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And to think I was mad at myself for not running USB power to outlets in the kitchen. This is perfect! I too don't think around 25 bucks is bad, this is a specialty product. It is low volume and has UL. I'm surprised it is so cheap. I'm a little surprised they can put a LV device in with a...

I put down SA as well but have a few switches from each of the manufacuturers. All seem to work great. I had a problem with an SA relay and they replaced no questions asked. I've have a few Web Mountain parts as well and they work fine. As far as I can tell they are all about the same and...

I think you need to to quantify what you mean by 'cut your energy costs drastically'. I think people WAY over estimate the cost of things like lights and cold water. There is some very simple math you can do to get a handle on real costs. In Seattle a kw/hr is about $0.11 and there are about...

Please add HomeVision for hardware controllers.

This hardware looks pretty interesting because the hardware *appears* to be in the same class as Apple products, similar specs and much lighter. What I find interesting is that this device might actually allow developers to 1) Develop apps without an approval process. 2) Have unencumbered...

MakeMKV was the second one I tried and it created a file I couldn't play. Argh. I'm going to try DVDFab ... then maybe consider that I might have same strange codec issue going on. Thx.

I'm stumped, I've tried various trials and free/shareware and still can't accomplish this simple task: Rip a bluray disc to my harddrive and transcode so the movie is a single file. I have backed up my DVD's (those the kid's haven't trashed that is) so they reside on my server such that sage...

We did PEX and it was quick to install and has worked well so far. It is very quiet (water makes less noise moving through pipes). Our plumber said he was happy to do copper but would charge about 30% more (I think that is right, I don't remember exactly).

One thing I do with my home brew HA software is communicate via google talk using the .net library Jabber. Works very well. It's pretty cool having a command line driven house :)

If you have chickens and want to have eggs in winter it is a good idea to give them 14 hours of light so they think it is summer. Using the HA sunrise/set information and a upb contolled dimmer it is simulated summer all year in the coup with the energy savings of only being on when needed.

All the doors and windows are wired up. Motions all over the place. Moisture sensors as needed. Phone ringer cutoff during dinner. Current sensor on gas furnace.

Can't help with the google calandar but I can help with the phone ringer thing. I hate the phone ringing during dinner so from 5:30 to 6:30 every night I disable the ringers with one of these ringer cut off things: http://www.sandman.com/wizard.html#RingerCut-off I have this thing hooked up...

That could be fixed though by checking if there was an RDP session in which case it wouldn't count.

I'm curious as to what the cool stuff is. As best as I can tell bluetooth proximity is a fuzzy way to track a person since batteries go dead and people set their phones down. Do those with bluetooth proximity *always* carry their phone? I do like the concept of having multiple dongles around...

I have been looking at bluetooth tracking and wondering if it really does work. All of my family's cell phones now have bluetooth capability and I've verified that I can see them from my PC but I wonder if in practice it actually works for any but the most subtle HA tasks. Bluetooth just can't...

I watch my furnace fan using a current sensor and logging the number of minutes each month that the fan (and thus furnace) is on by day/week/month. Lucky for me the furnace is about 5 feet away from my HA stuff so the total install time was about 30 minutes...it doesn't always work out like that...

I have found the monitoring of power to be interesting but doubt it will save any money for me. Since I have my heating on a schedule, have CFL's where possible and use the all-off light control there isn't much left to cut back on other than little stuff...certainly no 15%. I do like to have...

This might be a great way to setup a WHS box. It is tricky to get it installed but intel posted this PDF explaining how to do it: http://download.intel.com/support/motherbo...ation_guide.pdf Pretty cool stuff.

It froze because I left the hose on. Odds are I won't do that again, it was a $1000 mistake. But with my early onset Alzheimers you never know. I'll seal it though. Chuck

Sorry for waking an old thread, but this seems like the best place. I recently had a pipe freeze and now have the opportunity to put a sensor on it since the dry wall is open. What would be the best way to put a sensor on this setup? This picture has all of the unsulation removed. I...