Looking for a deal or to save money on adding a home security camera system? Home security is often the #1 goal for a smart home retro-fit or upgrade. There are a huge number of IP security cameras available for sale and the differences between the products can be confusing. With hundreds of brands and models, it can be hard to choose. My “secrets” to saving money when buying security cameras: There are only a few actual manufacturers of the image sensors and video chips and most of the cameras all use the same chip. So you won’t find a big difference in video quality between a lot of the products. If you aren’t stuck on brand names, you can save a lot of money. Brands spend money on advertising and promotion and pass along those costs to you as higher prices. “No name” products can be a lot cheaper because they don’t spend on advertising and PR. The biggest difference is usually in the software (the web interface, the smartphone app, & the cloud services). Since the software only works with a specific brand of camera, you can usually download the app for free before you buy the camera. (Some features won’t work, but you can get a good idea of the overall quality this way very quickly). The real cost isn’t the purchase price - it is the on-going monthly fees for “cloud storage” of the video footage. Shop around and pay close attention to the details. The smaller/unknown brands often have free or low-cost monthly charges. Costs also depend upon how many …
(Almost Free) Voice Remote
The Amazon Echo Dot is a general purpose “personal assistant” that listens to your voice and can provide information on the weather, news, sports, and many other kinds of information with add-on apps called “skills”. A huge feature of the Dot (and all the Amazon Echo devices) is that with the appropriate add-on hardware from other companies it can control lights, door locks, security cameras, thermostats, and many other smart home devices with just your voice. (It is really awesome and I encourage everyone to actually try it out in person.) The most popular products in the Amazon Echo family are the Echo (the tall cylinder) and the Dot (the small hockey puck). The Dot is very affordable (retail price is $49), but the bigger difference is that although the Dot only has a tiny internal speaker (not so great for playing music), it has an AUX output stereo cable and can be plugged into your media center or family room full-blown stereo receiver / surround-sound setup for high-quality music. The Dot is great for voice-controlled home automation because the internal speaker is just right for feedback to confirm your control commands. When you say, “Alexa, turn on the bedroom lights” the Dot can reply by saying “Ok” letting you know it heard the command was able to comply. This is so convenient that many of my clients have purchased multiple Dots and sprinkled them throughout their home in different rooms and locations. Anywhere they walk around they are within “voice …
Is It Worth It?
As a smart home system designer & installer, I enjoy helping my clients solve problems by automating their homes and implementing new and useful devices and systems. My clients rely on my knowledge and advice and their positive feedback encourages me to continue learning, researching, and problem solving. But sometimes I meet prospective new clients and they aren’t sure about upgrading to a smart home - they want to be “sold” on the concept and benefits. Is it worth it? Why should I spend the money? How much is this going to cost? Realtors opinions vary and depend upon the dynamics of the local housing market and geography where they work. In conservative parts of the country, they don’t understand smart homes and actually advise their clients selling their house to remove all the smart home gadgets if they want to keep them because it won’t result in a higher selling price. (So if you want to take that Nest thermostat with you when you sell, remove it before you start listing your house.) Fortunately, in many real estate markets (both here in the US and Internationally), having a smart home increases the resale value. The new buyer appreciates that everything is already installed and working. In addition to saving a lot of time and money, it is much easier to see the benefit when it is already in place. The biggest appeal right now is for millennials buying their first home or condominium. Some of the biggest national home builders are now including smart home …
Down to the Wire
Home Automation requires a solid home network foundation to work properly. There are a range of conflicting hardware technologies and software systems used by today’s smart home products. When reading product descriptions or specifications on retail boxes or websites, you’ll come across many different buzzwords and acronyms, some or all of which may be unknown. At the risk of boring or confusing you, some of the hardware terms you may see include Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, BLE (bluetooth low energy), Zigbee, Z-Wave, or RF (radio frequency). Software terms include TCP/IP, UDP, HomeKit, API (application program interface), Skills, & Thread. I won’t even try to explain all of these and you shouldn’t have to learn them either. The important thing is that sooner or later, all smart home devices must be interconnected to your home network. As the foundational backbone for your home automation system, it is very important to have a stable and reliable home network. If your network doesn’t work, then none of the devices connected to it have a chance of behaving properly. A network within a home or office operating over short distances is called a local area network, or LAN. Ethernet is the most common hardware used for LANs so you won’t find any competing technologies to worry about. Ethernet runs over telephone-style wiring commonly called twisted-pair cabling and the ends of the wires have modular telephone-like jacks called RJ-45 (they are just a little …
Turn your Amazon Echo into a DIY home intercom system
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 …