Wall-Mounted Home Control Center

I kicked off my latest series of posts with a rather benign one about the genius of paper tabs on outlet covers, but am excited to start sharing the details of my latest round of home improvements. (Some who have visited my place in the last couple months would call it “demolition” given the amount of drywall dust everywhere). I’ve talked about another home command center I’ve built in the kitchen with an iPad (replacing an old intercom system), and have wall-mounted a photo frame using the same intercom system low-voltage power lines. But today’s post is about something bigger and more prominent: a giant touch-screen command center in the front foyer of the house using my custom web-based home automation app, IntelliHome.

For this project, I had a wall facing the front door with a closet right behind it. My challenge was to provide a touch-screen interface to IntelliHome when you walk in the front door, but there was no power outlet available for the screen and I wasn’t sure exactly which look I was going for (small iPad interface or big wall-mounted monitor). The solution to the first problem was to install an electric outlet high in the closet on the other side of the wall, tapping into the light switch on the front of the wall. Of course, I used an Insteon OutletLinc for this because a) why not install an outlet you can control remotely, and b) I wanted to be able to power down the screen at specific times to save power.

My screen choice was more complicated than I expected. First of all, huge props to Amazon for their liberal return policy; I went through three monitors before deciding on a setup. The initial idea was to get a touch-screen monitor with Android already built in, since all I would need was a web browser to access IntelliHome. I started with this somewhat awesome-looking ViewSonic 22-Inch “Smart Display”, but it was horribly under-performant for even the basic web stuff I wanted. After returning that, I got the 24-inch All-in-one with a faster CPU, but even that one lagged a bit and I wasn’t happy with the responsiveness. Fortunately, I had a spare first-generation Microsoft Surface Tablet lying around, so I decided to put it to use – not for the screen but for the computing power. The MS Surface sits on a shelf in the closet, and I ended up with this HP Pavilion 23-inch Touchscreen Monitor mounted on the wall with a common VESA bracket, plugged into an Insteon OutletLinc and connected with an HDMI Cable and USB cable (for the touch screen) through the wall:

Read more ›

Posted by Matt Chiste

December 5

Tagged with: 2473SWH, drywall, intellihome, lcd, outletlinc, touch screen
Posted in Home Improvement, Media

Use a free Amazon Prime trial to get free shipping this holiday season

Judging by the sound track at my local mall, the holiday season is upon us. This Thanksgiving I wanted to thank everyone for making this blog a success, and for all the interesting people I’ve met and ideas I’ve collaborated on in the past year and a half.

As you likely know, I support hosting costs for this blog with an Amazon Affiliate account. I’ve mentioned Amazon’s Home Automation Department, and been thrilled with a great experience I had with them when dealing with a lost package.

If you would like to support this blog, all you have to do is follow one of the links to Amazon on this site and make a purchase. One other thing you can do is sign up for an Amazon Prime account. Even if you don’t do that much shopping on Amazon and don’t think it’s worth $99/year, in this holiday season it’s likely that you’ll be doing at least some shopping on Amazon, so you could sign up for a no-obligation free trial during the next month, and still get access to the free 2-day shipping. There are a ton of other advantages, like access to their media streaming services, so if you’ve looked into it in the past but decided to pass, it might be worth another look now.

Either way, Happy Thanksgiving, and I look forward to hearing from you with your questions and suggestions in the future!

Posted by Matt Chiste

November 27

Tagged with: amazon, prime
Posted in Other

Upgrade your ISY994i firmware to 4.2.18 for more secure connections

The Universal Devices ISY994i has long had the ability to use secure connections for access, and wasn’t even vulnerable to a major, recently discovered security hole.

Nonetheless, the good folks at Universal Devices have continued to enhance the security posture of this device, and last month’s security update of the firmware to 4.2.18 is a good example of this. The message when doing an automatic upgrade through the interface, though, isn’t completely clear:

When I saw the message, my first concern was that they removed the ability to connect securely to the device over the internet (by removing SSL). But, in reviewing the release notes, the message is more clear: “SSLv3 is now disabled. 994 Series now use TLS1.0 as default. PRO series can select up to TLS1.2”

In other words, they just removed an older, less secure mechanism for these transactions (upgrading to use TLS rather than SSL), which is a very good thing. Even Chrome recognizes the more secure configuration – notice the “lock” icon on the status bar changing from yellow to green in the below before-and-after shot:

For future reference you can follow this forum on Universal Device’s site to keep apprised of new releases over time.

Posted by Matt Chiste

November 26

Tagged with: isy-994i, security, upgrade
Posted in ISY-994i, Security

Turn off outdoor water spigots to prevent freezing

With the cold weather upon us now is the time to prepare your outdoor pipes to prevent freezing and bursting. If you have any hose-based systems (like the one I wrote about this summer), you’ll want to drain and/or disconnect those, but your outdoor spigots are also vulnerable since the pipes typically run outside of your home’s insulation.

