Blog Archives

Turn off air conditioning when doors are open

Spring is here, which means great weather and open doors or windows. In the past, the routine has been “Open door, close screen door, turn off air conditioning”. But with an Insteon-controlled thermostat and door/window sensors, the third part of

Posted by Matt Chiste
May 26

Replacing Insteon devices in the ISY994i

Occasionally Insteon devices go bad. It’s not an often occurrence, but when it does happen there’s more to the replacement than just swapping out physical gear: you also need to update the links table of associated devices and scenes, and

Posted by Matt Chiste
May 18

Put your house to sleep at day’s end

After a long day, who can be bothered to remember to turn off lights or lock the doors? Fortunately it’s easy to automate this with Insteon and some simple programs in the ISY-994i. The concept behind this is pretty simple:

Posted by Matt Chiste
May 14

ISY-994i is not vulnerable to the HeartBleed bug

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been dealing with the SSL Heartbleed bug in my day job pretty aggressively. The bug is a serious one and likely affects you in your daily Internet browsing, as any “secure” internet connections

Posted by Matt Chiste
May 3

Add an SSL certificate to your ISY-994i for secure home automation

If you’re not using something like MobiLinc Connect to remotely access your home automation system, it’s likely that you’ve created a personal domain name, and maybe even secured the connection to your home network with free VPN software with DD-WRT.

Posted by Matt Chiste
April 7

Provide indirect lighting anywhere with an LED light strip and Insteon

I’m a huge fan of LED lights, whether the application is to save electricity, run Christmas lights, or provide indirect pathway lighting. Today’s project is along the same vein as the pathway lighting, but with LEDwholesalers‘ color-changing LED strip. This

Posted by Matt Chiste
February 7

Automate home systems while on the road

While at CES earlier this month, I was faced with a challenge when I had housekeepers scheduled to come while I was on the road. Normally if I wasn’t going to be home I’d leave a key in the mailbox,

Posted by Matt Chiste
January 28
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