In my last post I wrote about interfacing my Ademco alarm panel into my Home Automation (HA) network. Since I completed the installation I have had an on again and off again problem with the Mac receiving output from the AD2USB unit. The problem manifested itself via the Serial Bridge software (more on that later) …
I have gone through many iterations in the applications that drive my Home Automation (HA) system but so far I have held firm to the underlying Insteon technology that powers it. A long-standing goal for moving to the next level has been to interface my Ademco Alarm panel into my HA system so I can …
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 two articles, we have laid the groundwork for getting our backups in place. By now you should have your site selected, your server built and your router and firewall(s) configured. Now let’s talk about the last big preparatory item before we get to the backup itself. So what is this last step …
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 …
