Global Gourmet Hot Dog Maker Machine

Win an American Hot Dog Maker #5
Well, it's not every day that I get a hot dog machine. But today was special, this neat box turned up and myself and the kids decided to give it a go straight away!

Unpacking it, you have the main unit, with the rollers on the top for the hot dogs, then a door below to fit your buns in and warm them up, just like you get at the shops!

We bought the 'regular' frankfurter style hot dogs, the tiny ones in the tins are no good as they're too thin (And taste horrible too), but get those or bigger and you'll be fine. The unit is ready to take 4 hot dogs as standard (But with experimentation I added another three on top of these and they cooked fine, just rotate them a couple of times, bonus!)

Here you see it warming up the kids lunch today! You switch the main red power switch on and then set the timer. I put it on for 15 minutes and it got the hot dogs really hot and buns hot and a little crispy, just how we like them.

We put them on cold, turned on and left it to it, no need to preheat or anything and you just wait until it pings and they're ready. Simple and the kids found it easy to use too, so something they'd happily use themselves too since no pans, mess or anything. Just pay attention that the rollers (in the top) get too hot to touch and the trays inside get really hot too, so be careful!

If I had to criticise it, it would be on the size of the bread roll tray. It says it'll take four, but buying supermarket hot dog buns (Which aren't huge) we could only fit 3 in, putting a fourth would have squashed them too much. But that's a minor thing really, just swap them around during cooking and all was fine.

I'm not sure if this was our imagination, but the taste of the hot dogs was much nicer than when we normally do them. (We usually cook them in water in a pan on the hob) So perhaps it's because they're not being drowned in water, but they had a lot of flavour to them and still nice and soft on the inside. We're very happy with this, one that will be used again and again.
Cleaning too wasn't too bad, wait for it to cool down, take the drip tray and bun tray and give them a clean in warm soapy water. Then get a cloth and clean the rollers. I turned the on switch on (but not the timer switch) which made the rollers roll so I could clean them all the way round. 5 minutes quick clean was all it took. Just as well as I'm lazy when it comes to cleaning up gadgets.

So we think this was a winner, quick easy meal and does the job perfectly.
Give it a try and let me know what you think: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01MSK7C02

Note: I received this item in exchange for this unbiased and honest review.

Even better, you can also enter a giveaway to win one:

Win an American Hot Dog Maker #5

Follow up: Wireless home alarm system from ebay 433Mhz

I've finally installed and setup the alarm I bought from eBay a few weeks ago (See post: http://www.thebmwz3.co.uk/2016/08/wireless-home-alarm-system-from-ebay.html ) and found a few extra little notes to add to anyone using it or looking to buy.
Firstly, the setup is actually straight forward, as per my previous blog post on it, configuring it and getting it working was simple enough.

I ordered a sim card (It needs to be an older 2G version) from o2, put some credit on and installed it, works great it sent me a text when power failed, power returned and when the alarm had triggered and the reason for the trigger. Pretty neat. I found that it was better to power off before inserting the sim as sometimes if you inserted it with power on it didn't recognise it and start to use it. A few interesting features I found, firstly if you ring the alarm from another phone it'll answer (give it quite a few rings) and it'll ask for your pin code (just the standard pin/alarm code) and give you the options: 1 to arm, 2 to disarm, 3 to monitor (listen) or 4 for intercom. There are also a couple of hidden options, press 5 and it triggers SOS/panic and goes to alarm straight away. I also found the * option played back what sounded like a technician setting the system up (In a language I didn't recognise so can't tell what he was saying!), I'm assuming that was a pre-recording loaded onto the sound chip by mistake and they probably didn't intend anyone to find it!
Unfortunately it didn't tell you the current state of the alarm which was one thing I was after.

Installing the wireless sensors was easy enough, they came with fixing brackets and also double-sided sticky pads, and it was easy to fit and test.
These are very basic 433Mhz devices, found in a lot of hobby electronics (and arduino kits), and in this alarm they seem to be only 1-way units, i.e. the sensor sends it's alarm state to the control panel, no return path from the alarm to tell it when it's armed (to save battery life), whether it's been tampered, if it's still alive (dead battery), if it's signal is OK (doesn't detect jamming/malicious signals), etc. So this is the true weakness of the system.

Here are the insides of one of the door sensors.

