Regular readers may be relieved to know that I’m done writing about my trip to Athens, and are back to the occasional series of ‘Neil reviews cheap Zigbee devices from AliExpress’.
Earlier this month, I reviewed Zigbee window sensors, and this time I’m reviewing a Zigbee PIR motion sensor. PIR stands for ‘passive infrared’, and senses changes in infrared light to detect motion. It’s used in most motion detectors for burglar alarm systems, but you can buy sensors such as these for home automation too. In my case, I’ve fitted one to the top of our cellar stairs, to turn on a light in the cellar when motion is detected.
It’s pretty small – about an inch across – and runs on a single CR2450 battery (provided). You also get a sticky pad to attach to surfaces, and a couple of tools for opening the battery flap and for resetting and pairing it. It’s compatible with Zigbee2MQTT.
In terms of configurability, you can adjust its sensitivity, and its keep time. The keep time means that it remains in the ‘occupied’ (i.e. motion detected) state for a given number of seconds after motion was last detected. If you have a motion activated light, this prevents the light constantly flashing on and off.
As with the window sensors, you can also buy these devices from Amazon(sponsored link) if you need them quickly, but again they’re significantly more expensive than AliExpress.
To make the light turn on and off, I have automations set up in Home Assistant. I also bought a Zigbee smart light bulb for the motion sensor. Ideally I would have just bought one that switches on and off, but the cheapest one I could find is a colour changing dimmable one. Which is overkill for a cellar light, but hey, it was cheap. Indeed, the motion sensor and light bulb collectively cost less than £9.
‘A Little Less Conversation’ by Elvis Presley & JXL. This was originally the B side to Elvis’ single ‘Almost in Love’ in 1968 and was a mere two and a bit minutes long. Junkie XL (credited as ‘JXL’ on this release) remixed in 2022, and the remix is now more well-known.
‘Sun is Shining’ by Bob Marley vs Funkstar De Luxe. Again, during Marley’s lifetime, this wasn’t such a well-known song, having been first recorded in 1971 and then again 1978. Funkstar De Luxe released a new version in 1999 which reached number 3 in the UK singles chart – higher than any other Bob Marley song.
‘Power of Love (Rob Searle Remix)’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The original version of ‘Power of Love’ is occasionally considered to be a Christmas song, especially since a cover by Gabrielle Aplin was featured on the John Lewis Christmas advert in 2012. Rob Searle’s remix turns it into a banging trance tune and it was given its own single release and music video in 2001. Searle went on to also remix ‘Two Tribes’, another Frankie Goes To Hollywood song, and N-Trance’s ‘Set You Free’, both of which were released as singles in their own right. I’ve included the full club mix on the playlist, so that you can hear how the song is layered.
‘Heartbreaker (Remix)’ by Mariah Carey, Missy Elliot and Da Brat. This remix was included in the original single release, rather than years later, but it was given its own music video.
‘Barber’s Adagio for Strings (Ferry Corsten Remix)’ by William Orbit. William Orbit produced Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ album, and shortly after released his own album of reworked classical music entitled ‘Pieces in a Modern Style’. This included his version of Samuel Barber’s 1938 ‘Adagio for Strings’, which in turn was given a trance remix by Ferry Corsten. Corsten also remixed the follow-up single from Orbit, ‘Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante Défunte’. A few years later, Tiësto also released his remix of ‘Adagio for Strings’.
’19-2000 (Soulchild Remix) by Gorillaz. This was included on the single release, and is superior to the original in my opinion. Daman Albarn’s singing is speeded up and it’s a much more upbeat song.
‘Protect Your Mind (For The Love Of A Princess) (Lange Remix)’ by DJ Sakin and Friends. Good grief, what a mouthful. You may know this better as the theme from the Mel Gibson film ‘Braveheart’. I believe this was Lange’s first remix, and it’s a corker with both classical and synthesised elements. Again, I’ve included the full nine minute version here.
‘Silence (DJ Tiësto’s In Search of Sunrise Remix)’ by Delerium featuring Sarah McLachlan. I think Delerium are more well-known for the remixes of their songs than the originals. This is an early Tiësto remix from when he still used the ‘DJ’ prefix, and it’s another long one at over eleven minutes. You need to listen to the whole thing though. For the UK release, an alternative remix by Airscape was chosen for the radio edit, which is also very good but not as groundbreaking as this.
‘Tequila (Mint Royal Chaser)’ by Terrorvision. Terrorvision’s most popular single to date was a remix by Mint Royale. They’re probably best known for their remix of ‘Singing in the Rain’ which was used in a Volkswagen advert and in a winning Britain’s Got Talent entry. Again, I’ve included the extended version as you can hear how the elements of the song were put together.
