I’ve been wanting to ditch the Amazon Echos in our house for quite some time. Then on a late night Amazon shopping spree I decided to grab a Waveshare ESP32-S3 Audio board to see if it would be up to the task. The board showed up on a Tuesday. I plugged it into the laptop…
Category: Builds, Projects & Solutions
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
Build a Discord Health Accountability Bot with PHP
This is where the project stops being plumbing and starts being something I actually use every day. I apologize in advanced, it’s a bit of a longer one. Over the last three posts, I set up Discord, figured out how to pull data from Garmin, and built a database backend to track it all over…
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
Track Garmin Health Data with PHP and MySQL
At this point in the series, I’ve got Discord set up and I can pull health data from Garmin. Two pieces of the puzzle sorted. But there’s a problem: Garmin only gives you today’s data (and maybe yesterday’s). There’s no “give me the last 90 days” endpoint that reliably works for everything. If I want…
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
Garmin Connect API with PHP: It’s Harder Than You’d Think
In Part 1, I set up a Discord server from scratch and got PHP talking to it through webhooks. That was the easy part. Now I need actual health data to push into those channels… and that means accessing the Garmin Connect API with PHP. My Garmin Epix Gen 2 tracks everything. Steps, resting heart…
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
Build a Discord Bot with PHP (My First Discord Server)
I’ve been writing PHP for over 20 years. Built tools, automated workflows, scraped APIs… the usual. I’ve used Discord here and there, but I’d never set up my own server. Never touched the Developer Portal. Never built a bot. So when I decided to build a Discord bot with PHP for personal health tracking, the…
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
Build an ESPHome Bedside Clock Display for Home Assistant
I had a Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-2.1 sitting in a drawer for weeks (okay, maybe months). Round 480×480 touchscreen, looked cool in the product photos, but I had no idea what to actually build with it. So I started with something practical… an ESPHome bedside clock display that pulls time, weather, and notifications from Home Assistant. It…
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
How a Smart Plug Became the Ultimate 5G Modem Watchdog Using ESPHome
Internet dropouts are annoying at the best of times. When the connection is the only lifeline to a remote property loaded with gear, it becomes a full-on liability. That’s exactly the headache a friend of mine was facing with a 5G modem setup at his off-grid acreage. It’s not a place he lives full-time, but…
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
Finalizing Our Smart Fan Controller: From Temperature Offset to Real-Time Data Logging
So, here we are, putting the final(-ish) touches on our smart fan controller project. What started as a simple temperature-based fan switch has evolved into something much more sophisticated. Now, we’re talking temperature offsets, data logging, real-time charts, and even NTP time synchronization. If you missed the original posts where this project started, make sure…
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
Adding OTA Updates to Your ESP8266 Fan Controller
In our ongoing quest to improve our custom fan controller project, we’re taking a major step forward by introducing Over-the-Air (OTA) updates. This addition will allow us to push new sketches to our ESP8266-based fan controller without needing to physically access the device, making maintenance and updates a breeze. If you missed our previous posts,…
CategoriesBuilds, Projects & Solutions
Enhancing Your Fan Controller: Adding a Web Interface
Following up on our initial project, Building a Smarter Fan Controller for Your Rack, we’re taking it a step further by adding a web interface. This will allow us to display the current temperature, as well as the on and off threshold temperatures, making it easier to monitor and view the current configuration of our…