Monthly Archives: October 2013

LED light strips make great low-energy pathway lighting

I had motion-controlled lights on my front steps for about a year when I decided I could do better. While it was nice to move up and down the steps without having to hit a light switch, the overhead lights

Posted by Matt Chiste
October 25

Control your holiday decorations with an Outdoor ApplianceLinc

It’s almost that time of year where those gaudy inflatable lawn ornaments will start showing up for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Hanukkah – hey, I don’t judge, more power to you! In the past you’ve likely used a manual

Posted by Matt Chiste
October 22

Extend HDMI range to 300+ feet with Ethernet cable

If you take anything away from this post, know two things: Over short distances, all HDMI cables are the same. Over longer distances (10+ feet) the signal may cut out depending on the quality of the cable, but you should

Posted by Matt Chiste
October 19

Make your own ethernet cable

Ethernet cable is traditionally used to connect networked computers, but it’s actually a great type of cable to have in your arsenal for other purposes. Before we get ahead of ourselves on some non-traditional ways they can be used, let’s

Posted by Matt Chiste
October 16

Make your Insteon Smart Home smarter with location information

By now you’ve probably got a decent number of Insteon-enabled devices in your home, like switches, thermostats, keypads, motion sensors, door sensors, and leak sensors, to name a few. Your house is getting smarter and smarter every day with your

Posted by Matt Chiste
October 13

Use Pushover as an alternative to SMS or email notification

Out of the box, your ISY-994i can send texts and emails. With the Network Module it can do even more, such as calling custom code to send you a picture of who just rang your doorbell. There’s nothing really wrong

Posted by Matt Chiste
October 10

ISY-994i: the difference between state and integer variables

Last week when covering MobiLinc’s geo-fencing feature, I mentioned how MobiLinc will change a state variable based on whether you are inside our outside your “geo-fence“. If you’re a programmer, the use of variables is pretty obvious – and even

Posted by Matt Chiste
October 7
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