Trackr/Tile

[IVB]

Btw I'm picking on Pete but judgements are rampant everywhere right now, more so than ever before, by many.

If you watch any of my videos you'll see I'm clear in pointing out I'm only describing my personal setup and what works for me. If that works for the viewer is up to them. I'm not here to tell you what to do in your home unless you explicitly ask. And even then I have grown to dislike doing that. I can tell you what I've gotten to work and how and leave it at that.

 

[pete_c]

Why are you judging / deriding people's decision making process about buying a $500 thermostat instead of a $10 one when you've made choices others wouldn't?
 
I am not.  Where do you get from?  I don't really think you are picking on me as I am not angry right now. 
 
I have only stated here that I have and try not to have internet dependencies on my automation. Trying is hard this days though.
 
I understand that judgements are rampant everywhere.  Not relating to automation just noticed a coup happened today in Turkey.
 
I do not see really what this has to do relating to automation.
 
I am stating that a $500 thermostat will will not make corrections to a home that has not been built in an energy savings way.  That is a fact based on my automation efforts that started in the 1970's.
 
I like that you are making videos about your stuff.  I see that you like doing this sort of thing.  I am being honest here and not writing this to patronize you. 
 
BTW met the Mainlobby group at an after EHExpo automation party a few years back.  They were mostly well behaved kids and didn't seem arrogant to me at all.
 
Thinking back I did purchase Main Lobby either right after meeting them and probably only because I met them in person.

 

[mikefamig]

For example,
1) since the time I made that post, I had to run some errands involving 40 miles of highway driving. I have an $18K (off the lot brand new no trade-in) Nissan Rogue. There was light traffic. A BMW 5 series, camaro, and Jaguar F-type all followed me, we were all doing about 80-90mph. They were struggling to keep up, I ended up dusting them.
 
IVB
 
No offense but it is my opinion that you are having delusions of grandeur if you think that you dusted them with your Nissan Rogue. My guess is that they didn't even notice that you were racing them.
 
Mike.

 

[IVB]

Sorry, went on a family weekend to Napa Valley yesterday afternoon. 8am and everyone is still sound asleep, so coffee & laptop and the hotel lobby I go.
 

Why are you judging / deriding people's decision making process about buying a $500 thermostat instead of a $10 one when you've made choices others wouldn't?
 
I am not.  Where do you get from?  I don't really think you are picking on me as I am not angry right now. 
 
I have only stated here that I have and try not to have internet dependencies on my automation. Trying is hard this days though.
 
I understand that judgements are rampant everywhere.  Not relating to automation just noticed a coup happened today in Turkey.
 
I do not see really what this has to do relating to automation.
 
I am stating that a $500 thermostat will will not make corrections to a home that has not been built in an energy savings way.  That is a fact based on my automation efforts that started in the 1970's.
 
I like that you are making videos about your stuff.  I see that you like doing this sort of thing.  I am being honest here and not writing this to patronize you. 
 
BTW met the Mainlobby group at an after EHExpo automation party a few years back.  They were mostly well behaved kids and didn't seem arrogant to me at all.
 
Thinking back I did purchase Main Lobby either right after meeting them and probably only because I met them in person.

 
I apologize if I misunderstood, but I took "Similar to having to be able to look at my thermostat on my cell phone.  If the base cooling or heating infrastructure is shit then a $500 thermostat isn't going to fix it.  I don't understand why folks do not see this?" to mean "its silly to spend $500 to look at thermo on your phone, its not going to fix your heating issues". When nobody every said that it could do that. Or the "$10 of parts and RPi2" bit.
 
Re:Cinemar, not getting into that again. My point was that I can make the same point about "I don't understand why folks do not see this" about many things. But, I accept that people (including my wife) look at what I do and also don't understand why I don't see things, so i'm just as willfully ignorant as anyone.
 

For example,
1) since the time I made that post, I had to run some errands involving 40 miles of highway driving. I have an $18K (off the lot brand new no trade-in) Nissan Rogue. There was light traffic. A BMW 5 series, camaro, and Jaguar F-type all followed me, we were all doing about 80-90mph. They were struggling to keep up, I ended up dusting them.
 
IVB
 
No offense but it is my opinion that you are having delusions of grandeur if you think that you dusted them with your Nissan Rogue. My guess is that they didn't even notice that you were racing them.
 
