Charging Area for Robots and Laptops

We have one of those desk nooks in our kitchen. We've never been really sure what to do with the space. But recently I installed a new electrical outlet in the foot-space, and now we have a charging barn for our robot vacuum and robot mop, and charging cables in the drawer below the counter, to keep our family laptops in a known location that's also unlikely to be swept to the floor by accident.

Since the robots are pushed foward and easy to access, I think I might install some sort of shelf above robots and below the drawer - might make a good spot to store our instantpot or something similar...

WiFi Cameras

These little DropCam clones dropped to $30 each over the holidays. For that price, I can buy six for the price of a more mainstream camera. So we bought three.

One for the basement nursery:

One for the Great Room:

And one for the upstairs Nursery:

That wall is getting pretty techy. I should probably come up with a cleaner mounting system for the web cam, Echo Dot, and white noise machine.

The screen is a 24" LCD monitor with built-in speakers, running off a chromecast.

*** UPDATE FEB 4, 2017***

I added a camera for the front porch, and ordered another for the gate on our back yard.

I used this software to modify the firmware on the Yi cameras so I could integrate them with Blue Iris DVR software.

New Location for the WiFi Router

Our coax cabling has been messed up since we moved into the house. I have only been able to connect to the internet through one cable port in the basement, which meant our WiFi router has been located in the basement. I have a few ethernet-only (no WiFi) devices in the basement, so this worked out for the most part, but we did not have a reliable WiFi signal in the backyard or the garage.

I finally got around to doing something abut it.

I traced the coax cables, and swapped the active coax cable from the basement connection to one in the Great Room. I put the cable modem, the WiFi router, and a small UPS in a nice box:

For the non-WiFi devices in the basement, I dug out an old WiFi router and flashed it with DD-WRT, and then put it in Client-Bridge mode. The non-WiFi devices plug into the DD-WRT router via ethernet, and then connect to the rest of the network through a wireless bridge between the main router and the client router. Took a while to get it properly configured, but seems to be working well now.

And we have a good WiFi signal throughout the back yard and well down the street now!

Automating the Air Conditioning - Step One: Control

Over the last couple years, a few articles about interfacing with IR controlled devices have popped up in my news feeds. Coincident with getting our new Air Conditioning Units (which have IR remote controls), a new walk-through popped up that seemed like something I could handle. The project required a cheap ESP8266 board (which has WiFi, some general purpose pins, and runs off micro USB for power), and an IR receiver and LED set for a total bill of materials of around ten dollars.

Here's another link to the project, to give credit where credit is due.

Once the parts arrived, it was time to get into black magic territory:

Here be Dragons

I got the Arduino IDE set up with no issues, and started playing with "sketches" - the code that runs on this little guy. I immediately ran into problems. It turns out you can't have spaces OR punctuation in the sketch name (which nobody bothered to mention in the tutorials I read), so my file "Brian's IR Emitter" had several problems right off the bat.

Once I got that figured out, I was able to load up the example IR recorder with no problems. I pointed the remote control at the receiver and started hitting buttons, with no idea what would happen next. Eventually I figured out (mostly by random clicking) that I needed to open the "serial monitor" to see the data the remote control was sending over IR. Here's the sample data from the "On/Off" button:

Encoding  : UNKNOWN

Code      : BBF4F9F (32 bits)

Timing[67]: 

     +9050, -4550     + 550, - 600     + 600, - 600     + 550, - 650

     + 550, - 600     + 600, - 600     + 550, -1700     + 600, - 600

     + 550, - 650     + 550, -1700     + 600, -1750     + 600, -1750

     + 550, -1750     + 550, -1700     + 600, - 600     + 550, -1750

     + 600, -1750     + 550, - 600     + 600, -1700     + 550, - 600

     + 600, - 600     + 550, - 650     + 550, - 600     + 600, - 600

     + 550, - 600     + 550, -1700     + 550, - 650     + 550, -1750

     + 550, -1750     + 600, -1750     + 550, -1750     + 550, -1750

     + 600, -1700     + 600

unsigned int  rawData[67] = {9050,4550, 550,600, 600,600, 550,650, 550,600, 600,600, 550,1700, 600,600, 550,650, 550,1700, 600,1750, 600,1750, 550,1750, 550,1700, 600,600, 550,1750, 600,1750, 550,600, 600,1700, 550,600, 600,600, 550,650, 550,600, 600,600, 550,600, 550,1700, 550,650, 550,1750, 550,1750, 600,1750, 550,1750, 550,1750, 600,1700, 600};  // UNKNOWN BBF4F9F

As far as I can tell, the remote for this particular model is pretty dumb. It sends out one command per button press, identical every time, and the AC unit decides what to do with that command (turn on or turn off, increment or decrement the temperature, etc.)