‘Brimful of Asha (Norman Cook Remix) by Cornershop. There’s a story of someone who went to a Cornershop gig on the basis of this remix, which was used for the single release, and being disappointed to find that the original was a slower indie song – as were all of their other songs. Norman Cook is, of course, better known as Fatboy Slim and this is typical of his style. He also did a good remix of ‘Renegade Master’ by Wildchild.
Building on last week’s post about flashing smart plugs Tasmota, today I’m going to talk about other custom firmware that you can install on devices with an Espressif ESP chip. Tasmota is the most well-known, but whilst researching how to do the flashing, I’ve come across some others.
Tasmota
Obviously the first one I should mention is Tasmota. It seems to be the most well-used, with active development and lots of features. It’s designed to be used only on ESP32 and ESP8266 boards. Tasmota incidentally is an acronym which stands for Theo-Arends-Sonoff-MQTT-OTA and to this day Theo Arends remains the primary developer.
Recent Tasmota releases have included Matter support, albeit only on ESP32 chips which have more storage than ESP8266.
Notably, ESPurna only works on ESP8265 and ESP8266 chips, whereas Tasmota and ESPEasy also work on ESP32 chips, such as the one in the m5stack Atom Lite that I turned into a Bluetooth Proxy. Both ESPurna and ESPEasy use MQTT to communicate with other devices.
ESPHome
ESPHome is part of the Open Home Foundation, along with Home Assistant, and as such integrates well with Home Assistant. Unlike the other firmware tools here, ESPHome doesn’t use MQTT by default, although if you build your own firmware with ESPHome then you can add it as an optional extra. Instead, it communicates via Home Assistant’s API. This offers some advantages – it allows Home Assistant to install firmware updates for ESPHome devices. But if you were to switch from Home Assistant to another smart home platform, then you would either need to recompile the ESPHome firmware to add MQTT, or switch to one of the other firmware platforms listed here.
Another thing I’m less keen on about ESPHome is that you use a YAML configuration file to configure devices. I found Tasmota’s web-based interface much more user-friendly.
It’s worth noting that, as well as Espressif chips, ESPHome also works on RealTek RTL8710 and Beken BK7231 series chips too.
OpenMQTTGateway
OpenMQTTGateway is a more specialised firmware designed to make existing non-smart products work over MQTT. It’s best used with BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), RD, Infrared and old fashioned Serial (RS232) devices. You can buy devices from Theengs which have the OpenMQTTGateway firmware already flashed.
As far as I can tell, OpenMQTTGateway just works on ESP32 chips.
OpenBeken
OpenBeken started out as a way of implementing a Tasmota-like experience on Beken BK7231 chips, but now supports a huge range of chips including ESP32 (but not some other Espressif chips like ESP8826) and RealTek RTL8710. It apparently works in a similar way to Tasmota, but I’ve yet to try it. I have one Tuya device with a BK7231 chip, but I haven’t yet been brave enough to try to flash it. Again, it uses MQTT to communicate with other devices.
I’m a little over 18 months into my Home Assistant journey, and now have 54 integrations set up. This includes standard integrations set up in the Home Assistant interface, some added using YAML, and custom integrations added via HACS.
When I first set Home Assistant, I went out of my way to set up as many integrations as possible, regardless of whether I needed them. Home Assistant scales quite well, but some integrations take longer to load than others. If you’ve ever logged in whilst Home Assistant is restarting to see a dashboard with many missing entities, you’ll know what I mean.
There’s a panel hidden away in Home Assistant’s Lovelace interface that tells you how long each integration takes to load. Open Settings, scroll down to System, and select Repairs. Then, click on the three vertical dots at the top right, and choose ‘Integration Startup Times’.
The list will be sorted with those taking the longest at the top. The vast majority of mine take less than a second to load, but there are some outliers. My worst offenders are:
Google Nest (24 seconds). Taking three seconds longer than a famous So Solid Crew song, this is the integration for my Nest Thermostat. I use this quite a bit in Home Assistant, so I’m stuck with it.
Wyoming Protocol (21.5 seconds). This is the bridge between Home Assistant’s Assist chat bot, and Homeway Sage. To be honest, I don’t use this, so this is an easy one to turn off. It’s an auto-discovered integration.
Meross LAN (21 seconds). This is a custom integration from HACS for my Meross smart plugs, and I need this for energy monitoring. Whilst the smart plugs also support Matter, the energy monitoring is only available via this integration. Theoretically, I can convince the smart plugs to use MQTT and that might negate the need for this integration, but I haven’t fully investigated it.
DLNA Digital Media Server (17 seconds). Another auto-discovered integration, courtesy of my router. I’m not using this, so this is another good candidate to disable.
Spotify (15 seconds). This allows me to control Spotify playback in Home Assistant. In reality, I don’t really use it, but it is on my dashboard.
