I have an extensive home automation implementation that I have built over the years based, for the most part, on Insteon technology. I recently decided that I wanted to integrate my Ademco security system into my setup so I could take advantage of its vast array of sensors. I have been using an ISY-99i controller …
I have had an open item on my To-Do-List to set up a WebDAV Server for well over a year now. I needed a good distraction from my work activities for the weekend so I decided I would –finally- make this list item a reality. For those that don’t know what WebDAV is, let me …
My son has a number of game consoles and has really been into his XBOX 360 of late. He recently acquired a new title that was complaining about our network configuration and refused to let him play. After hearing his description of the message, I figured the issue had something to do with my very …
Back in October 2009, I wrote an article about Home Automation and mentioned that one of my next tasks was to figure out a way to “sense” my garage door status so I would always know if it were open or closed. Initially it may not seem particularly valuable to know the status of one’s …
We are finally ready to complete this series and leave you with a fully functional and cost free backup solution. Now that you have your server setup and have an initial copy of the data you want to backup on the box, we’re ready to go back to our source machine and setup our backups. …
In the last article we talked about the fundamental requirements for our DIY backup solution. Now that we understand what’s required, it’s time to set the wheels in motion. As I mentioned previously, our off-site backup server will be running Linux. For this type of workhorse function, I prefer a lightweight OS, so I chose …
I'm a big believer in backups. I've gone completely over the top in the past and have so many external backup devices that I found myself confused about which was which. Knowing that a backup, by itself, wasn't enough, I eventually started storing my data in "the cloud" by leveraging Amazon's S3 service. This meant …
I seem to change my home file server platform like most people change their socks. My most recent change was from Windows Server 2008 to a Mac Mini running Snow Leopard. Since most of the computers in our house are now Macs, it seemed like a logical next step to migrate our server back-end to …
I have been wanting to set up a home automation system for some time now and have finally taken my first steps. Do a bit of investigation on this subject, and you will quickly be overwhelmed with options. The grand daddy of these systems is a power-line based system called X10. Unfortunately, X10 has always …
I jumped onto the MP3 player bandwagon fairly early with my purchase of the Creative Labs Nomad, in 2000. This was Creative’s first MP3 player (it wasn’t even theirs, it was a rebranded Samsung model) that launched in June of 1999 and was a leading edge device for its time with 32MB of RAM, FM …