Next step was to swap out the receiver for an emitter (the IR LED). I made the switch, and tried to load the original poster's "emitter" sketch. And tried. And tried. And tried again. Nothing.

Turns out, the IR diode does something weird at start up (draws too much power, maybe?) and the entire ESP8266 hangs. I have to physically detatch the LED, boot the ESP8266 and then plug in the LED. That particular bug was not a lot of fun, and was only solved through an equal measure of google searches and dumb luck.

Once I got that working, I copied the original poster's simple web server, and made it even simpler, knocking it down to a single entry to toggle the power on my AC unit. Here's what the front end looks like, in its entirety:

Brian's ESP8266 IR Remote

FAN ON/OFF




Miraculously, it worked! And all I really needed is that link: http://192.168.1.194/ir?fan=power. A GET command to that link with cause the ESP8266 to issue the "toggle" IR command. Booyah!

Later on, I'll have to put this on a smart plug that can monitor energy usage, so I can know whether the unit is on or not, and decide to toggle the IR command or not. But that's for Step 2: Automation. For now, all I've done is add that toggle command to my Alexa HA Bridge (from BWS systems - it's the best Alexa HA bridge I've used so far)

Now that I've got this one working, I'll but together another one for the AC unit in the master bedroom, and then I'll integrate it with OpenHAB, and (hopefully) Nest. Making it work with Nest would be a real coup - I don't think anyone else has pulled that off yet, and I've got an idea for how to do it that I haven't ready about anywhere else. But that will be a post for another day, after some more parts arrive from Amazon.

IP Camera in Great Room

The previous owners left a crappy, non-functional motion sensor in the great room. It's really ugly.

I decided I wanted to replace it with an IP camera of some sort. I considered an ethernet camera, but wifi just seemed easier.

This weekend, I removed the motion sensor and investigated the cable:

I tried to use the existing four-wire cable to fish a 10-foot usb cable from the basement to that location. Unfortunately, that didn't work.

So I decided to turn the existing cable into a 10-foot usb cable. I sacrificed an old usb cable and spliced it on to either end of the existing wire.

The existing cable doesn't have any shielding, so I doubt I could do any data transfer over this cable. Should work just fine for power transmission, though.

Then I added a Yi Wifi Camera (basically a 720p Dropcam clone).

Ultimately, the camera is supposed to hide the cable and the hole in the wall, but for today this was the best I could do. It's surprisingly hard to find a white corner mount.

Fourth Monitor in Workshop

This year for National Engineers' Week, my company raffled off old computer equipment again. This year, I won a monitor. Today I added it to my workstation in the basement.

(I don't have any justification for this beyond "because I can").

Bloomsky Weather Station

BloomSky is a weather forecasting startup that debuted on Kickstarter in 2014. Their shtick is "hyper local" weather forecasting, using a multitude of small, personal-size weather stations, rather than big expensive Doppler radars.

The weather station records temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, UV exposure, and precipitation, as well as taking photos of the sky at 5-minute intervals. The photos are combined into a timelapse at the end of the day.

In order to expand their network outside of San Francisco, BloomSky is offered free weather stations to people willing to host and provide internet access to the weather station. I signed up, and received mine yesterday (I paid $20 to cover shipping).

Per the agreement I signed, I have to keep the weather station working and publicly available on BloomSky's network for 6 months after delivery, and then it's mine free and clear.

I set up a guest wifi network just for the weather station. The included solar panel means I have a lot of flexibility on where I install the weather station, but I may wind up just running power to it for reliability.

I'll do a more permanent install this weekend. The goal is to keep it where it can't be seen from the sidewalk to avoid any potential hassles with the HOA.