Home Connect (14 seconds). This is for my smart Bosch dishwasher. I use this for a dashboard badge to see if the dishwasher is on at a glance. Our dishwasher is built-in and almost silent so this is useful.
Fitbit (14 seconds). Another dashboard badge to see how much charge is left in my Fitbit Versa 3.
Of these, there were two obvious candidates to remove – Wyoming and DLNA, saving a combined 30 seconds of startup time.
Ignored integrations
As they’re both integrations which are auto-discovered, I have had to tell Home Assistant to ignore them. On the Integrations Settings page, if you click the filter icon on the top right, you can then show the integrations that are ignored. I’ve added Wyoming Protocol there; it joins Philips Hue (since I’m using Bifrost) and ZHA (since I’m using Zigbee2MQTT)
Last year, I wrote about using a tool called tuya-convert to replace the firmware on my Tuya smart plugs. The firmware in question is Tasmota, which is an open source replacement firmware for devices with Espressif ESP chips. All my Tuya smart plugs have an ESP8266 chip, which can take custom firmware.
There are two ways of flashing Tasmota onto Tuya devices – an easy way, and a harder way.
There’s also a kind-of third ‘super-easy’ way, that I’ll mention towards the end.
tuya-convert – the easy way
I mentioned tuya-convert, which is a command line tool that exploits a vulnerability in older Tuya firmware to install Tasmota. You’ll need a computer such as a Raspberry Pi that has both Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and a smartphone. The tuya-convert tool then creates a hotspot that your Tuya devices can connect to when in pairing mode, and deploys the firmware wirelessly.
The key thing to emphasise here is that it only works with older firmware. Tuya patched the vulnerability in an update that came out some years ago, and indeed I’d already installed this on my smart plugs. That meant that tuya-convert could see the smart plugs, but couldn’t deploy the Tasmota firmware. So, I had to do it the hard way.
Using a UART converter – the hard way
As you may have guessed from the photo above, the only way I was able to flash Tasmota onto these smart plugs was by taking one apart, and using a USB to UART converter with some jumper cables. If tuya-convert doesn’t work, then this is what you’ll need to do. You’ll need the following:
Some Dupont Jumper cables – again, I bought these from AliExpress for £2.40. I picked up a big bag of male-male, female-female and male-female cables, but you only really need male-female cables if you want to save a few pence.
A computer with a USB port
I would also recommend the following:
Some electrical tape to hold things down
A USB extension cable
For the plugs that I was working with, I didn’t need a soldering iron, but some others may require it.
Disassembly and what’s inside
Firstly, it is very, very important that your smart plugs are not plugged into the mains while you do this, unless you want to burn yourself and/or your house down. We’ll be providing power via a different method, so make sure your device is not plugged in via the usual method. With my smart plugs, the positioning of the screws means it’s impossible for them to be plugged into the mains anyway.
Next, remove the screws from the plug. There were five on mine – the central one had to be removed first, and then the remaining four. Once that was done, I carefully separated the top and bottom of the housing.
The bottom part includes the high voltage AC circuitry. We’re not concerned with this and can leave it alone. What we’re interested in is the ancillary circuit board in the top part. It’s held in place by two small screws – you can remove these if you wish, but you can easily access the five pin holes that we need with the board still screwed in place.
The pin holes are as follows, with the first closest to the edge:
RX – data in
TX – data out
GND – ground
GPI00 – the pin hole that puts the smart plug into flashing mode
5V – the 5 volt power input pin hole
Normally, ESP chips work at 3.3 volts, but there’s a converter chip elsewhere on the circuit board for these specific smart plug. Yours may be different, so check first to see if it’s 3.3 volts or 5 volts. The UART to USB converter that I have offers both, so we’ll use five volts for this.
Connecting the wires
Firstly, make sure your USB to UART converter is not plugged in to the computer. You’ll need to get your Dupont cables and connect them from your converter to the board. The pins on the converter should be labelled, so you need to connect them as follows:
From RX on the board to TXD on the converter
From TX on the board to RXD on the converter
From 5V on the board to 5V on the converter
From bothGND and GPI00 on the board to GND on the converter
For this last one, I used three cables – two male-male cable from each of the GND and GPI00 ports on the board, and one female-male cable from the GND port on the converter – and then taped the pins at the end of the wires together. If it helps, there’s a standard wiring diagram on the Tasmota Getting Started page – although we’re connecting one additional wire (GPI00).
Getting read to flash Tasmota
Now that we’ve linked the converter to board, we can do the fun bit – flashing the device. There are several ways you can do this, of which I would recommend two:
Tasmotizer – this is a simple Windows program for flashing. The key advantage is that it can optionally download and backup the previous firmware, just in case you want to restore it later.
Tasmota Web Installer – this allows you to install Tasmota through your web browser, using WebSerial. As it stands, only desktop versions of Chrome, Edge and Opera support it, so you can’t use Firefox or Safari.
