Home Automation – Graves On SOHO Technology

Google TV Streamer: A Streaming Media Upgrade

Last month we observed the one-year anniversary of our forced migration away from our decades long love affair with Tivo DVRs. That transition, forced by Xfinity, also inspired our migration to AT&T Fiber. We will never again spend a dollar with Comcast or their kin.

No, we’re not bitter. Not in the least!

We have also had a couple of Tivo Stream 4K Android TV devices for several years. These initially overcame the fact that the Tivo DVRs had limited access to online streaming services. And the experience of using streaming services on aged Tivo hardware was less than enthralling.

Over the past six months the Tivo Stream 4K that we use most often has exhibited a problem. It would lose its connection to the handheld remote control. At first, it appeared that the remote was going through batteries very quickly. When the batteries failed the Bluetooth connected remote would drop the pairing to the Tivo Stream 4K. I’d put in a new set of batteries, and repair the remote. Mostly that got things back to working.

Extreme Power Over Ethernet

If you’ve been reading hereabouts for some time, you likely know that I am an advocate for power-over-ethernet. In it’s earliest days, almost twenty (!) years ago, I started blogging in order to share my experience combining working from a home office full-time, leveraging broadband-over-DSL and IP telephones.

SIP/IP telephones and Wi-Fi access points are natural gateways into P.O.E. That’s certainly how I got started. At first, I used POE insertors. As the number of POE-capable devices mounted, I migrated to Ubiquiti Unifi POE switches.

Smart thermostat goes offline: Not Cool

“I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.” – HAL 9000

Back in 2021, we had an American Standard Platinum 18 air conditioner installed, with the accompanying Nexia 850 smart thermostat. We can control the thermostat locally, via their mobile app, via Home Assistant or its mobile app.

Early in the evening of November 24th I reached for my phone. I wanted to adjust the thermostat. On this particular occasion, the American Standard app on my phone reported a connectivity failure.

Rewiring the Network Core: Part 2 – Beats, Wi-Fi & Brittle Cables

As was mentioned previously, I’ve been upgrading the network installation in the central hall of our home. The new vertical rack cabinet is now installed.

The paint job is a little splotchy. A contractor we had working for us the other day commented on the “neat cloud effect” I had achieved. I had to admit it wasn’t intentional, but it’ll do for now. It’s mostly hidden from view. At least the color is a good match for the wall.

Vertical Rack

As you can see, power is still being supplied by way of a pigtail out the bottom to a nearby outlet. That’s temporary. It will be replaced by a wire fished through the wall.

You can also see the holes in the floor where network cabled once passed from under the house. I need to get wooden plugs to fill those holes. The cables now run into the wall, onward to the patch bay in the cabinet.

Holidays Lights 2023: How Much Power?

December 3, 2023
Michael Graves
Home, Home Automation

As I’ve noted many times recently, instrumentation is addictive. Or perhaps it’s just my latest affectation? As I went about putting up our usual outdoor holiday lights, it occurred to me that I should change up how they are powered. In so doing, I’d collect some data on how much power is used by the festive presentation.

Holiday Lights 2023

The lighting design is the same one we’ve used for years. Its has a 5-pointed wooden star mounted to the top of the porch, with a cascade of mini-lights falling from the base of the star to the fence line. It was inspired by the fact that, long ago, Stella’s father had a 5-pointed metal star that he put atop their homestead in Thorndale, TX.

Flume Water Monitoring: One Year Later

It just so happens that it’s almost exactly one year since I published the post on the installation of the Flume water meter. Since then, it has continued to help us save water and money. Sometimes in unexpected ways.

At the point of initial installation I found that I had to locate the Flume base station in our living room. I had to move it to the point in the house that was nearest to the Flume sensor, which is in the water meter housing, out on the boulevard.

This is likely because we have bronze metal mesh in our window screens. They tend to block wireless signals. This is also why I installed a supplemental Wi-Fi access point in the attic above the front porch.

Frozen

Over the holiday season of winter 2022 we suffered a couple of very hard freezes. During one of these freezes a fitting under the back of our house cracked. It’s where a metal pipe connects to PVC just before it goes underground to the garage. That metal/PVC interface fitting split. Not entirely unexpected given the different thermal expansion/contraction of metal vs plastic.

When the temperature finally started to rise, and water once again flowed, the Flume system alerted me to the rather dramatic leak resulting from the broken fitting. It’s not like I would have missed it in any case, since water was literally spraying aloud under the back of the house.