2021 Home Security/Home Automation Re-Design [ Part 1 of 3 ] I’ve been an ADT customer for almost 20 years. When we moved to Florida in 2001, our house already had a hard-wired alarm system put in by the previous owners so subscribing to ADT’s monitoring service was one of the first “utilities” we set …
It was finally time to move my daughter back to college in Ohio, which meant a family road trip during COVID-19 times. Considering we hadn’t really been more than 15 miles from the house for the past 6 months, going on a 2,000 mile roundtrip drive across 5 states during a global pandemic was a slightly daunting.
We purchased our first “robotic” vacuum cleaner back in 2005 (the Roomba Red) and since then we’ve owned two more, the last being the 589 Core (which was a warranty replacement for our 530 in February 2014). I had replaced the battery a few times already in the 589, so when it stopped holding a …
Like a lot of other people in the world right now, I just finished my first week of working from home due to COVID-19. I’m a little luckier than most in that I’ve already had a lot of experience working from home, and my job as a systems administrator lends itself to working remotely easily. …
During our recent cruise to Hawaii, my three and a half year-old Canon PowerShot SX710 HS started having lens issues. Just what I needed in the middle of a 10-day trip to the most exotic location in the United States: a super-zoom camera that wouldn’t zoom. The lens would make a clicking noise as it …
Didn’t have to reach too far for that title! 🙂 Time for the spring sports update! After a record-setting season (winning 62 games and the President’s Trophy for the first time in franchise history), the Lightning imploded and got swept out of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in embarrassing fashion by the …
It’s both. This week Microsoft released the first preview build of their Chromium-based Edge browser as part of the Edge Insider Program. Can you see a difference between Edge and Chrome? Visually similar, you can currently tell, based on the iconography, that the new Edge is on top and current Chrome is on the bottom. …
Earlier this month while visiting my in-laws I helped my father-in-law connect his Rainbird ESP-Me sprinkler controller to his wireless network and then showed him how to use the mobile app on his Android phone. After doing this I realized: I’m the techie/networking/home automation/IoT guy in the family … why haven’t I installed an internet-enabled sprinkler controller …
This past weekend involved another road trip (July has been a busy travel month for us!). My wife and daughter flew out to Houston on Thursday to kick off another week-long college visit road trip that will take them from Texas to Ohio. Friday evening, after work, I flew to meet them in Dallas. It …
Over Christmas vacation I had a network outage that left me without remote access to my home network for a week. While I was at my in-laws, unable to connect to my server or cameras, I started researching options for out-of-band management of my home network. I started with cellular devices like this, but they all …