Personally, I had a better experience with the Web Installer, so this is what I used. Once you’ve opened your flashing tool, plug the USB to UART converter into your computer and then click ‘Connect’. Your browser will ask for your permission to link the web page with the COM port created by the converter, so you’ll need to grant permission.
Note: sometimes the COM port wouldn’t show for me in the browser. If this happens to you, try opening Device Manager, if using Windows, to ensure that the driver has installed correctly. If not, asking Device Manager to simply update the drivers should be enough. I had the most success if I opened the web page, connected the USB to UART converter and then clicked ‘Connect’ in that order.
If all is well, the web flasher will connect to your device, erase the existing firmware and then upload Tasmota. It’s a quick process – the binary file for Tasmota version 15 is only 655 kilobytes, so it’ll only take a couple of minutes at most.
If you get a connection error, try swapping the RX and TX cables over and then try again, and make sure that the light on the circuit board isn’t on or flashing. If the light is on, it’s a sign that you’ve not connected the GPI00 pin correctly.
Assuming that the flashing worked, you can take the jumper cables out and reassemble your device and plug it back in to the mains.
Configuring Tasmota
So, now that your device has been flashed, you need to configure Tasmota on the device. Get your phone out, and go to Wi-Fi settings. You should see a new Wi-Fi hotspot called ‘tasmota-something-something’, where the somethings are an alphanumeric string – connect to it. A hotspot login box should appear – if not, go to http://192.168.4.1/ in your phone’s web browser.
The first step is to connect Tasmota to your Wi-Fi network. Choose the network, or type it in, and provide the password. Tasmota will then connect, and, if successful, will redirect to its new IP address which it’ll display on screen. I suggest making a note of this.
You’ll now need to navigate to Tasmota’s new IP address in a web browser – you can do this on any device, not just your phone. The first thing we need to do is tell Tasmota what kind of device it has been installed on. The easiest way to do this is with a Template, and there are a huge range of templates listed here. I couldn’t find an exact match for mine, but the closest was this one, which gave me the following template code:
To paste this template into Tasmota, I used this guide. From the Tasmota home screen, I clicked ‘Configuration’, then ‘Configure Other’, and pasted the whole string into the ‘Template’ field at the top. Tick the box that says ‘Activate’, and then the green Save button at the bottom. Tasmota will restart, and then you’ll find that your smart plug now works. Huzzah!
Integrating Tasmota with Home Assistant
If you want your newly Tasmotised smart plug to appear in Home Assistant, then there are a couple more steps that we need to take. Tasmota communicated with other devices using MQTT, so if you don’t already have MQTT set up in Home Assistant, you’ll need to do this. The easiest way is to install the Mosquitto addon; this will then suggest the MQTT integration for you.
Next, we need to create a user account for Tasmota to use with MQTT. In Home Assistant, open Settings, and then People. At the top, select ‘Users’, and then click the blue ‘add user’ button. Give them a username and password, and then save these details somewhere safe for the next step.
Back to Tasmota. Firstly, we need to change a setting to allow Home Assistant to automatically discover your new Tasmota device. From the Tasmota home screen, choose ‘Console’, and input the following command:
SetOption19 0
Press enter. Next, go back to the Tasmota home screen, and into ‘Configuration’ again. Select the ‘Configure MQTT’ option. In the first box, you’ll need to enter the IP address or local hostname for your Home Assistant installation. If you use Home Assistant OS, this is most likely to be ‘homeassistant.local’.
Next, we’ll need to enter the username and password for the MQTT account we created earlier. The rest of the fields can be left with their default values, unless you want to customise the name.
Back to Home Assistant. If this is your first Tasmota device, then you should receive a notification that a new Tasmota device was found, and that you need to install the Tasmota integration. Do this, and your device will now be available. If you add any further devices, these will automatically appear in the Tasmota integration once their MQTT settings have been configured.
And that’s it. You should now be able to control your devices without needing to use Tuya’s cloud services.
The super-easy way – pre-flashed Tasmota devices
If you don’t already own a suitable smart plug, but want to use Tasmota, my advice would be to buy a smart plug with Tasmota already flashed. Local Bytes sell pre-flashed Tasmota smart plugs, so you can skip the disassembly and flashing sections of this guide. Alternatively, try eBay, where these plugs can also be bought pre-flashed.
That being said, I’m pleased to have been able to flash Tasmota on these smart plugs. I’m currently only using one of them, but I’ve been able to give them a new lease of life with about £5 of materials and an hour or so of my time. Indeed, the spare ones may well end up on eBay in due course for someone else to use. It’s far better than letting them become yet more e-waste.