And that's the view from the app! Once the weather station is permanently installed, the deck railing should no longer be visible, and I'm hoping we'll be able to see the soccer fields on the other side of the fence.

If you're interested in seeing what the weather is like at our house, here's the iPhone App and the Android App - we're the "Cherry Creek, Parker" weather station in Parker, Colorado!

Amazon Echo!

My Amazon Echo arrived today!

It doesn't look very impressive, but I think it sounds better than the smartphone speaker dock that used to be in that spot.

I'm pretty impressed with the voice recognition - Siri couldn't pick me up from more than 2 or 3 feet away, but the Echo has responded to every prompt made within line-of-sight, regardless of distance (within the confines of the house, anyway), and has only mis-understood a couple of commands thus far.

Amazon's music service has been pretty good so far, and all my Audible audiobooks are also available. I'm going to have to see if there's a way to integrate my podcasts (beyond standard bluetooth tethering).

I really like the shopping list feature - I had the web interface open when I verbally told the Echo to add milk to the shopping list - it was dang close to instantaneous.

As for home automation, the Echo supports Wemo and Phillips Hue currently. I don't have either of those, but there's already a Wemo emulator available online that I can run side-by-side with my OpenHAB installation - in theory. I'll have to play with that in the near future - it will be pretty cool to control the lights by voice :-)

New Computer Command Center is Up and Running

Oh, I'm going to enjoy this:

Still need to get the fourth monitor hung, but the SSD is running with a legitimate copy of Windows 7 Pro, dual graphics cards are pumping out pixels, and I have 20 Gigs of RAM.

And I've spent about $150 on this!!

:-D

Automatic Feeder for the Dog

Our dog Eva is (theoretically) on a diet following her last vet appointment. However, between me and Brianna, it's more common for Eva to get fed twice or not at all (the food dish is almost always empty, regardless of how often she's fed).

So, I used an Amazon gift card and ordered an automatic pet feeder.

The Amazon reviews assured me there was a port for an AC power adapter (the feeder is nominally battery powered) even though I would have to order the actual power adapter separately.

I was lied to.

So, I drilled a hole in the housing and wired in the power adapter myself. Works great!

Moto G

I picked up a 1st gen Moto G for just $30 today! It's a verizon pre-paid phone, and they're so cheap because they're trying to clear out inventory for the 2nd gen Moto G. It was really easy to by-pass the Verizon activation, and now I have a 4.5" touchscreen wifi device!

Between this and my $60 7" Windows 8 Tablet, I need to actually figure out some control software and start mounting these on the walls!

Brian's Fledgling Computer Repair and Reselling Business

All the revenues (not profits) are plowed into home automation products. Sigh.

Honestly, I just poke at things until they break in interesting ways:

Amazon Echo - Ordered.

I posted about the Amazon Echo when it was announced back in November. I didn't order one then, but I speculated that it could be pretty cool for home automation. Well, today Amazon announced that the Echo integrated with the Wemo and Phillips Hue platforms, and someone else made a messy hack to control their Wink Hub via the Echo. Amazon is also working on releasing a public SDK that I have high hopes for.

The Echo supposedly retails for $200 for people without Amazon Prime memberships, though I have a hard time believing anyone actually paid $200 rather than sign up for a free Amazon Prime trial. Yesterday was the last day for Prime members to buy the Echo for $100 (it jumped to $150 today). Yesterday I still wasn't convinced I wanted to make the purchase, but I locked in the option for a 7 day period. Today the news broke about Wemo and Hue, and I decided to go for it.

I just bought a bunch of Zwave switches (post about that should be up in the next couple of weeks), though, so my fun money budget was pretty tight. So I signed up for an Amazon credit card, which came with a $70 Amazon credit sign-up bonus. I applied that sign up bonus to the $100 purchase price, and wound up paying $30 out-of-pocket for the Echo! It's hard to get a decent bluetooth speaker for $30, so I'm pretty happy with that deal.

Unfortunately, Amazon is waaaay backordered on the Echos. Mine isn't scheduled to ship until June or July. :-/

Smart Doorbell

We have a smart doorbell! Specifically, we have a SkyBell 2.0.

Brianna was onboard with this idea, because the UPS guy rings the doorbell three times a week with Amazon purchases, which in turn sets off a storm of high-pitched apocalyptic fury from our rat terrier, waking Link up from a nap he desperately needed.

