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Solum 2.2 inch Electronic Shelf Label Teardown

Quick peek inside the EL029F3WRA

In light of the recent news that the OpenEPaperLink firmware has been ported to the nRF52811 series of chips, I decided to take a look inside the Solum EL029F3WRA to see if it was a viable candidate for a project.

As it turns out, it is very similar to the 2.9 inch tags. I hope to soon have a simple CAD model of the ESL which I’ll use to model a basic pogo-pin programming jig for this particular ESL.

Roborock S8 Pro Ultra Teardown

Roborock S8 teardown

I recently acquired the new S8 from Roborock to replace my rapidly failing roomba.

While I am patiently waiting for Dennis and Hypfer to add Valetudo support, I thought I’d have a peek inside to see if this model will be any more serviceable or maintainable than my current vacuum.

From what I’m told, the S7 and the S8 are supposed to be pretty similar so here’s to hoping that it’s not too much more of a wait.

ESPHome on dingtian-tech relay modules

This is another one of those quick “I wish that was easier to find when I was googling it” posts.

For a project, I needed a small relay module to switch a few mains loads. I chose this generic looking relay module from AliExpress because it was powered by an ESP32 and featured ethernet connectivity.

AliExpress is full of generic looking relay modules but this one is branded dingtian-tech

Frigate From Scratch guide

Updates in 2025

In early 2025, I began moving virtually all of my workloads into a k8s cluster. I have put some basic notes on frigate in k8s here.

Beyond that, the section below about installing the coral.ai edge TPU drivers is now out of date and has been revised.


The Frigate NVR project is a relatively new entrant to the home security camera DVR space. Like most immature yet popular software, it has a killer feature - very good object detection that just works™ and robust Home Assistant integration.

Integrating a dumb coffee maker with Home Assistant via ESPHome

My beloved coffee maker of 10 years has finally died 😢. Parts are no longer available from either the manufacturer or the second-hand market.

Taking advantage of a (slight) holiday sale discount, I pulled the trigger on a coffee maker that’s designed to be repairable forever. The perpetual serviceability is a side effect of an ultra-simple design; this coffee maker has zero intelligent features which means there’s next to no remote control or customizability.