Recent content by brothers

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but do you have an MSDN subscription? I just checked, and the site seems to be working normally (I went to msdn.microsoft.com, clicked the subscriber link, and logged in with my passport). - Dennis Brothers

I bought a similar device at Radio Shack over ten years ago. - Dennis Brothers

The advantage of RG-59 may simply be that it is "good enough", and tends to be smaller-diameter and more flexible than RG-6. Also, some RG-59 has lower capacitance-per-foot than some RG-6 (the best and worst of each are roughly equivalent to each other in C/ft). This capacitance is the...

I have a card deck stashed in the archives somewhere that, when printed on an IBM 1403 chain printer (roughly 1960 technology) plays "Anchors Aweigh". I've also got a paper tape for a DEC PDP-8 which plays various tunes on an AM radio held near the PDP-8's core stack. Younger members of this...

I use one of DynDNS's paid services to handle my registered domain names. An advantage to this is that I can add as many hostnames as I want. I have the usual mail. and www., with my router doing the usual port redirection. I use Reverse Proxy on the designated www (port 80) machine to detect...

Yes. - Dennis Brothers

.NET 2.0 has a serial port class. You can download Visual Basic.NET 2005 Express Edition for free from the Microsoft site. - Dennis Brothers

The latest updates to Outlook (for the last year or so, actually) modify it so that it requests your permission before downloading pictures (to prevent the confirmation scenario). I don't think this helps if there's a mime-encoded graphic in the email itself, but I almost never see those...

Semi-random comments addressing various points raised in the thread so far: Insteon will be supported by all the major HA software vendors. I currently have it running in HomeSeer; SmartHome's own software package should be out Real Soon Now; many others are in the works. You should see a...

As of today, I'm almost completely X10-free (still got two old SwitchLincs I need to swap out). Aside from the two "legacy" devices, I'm running nearly thirty Insteon widgets from HomeSeer, and they are completely reliable. I was originally running these things in X10 compatibility mode, and I...

I'll second the recommendation of the Panasonic BL-C10A - I've got two of them, and they work great. While theyre not touted as low-light cameras, the one overlooking my front yard gives perfectly viewable images in the middle of the night, with just the light from a nearby streetlight. My...

You basically need to find somebody who is knowledgeable in electronics to look at the schematics for both your Z-Wave T'Stat and your HVAC controller, and figure out exactly how it should be wired. Wire colors can be pretty arbitrary - most HVAC guys are oriented toward the...

Thomas - Before you dismiss HomeSeer, check out the (free) TouchPad plugin. It provides a much less busy web interface that I've found works very well on the 770. - Dennis Brothers

The way to decouple remotes from house codes is through home automation software (I use HomeSeer, but there are others with similar capabilities). As you have, I've got each room on its own X10 house code (though I'm in the process of switching to Insteon codes). Then I've got several remote...

Currently, the main purpose of the wireless side of Insteon is phase bridging. It has some serendipitous applications in bridging into otherwise isolated circuits, but until we see wireless Insteon controllers and similar devices, it won't really come into its own (IMO). As far as the...