Technology Ramblings

For those of us who have been involved in automating homes by adding "smart" devices from light switches to thermostats, cameras, sensors, controllers, etc - there was always a challenge with managing the wide range of devices. While each OEM had their own app that would allow you to control their devices - you'd often end up with anywhere from 4 - 10 apps that were required to manage the entire home.  And depending on your product choices you also had to have hubs to communicate from your Wifi network to other RF networks like Zigbee or Z-Wave.  With many of these "hubs" they had native support across multiple vendors or you had to add plugins or provide specific OEM support. Some OEM apps were great, some sucked, but it became challenging to provide a solution for a client where they could easily manage their home on their own.  Between having to maintain multiple credentials/logins across the apps and even communicating which app controls what - it sometimes ...

Hey folks.. Back in late June of 2021 - I started down the Windows Insider track with Windows 11 and installed build 22000.51 on both an Intel NUC 8th Gen and a Dell Inspiron 2-in-1 laptop. Back then I made the comment that effectively Windows was just a Chromebook/MacOS mashup and that really I had noticed any major performance improvements over the Windows 10 builds I had been running... Okay so here we are some 18 months later and I'm running build Windows 11 Pro build 25267.    So what's changed ? To be honest not much.   Sure there have been some improvements with the overall start menu and task bar, there is now tabs for Windows Explorer and the extremely glacial migration of system settings from Control Panel has continued The biggest thing that Windows 11 had forced me to do is to upgrade my NUC as Intel effectively stopped upgrading the Iris 655 Graphics drivers for my NUC 8 and I didn't want end up with a platform that wouldn't support newer builds. So the ...

Hey folks... As we close out 2022 - figured it was time to revisit my Cutting the Cord analysis.   Over the last 4 or 5 years - I've done an analysis every year or two to see if I could "cut the cord" while will providing my family the entertainment choices they wanted, with the same convenience they were used to and lower my monthly costs. Back in 2017 & 2018 the answer for me was a definite no.  There were simply too many caveats, compromises and complexity to make it work.   My last analysis was in late 2020 and the market had matured quite a bit - with much better offerings and technologies.  My conclusion then was that cord cutting was a very viable option and in fact starting in 2021 I started switching some of my property management customers to streaming, but I still hadn't done it myself... Finally in 2022 I did "Cut the Cord" - albeit a Satellite TV cord vs a Cable TV Cord.   The catalyst for the change was actually a move - we bough...

  Hi folks... It's been over a year since my last post - but I recently upgraded my Intel NUC from an 8th Gen to 12th gen and figured it was time for a review of the latest generation.    I'm a big fan of the NUC platform. The fact that you can have a 4" x 4" system on your desk with the latest Core CPUs and easily add what ever RAM and Storage you want to it for under $1,000 is great.    I'm not a gamer - so the NUC12 Pro - Wall Street Canyon - NUC12WSHi5 was my choice.  Its effectively a like for like upgrade to my NUC8 Bean Canyon system. Let's start the review with obtaining a NUC 12.   I always buy the NUC Kits and then purchase my own RAM, NVMe and in this case an additional 2.5" SATA SSD.  I love that flexibility of the NUC line.   Although the NUC12 Pro was announced in August - right now NUC12 Pros are few and far between and many are over charging for the unit.   I was able to find one for $526 US.  One...

Hey Folks... It's been quite some time since I've written anything about Windows.  It was way back in March of 2019 when 19H1 was being released and a new Windows org was being announced.    Quite frankly I haven't written much be was because little if anything really changed from 19H1 onwards.  Sure there was News and Interests, People and some continued updates to things like Settings - but little else and so nothing much to write about.  Windows 10 was effectively dead after 19H1.  Yeah there was the Duo/Neo announcement and release of the Duo foldable in the fall of 2020 - but as I have suspected the device just did not sell and pricing has already dropped by 30 - 40% or more.  MS can't give them away.  The Neo was killed entirely and it was actually the unit I was most interested in.    But now here comes Windows 11.  A bright shiny new version of Windows that may have been the result of that reorg back in 2019. One of the big ...

Over the last few years - I've performed various cord cutting experiments in an attempt to A) get all the content my family consumes and B) reduce the the cost compared to the Cable/Sat providers. The challenge with previous experiments was often issues with local channel support or picture & sound quality or total cost when looking to supporting 4+ active TVs. The good news is things have changed and you now have a much better experience at reasonable pricing. My most recent experiment involved both the new Google Chromecast with Google TV and YouTube TV as well as my TCL 6 Series Roku TV also running YouTube TV.  Both devices also support all the other popular streaming apps, NetFlix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, etc.  The TCL Roku TV even supports Apple TV+ with Airplay and HomeKit support.   For our family YouTube TV had a really great channel selection at a reasonable price and features like the unlimited cloud based recording are unbeatable.   Whi...

In part 1 of the Journey to Solar - I discussed getting a good understanding of what your energy needs really are and where you should make investments in efficiency to change your consumption model and potentially reduce the size of your solar solution. For Part 2 let's assume you've done your homework and made your investments to improve your efficiency and your ready to start designing your system. Where do you start ?   How do I size my system ?   Do I want Storage ?   So let's start with an example set of criteria.  You added up your total annual kWh usage is it's around 20,000 kWh.  You've also determined that your maximum kWh consumption during any one hour in the year is 10kWh and that your daily maximum total consumption is about 100kWh and your maximum monthly usage is about 3000kWh - with a range of 1500 -> 3000 during any one month.  Finally let's say for that 100kWh day - 60kWh is during daylight hrs and 40kWh is evenings/over...