Update: "Never mind". As of this week (June 26, 2017) Amazon has pushed out software updates for all Amazon Echo products that allows direct room-to-room calling. Now by giving each of your Amazon Echo devices their own name (e.g. Office, Bedroom, Kitchen, etc.) you can use them as room-to-room intercoms by simplying issuing the command "Alexa, call kitchen". I am very pleased to see Amazon add this capability so quickly and make it very simple to use. My originl workaround suggestion: The new Alexa Calling & Messaging service turns every Amazon Echo and Amazon Dot into a voice telephone. The free service allows you to make telephone-like voice calls from your Alexa device to any other Alexa device in the world free of charge. There is no monthly fee, no per-minute fee, and no per-all fee. You can also use the just-updated Amazon Alexa app on your smartphone to do the same thing. Of course, this a walled-garden system - every person you wish to call must also own an Amazon Echo device or be using the Amazon Alexa app on their smartphone. This has very interesting possibilities and when the video-enabled Amazon Show device starts shipping at the end of June, video calls will also be possible. For me, there aren’t a lot of people I know with Amazon devices that I would want to reach this way. A regular phone call, text message, or email would be fine. However, since I do have multiple Amazon devices in my home (two Amazon Echos and five Amazon Dots), I though …
It’s Time to Pull the Plug on your Smart Home
Whether you are a do-it-yourself (DIY) enthusiast, or hire a professional to retrofit your home with the new crop of intelligent devices, it is worthwhile to have a basic understanding of how home control and home automation works. Follow my advice, and you’ll want to disconnect (“pull the plug”) on your home Internet connection, as least temporarily. One of the biggest sources of confusion is the requirement, or lack thereof, for Internet connectivity. Unfortunately, the industry has adopted the acronym IoT, or Internet-of-Things to represent many different types of connected devices ranging from simple household gadgets to turn a light on or off from your iPhone to multimillion dollar jet engines with thousands of sensors monitoring millions of data points every second. Hyping one acronym and stretching it to cover everything so any new device that is IoT-related gets PR buzz, website clicks, and attention? I could live with that if the word “Internet” was not included. Unfortunately, there is a huge difference between simply being connected and being Internet connected. With the huge growth of smartphones and devices like the iPhone and iPad we have become accustomed to treating Internet and general connectivity interchangeably, but they are not the same. Before we had the Internet, we had local and wide area networks and a variety of connectivity hardware and software available providing useful, and crucial functions. (Back when I worked on PC’s and LANs, and …
Fix Plex Movie Viewing Problems
Can't watch your Plex movies while away from home? Here's a quick fix! Are you enjoying the holidays away from home and getting frustrated trying to use Plex to watch a movie on your home server? There could be lots of reasons why that movie keeps buffering, stops for no reason, or simply won't play at all. With a couchful of friends and relatives, now is probably not the time to start a serious troubleshooting session. If you have remote access to your home system (via TeamViewer, Screens, Back to My Mac, or some other mechanism), then here is a "quick fix" that might help. Step 1: Get your hands on a PC or Mac computer. You probably brought your laptap, but if you didn't, hopefully there is a computer you can use temporarily. Step 2: Using remote access to your home system, download the media files to the computer you are using. (Various techniques to do this, most remote access programs have a built-in file transfer command or your can copy the file to a cloud service and then copy it down to your computer.) Step 3: Log in to the Plex.tv website, download the Plex server (not the client), and install it on your computer. Setting up Plex is really easy; just accept all the defaults and create one media folder/library that points to the files you downloaded in Step 2. Now you can view the media locally on this computer, or stream locally to other devices at your location - laptops, Roku, Apple TV, etc. without any broadband, Internet, or bandwidth worries. …
Wi-Fi Secrets: Configuring dual band routers
Dual band Wi-Fi is complicated, but with a little insight into how things work, you can optimize your home Wi-Fi network without being a rocket scientist. Wi-Fi bands have nothing to do with your ISP, even if your ISP rents or sold you the router/modem/wifi device you are using. 5 GHz band is not always better than 2.4 GHz. Radio waves are subject to interference which varies according to frequency, "width", physical construction (walls, concrete, metal), and the overlap of other Wi-Fi networks other than yours, in the same radio space. (Neighbors in close-packed houses or apartments, condos, buildings, etc.) A high-speed 5 GHz connection with a lot of interference will be slower and less throughput than a 2.4 GHz strong signal. In general, 5 GHz is faster, but travels shorter distance and has poor penetration of walls and other physical barriers. 2.4 GHz is slower, but travels longer distance and penetrates walls better. You have two options in setting up Wi-Fi routers - manually create two (or more) different networks for each band by giving unique SSID's or setting up one SSID that handles all bands. Usually the default config from an ISP will setup different SSIDs using something like "YourRouterID" and "YourRouterID-5G" for example. When using a single SSID for all bands, the way a device (computer, phone, network-connected gadget) determines which band to use involved a complex series of decisions that are made in co-operation with the router. It depends …