You can see the typical 433Mhz can at the top right (R433A), along with the spring antenna it uses. On the left is the reed switch and top left is the tri-colour LED. On the back are the electronics and it's all controlled by the chip you can see middle right of the photo. The chip is the typical EV1527 OTP encoder with configurable code setting.

I did like that they left in the jumpers for helping to set a 'random' coded sequence on them, the theory being you set these to random positions so they're unique to your alarm and individual sensor setup. I changed mine just because I could and in theory thought anyone near me (There is probably only one house close to me!) wouldn't bother/know this. They also need to be unique otherwise two sensors will share the same code and trigger the same input.

Note that they came with the 23A 12v battery installed, and I've had at least two die since installation, so I'd say go out and buy a pack of them and replace them as soon as you purchase.
This has also exposed another weakness, knowing when the batteries run down. Most of the time you notice the little red flicker when you open the doors, but that means you wait until they're dead before replacing. There is also an odd flicker pattern. When you open the door it goes bright red then flickers 3 or 4 times getting dimmer each time. (Capacitor discharge timer?) If you press the button and hold it the red light flickers then goes orange and green. I've got no idea what the different colours of the lights mean, so when I've replaced the batteries with new ones I'll add extra info here on them, my hope is they are green for good battery and drop to red/orange when low battery (Too much to ask?).

Next was wiring up an external bellbox. Although one came with the unit, I also had a traditional bellbox that I could use. As normal this had various feeds into it, labelled:
holdoff - and + = These are the power supply (12v) to the unit that charged the battery and also acted as the power feed.
STB - = Strobe negative switched trigger
TRG = Siren negative switched trigger
LOOP = negative feed from alarm (This acts as a tamper circuit)

The problem here is that the alarm uses positive switching for it's alarm trigger output (On the back of the alarm it's BZ+ and BZ-, BZ- is common to ground so not switched), so therefore I had to be a little creative. A cheap 12v optocoupled relay looked like the best option (http://r.ebay.com/EvgMbn)

Which you feed with 12v constant and then when the IN terminal goes high it'll activate the relay (If you set the switchable trigger to HIGH). This way it protects the alarm from any noise/spikes from the relay itself and triggers on high. You can then connect the holdoff - (supply) to COM on the relay and then feed NO to the TRG and STB terminals, so when the relay is triggered it'll set the alarm off. It also has the advantage that the battery built into your bellbox can be enabled so if wires are cut, etc, then it will trigger the sounder on it's own.

The next part to tackle was a magnetic door switch (non wireless), this was for the garage doors. So I had the relevant magnetic reed switch, just needed to feed two wires back to the alarm from it, and wire them into the Z1 contact. This is wired in between common/ground and the zone input (with a resistor in series too). The manual wasn't very good at explaining how to wire it, so it was a bit trial and error!

So if you have normally closed contacts (Like most magnetic door switches are) then you put the resistor inline (10k ohm supplied in the box) and connect back to ground.
For a normally open contact you put the resistor in parallel to your sensor and wire it into ground and the zone you need.
(Ignore the Pusitive (!) and power supply lines, I have no idea why they included them on this diagram unless to show electrical isolation)

Setting up the wired zones didn't seem to go right to start with, but I finally figured it out.
Each zone you can setup with one of the following modes:
0) Sensor will not trigger in any status (disabled zones)
1) Sensor will trigger the alarm when in out or home alarm state
2) Sensor will trigger the alarm when set to out state only (for PIRs, etc)
3) Sensor will trigger the alarm in any status (for smoke alarm, panic alarm, etc)

So to set the wired alarm into state 1 you are supposed to use key function
47811 (47 is the menu code, 81 is the wired zone code range [81-88])
However when I did this the alarm didn't confirm the setting, just returned to the menu, like it was an invalid setting. I then tried each one in turn and it seems 81 didn't accept it, but 82-88 did. I have my sensor still in zone1 and it works in mode 1, so not sure if that is a constant setting for that or something similar, but it seems to work.

All in all, I'm quite impressed. It installed without too much challenge and is working great with the remotes.
A few negative points:

• Remote-only 'home' alarm mode. There is no way of setting the home mode from the panel itself, so you need a remote to set that mode.
• Positive triggers (for sounders) as noted above, so needed a relay to solve this
• No indication (that I've found) that it'll alert me to batteries going low on the sensors
• No remote way of determining if alarm is armed or not
• Timer is always active on zones, so no matter which zone is triggering the alarm, the timer starts counting before the alarm sounds

I'm also thinking of changing the resistor on the speaker as now it's in 'production' use it's actually a little bit too quiet, so might change this in the near future.

