Networking – Modern Anachronist

Free D Printer.

I was gifted a 3D printer by a buddy who upgraded his. This weekend I finally got around to trying it out.

Robo E3 printer. Free to ~~not so~~ good home. *Please ignore the luffa drying behind the printer.

It is Finished

Finally, six months behind schedule, my living room wall is finished.

Cleaning up the (music) library

We are an unapologetic Apple house. Phones, tablets, computers, even an AppleTV in the family room. When you use Apple products in the manner which they are designed they really do just work.

That being said, when you start to do things that the folks in Cupertino hadn’t planned on, it gets challenging. This is also probably true for Windows environments, but Mac users are really accustomed to things that just work.

Happy New Year. Happy New Network.

Lots of curse words and money thrown about unexpectedly.

It seems that my wireless router had reached its effective end of life, or at least the end of my fault tolerance.

Whenever my wife and I watched television, the router would go for about five – ten minutes and then require a reboot. This didn’t happen to the kids. It may be because our shows are high def, and theirs are cartoons. It is about six years old and doesn’t support all the latest protocols, so I decided to upgrade.

Smart home platforms & protocols

When you finally start looking at home automation, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of technology, platforms, protocols, and marketing hype. The goal is to make sure that you spend money on equipment that will work together and continue to be supported in the future.

As of January 2021, there are three major platforms – Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit. There are probably hundreds of manufacturers who support some combination of these platforms. Personally, I use HomeKit with equipment from probably a dozen manufacturers.

Adding smarts to an old house

This summer, as I invoked Siri to light up the dinner table on the patio, my father-in-law’s girlfriend said, “You have a smart house?”

I’ve never really thought about it, but I suppose I do. I’ve got lights that are tied to sunset & sunrise. I’ve got lights that turn on if the wife or I come home after dark. I can control the HVAC system from anywhere in the world.

It’s not something that I consciously set out to do, it just slowly happened over a course of several years. In this post I’ll describe some of the lessons about “smart homes” that I’ve learned the hard way over the years.

Network cabinet

Or, What to do with that stupid cabinet above the fridge.