Recent content by Tessa

  1. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    Quick question:   If someone says this...are you, in fact, offering your services as a contractor?  [Paid, of course.]  Is this a cue I should be picking up?  :)  Sorry, I can be dense.
  2. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    As the builder pointed out, when I brought up secure sliding glass door locks with him & the glass contractor: I want big windows and sliding glass doors EVERYwhere.  If I make it too hard to open a locked [anything], and someone really wants in, they're just going to break a pane of glass.   So...
  3. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    Thanks for the clarifications about Homeseer.  All very good to know.  Sounds like a definite prospect.   Can a number of these things work together?  You may recall I'm trying to figure out how to control a bunch of devices in 3 different outbuildings, without running an individual wire from...
  4. Tessa

    Long distance wi-fi, antenna

    Oh dear, sorry to make you think harder on this topic than you had already :) but thank you.  Yeah, see, there's 3 outbuildings, and at the very least I want video feed(s) from all of them, so I need to get into them *somehow*.    My thought was sort of like this, and it's still a little...
  5. Tessa

    Long distance wi-fi, antenna

    That is extraordinarily useful, thank you so much.    It is very spiffy that there ARE products that can reach like that.   I'm looking at their products page (https://store.ubnt.com/unifi.html) and it looks like they have 4 products called "Outdoor"; d'you just recommend the most expensive one...
  6. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    Ah, okay, great. Reading through their setup instructions it looks like the only way to initiate communication from computer-to-homeseer_device is through their webpage, and that's always worrying. They sell these kits with the prepackaged small controller (HomeTroller Zee) and one piece of...
  7. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    Now, here's some interesting software that a friend pointed me to: http://thethingsystem.com Looks like they're pretty much trying to do exactly what I want: run any automated device, from any protocol, from any computer. ...I could _probably_ manage the "websockets" modules for "observe" and...
  8. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    I've been looking at Homeseer now, thank you. There are a few things that perplex me. There are all-in-one boxes, controlled by browser, it looks like. You have to go to Homeseer's site to initially set up the connection from your own computer to the Homeseer device. How much of the data has to...
  9. Tessa

    Long distance wi-fi, antenna

    Has anyone used something like the Ayrstone antenna to try to really push your wi-fi network signal over distance to automated devices? This antenna's claims are rather impressive ("up to half a mile away"); I still have issues with "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." (I might...
  10. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    I am corrected: he uses both VNC and VPN, and I was thinking of VPN here. He & I haven't talked about VNC before. He thinks it sounds like a good idea, though, and says it hadn't occurred to him in this context.
  11. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    You know, I didn't intend to blow right by this without saying something (although I did mention that I was in rough shape that day); my apologies. This was helpful in a "this can be done" way. Since security--at least, the traditional security system--_is_ the least of my concerns in the whole...
  12. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    Very spiffy. The Spouse uses a VNC product for work, but it's not residential-quality ;) and I'd gotten the impression that its main job was to provide authorization to permit his connection through otherwise-closed secure connections. (He mostly uses linux at work, sometimes Windows for...
  13. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    Aaaand I'm a residential quality customer with a residence. I'm disabled; that makes me less able to afford high end projects.
  14. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    Oh, heck yeah. *Sounds* delightfully easy. Are your suggestions reliable software? Just... is it going to be buggy, suffer random connection loss, break with library updates, require nasty yearly license fees, need all kinds of regular software nursing, or otherwise be an immense headache to...
  15. Tessa

    New home, some specifics now

    So please, can we just step away from the "Tessa is a linux bigot" button? (For cryin' out loud, The Spouse spends most of his time in Windows for his video games. It's not like we can't have it in the house or anything.) And then we can get back to what I *did* say, which is that I need to be...
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