What’s next
Last year I bought a Sonoff Wi-Fi RF Bridge, but was disappointed that it wouldn’t work the way that I expected it to. And getting it to work with Home Assistant was a bit of a pain, requiring a custom integration from HACS or an addon. I’ve already installed Tasmota on it, so it too has local control, and I’m looking at flashing the RF chip with a different custom firmware to make it more useful. That will probably require soldering and is for another future blog post, however.
Phew, it’s been a bit warm, hasn’t it? I was planning to write this review in a few weeks time, but seeing as we’re experiencing a heatwave in England right now, I’ve brought it forward in case you’re considering purchasing an air conditioner yourself.
Earlier this year, we bought a ProBreeze 4-in-1 portable smart air conditioner, and this week, it’s finally been warm enough to put it through its paces for a review. We went with this model as it was a Which Best Buy, and relatively cheap – £250 for refurbished model direct from ProBreeze. Also, I was able to pay for it in three instalments using Klarna, so I’ve actually only just finished paying for it. It’s available from Amazon(sponsored link), but unsurprisingly appears to have sold out.
For an air conditioner to work correctly, you need to be able to pump the hot air out of the room. So, the air conditioner comes with a chonky hose, that you can poke out of a window.
However, to stop the hot air from coming back in again through the open window, there’s a window sealing kit included. This consists of a series of sticky-backed velcro strips, that you attach to your window and frame, and a membrane with velcro edges and a zip with which to make a hole for the exhaust hose to poke through. There’s also a more rigid plastic slidy thing for use with sash windows, if you want to pretend you live in Ecuador.
Part of the reason why I’ve not written this review until now is because the provided hose wasn’t long enough to reach the opening of our window. Our house is at least 100 years old, with nice big windows, and when the previous owners had double glazing installed, they insisted on windows which opened at the top. I ended up buying a longer hose, and some additional velcro strips, from AliExpress to reach the window.
Taking the sealing kit off and on again is a bit of a faff, to be honest. We’ll be leaving it on until the weather’s due to get cooler again on Sunday.
Using the air conditioner
I’m going to cover the disadvantages first:
It’s quite noisy
It’s more expensive to run than a fan
However, it did manage to cool our bedroom down very quickly. We’ve been using it in the evenings, and then switching it off at bedtime. I don’t think we would want it on all night due to the noise.
In terms of the cost of running, expect to spend 20-30 pence per hour to run it. As we’re a day away from the Summer Solstice, we still had sunlight late into the evening last night and so it didn’t actually cost us anything (thank you, solar panels and battery) other than reduced export.
You should also plug it directly into the wall, where possible, and not use extension leads. Because it draws a lot of power, you risk damaging your plugs and/or causing a fire with extension leads. Which would be terrible and also an incredibly ironic way to lose your house, seeing as an air conditioner is supposed to cool it down and not set fire to it.
Hello Tuya, my old frenemy
The ProBreeze air conditioner we bought is also a smart appliance. So although you can control it using buttons on the front, and the included remote control, it can also be controlled using an app or Google Assistant and Alexa.
However, the app in question is Tuya’s Smart Life app. Regular readers will know that I’m not Tuya’s biggest fan (pun not intended) but it seems to work okay, and easily integrates with Home Assistant through the official Tuya integration.
Maybe in future I can take it apart and flash the chip with something else to use it locally, but seeing as I’ve only just finished paying for it, I’ll leave it be for now.
The other three functions
I mentioned that it’s a four in one device. As well as air conditioning, this ProBreeze device can also act as a dehumidifier, and as a simple fan without a cooling mode. I think the fourth mode is a quieter ‘sleep’ mode for use at night. It’s still quite noisy in fan mode, even when it’s not actively trying to cool the air in your room. I believe it’s now branded as a ‘three-in-one’ device.
How it compares to a fan
A simple fan may cool you down, by blowing sweat away from your skin, but it doesn’t actually cool down the air in the room. That’s where air conditioning and air cooling devices come in. Air coolers are usually simpler and cheaper, whereas air conditioning units are more powerful.
Air conditioning at home is still something of a novelty to Brits. We’re not used to hot weather, and our homes are usually designed to retain heat to get us through cold winters. An air conditioning device is therefore unlikely to get much use all year round, but it’s made a difference over these past few days. I’ve glad we’ve bought one – even if it is a bit expensive to run, noisy and a faff to set up the window sealing kit. Anything for a good’s night sleep.
This is the fifth and final blog post about my trip to Athens – bearing in mind that my trip was only for three and a half days. This is where I want to write about everything else that happened whilst not in Athens – i.e. the journey there and back. Here are the links to part one, part two, part three and part four.
Ibis Budget hotel at Manchester Airport
As I mentioned last Monday, my flight was a 6:30am departure from Manchester on a Sunday morning. With this in mind, I booked myself a room in the Ibis Budget hotel at the airport, and then got a train over on the Saturday night.