Next up I'm also going to start to sniff the protocol and traffic going through the 433Mhz system and see if I can also 'read' the sensor states and anything else the units chatter about during normal operations, this may prove interesting as may help determine how 'secure' or at least tamper resistant the system will be. Again this is in theory, because as usual an intruder would need to know this was the system in use, and sniff/understand the frequencies involved to try to use them to their advantage. I suspect brute-force attempts to jam it won't work very well from outside the house, otherwise they would need to learn/replay the remote control codes to help de-activate it, as all other signals would trigger the alarm. (All just conjecture at this point in time)

UPDATE 12/sept:
I've done a little sniffing using my Arduino 433Mhz receivers, and sure enough I can see some of the communications. Generally I can see the PIRs sending their current movement state, so when movement is detected they send a stream of their code. I've not seen any values from the door sensors as yet or other sensors but this may be the mode I've been testing using my Arduino. I've also seen some limited codes from the remotes, they don't appear to be rolling code units but I do see several codes sent on each keypress that I'm going to investigate further.
My conclusion is that it's not got a very secure wireless component to it, it uses hobby electronic frequencies which increase the chance of interference and also jamming/hacking into it. I've not yet tried to replay codes and see if the system accepts or rejects them at this point in time.

Wireless 433Mhz home alarm system from ebay

Following on with my faulty alarm problems at home (The X10 system) I've been looking for an alternative, waiting for when the current one acts up enough to warrant buying a replacement.
This week it did just that, making strange noises from the sounder and forgetting the remote fobs. So I decided to look around.
I had a few requirements:

• wireless (to avoid the need for long wiring runs to the sensors)
• gsm/remote alerting (to sms or ring me during alarm conditions or let me remotely check status, arm/disarm, etc)
• keychain/remote arm/disarm (Wife and daughter prefer these to tapping in a code)
• Interface with my home automation systems (More tricky, but basically have some I/O I can tap into)
• "nice" appearance. It'll be in a prime location in the house so don't want it to look terrible.
• Cheap (ish) as I'm a cheap-skate so don't want to spend a lot of money on a solution that I'll never be 100% happy with (I also have a high expectation for electronics, so I'm never happy!)

So after a lot of searching, I found a system that might fit the majority of my requirements, and have the potential for expansion and tinkering. It's also not mega-expensive which gives me more incentive to take a look inside and tinker with it!

The ebay listing I found was this one, so the unit came with the control box (and PSU), 3 door sensors, 3 motion/pir sensors, 1 smoke sensor, two keychain remotes, one additional sounder and an outside bell/sounder box. Not a bad package for the price I feel.

Delivery was in a couple of days, so now I have the unit I've started to play with it. So here are my findings on the unit. Firstly it's not the best plastic casing I've ever encountered. It's distinctly cheap, but rounded corners and smooth edges so it's not going to win a fashion award, but it's also not too hideous to put in your hallway!

This is the main control unit, front. At the front you have the two speaker grills either side (As I found out, one is a microphone and one is a speaker). Behind the clip down door is the push button keypad. At the top you have the LCD screen and a series of LED indicators either side for constant system status.

This is the rear view. You can see the 12v power cable going in, the SIM slot and the various I/O screw terminals. To the left you can see an on/off switch. This worried me slightly immediately when I found it, assuming it would turn the whole system on and off. However as it turns out this is only the battery master switch, normal power was not controlled by this switch!

The screw terminals provide 8 wired inputs (and can take normally open or normally closed with the use of a set of resistors supplied), it also has a sounder +/- terminal, a constant 9v output for supplying alarm boxes, etc. Two GND terminals for the I/O ports, then the final two are COM and NO which I've yet to work out their function or use.

Powering it up for the first time, I found the speaker to be VERY loud, even normal arm/disarm and voice prompts were at a volume unbearable for setting it up. The volume level I suspect was fixed so it always ran at that level, no configuration to set it either which was disappointing. So the first job I'd have to do was change this, as it was almost unusable in this state as soon as it was put up it would annoy me!

So, the back came off and I discovered some very recognisable components inside:

Looking at the board, top left (blue square) is a relay, which I think will be the alarm output switched contact.

