Cabin Update With Electronics

2nd cabin just about ready. Just need to hang the three internal doors and finish off the parking area. Hay already has a local business start-up lined up to take occupancy in a couple of weeks.

Next on the to-do-list come summer is a solar PV array to power both cabins.

Hay bought a couple of Laptronix glass panel electric heaters on Amazon for the place - it's mistake to allow a woman to buy technical equipment.

The instructions are in Chinglish and as useless as a one-armed trapeze artist with an itchy arse. Through a process of elimination, I found it has no timer control (except for a countdown timer to switch it off after so many hours) and the minute you switch it on at the mains it defaults to the off setting, so you can't even use an external timer to switch it on automatically in the morning before you arrive. A total waste of £106 - she should have left it to the expert in the family.

I bought a text-activated switch on Amazon for £20.99 (just about the cheapest) to go with these heaters, but it's now redundant until such time as Hay gets some bog-standard heaters with a simple on/off switch and a thermostat.

The switch is magic - I got it working with a Giffgaff pay-as-you-go SIM, loaded with 10 quid to get started. You simply text instructions to the switch and receive a text confirmation of the status (on or off) by return. Really simple, but it costs 5p for every confirmation text received back. You're meant to be able to switch off the reply confirmation, but I can't seem to get it to work, failing which, I assume that once the top-up runs out it will just stop sending confirmations anyway, but I'll still be able to send control texts to it. You're also meant to be able to just do a voice call and it will simply change state from whatever state it happens to be in, with no confirmation text, but that doesn't seem to work either.

The issues are probably to to with the instructions once  again being in bloody Chinglish - very bad Chinglish. A tad on the bulky side too, as it can cover the wall socket switch and is flush with the socket, meaning it can turn it off the wall switch accidentally if pressed in too hard.

I can think of all manner of uses for it, from recycling the internet router remotely, to controlling a light while we're away.