Now, if you’re staying in a hotel with the word ‘budget’ in its name, you need to manage your expectations. The rooms are small – there’s space for a double bed, but no bedside tables. There’s a small and narrow desk, a blind instead of curtains, and quite a thin mattress. But as I only needed the room for about seven hours, it was fine. There was free Wi-Fi, and most importantly it was in very easy walking distance of Terminal 2, where I needed to be for my flight. I didn’t want to stay somewhere that required a shuttle bus transfer which may or may not turn up at stupid o’clock in the morning. And the room was significantly cheaper than almost all other hotels at the airport.
Manchester Airport at 5am on a Sunday
Speaking of an early start, you would not know that it was only 5am on a Sunday once you were through security and in to the duty free bit before the gates. It was like the Trafford Centre on a Saturday afternoon – all the shops were open, all the lights were on, and it was heaving. There was a lack of seating, although Terminal 2 is being renovated at present which may explain the lack of capacity.
Judging by the airlines and destinations, it was mostly package holiday flights taking advantage of off-peak slots.
Flying with Jet2
Indeed, my flight to Athens was with Jet2. Jet2’s selling point is that they’re a budget airline, but they’re not as stingy as some of their rivals *cough*Ryanair*cough*. You’re allowed one standard cabin bag, and one small bag as standard, although you can pay extra to ‘guarantee’ space for your cabin bag in the overhead locker. My carry-on case was quite a bit smaller than the maximum permitted size and so I didn’t bother, and indeed had no issues with space. As with my trip to Dublin, I only took carry-on luggage with me.
If you want a meal on the flight, you have to pre-order it when checking in online. It is, of course, extortionately expensive for what it is, but the food was fine and rather welcome considering my early start. If you don’t pre-order food, the cabin crew may be able to offer any food that is left over after the pre-orders have been given out.
On more than one occasion, staff wished me a good holiday. I didn’t have the heart to tell them I was travelling for work.
Flying with KLM
My flights back were with KLM, the Dutch flag carrier, and so this meant a connection at Amsterdam. I honestly expected more from KLM – after all, Jet2 is a budget airline and so I didn’t expect any niceties like in-flight entertainment or Wi-Fi. But I didn’t have those with KLM either, and both planes were also a bit shabbier and care-warn than Jet2’s plane. They were all variants of Boeing 737 planes, if you’re interested.
KLM did include a ‘snack’ on each flight though. From Athens to Amsterdam, we were all offered a Beemster cheese sandwich with a honey and mustard dressing, which was actually quite nice, and a small piece of cake. Drinks were also offered. Meanwhile, for the much shorter flight from Amsterdam to Manchester, we just got a packet of Mini Cheddars and a more limited range of drinks.
My flight back to Manchester also appeared to be a late aircraft swap. When I checked in at the gate, I was given a new boarding pass with a different seat number, having been moved from row 29 to row 22. Indeed, there was no row 29 on this plane. Amsterdam Schiphol Airport is KLM’s hub, and so they must’ve decided to swap the planes as the flight was under-booked.
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
After Dubai, Schiphol is the second busiest airport that I’ve been to. My brief layover there on Tuesday is, to date, the only time I have been in the Netherlands, and I don’t think it really counts as I spent my entire time ‘airside’. Unlike other big airports, Schiphol has just one massive terminal, arranged in a horseshoe shape. Thankfully, my arrival and departure gates were relatively close to each other and so I didn’t have to walk too far. Like in Athens, there were lots of food and shopping brands familiar to Brits. Although, unlike 5am in Manchester, by the time I got to Amsterdam at close to 9pm local time, many of the places to eat were closed. I ended up spending €10 on a WHSmith meal deal for some sustenance.
Getting home
I think some colleagues at the summit were a little concerned that my journey home to Sowerby Bridge consisted of two flights and then three trains. As it was, both flights were only delayed very slightly, and all my trains were on time – a relief as I had to change at both Manchester Oxford Road and Victoria, and the connections were both around five minutes. Not only that, but my train from Victoria to Sowerby Bridge was the last train of the night, so I was very relieved to make that connection.
Whilst this wasn’t my first visit to Greece – I went to the Greek island of Crete when I was three, but don’t remember much about it – this was my first time in the Greek capital. As per previous trips to Paris and Dublin, here are some assorted notes about my time in Athens.
Athens Airport
My flights were to and from Athens International Airport “Eleftherios Venizelos”, which was opened in 2001 in readiness for Athens to host the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games. As such, it’s relatively modern, but it’s clear that passenger numbers have grown since it was opened. We were bussed between the plane and terminal both times, as there’s not enough airbridges to allow direct boarding. On arrival, we had to sit on the tarmac for a while to get a parking space and again to wait for the buses to arrive – the pilot commented that it was like they weren’t expecting us.
