Monthly Archives: December 2013

PSA: Back up your ISY-994i

There are two types of people in this world: 1) Those that know that they should do regular backups of their systems and actually do them, 2) those that know they should but don’t do them, and 3) those that

Posted by Matt Chiste
December 31

Last minute gift idea: Worx semi-automatic screwdriver

You’ll never look at the screwdriver in your junk drawer the same way. Some time back I saw this Popular Science article that proclaimed “The SD SemiAutomatic is an entirely new take on the cordless driver”, and thought I’d check

Posted by Matt Chiste
December 20

You are connecting your extension cords this way, right?

Public Service Message: Whether it’s Christmas Lights or power tools, any time you’re connecting two power cords together that have a chance of being pulled on, they should be connected thusly: Unless, of course, you want to get all fancy

Posted by Matt Chiste
December 18

Are LED Christmas lights worth it?

We’ve covered the Insteon 8-watt light bulb, a DIY project involving LED light strips, and the Kill A Watt to quickly view energy usage (without needing a whole-house system). Armed with the knowledge that LED lights are cheaper to run

Posted by Matt Chiste
December 17

Track Electricity Usage with the Kill A Watt

The holiday season is upon us, and for many of us that means Christmas lights. For some of us, way too many Christmas lights: A question that comes to mind when seeing some of that extravagance is “how much does

Posted by Matt Chiste
December 14

Soup up your home router with DD-WRT

Most people buy a home Wifi router, set it up, and forget about it. For most of them this is just fine, but as we enter the increasingly connected world of Home Automation, the standard software on those routers can

Posted by Matt Chiste
December 8

Wiring 3-way Insteon Switches

We’ve shown how installing an Insteon Switch is really straight-forward: turn off power, remove old switch, connect Insteon switch to the same terminals, restore power. It’s easy to do and doesn’t involve any wiring changes at all. Multi-way switches (also

Posted by Matt Chiste
December 5
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