News and Reviews

Craftsman just recently released their AssureLink Garage Door Openers which allow you to check and close your garage door via your smartphone. The openers themselves are fairly pricey ($289.99 if you don't want battery backup, $296.99 if you do). Internet connectivity is free the first year, but jumps to $19.99 a year thereafter. Twenty bucks a year seems a little pricey simply for the convenience of seeing if your door is open via your smartphone. If you feel it's something you need, but don't want the extra cost AND you have a little electrical know-how, the tuxgraphics smartphone garage door opener may be just the ticket for you.
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ecobee has recently announced a brand new model of the incredibly feature-rich ecobee Smart Thermostat called the ecobee Si at the AHR Expo in Chicago. Since it has been announced I find myself being constantly asked what features this new product would offer and how would it compare to the ecobee Smart Thermostat that is being sold today. First and foremost, I do not work for ecobee and I do not speak for them. I just happen to work for a company ( Eden Energy Equipment ) that has been selling them for some time and have direct contact with ecobee on their existing products and products in development.

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It seems like I've spent a little more time lately than I would like recovering failed hard drives for people. How I do it is a topic for another complete article, but there's also a common thread and question involved with these recoveries. The common thread is no files are backed up, usually people had a USB drive, but never took it out or hadn't backed up to it for quite some time. Even worse was using the USB hard drive as their main datastore. The question I always hear after saving the irreplaceable pictures and data is, "How can I keep this from happening again?" In this article I want to explore a few options of building a solid home network on the cheap. The avenues to get it done can vary, but the solution to the data loss problem is common, back up to the network and have it be automatic, or it will never happen.

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EDIT: If you are looking for more in-depth information on the Smart Si, check out this ecobee article from an industry expert, Michael Ridler.

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE


For release on Monday, January 23, 2012

ECOBEE UNVEILS THEIR LATEST PRODUCT AT AHR 2012—THE NEW SMART Si THERMOSTAT—DELIVERING GREAT FEATURES AT A GREAT PRICE

Toronto, January 23, 2012: ecobee Inc., makers of the award-winning Smart thermostat and Energy Management System unveiled their latest product, the Smart Si thermostat, today at the 2012 AHR Expo in Chicago.
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UPDATE: After a few months in service, it was clear the AMD board and CPU were not cutting it. MicroCenter had a crazy sale on i7 2600K quad-core 3.4GHz processors, so I picked one of those up. I put it on an ASRock H67M-ITX board and added a 220W PSU, the latter requiring more fabrication on the TiVO case. This setup flew and was then used for the review of TVersity on SmallNetBuilder.

In Part 1 of the Repurposing a TiVo Series 2 set of articles I walked through my plan of repurposing our TiVO Series2 as a home theater PC (HTPC). For those of you coming here on this page and not seeing Part 1, you're probably thinking, "but I just want to install Linux on my TiVo and use it that way". Give up on that thought. The TiVo hardware is proprietary (ie limited or no drivers) and CPU power is very low. I explored this route for quite sometime and eventually gave up. I eventually settled on gutting the TiVo, doing some fabrication to make it in to an HTPC, and then placing it inconspicuously in to our cabinet under the TV. What I found was that was easier said than done. Granted, I did do some things along the way that took a lot of time, but overall this was what I could describe as a moderately difficult project. Let's press on!

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