Inside the terminal, I was a little surprised at just how many British/global brands were there – the shops were all WHSmith, and there was a Burger King and Pret a Manger. It turns out they’re all operated by SSP, a British multinational which runs many franchised outlets in airports and railway stations. There were plenty of Greek options though too. Oh, and lots of adverts, in English, for Lidl, advising people that they can still use the Lidl Plus app in Greece.
Whilst our departure was from the main terminal, when I first arrived we were bussed to the satellite terminal. There followed a ten minute underground walk to the main terminal. According to Wikipedia, the airport was built with room to expand, and it looks like it needs it. It has two runways, either side of the A6 motorway, and on the return flight the plane taxied over the motorway to take off. Hopefully they will open another satellite terminal soon, and consider some kind of people mover to get people around more quickly.
The city of Athens
We arrived in Athens on a Sunday, and then Monday was Whit Monday, which in Greece is celebrated as the ‘Day of the Holy Spirit’ and is therefore a public holiday. As such, the city seemed rather closed up and deserted until Tuesday, which for me was just a half day. However, lots of shops seemed to be open late on Monday night, presumably because it’s cooler.
Athens also has a graffiti problem – much more so than Paris which I thought was bad. There were also more buildings in a state of disrepair, with some older buildings looking like they’d had scaffolding around them for years. However, this certainly wasn’t the majority and not reflective of the whole city.
Transport
In terms of transport, Athens has a variety of modes on offer. There’s an underground metro, trams, and trolleybuses, as well as the usual buses – some of which are zero-emission battery electric buses. As befits an ancient city, lots of the streets are quite narrow and there are one-way systems in lieu of dual carriageways in places. Coming from Bradford, which was the last UK city to get rid of its trolleybuses in 1972, it was good to see them still in use in Greece. After all, Greece is not short of sunlight for solar power, and I saw plenty of solar panels whilst there.
I was provided taxi transport to and from the airport, which took around half an hour, but the metro and suburban rail services also connect to the airport, using overhead electrified lines. That being said, I only saw a couple of trains in each direction – the railway is in the central reservation of the motorway links to the airport. Had I needed to take the metro, I would have been able to get very close to my hotel without any changes.
Speaking of motorways, these seemed relatively new and were tolled. Our driver had a toll tag, similar to the one we use when in France. Some of the motorways were quite twisty, with sharper bends that I would expect to see in the UK, but I suspect that this is due to the terrain – we also went through several tunnels.
Almost all signage that I saw was in both Greek and English.
My hotel
I stayed at the NYX Esperia Palace Hotel, which is part of the Leonardo Hotels group. It’s quite new, and way outside my normal budget for a hotel. There are two swimming pools – one in the basement, and a smaller one on the roof. The restaurant is also up on the roof, with a view of the Acropolis – I really enjoyed being able to sit outside at breakfast time with a stunning view across the city.
As a smart home geek, I was particularly drawn to the controls in the rooms. There were several human presence sensors to turn on the lights automatically, and several touchscreen panels to control the lights, air conditioning and even open and close the curtains. For coffee making, there was a Nespresso machine in the room – indeed, it appears that pod coffee machines are really popular in Greece based on my experience.
The hotel was also just on the next block over from LanguageCert’s headquarters. The Wi-Fi was free and worked well.
Mobile phones
I bought a 1 GB eSIM before setting off for £4 on Airalo, rather than relying on roaming. Greece has three main networks:
Vodafone, which Brits will be familiar with. Indeed, at Athens airport, there was a vending machine selling Vodafone SIM cards which was clearly aimed at Brits.
Cosmote, which is the state operator but is majority owned by Deutsche Telekom. As such, there’s a lot of T-Mobile co-branding. Brits may be surprised to see T-Mobile still in existence as in the UK it merged with Orange, became EE and was then bought by BT.
Nova, which is what both my UK SIM on 3 connected to, and the network used by my Meraki Mobile eSIM from Airalo.
Across Athens, 5G internet was widely available. Indeed, it may be that Nova has already turned off its 3G network (as all but O2 in the UK have already done) as when I couldn’t get a 5G or 4G signal, it dropped down to EDGE.
I realised after reviewing this that it sounds like I’m surprised that Greece has similar level of connectivity to the UK, as if my perception is that Greece is somehow less developed than the UK. This was not my intention – I think as someone who would feel very isolated without internet access, I was reassuring myself that I would have good access to services whilst travelling.
Food
The food we had during our stay was nothing short of excellent. Christine and I are both foodies and we cook a lot of Persian food at home, of which Greek food has some similarities. The organisers of the summit took us to a couple of excellent Greek restaurants for our evening meals – again, both with a view of the Acropolis. I ate very well whilst I was away.
If you play Pokemon Go, then there’s a Pokemon to catch which is exclusive to Greece and Egypt (and parts of Albania bordering Greece): Sigilyph. They’re not very common – it took me until the morning of my departure on Tuesday to track one down – but they often appeared on my radar. I later caught another at the airport whilst waiting for my flight.
