Stock photo of a heating radiator, from https://www.pexels.com/photo/unrecognizable-handyman-with-ruler-near-heating-system-at-home-5691536/

Adding Abus Z-Wave Devices to Domoticz

The Domoticz home automation system ships with a remarkably extensive set of XML bindings for Z-Wave devices. Still, I was unable to find the correct mappings for some Abus products, specifically the SHHA10000 wireless socket and the SHLM10010 LED bulb. Fortunately, combining publicly available information from the OpenZWave device database with a few parameters from the data sheets did the job quite well. So here's some copy-and-paste code to get started with these devices in Domoticz right away. As a little bonus, there's also a one-liner to integrate the DONEXON Pro thermostat.

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Stock photo of people looking at a retro computer, from https://www.pexels.com/photo/businesspeople-looking-at-the-computer-monitor-8872597/

The Secret of the Dial-A-Pirate

Copy protection was already a thing when computer games were sold on floppy disks. The Secret of Monkey Island shipped with the famous Dial-A-Pirate code wheel that would map fifteen pirate face combinations and seven possible locations to a year. But what's the logic behind the numbers on the wheel? And how does the game check if you've typed the correct one?

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LeChuck's ship, as visible in the game

TFG - The Secret of Monkey Island RECODED Walkthrough

31 years after 'The Secret of Monkey Island' has been released, there's still a vivid fan community. So I wasn't really surprised to find 'TFG - The Secret of Monkey Island RECODED', a lookalike of the original game with entirely different challenges, plus some extras: You get to see Mêlée Island during daytime. And meet the heavily-armed clown. And you'll have to chase the three-headed monkey. If you're after some help in solving the riddles, here's a walkthrough showing you how to complete the game.

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Stock photo of two big fans, from https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-plastic-bucket-on-brown-wooden-wall-5502720/

Let Domoticz Tell You when Your Bedroom has been Ventilated

Even though my instance of the Domoticz home automation system has been running for several years now, I only ever used its dashboard occasionally to check on the power consumption of my electrical appliances. The recent addition of a Z-Wave reed contact to my bedroom window, however, made it possible to notify me when the room needed ventilation. And when the window has been open for long enough.

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Stock photo of a five-strike symbol, from https://www.pexels.com/photo/5-strike-symbol-1010973/

Reviving the HTML-Access Counter

In the early days of the WWW, any modest webpage had a counter showing how many visitors it had attracted so far. Not for tracking customer journeys or ad revenues, but rather just for fun.

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Stock photo of a smartphone, from https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-smartphone-1851415/

A Handy Pushover Console Script

Several years ago, I had purchased a one-off licence to use the Pushover push notification service, so a home automation suite based on Domoticz could inform me of unexpected events. Digging a bit deeper into the API, I found that it can be readily used to notify me of (important) system events on Linux hosts.

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