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.

"Office" has Moved to the Main Floor

Neither Brianna nor I have been working from home for a while now. We moved the computer desk and filing cabinet to the main floor, where they should be used more often.

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!

Sparkly Ceiling

I saw several "star shower" laser projectors last christmas while driving around.

While they look pretty cool, putting them outside and potentially spraying laser light in to air traffic lanes doesn't seem like a great idea. But I thought it would probably look awesome on a ceiling!

I kept an eye out for deals on laser projectors, but the ones with blue lasers are still well above $100 each, more than I was willing to spend. But while I was out grocery shopping, I saw a display of LED-based projectors and played with one. I wound up buying a "kaleidoscope" version with red, blue and green lights for under $20 to try out at home.

I initially set it up on a camera tripod, aimed at the ceiling. With the rest of the house lights off, it actually looked pretty good!

For a permanent set up, I bought a second projector, and mounted both inside floor lamps in the Great Room:

I had to replace the original bulb with two bulbs on a y-splitter in order to fit everything inside the lamp shade.

Here is a picture with the conventional lights on, and the projectors off:

And here's a shot with the conventional lights off and the projectors on:

And here's what the ceiling looks like:

Both projectors are plugged into a zwave switch behind the couch, so it was pretty easy to add these to the rest of home automation system.

Ideally, these cheap projectors will last a few years until the laser projectors come down in price, at which point it should be a fairly simple job to upgrade from LED to laser.

Air Conditioning

We liked our new portable air conditioner so much, we got a second one:

Here's the story:

The HVAC pros we called in to get quotes for a replacement furnace (ours is 23 years into its 20 year expected lifespan) and brand new central air conditioning all had a similar ball park:

• The furnace would have to be replaced to install central air conditioning.
• Our house would need about 2.5 to 3 tons of air conditioning capacity.
• The job would cost $11,000, minimum.

Since the furnace was still running fine, we opted to get the new portable AC unit for the master bedroom, and see how much life we could squeeze out of the furnace. A little online shopping revealed the 13,500 BTU/hr Haier model to be the best bang for the buck right now. That prompted Brianna to ask me (since I'm the mechanical engineer and should know these things) what the difference between "tons" and "BTU/hr" was in air conditioning.

I had to look it up, and it's actually pretty interesting: "Ton" was a slang term that later became standardized. It turns out that one ton of ice melting over the course of one day (24 hours) will remove (absorb) almost exactly 12,000 BTU/hr (for all 24 hours). So "one ton" of air conditioning means a unit that can remove 12,000 BTU per hour.

Our new portable air conditioner is rated at 13,500 BTU/hr. We were practically halfway to the 2.5 tons required for our whole house!

So, we ordered a second one while the price was still good. It won't be quite as efficient or effective as a properly sized central air conditioner, but it ought to keep the house below 75F, and the two units cost less than $800 total - a twelfth the cost of a whole new installation. When the furnace gives up the ghost, we'll probably install central AC. But until then, we'll hang on to our money. Or spend it on other things. Probably we'll spend it on other things.

***

Once we had the second AC unit on order, we got rid of the old evaporative cooler in the great room, which really had not handled the winter well (tons of rust, and all my fault since I did a poor job of winterizing it).

I installed this one a little differently: I removed the castors and placed the unit on top of an old IKEA table we had kicking around. I had to cut off 4.5" from the table leg to get it the right height (Actually, cutting off 4.625" probably would have been better, but oh well).

This height adjustment prevents the surrounding furniture from blocking air flow, and allowed me to set up the air ducts as the minimum possible length, which did require me to do some cutting:

(That's the radon mitigation system outside the window, not a part of the new AC unit). I also had to "adjust" one of the connection brackets with my dremel (Thanks Dad!).

Finally, since this is a ground-level window, and it can no longer lock while the ducts are in place, I added a locking pin:

And the best part is: the times the AC units have to work the hardest are also the times we'll have the greatest amount of solar energy production! We get to cool the house without heating up the planet!

Update: Brianna had the good idea to put a filter on the air intake. I'm very glad we did!

Update 2: One AC unit on the main floor wasn't cutting it. I set up a price alert, and a week later we were able to snag a third unit (the second for the main floor) for the same price. It is set up the same was in the opposite corner of the house, near the kitchen. We've been able to come home to a 72-degree house on days that hit 95+ degrees!

