Hardware on yoav.blog

Reverse engineering the leynew WF510 light bulb adapter

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 12:01:17 +0000

A few weeks ago I ordered some WF510 WIFI enabled E27 adapters. The WF510 is a device you place between your light fixture and your light bulb, that allows you to control the light with an iOS/Android app. At $56 per lot of 3, they’re the poor man connected light bulb.

The reason I bought those adapters was to see if I could find out how the app controls the device, and build a better (open source!) app or web service around that. I always wanted to get more experience with home automation and device control.

Macbook Pro SSD Upgrade

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 19:08:53 +0000

Today I replaced the 7200 RPM 250GB Hard Drive in my laptop with a 120GB SSD. Here are the Xbench Disk Test results:

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Before - Hard Drive

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After - SSD

More important though is how the system feels: blazing fast – I never expected this level of improvement!

Broken MicroSD card

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:23:10 +0000

I’ve put my phone’s 8GB MicroSD card in an adapter the wrong way, and this is what happened when I tried to pull it out:

Then I remembered how my father was excited they got a 40MB hard drive in the computer training center where he worked, 20 years ago. It was huge!

Two hundred times that in a plastic card smaller than my thumb nail? I admire who ever had the imagination to dream that.

What to do when the MacBook battery drains in Sleep

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:37:51 +0000

A couple of weeks ago my MacBook battery started to drain heavily when the computer was in sleep (standby) mode. This was really troubling – and while I was still getting a decent enough run on a full charge, a “Service Battery” notice also appeared on the power menu.

The fix? A reset of the System Management Controller:

In some cases, resetting the SMC may be the only correct method to resolve the issue, however, an SMC reset should only be attempted after all other standard troubleshooting has been performed.