, firewall and so on, and the other to act solely as a WDS repeater, allowing WiFi coverage to be extended to the rest of the house.

The hurdles of fixing a puncture in a Xiaomi M365 scooter

I can say that I am pretty seasoned at fixing bicycle tires. It dates back to my childhood, where numerous times I had to fix the punctures by patching the inner tubes. I still remember the patching kits featuring an assortment of patches of different sizes and shapes, sanding paper, and the rubber cement.

Never had much trouble in separating the tire from the rim, and putting it back together, after having fixed the puncture. The same applies for fixing the tires of more recent MTBs, where upon following the usual technique no major obstacle arises in accomplishing these tasks.

But now, just after a bit over 100 Km into using my Xiaomi M365 scooter, I found a rattling noise in the front tire while riding it. Went on to take a look, and found a thumb tack, fully buried in the tire. As I started removing it, I could hear the air escaping. Decided to leave it there just so that I could ride the scooter back home.