Below it is a ZTE cellular modem which supports SMS and telephone calls. The coil to the left of it I think is the internal antenna for it (There is also the on-chip connector for external antenna if you need it). To the right of it is the SIM card (with mine inserted). NOTE: This is 2G only (EDGE/GPRS) so you need to find a mobile company that supports this (So O2, T-Mobile/EE I believe should be OK. Three is NOT an option - I tested this). So the potential here is that this won't work very well, and not for long as mobile networks phase out their 2G networks, so something to be aware of here. However chances are you can just swap the board for a newer equivalent that uses the same AT command set.

Over to the top right (with the yellow outline) is a small backup battery, this probably keeps power to the EEPROM for storage of data, time, system state, etc.

The to the very right of the board (which has the black wire coming out of it) is a very recognisable part! It is a 477Mhz receiver that is commonly used in Arduino and hobby electronics, soldered on as a daughterboard. The black wire is the antenna.

If you then look to the bottom left, you'll see the matching 477Mhz transmitter board with it's own black antenna wire running along the left towards the top. So these two are standard boards that you can buy for Arduino development.

Here are similar modules you can buy easily for Arduino development:

Above the transmitter board is a two-pin connector, this connects to the speaker round the front.

Here is the front of the board:

Here you can see the microphone to the top right (I've flipped the board) and the LCD screen and various status LEDs. You can also see the copper contacts for the buttons.

These may need to be altered as the key button presses aren't very accurate, so probably need some better contacts here which i'll work on another time.

This is the front casing, showing the 8 Ohm 5W speaker and plastic casing and buttons.

So, first job is to reduce the volume output of the speaker. Since it's not used much and doesn't carry high current I'm going to simply wire a resistor in series with one of the leads.

The final soldering and resistor work looks like this:

That was a larger value than I'd wanted to apply (120 ohm) but it should reduce the volume appropriately. I powered it up and it reduced the volume pretty well, perhaps a little low (as it had distorted the spoken voice slightly) but that should do for now (It was the lowest resistor value I had!)

Now onto the 433Mhz sensors. These attached to the doors/windows and had a magnet one side and a reed switch a the other, very simple typical design really, so taking a look inside it:

Top left is the red LED which flashes when triggered. Top right is the 433Mhz transmitter crystal, the spring to the right is the antenna.

The push button is brought to the front of the unit as a press button (This is for setting, to trigger a signal). At the bottom is a 12v battery, and above it is a set of 4 jumper pin positions. I'm assuming these set a unique code for the unit so you can change it if so desired, adding a little more security to your setup. Naturally, no instructions on this! To the left you can see the reed switch soldered in there (and without trimming the excess wire!), so quite a simple design once again.

On the other side of the board is all of the transmitter electronics:

Which I was actually surprised it was so complex, as again this is just a simple 477Mh transmitter when the reed switch was activated. I'll dig into the wiring at some future date.

So there it is, all in all there are good points and bad points. For example, 477Mhz is hobby electronics, so you CAN sniff the traffic and protocols, and no doubt spend enough time to watch the data and decode/decrypt them. But for the average user and average building security this unit will do the job nicely.

UPDATE:
I've noted down all the relevant chips I've discovered and looked up so far:

Follow-up to this is HERE: http://www.thebmwz3.co.uk/2016/09/follow-up-wireless-home-alarm-system.html

To purchase pressure washer or not?

A few people have been buying pressure washers recently, and I'm wondering if they're worth getting.
The main jobs would be for washing the cars (Mine takes ages as it's a people carrier, so anything that helps would be good), cleaning the drive, paths, etc (They get a bit grubby as I do my car fixes on the drive, so they end up with coolant stains, oil patches, etc) so not a huge number of tasks but I'd want it to work well for these jobs.

Therefore looking at the type of pressure washer is important. Recently I've seen deals for them such as the Bosch AQT 33-11 which keeps going on offer down to around £50 which is a good value price. However as most deals, the devil is in the detail and looking closely you need to check a few specifications on them.
Here's what I've found out:
Power output - The energy consumed by the washer, in rough terms the higher the wattage the more power it will draw and vaguely the more powerful the motor will be.
Flow rate - Probably the key, this is the amount of liquid it will transfer within a specific time. This is normally in litres per hour, so the higher the value the higher pressure/volume of liquid is being pushed.
Mains fed/Tank fed - To allow you to run it from a water butt or tank, a handy option if you've got additional water storage and don't want to use the mains-fed water.