Mike.

 
I'm a NY driver living in NorCal. Q.E.D.

 

[mikefamig]

Lucky you, I've seen northern CAL and the shore is breathtaking.

 

[IVB]

Lucky you, I've seen northern CAL and the shore is breathtaking.

 
I live maybe 15 miles inland in a super yuppie part of Oakland. The house down the street just listed for $1280/sqft. $2.7M. WTH people, who can afford that? Thank god we bought in '01, I can't afford my own house!
 
That house is absolutely stunning though, was entirely redone top-bottom with some super nice type of hardwood floors/etc.

 

[pete_c]

Understood; understood. 
 
It is nice to be able to chat / compare notes / DIY stuff here on the forum.  All of us in to doing Automation do it differently and similarly with whatever.  Here also utilize the OP2 panel and there is automation that I do not touch and automation that I always am tinkering with.  IE: Amazon Echo / Zigbee stuff for play while concurrently have stuff and same stuff running for many years now.  I personally have learned much from others on the forum.
 
I have only been to Boston and Baltimore for work and just Manhattan for short vacation.
 
I took my wife to Manhattan a few years ago (in the 90's) to see some shows and visit friends.  At the time stayed at the Milford Plaza hotel.  Did visit with a couple of friends working there.
 
When I got there with the rental vehicle the folks at the hotel told me there was no parking and if I left the car on the streets there it would be probably be stolen.  So I returned the car and we just used a cab or walked around Manhattan. 
 
West coast for work mostly in LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Oakland....and always flew and used rental car locally if at all.  If I drove it was always bumper to bumper in a rental car.  IE: did a project at SAIC (they only went to DC and London) for the company that I worked for.  It was mostly just sitting in a board room reviewing a little network design and methodology of implementation.  Not much else.  I did enjoy the almost university like campus there.  At the time we were putting in an airline terminal for the company for private flight bookings.  We did also do a bunch of these internationally at US embassies and the such (very secure using bio metrics).  PITA is that is was using older ALC controllers / com stuff and going IP was using a custom Cisco IOS MATIP configuration (wrote an instruction manual here for use of MATIP working with Cisco).  Had to do an audit as there were terminals all over the world; sometimes loosy goosy.  Found one on a farm in the middle of the UK with an 80 old retired employee using it.
 
Curiousity some looked at the prices of the homes in the middle 2000's and they were mostly > $1,000,000.00 for a tad over 1000 SF.  Peers that I worked with either lived in San Francisco proper or just a bit outside. 
 
I remember them talking about their vacation homes which were mostly in Hawaii at the time but it being expensive they purchase homes too in the Caribbean (which was much more reasonable)/

 

[mikefamig]

I took a job as a toolmaker in San Francisco in the mid 70's and rented in San Bruno for a few months. It didn't work out and I ended up back in Connecticut apparently for what will become the rest of my life. But who knows. i returned to SF for a weekend once and rented a 260Z car and beat it around some shore roads and what a blast! Only got as far north as Stinson beach as I remember it was very scenic.
 
Mike.

 

[pete_c]

Here last trip to SFO I was able to go across the Golden Gate bridge once.

Stayed next to the airport and only ate at the restaurant that extends out from the airport on kind of an island. The restaurant was circular.

That said only worked between 1 AM to 3 AM for 3 nights in a conference room next to one com closet.  The two closets (server rooms) were opposite sides of the airport where I had to use a golf cart and it took me about 30 minutes.

Typically never did stuff like this rather managed it but at the time there were no resources there.  The time before though a peer gave me a sight seeing tour which I enjoyed.  I liked that he took the time to do this as mostly folks just wanted to go home after work.

I had a peer in the Midwest that had flown there one time to do work. It was the time that they had the earthquake interrupt the baseball game that was happening there (world series). He had never experienced an earthquake. He rented a car and decided to drive back to Chicago, never going back there again and never wanting to work there.

In the 1960's family had a motor home and the family vacation was a month long trip down 66 and back I80.  We did the whole Disneyland thing, I have fond memories of that.  One cousin same age had joined us (from EU).

Thinking folks got upset because we put a peace symbol on the spare tire cover of the motor home (late 1960's).

