reviews – chmod 644

Matter matters: implementing yet-another smart home standard

July 20, 2026 at 6:00pm by windracer

I’ve worked with a lot of different technologies and vendor ecosystems since I first started tinkering with home automation in 2011. It started with Z-Wave devices and ADT Pulse but expanded to include Google Nest, Amazon Alexa, HomeSeer, Homebridge, and Ring, with additional forays into things like HomeAssistant and Node-Red, plus a proliferation of new Z-Wave Plus and WiFi devices (I’ve never dabbled with Zigbee though).

My current system is built around HomeSeer on a HomeTroller Pi with an 800 Series Z-Wave hat, so adding new Z-Wave devices is easy. Devices that use WiFi, however, typically require using the vendor’s specific app, like Tuya, Kasa, or SmartLife, and then I have to use an additional plug-in for HomeSeer in order to be able to control them there. It gets complicated.

Matter is a new communications standard for smart home devices hoping to simplify that complicated sprawl. A Matter-enabled device will work with any Matter-enabled hub, can connect to multiple hubs at the same time, and most major vendors (like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.) are adding Matter support to their devices.

Ring Battery Doorbell

July 18, 2026 at 5:26pm by windracer

It’s funny that I’ve been using Ring products since 2021 when I put in the alarm system (and then moved to all Ring cameras in 2025) but still did not have Ring’s original product: the doorbell.

I guess timing is everything … during Amazon’s Prime Days event last month I noticed our everyday normal doorbell was coming out of the wall (bad grip into some crumbling cement for the lower screw) and the light had burned out. It still worked but since Amazon had their 2nd generation Ring Battery Doorbell on sale for $50, well …

Smart Tint switchable film

April 12, 2026 at 6:04pm by windracer

We recently completed a (year long!) construction project in the front room of our house replacing three individual double-hung impact windows with a large picture window surrounded by two casement windows (all impact, of course). This isn’t a post about the construction though (well, maybe a little) but about the cool tech we’re using on our new giant window.

Lightspeed internet: making the switch to Frontier Fiber

February 26, 2026 at 8:52pm by windracer

I’ve been a RoadRunner/Brighthouse/Spectrum cable internet customer since I moved to Florida back in 2001. In 2004, I commented about Verizon FIOS possibly coming into my area but in 2013 I was still waiting. Thirteen years later, Frontier finally laid fiber in my neighborhood late last year and started offering internet service starting at $30/mo for 500Mbps. My Spectrum service was costing me $115/mo for 600Mbps so it was a no-brainer to upgrade to 1 gig fiber service at $50/mo.

Tablo TV OTA DVR

October 26, 2025 at 9:16pm by windracer

I’ve had a hate-hate relationship with the regional sports networks (RSNs). Before cutting the cord on my Spectrum cable, I could watch the Rays and Lightning on Fox Sports Florida, and that continued for a while after I dropped Spectrum (and TiVo) for YouTube TV in 2020. Fox Sports then became Bally Sports in 2021 and then in 2023 YouTube TV dropped the RSNs completely (which made it hard to watch my local sports without cable). In 2024, Bally Sports became the FanDuel Sports Network and I ended up buying a separate streaming subscription so I could watch my local hockey and baseball teams for last season. Now in 2025, the Lightning announced a partnership with Scripps Sports that moved the hockey games off of FanDuel to local broadcast (on Channel 66 – The Spot) and streaming (which does not include YouTube TV, just DirectTV and Fubo). Argh! Since I still don’t want to go back to cable (although this was almost the straw that broke that particular camel’s back), my only option was, amazingly, trying OTA broadcast television.

TabloTV I haven’t watched TV over an antenna since I was a kid in the 80s … my parents never got cable, we were strictly a local channels household. In this modern age of multiple TVs, wireless streaming/casting, and mobile devices, I couldn’t imagine hooking up an antenna to a single television, so I started looking at options and came across the Tablo TV DVR for OTA (which ironically is also owned by Scripps, the same company now broadcasting my Lightning games). After doing some more research, reading some reviews (like this one), and planning the setup, I purchased a 4th generation, 2-tuner/128gb model on Amazon for $70, along with the Channel Master Omni+ 50 antenna for another $70.

Surface Laptop 6 for Business

June 6, 2025 at 12:16pm by windracer

I’ve used a lot of Microsoft Surface devices going all the way back to the original Surface RT and Surface Pro in 2012; then the Surface Pro 3 (2015) and Surface Pro 4 (2016); and finally the Surface Laptop (2018) and Surface Laptop 2 (2019).

I was given a Surface Pro 6 when I started my (then) new job in December 2019 and it had been my day-to-day primary machine for work ever since. There was nothing really wrong with it (other than the occasional Defender full virus scan that would cause high CPU usage), but it was time (from the asset and device management perspectives) to get it replaced so my new daily work driver is now the Surface Laptop 6 for Business.

Ring camera conversion, completed!

March 11, 2025 at 6:45pm by windracer

I started my switchover from Google Nest cameras to Ring back in May 2023, replacing my indoor Dropcams with battery-powered Ring Stick-Up Cams. At the time, I kept my Nest Outdoor cameras because Ring did not have a constant recording option, but fast forward to 2025 and Ring has finally added 24/7 recording to certain plugged-in and hardwired cameras as part of their new Ring Premium plan (for $200/year). I was losing my grandfathered $10/month Ring Protect plan in March and last year Google raised the annual price of Nest Aware Plus to $150, so it was time to upgrade some hardware and consolidate. I didn’t end up saving money (~~professional monitoring is now an additional $10/month on top of Premium~~ this is now included as of January 2026), but I did gain some convenience of finally being able to ditch Nest and manage all of my cameras in a single place (plus additional automation capabilities, but more on that later).

Is it time for a new DMS? (three months later)

February 12, 2025 at 9:06pm by windracer

It’s been three months since I switched from my Paperport-based electronic scanning/filing system to a combination of NAPS2, PDFgear, and paperless. So how’s it going? It took me a little while to get used to using three separate applications instead of one, but now I actually like that I’ve decoupled all the various functions into separate pieces of software that I can swap out and replace easily (if needed).

Is it time for a new DMS?

November 3, 2024 at 9:08pm by windracer

I’ve been using PaperPort Professional as my document management system (DMS) since I first started scanning documents (instead of keeping a file cabinet full of paper) back in 1999. Over those past 25 (!!) years I’ve used multiple versions, gone through multiple ownership changes, and dealt with technical issues, but I’ve stuck with it. The “current” version, 14.7, was released in 2019, but that was really just a minor facelift to add the Kofax branding to v14.5 which was released in 2015 (and since then Kofax has been renamed to Tungsten Automation). That’s right, the latest major release of this software is almost 10 years old.

It’s odd that a technophile like myself wouldn’t have looked for something newer and shiny by now but PaperPort still works and I’ve built my document storage and archive folder organization around it for (it’s weird saying it this way) a quarter of a century. But the end of 2024 is approaching and traditionally over the holiday break I’ve done some sort of tech project (this past year was switching registrars, the year before that was leaving LastPass for Vaultwarden). Doing a little planning ahead, I’m thinking maybe it’s time for a DMS switch.