Albert Nisbet

Kia ora!

I'm Albert, a developer living and working in Christchurch. I'm into engineering, home automation and electronics. Find me on LinkedIn and GitHub, or send an email.

Blog posts

Adventures in headphones

November 14, 2020

Detailing the headphones I've tried over the last 10 years: Sennheiser, Grado, Audio-Technica, Superlux and HiFiMan.

Migrating from ESPHome to WLED, the easy over-the-air way

October 18, 2020

Moving from ESPHome to WLED can be done without wires or worries

Upgrading branded IoT devices with tuya-convert and ESPHome

Or how my Kogan smart plug gained superpowers over-the-air

Using three-stage Dockerfile for accessing build output

How to make builds consistent and flexible with a single Dockerfile

Remote controlling a computer with home automation

Developing a simple Go application to solve a problem

Smart home architecture - DIY vs off-the-shelf home automation setup

Why smart homes can be a mess, and why there's a better way

Making a custom multi-click push button using ESPHome

February 17, 2020

Or how I abandoned custom firmware because somebody else was doing it better

A better alarm clock, powered by LED strips and sleep science

February 17, 2020

I’m currently reading Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. There’s an interesting section where he discusses the potential of technology and…

Automating amplifiers with an IR blaster and Google Home

December 08, 2019

Dumb speakers made smart with Home Assistant and Node-RED

Using browsers as IoT screens with React and MQTT.js

November 02, 2019

When it comes to smart home displays, I’ve seen two main options: Use a small 1-inch OLED screen with a microcontroller. Buy a tablet, nail…

Rendering React Server-Side with AWS Lambda

The dawn of serverless-side rendering?

Using ESPHome on a Raspberry Pi with Docker

Moving old devices to a powerful new platform

How to Automate a Heat Pump Unit

Bringing smarts to dumb air conditioning units

How to Reverse Engineer a Heat Pump Unit

Cracking the code and paving the way to automation

Understanding Infrared Remote Control

Going beyond the remote in pursuit of automation

Using MQTT for Availability and Retained State

January 03, 2019

One of the crucial aspects of MQTT is the broker. Among other things, the broker manages connected clients, ensuring messages are received…

Lightt - The Hardware

Getting to grips with IoT networking

Adventures with the MERN Stack

Beautifully generic. Never fear: Hex Solutions isn’t an actual company. Rather, I imagined the overly vague company in a recent project…

Castle Hill

The flat took a day trip to this strange stony place, and plenty of adventures were had. It was easy to explore between the large boulders…

Piano Vision

In an effort to focus more of my attention on coding, I managed to pick up two computer science papers at the start of the year to add to my…

DarkMOD

February 06, 2017

A dynamic MusicBee skin using PHP

Obfuscator

November 05, 2016

Highlighting the potentially hilarious flaws of modern computer translators

Mahia

A voyage to the peninsula

Afterglow

An experiment in spectra

A Cursory Revelation

One man's trash

The Apex?

February 25, 2016

Gimmicks are key

Back to the Music

August 30, 2015

The world of music today is a brave new one indeed. Every time I blink it seems that a new streaming service is born. People are using these…

Birds

The avian album

Makara Hills

Rural walk with seaside views

Moto L

Impatience made me delve into Android ROMs

The Dragonfly Effect

February 06, 2015

I take my first dip into better computer audio

Going Closed

January 26, 2015

Some decisions are made to be undone

Going Open

December 24, 2014

Recently I decided to upgrade my computer audio experience to match my improving and expanding music library. So I bought a DAC and some new…

Waikawa Bay

January 30, 2014

A quiet spot in the Marlborough Sounds

San Francisco

An enjoyable stay in an unbelievable city