The SkyBell allows you to turn off the actual chime portion of the doorbell from your phone, instead sending a push notification to everyone whose phone with the correct login credentials. When you get the notification (or any time you feel like it, actually) you can open up a video stream from the doorbell and even have a two-way audio conversation.

I didn't want to pay full price, though.

I managed to find an "open box" Skybell on eBay.com for 40% off. I've been buying lots of stuff "open box" from Amazon, so I jumped on this. Well, turns out there's a difference between Amazon's return department reselling a returned item after they have fully tested it, and some guy on eBay selling an open box item as-is.

It was dead on arrival.

Ridiculously, 4 days later Amazon had a 25% off sale on SkyBells. I hemmed and hawed a bit, having already blown a fair bit of money on this project. But I decided I wanted enough to pay twice. To my delight, the 25% discount somehow was applied twice to my purchase - I got my second SkyBell for 50% off!

I got it installed tonight:

And the video stream works!

So, after getting two fantastic deals, I have the smart doorbell I've wanted since we moved into the house, and I only paid 15% more than I would have if I had just purchased one at full price from the start.

:-/

Replacing Batteries with USB Power Banks

It turns out a lot of baby paraphenalia require batteries. A lot of batteries. I got tired of replacing all those batteries. So I replaced them with USB power banks.

Now both these baby rockers run off 5V USB power, and the power banks can be recharged at any of the multiple charging stations we have around the house.

Wall-mounting the TV

I have been working on baby-proofing the house for a while now, being comfortable in the knowledge that Link will not be crawling for a number of months yet.

I came to an unpleasant realization this week: there is already a toddler spending a lot of time in our house. Our nanny brings her two-year-old son to our house while she watches Link. Our 10-month-old nephew Torsten has also begun crawling and pulling himself up on furniture. So I skipped right past "running out of time" to "over-due" on getting things baby-proofed.

Probably the most dangerous (to toddlers) item in the house was the un-anchored TV in the basement. While it is fairly stable and would be difficult to knock over, the consequences of a 65-pound flat panel TV falling on a little kid made it the biggest risk in the house (that I can think of).

I ordered a locking wall-mount kit compatible with our TV the same night I realized this oversight (the nanny was off this past week).

Here is what the old TV setup looked like:

Today, I installed the wall-mount kit and hung the TV!

Any kid that wants to move that TV is going to need a lot of persistence and a long screwdriver.

I moved the TV to the far end of the basement because Brianna and I are thinking of installing a screen and projector there sometime later this year. This allows us to get the TV safely mounted, and to try out a different arrangement of the basement.

Of course, since I was moving things around in the basement, I organized the rest of it as well:

It's a much more open rumpus room now!

Webcam in Nursery

Brianna's going back to work soon ("NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOO" -Brianna) so I installed a webcam in the nursery this weekend.

The webcam is "pan and tilt" so it can focus anywhere inside the room.

The next step will be to run the power cord inside the wall, so no little boys can yank on it once they start being mobile.

In the meantime, the camera is actually performing better than I expected:

I still have to get the network configured so Brianna and I can access the video stream from outside the local wifi network. I may have to ask for help on that one - seems like an easy way to let intruders onto the network.

USB Charging Station

I put together a USB charging station for my Mom's kitchen as a Christmas present.

Now I want one for myself!

Windows Tablet

Muah-hahaha!

I bought myself a new computer today:

I was actually looking at its 8-inch big brother a month ago, but decided I'd rather keep my one hundred dollars than have a small windows tablet.

This 7-inch tablet, with the same specs, popped up on my radar today for the low low price of *sixty* dollars.

I expect to play around with it for a month or two, then mount it on the wall somewhere as a smart-home controller.

So far, the tablet is a lot snappier than I expected. Granted, I had pretty low expectations to begin with, but this was a pleasant surprise. But, on just one gigabyte of RAM, Chrome is dog slow. I'll have to check out Firefox, or if I get truly desperate: Internet Explorer.

Cabinet-Mounted iPad

At first, Brianna loved it. Then I pointed out this meant every floor had its own internet-connected screen. Then she was horrified.

(Yes, we are now those people).