My beef there was that there were two pops there to the PAC RIM; SFO and OAK. I kept mentioning that one earth quake would disconnect the pac rim. Vendors I dealt with put their connections in LA and way up north(Washington state). To this day I still have reservations about this. Not sure if has been fixed. I know for sure that one day while constructing the new international terminal there at SFO, fiber was cut and that disconnected (everything from old telco to new privatelines to internet) the northern half of California for a bit.

Only other earthquake debacle I have had was one 15 minute earth quake demolishing a gas facility during construction in the middle of a desert by the ocean 300 miles away from Lima, Peru. Years of a project reset to the the beginning (millions of dollars of reconstruction).  Mostly in South America it would always be coup and a disconnect of all com lines in to the country for whatever reason.  The cell phone conversation was like get to the airport, get our stuff out asap usually with a military escort  - what a PITA.

 

[pete_c]

What the heck.  I cannot remove the extra stuff in the post above.

 

[tmbrown97]

Now that we've gone pretty far off topic...  I was given a tile at a conference recently.  I activated it and played with it a little, and now it sits on my desk.  I don't have a dog, and I don't lose my keys.  I suppose if you could track it using the crowdsourcing without putting a tag in lost mode, I'd probably find more use (say in a kid's backpack) or if it did a breadcrumb, I might stash one in a teenager's car... but for what it is today, I haven't been able to make myself care yet.
 
Honestly the Tile app irritates the heck out of me... every time I put my phone in airplane mode I have it pop up complaining... and when you're on a plane twice a week, that's a lot of times to see that stupid message.  It did pop up one time though as I landed in Orange County, right as I turned Airplane Mode off - saying my phone just helped find a lost tile.

 

[IVB]

i have one in both my cars too. I guess i'm just more forgetful than most, walked up to the wrong white mini-SUV just tonight and was baffled until I realized I had parked elsewhere. Then again, most people here have realized i'm just not that smart

 

[pete_c]

IVB; you stimulated a lively 3 pages of posts here that started with Mike on page #1.
 
While I understand it went in many directions.  I participated in that here.
 
It has made for some interesting reading/writing here which I enjoyed. 
 
Technology is moving quickly and I cannot keep up with all of it. 
 
We ventured off and did always return to the OP somewhat.
 
I kept reading.
 
I have been involved in IT now for many many years; that said though never much in to the selling of IT and/or IT services.
 
Relating to the new start up companies; I have only really been involved with 1-2 in the last 5 years.  First one just gave me beta hardware to play with and in return help others that were per-purchasing the hardware.  The second company started off by asking me to testing their new wares on my hardware and helping with their start up.  Basically I started doing this and then really thought about why I would provide free pro bono help when the product/idea didn't really do anything for me.
 
Both of the companies mentioned above I only really gave them my time, no monies.
 
The original post writes about a new product that started off this way and now is making money selling their widgets.  The attraction to the widget justifies the cost and they appear to be doing well.
 
I do like the concept of investing in a company in the beginning if you get something out of it afterwards; but really without the meat then even time spent doesn't really do much for me.  Recently tried two newer IT products.  One was from a company that started off with a bang, did well for a bit then bit the dust all in just a few years.  I did pay a fraction of the original price for the product and well it appears to be very well built and made to last forever.  I am a happy camper having paid $60 for a product that was selling close to $800.  They did well for a time as mostly folks did purchase the product for $800. 
 
The second product was given to me gratis from another start up company.  Again it was only my time and familiarity with similar products.  I tried it, it worked then I invested a bit of monies in to it purchasing a case for the device made in Spain by a guy who builds guitars and appears to be using a 3D printer now for his stuff.  I have written about that product here as well and the product mentioned in the paragraph before. 
 
I also see here many posts relating to the Amazon Echo and what CT folks are doing with it.  I like what I read having purchased one from the get go.  Really with the monies that I have spent with the company it should have been given to me for free; I still did purchase it.  While I got a deal on the pre-purchase of the item and did tinker with it for a bit; I do not today; but that is me.
 
Really what is nice is that I can go to Cocoontech and read about this stuff; IE: the Trackr/Tile stuff posted here which started this OP. 

 

[IVB]

I should have put a Tile on this conversation, then it would have been easier to track :rofl:
 
i'll see myself out...

 

[tmbrown97]

lol!
 
I just came from another conference tonight with another tile and a samsung tab...  maybe I'll do something more interesting with the tile this time.