So based on that, you can start to make a choice on washers. The cheapo Bosch AQT 33-11 is predictably not that great. From the few that I've seen doing the rounds I've put the following together:

Bosch AQT 33-11 approx £50, 110bar, 1300watt, 330l/hr.
Nilfisk C120 approx £100, 120bar, 1400watt, 440l/hr.
Bosch AQT 35-10 approx £99, 120bar, 1500watt, 350l/hr.
Karcher K2 classic approx £120, 110bar, 1400watt, 360l/hr.
Karcher K4 approx £150, 140bar, 1800watt, 420l/hr.

So pricing varies by £100 and there isn't a huge difference in the pressure or water rates, although the £50 Bosch shows it really is underpowered compared to the rest.

So all in all, I'm still unsure about buying one at the moment as prices vary a lot and there isn't a huge difference for the money from what I can tell.

Oh and when you can get your car washed for £5 to a decent standard, that gives me 20 washes and 0 effort relating to the £100 pressure washer!

Tell me what you think, especially if you have one and like/hate it.

Marmitek/Haibrain SC9000 X10 alarm system

* Updated 02/06/2015 (See end of post)

When we moved into our new house a year ago, I decided to go for an alarm system that I'd be able to integrate with, and use with my home automation that I keep trying to build upon and improve. I already had various X10 home modules (lights and appliances) and whilst some of these modules are poor quality and fail quickly, it is a good system that has worked for me. I have the CM11a conneted via serial to my server in the house so it can monitor all X10 codes and also send them for turning outside lights on, living room lights, etc.

So I looked into it and went with the SC9000 home alarm system from Marmitek (Who are now called Haibrain) as it was a fully integrated X10 alarm system, it could send and receive X10 signals over the home powerline and also used wireless door and motion sensors in the house for triggers.

The above is a stock image, but it's similar to what I got, I added more sensors and an external bell box. I fitted the unit into the hallway in the house, cut a hole in the wall and fed it to be supplied by a mains socket. This was the first challenge. The PSU looks like this:

Which is kinda tricky to install for an alarm system! You want things like that hidden (So burglar doesn't unplug the alarm!) and that huge power brick and hard-wired plug was a pain. I also did a bit more reading and found that power brick isn't just a step-down transformer. Since it has to send and receive X10 signals it actually has a lot of the X10 circuitry built into it.
So my plan was, install the front facing alarm unit somewhere public, then run cables away somewhere hidden. The house lent itself to this so I got it fitted and sorted. The alarm had backup batteries internally, so it was protected even if the power was cut.
Registering the wireless motion sensors and door sensors was easy and the remotes to arm and disarm the unit, etc.
The unit wasn't as flexible as I'd hoped, you couldn't specify which zones you wanted for "home set" and "away set". I.e. when "home set" it will only activate the door sensors, no motion sensors. And "away set" activates all sensors, no option to exclude. This was a bit annoying, but the unit didn't have much flexibility in it's programming.

Anyway, I lived with all of that, and now almost a year later the unit has stopped working in quite a critical way. It won't alarm! It sets, it will do the exit timer chimes, and notify when people open doors, but critically if it's triggered it would sound the main alarm sounder. It is also not sending or receiving the X10 signals.

Again, reading up, it appears the PSU on these units is particularly sensitive and will 'blow' in a partial way quite easily. My PSU has always run pretty hot, this seems common with X10 stuff, and it looks like after around a year it's given up. It still supplies the correct voltage, etc, so the alarm is on but critically it won't send or receive the X10 commands (So can't send the 'ALARM ARMED', 'disarmed', etc) and it also won't trigger it's main alarm siren.

I've contacted Marmitek in the hope of finding a solution, as I am also not 100% sure this is a faulty PSU, or some other fault that has been developed. Either way I want an answer as surely it has a longer life than a year on it. If it does indeed turn out to be the problem, I think an alternative is needed as I'm not going to keep replacing these every year for an alarm system, seems excessive that, as electronics should be more capable than that.

* Update 02/06/2015

I've had a reply back from a UK reseller of the Marmitek equipment regarding this issue, and they do indeed state that it was likely a brownout or power spike caused the PSU X10 electronics to fail causing the situation I've got. They've recommended their replacement power supply at £13. I've contacted them back asking if anything can be done to protect the supply, as my understanding is I could buy a new one, plug it in and if I get another surge next week that one will blow. And putting it behind a surge protection multiway I suspect would stop the X10 signals. I'll post back if/when I get a reply, but in the meantime it doesn't look a very good solution to me.