Usually it’s enough to simply make sure the faucets are shut off, and it doesn’t hurt to cover the spigot with an insulated outdoor faucet cover, but in most homes there’s probably a better option: turning off the water INSIDE the house.

It’s always a good idea to know where the water comes into your house. In most cases, you’ll find a couple of shut-off valves on that pipe. In my case I have 4 shut-off valves – one for each of the two outside spigots, one for the hot water heater, and one for the humidifier attached to my HVAC system. Generally, the process for properly turning off the water is:

Turn off the water at the shut-off valve inside the house
Open the spigot outside
Next to the shutoff valve there should be a small bleeder nozzle that opens up the pipe to drain the line. Generally most water will flow out of the spigot, but you should have a bucket handy for the small amount that may leak out of the valve. In my case one valve was completely dry, and the other drained about 2 pints.

Insteon OutletLinc Dimmers are only for 2-prong lamps

We’ve talked about the Insteon OutletLinc before, including installing a new Insteon OutletLinc, using one to control stairway lighting, and using one for other indirect lighting. OutletLincs come in a variety of models with different features like SwitchLincs (dimming, dual-band, high capacity, color), but the dimming version cost me a bit of time recently.

As a general rule, you can ONLY use the Insteon Dimmer functionality for LIGHTS, which makes sense – why would you want to “dim” your phone charger, for example? I assume that would just charge the phone slower, but what would happen if you “dim” the power to the sensitive electronics in your home router, or to a device with high amperage requirements like a vacuum cleaner? Insteon added an additional safeguard to their dimming OutletLincs to prevent users from “accidentally” plugging these types of devices into these outlets – a “Dimmer Key” that fits between the plug and receptacle to “activate” the outlet:

The key seems to have a simple magnet in it to activate the outlet, and I’m guessing the reason they added this safeguard was because “Bad Things Can Happen” if you plug the wrong device into it.

At last count I have 7 OutletLincs installed in various new and existing locations, and somehow never considered the fact that the dimmer outlets are 2-prong, and the non-dimmer outlets are 3-prong:

That is, I never considered this until I installed a dimmer OutletLinc to control a basic floor lamp in my family room. I mean, it’s a lamp, which should be dimmable, right? The problem was that the lamp has a 3-prong outlet for some reason. So, I ended up wasting time installing a 2-prong dimmer outlet, only to have that “oh, crap!” moment when I went to plug in my 3-prong lamp.

The bottom line: you can ONLY DIM LAMPS with a dimmer OutletLinc. But more specifically, you can only dim lamps THAT HAVE 2-PRONG PLUGS with a dimming OutletLinc. Check the plug of your desired lamp before installing that outlet!

Posted by Matt Chiste

November 13

Tagged with: 2472D, 2472DWH, 2473, control device, outletlinc, outlets
Posted in Electrical, Insteon

Paper tabs on the back side of screws: genius!

I’ve done a ton of electrical and media work in the past couple months (at the cost of not spending as much time on Intellihome – sorry guys for the delay in those new features). I’ll be writing about these projects in the coming weeks and months, but wanted to start with something that makes me think “genius!” every time I use it.

I actually spent some time looking for this little innovation online using Google’s Patent Search, and didn’t find anything that exactly matches it, but then again, “electrical face plate” returns 900,000+ hits. The innovation? The little paper tabs on these wall plate screws:

They’re so simple, but incredibly useful. By spinning freely with the screws themselves, but staying attached with a little bit of friction, they allow the screws to stay in the holes while you’re mounting them to a vertical surface. And when you unscrew them, the screws come out of the threaded hole but stay attached to the wall plate so you don’t have to catch them on the way out – or rely on the magnetic tip of awesome screwdrivers like this. Read more ›

Posted by Matt Chiste

November 1

Tagged with: outletlinc, outlets
Posted in Electrical

3D print an umbrella mount for secure installations

As you saw in the last post on mounting a deck umbrella, the hole through the railing had to be a little larger than the actual umbrella pole due to some pins used to secure the umbrella to the base:

This doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but I found that the little bit of extra play in there made cranking the umbrella up and down a little tougher, and the umbrella would rattle a bit in the extra space when it was windy. Admittedly, there are plenty of low-tech solutions (my first one was to simply wrap that section of the pipe with some Waterproof Tape), but we’ve got access to a better option: a 3D printer. Read more ›

Posted by Matt Chiste

October 28

Tagged with: 123D Design, 3d printing, outdoor, umbrella
Posted in 3D Printing