I have one more blog post to follow, which will be another miscellaneous blog post about everything else that happened whilst I was away.
Renovated the entire downstairs, including a new kitchen in 2022
New central heating boiler and new radiators downstairs
Complete re-wiring downstairs
Removal of old gas fires and associated gas pipes
Opened up the cellar to use as a laundry room
Renovated our nine-year-old’s bedroom with new plaster, floorboards and furniture
Re-decorated the bathroom
Added solar panels and a battery
Despite this, the house is still a work in progress. Although we have redecorated the bathroom, and made some minor changes (new taps, new bath panel, replacement shower and shower screen), we’re planning on renovating it once money allows. In particular, at present we have a shower over the bath, but would prefer a separate shower cubicle. After that, there are also our bedroom and our spare bedroom that need renovating, and the landing. But we’ve done more than half of the house now and it’s much nicer for it.
This also means that I’ve had the same address for 10 years – my longest period of stability since moving out of my parents’ home in York, back in 2002. Another eight (and a bit) years, and this will have been the place that I have lived the longest. I’ve already spent more time living in Sowerby Bridge (15 years this November) than Bradford (8 years).
We originally took out a 25 year mortgage in 2015. However, we’ve re-mortgaged a couple of times, most recently in 2022 when we took out a five year fixed deal shortly before the Truss-Kwarteng Fiscal Collapse. And changes to our payments, plus our over-payments via Sprive, should mean that next summer will be the mid-point of our mortgage repayments. So we’ve got a way to go before we’re mortgage free.
The purpose of my recent visit to Athens was to attend a summit for staff working in admissions and English teaching in higher education, hosted by LanguageCert. LanguageCert offers tests in English, Spanish and Classical Greek for those wanting to prove their language proficiency for work, study or immigration.
I don’t tend to talk much about my day job on this blog, but as someone who works in international university admissions, I was already aware of LanguageCert. They offer a suite of tests, including an Academic test which is more focussed on the English skills needed for academic study at an English-speaking university. LanguageCert took over the running of the International ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) test from City & Guilds in 2015, and moved into online testing in 2019. Which, considering everything that happened in 2020, was a very wise move in hindsight.
Online testing
LanguageCert tests can be taken in a test centre – indeed, they’re one of only five providers offering a Secure English Language Test (SELT) approved by UK Visas and Immigration. But their tests are also available to be taken online at home, and it was good to hear more about the security and identity checks that they do for testers. I won’t go into too much detail, as I don’t want to share information given to me in confidence. Test takers have to download apps to their computers and mobile devices to verify their identity and to detect any cheating tools. We also got to see some examples of how they’ve been able to catch paid impersonators who have taken tests on peoples’ behalves. Their mobile app, ExamShield, can read the chips located in most modern passports, which can be compared with the printed details to avoid issues with fraudulent identity documents. The same app can also be used as a second webcam, typically positioned 135° from the primary webcam on the computer, to allow the proctor to see that the workspace is clear of any unauthorised materials. There’s more detail available here if you’re interested.
We also got to see behind the scenes, to see live exams being remotely proctored. They offer exams 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The AI elephant in the room
The topic of Artificial Intelligence came up several times during the summit, both in terms of opportunities and threats. AI, when used correctly, can assist humans with tasks – especially around fraud checks. But it can also be used for fraud, and this is something that LanguageCert are tackling. They have various tools and pre-test verification checks to detect deepfakes, where an impersonator will use live face-swapping technology to make themselves look like the person who was supposed to take the test. Their software is designed to lock down a computer, so, for example, it wouldn’t be possible to paste answers from ChatGPT into the writing section of a test.
Preventing fraud using AI is an ongoing arms race. LanguageCert’s software and platform is developed in-house – again, we got to see where their programmers work – and so they are well-placed to be agile in responding to new developments in the AI space.
The English testing market
LanguageCert is a relatively new entrant to the market for English testing. Most British universities steer people towards the IELTS test, which is run collaboratively between the University of Cambridge, IDP and the British Council. Meanwhile, TOEFL from ETS is usually preferred by American universities and Pearson PTE by Australian universities. Widening access to university education is something I feel passionately about, as I say peoples’ lives being changed every day by being able to undertake further study, and so having a wide range of accessible and affordable tests facilitates this.
Besides learning about LanguageCert’s products, and those from the wider PeopleCert group, the summit was also a good opportunity to network with colleagues from other universities. Several British universities besides my own were represented, but also universities from the US, Canada, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and Poland. It was good to speak to other professionals, especially during a turbulent time for higher education in the UK and US.
It was a very useful and well-organised summit, and I really appreciated LanguageCert extending an invite to my employer and for covering our travel costs.