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.

Great Room is Decorated

We got our Christmas Tree up! Technically it was up yesterday, but it had to thaw over night before we could put the decorations. We got a big one this year! There's nothing breakable below three feet off the ground :-)

Walking

So embarrassing to have a piece of paper stuck to your foot...

Entryway Closet

Since I had paint out anyway, I went ahead and painted the entryway closet.

It actually didn't look too bad before, but there were plenty of scrapes and dents in the walls, and the paint definitely looked old.

Now:

Not a great picture - it's the same green as the laundry room now. It definitely seems dimmer now with the darker paint - I might need to add a light or something. Maybe one that turns on and off when the door is open and shut, respectively?

Anyway, this means the upstairs linen closet is the only drywall in the entire house that hasn't been repainted or at least touched-up! It might stay that way - there's so many shelves in the linen closet that I really don't want to paint it.

Decoration in the Great Room

Brianna has been working on a decoration project this week:

She purchased fourteen 11"x14" canvases and painted them to match various portions of the house. Then, with a tape measure, a level, and a husband, she got them individually hung on the wall.

Eventually, the idea is to have Lincoln finger paint on these canvases as he gets older. We might add an additional row up top as well.

One More Z-wave Switch Installed

The exterior lights on our front entry have been controlled by an on-off Z-wave switch for a while now. Today I changed them over to a new dimmer switch, and moved the on-off switch over one spot in the junction box to control the wall out in the Great Room. Now that whole panel of switches is Z-wave!

Space Rails

I've been working on a new toy for the last 10 days :-)

It's basically a fancy marble run. I saw a large version at an engineering convention a few weeks ago, and decided I wanted one of my own.

A couple of years ago, this would have taken a lot less than 10 days to build, but Lincoln kinda eats into my two-hands-free hobby time.

Here it is running:

Brianna and I have been discussing using an expanded version of this as decoration, specifically on our two-story-tall hallway:

I'm imagining having a much larger version of this space rail toy spread out across the two white walls in this picture, above the door frame and well out of reach without a step ladder. I'm excited about the idea, but there's a very strong chance it won't happen this year, if it happens at all.

Window Cleaning

The wall by the front door had developed an unpleasant brown streak from top to bottom, seeming to originate from the window above the door. Turns out the condensation on the inside of the window was picking up dirt from the window, then draining down along a specific path, leaving dirt streaks on the wall. So I got to clean the window today.

Some Windex and a few paper towels later, and the window is crystal clear again!

Getting Rid of the Christmas Tree

Man, our christmas tree held up really well. It has been in the house for five weeks, and hasn't been watered for the last two weeks. According to the sales tag when I bought it, it originally came from Washington State.

A coworker of Brianna's dropped by for a visit today. She (the coworker) was nice enough to let me commandeer her pickup truck to drive the tree to a public christmas tree "recycling center":

A little bit different from "toss the christmas tree into the blackberry bushes" back in Washington.

New Crack in Drywall

Dammit. This was perfect a month ago.

That motion detector belongs to the old security system the sellers left behind. It's been hanging like that since we got here. I want to repurpose the wires eventually, but for now I'm just letting it hang.

Christmas Tree

I bought a Christmas Tree yesterday, and tonight we decorated it!

The tree skirt is hand-made - an early Christmas present from my Mom. It looks awesome.

And yes, we can turn the Christmas Tree lights on and off from our phones.

Brian's Parents are Here!

Brian's Dad and Mom arrived from Seattle last night. Very glad to have them here!

Thanksgiving Prep

Nothing like a combination of nesting instinct and knowing relatives are on their way for dinner to inspire some clean-up:

Curtain Hemming Party!

Lily and Brianna's Aunt Julie came up today in the late afternoon/evening and hemmed six curtains for us!

They look really nice, and especially seasonal with the bows.

I can always tell when Lily has been by for a visit. The house's decorations improve:

Curtains on South Great Room Window

Lily has agreed to come up and hem some curtains for us this weekend. I decided to take full advantage, and hung two more curtains.

Unfortunately, the IKEA KVARTAL curtain rods need to be supported at the intersection point. I had to go back to IKEA to pick up a third wall anchor.

I'll be trimming down the sides of the curtain rod just as soon as Brianna decides how much she wants it trimmed down.