YWGAV

I’ve had my home security system for a few weeks now,   and let me just say – I still love it.  While I have had some minor issues with sensor placement, the company (FrontPoint) has been very good, thorough and fast about resolving the issues and helping me be sure I’m getting the best coverage [...]

Today is the long awaited release day for the iPhone 3G, as well as the day when MobileMe finally shows up and is accessible (while some were able to get to it yesterday, I was not amongst them). It’s also supposedly the release date for the iPhone 2.0 software update release, though an unofficial leaked version was available early yesterday. A few brave souls decided to take the plunge and install the unofficial version – I’m not that daring, especially with a major update like this. And of course, the much anticipated App Store is now officially online as well.

I wrote in my last post about the structured wiring I am having installed in my house to allow for my home network to properly function.   I was pretty stoked about it since it’d give me gigabit networking to all of the important parts of the house.  I wasn’t really looking forward to the COST [...]

When I first moved into my house (almost two months ago), I didn’t really plan on having a robust home network – and certainly had no plans on doing any network wiring. I planned on having my home office machines wired to an airport extreme base station, and the remainder of my gear using the airport’s wireless capabilities. That initial concept failed to take into account on very important thing: my servers.

Evernote – providing a convenient place to store all the stuff you want to remember, using almost any device.

Hey everyone – nothing new to really write about technology wise, but I did want to ask for your comments and thoughts. 
I’m in the process of preparing to build my home office – and I’m trying to think of “tech” oriented things to include in the design.  Since this is my first go at building [...]

Earlier in the week I mentioned I had a project cooking that I thought was pretty cool. Last night, after I received the last piece of hardware I needed to make it work, I got it all set up and working. This didn’t involve much heavy lifting (none, actually) as I had already done the difficult parts when I set up a proof of concept to show Ann ( my girlfriend, for those who don’t know).

I’ve had it set up for a while such that, when I wake up in the morning I press a button on a keypad (mounted in wall) in my room and my room light comes up slowly – so as to be easy on the eyes – and the bathroom vanity lights turn on. The vent fan is then set on a 5 minute timer to turn on about the time my shower really starts producing steam – and turns itself off after about 15 minutes, ensuring it got all the steam. I press the same button on my way out my bedroom door and the bathroom light shuts off, as does my bedroom light.

Pretty cool way to do things – one button controls everything. It just got cooler.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the home automation gear I’ve been installing in my house,  specifically mentioning the Venstar T1700 thermostat I bought.  At the time I initially tried to simply replace my existing thermostat with the Venstar, but found I was lacking a very important piece – the common wire.   Not [...]

Last night I wrote how I was disappointed that my home security system’s X10 controls weren’t robust enough to allow me to trigger lights and other actions off of output from the various security sensors in my home.   For instance, having lights turn on near a particular door when it opens.  I did a [...]

So last night I was able to get some neat stuff going to integrate my alarm system (provided by an awesome company called FrontPoint Security – check them out if you’re looking for an alarm system) using it’s native X10 signaling and my home control server’s ability to understand it.

Tonight I wanted to play around with it to see what all the X10 commands are it sent out – primarily to see if what I would LIKE to do is possible (it’s not, yet).