IoT Lights

The challenge - the builder of the church wound up doing something that was, umm, not so smart. In our backyard they installed 3 lights. 2 of them are normal, the 3rd is a motion detector. The not smart part is they are all on the same switch. If we shut the switch off, then the motion detector does not work at night. If we leave the switch on, then the non motion detector lights are on 24/7.  I decided to address the problem by looking at IoT lights.

One of my friends recently built a house and he had Insteon installed everywhere.  The hub is $149. The switches are $69 each. Then I counted up my light switches, 70. Now obviously I would not have to change them all out, but I really started thinking about what lights I would want to control, and this solution just did not seem to make sense, from a fiscal standpoint.

Another gent I work with has the Hue system. He swears by them. Openly admits they are not cheap, compared to regular bulbs, but preaches that it changes everything. The starter kit, which is the hub and 3 bulbs is $199. 

Setup was very simple, starting with Amazon frustration free packing FTW! Once the hub is plugged in the lights automatically find it. You then install the app on your phone, and pair with the hub, by pressing a button on the front of the hub. I am guessing it's a security feature. Prevents someone from pairing with your hub and taking over your lights, since you have to have physical access to it. 

Now here is the cool part. Once everything is setup up you can control the lights with IFTTT. I created a recipe to turn the lights on at 5 PM and off at Midnight. Allows us to have all the lights on when we want them. The 2 IoT ones during the evening and the motion detector all night. 

Another ridiculously cool thing is the Echo integration. Now we can simply ask Alexa to turn our lights off and on. 

Enter the slippery slope. The lights were just too cool to not get more. I wound up switching out the builds in many of our rooms. Once you have more than one light in a room you can select a theme. The multi-color LED’s will paint the room in color. I truly lack the words to describe how awesome it is to light a room up with the different themes. 

vCenter Server Appliance 6.0

Got some cycles in on the lab today and decided to work on vCenter Server Appliance. The first thing that you need to take care of is local DNS. In the past I have always run a windows server.  I decided to see about an appliance. Infoblox has one, and so does Men and Mice. Both led to registration, request for downloads. Which I still haven’t received. As I was poking around and I found the VM that was my old DNS server.  I was able to import and update it without too much Yak Shaving. DNS, ✓

Its been a while since I have installed the Appliance. I was a bit surprised to find out that the appliance is still heavily dependent on Windows to install. There is plenty of docs and blogs on how to install the appliance, so I won’t duplicate here. At a high level you mount the ISO to a windows image, install a windows program, and then that program deploys the Linux Appliance. 

The windows dependency comes in because while the end product is an appliance, it is an appliance that can have many configurations. The installation wizard (the aforementioned windows component) leads you through a series of questions.  Do you want to embed the platform controller? Is this a stand alone platform controller? What about SSO? Do you want to use Postgres or Oracle? The install actually builds the Appliance based on your answers. Hence why an ISO versus an OVA.

The windows install (OVA builder) took about 20 minutes to run. Just when I thought things had gone wrong and started to go look for log files, it finished. 

After an EBKBAC error I was able to log in. I must have mistyped my login. For the life of me I could not log in. Then I read the fine print about close the window and try again. Once I did that I was able to log in and have vCenter running. 

Alexa Nest

Sometimes our house gets a bit warm in the middle of the night. It sucks to have to turn on the blaring iPhone screen to adjust the Nest. I thought to myself wouldn’t it be cool (pun intended?) to have Alexa take care of things for me. 

I started out with the goal of having Alexa turn on our HVAC fan. Logged into the Alexa app and it does have Nest integration. Turned it on and spent the next 15 minutes in the I hate Alexa category. You can’t just turn on the fan. Alexa wants to turn on the AC. Okay so maybe not a bad thing, but even giving in, I could never get her to understand my request to make the upstairs cooler and turn on the AC. 

Time for plan B. Jumped over to ifttt.com. Activated the Nest and Alexa channels. Created a trigger channel to turn on the fan. Moving back into the I love Alexa category. With the simple phrase “Alexa trigger  turn on the upstairs fan" the fan will turn on! 

Solar Fountain

Years ago we got a fountain for our anniversary. It has an electric pump. We used it every once in a while when we felt like plugging it in. When we moved to the Church my wife decided to hang it where it could be seen all the time, but there is no electric plug. 

What to do? Go with her plan, its just a decoration now? Figure out how to run electricity to it? Then it hit me, Solar! I first started my Amazon search for a Solar electrical plug. This took me down a bit of a wrong path, because it led to fairly expensive systems. hundreds of dollars,  that are able to generate a lot of electricity and inverters to convert to AC. I was fairly certain the pump had to be DC to start with, which got me thinking. 

I modified my search and sure enough quickly found myself looking at a solar powered water pump. And for $15 what did I have to loose?

Installation was breeze. Simply replaced the current pump with the Solar one, and place the solar panel on top of the fence. In the video you can see the pump running with the solar panel in the top right.  It will also add a bit of fun to see just how much sun it needs to run the pump. 

Update: Had just a bit of a cloud move in front of the sun. Something wispy enough that you probably wouldn't have noticed. The water immediately stopped flowing. Started right back up as soon as the cloud moved. A little bit surprised at how sensitive the panel is.

06/06/16: Looks like the pump is running from a bit after 9AM to a bit after 4PM.

Garageio->MyQ

One of my ex-sun co-workers tweeted about Garage. I was smitten and started to budget for it. Several items played against me on this one. First the garage door opened died and I had to use the funds for the Garageio to get a new opener. Then we started thinking about moving and I held off till we got to the Church. Then I discovered the garage door opener that came with the church was not Garageio compatible. And of course we had friends over for dinner one night and all they could talk about was how cool their Garageio was. 

Our opener is a Liftmaster and it has an Internet gateway. I decided to give it a whirl. The setup was ridiculously simple. Plug the device into power and your router, create an account, download the app. The app guides you through adding your garage door opener as a device. You have to hit the learn button, like any other remote, but since you are doing it through the app, you can be in the garage to do it. Nice touch! 

In all of about 10 minutes we now have an Internet enabled garage door opener. A unique feature is when you close the door with the app, the touch pad in the garage sounds an alarm as a fair warning. I am guessing they had to add this since you are closing the door without line of site of it.  Truly loving the notifications when the door opens and closes, and the ability to double check the door is closed.

 

Sugru

Yet another thing I saw on KickStarter that I thought was cool, is Sugru. Alas I couldn’t figure out what I would ever use it for, and decide to pass. Flash forward a few years, and I decided to pick some up. Heck if it was on hand, maybe I would think something up to use it for. 

I recently switched out my sprinkler clock. The old one sat vertical. The new one horizontal. I quickly realized I was going to have a hole in the wall. Umm… SUGRU!  

I had about half the package left, and was contemplating what else to do with it. Then an idea struck me. The Church builder put our gate handle right up against the wall so you drag your knuckles on the stucco every time you open it. Sugru!! 

Both applications have been holding up for about a week. It will be interesting to see how the hold up over time. 

IoT Sprinklers

My IoT journey actually started with sprinklers about 6 years ago. In our old house we had 2 systems. One in the front, one in the back. To top off that design decision they ran the control cables smack dad to the middle, which meant they were in the basement under the staircase, and installed the clock. For normal operations no big deal, but when you were working on them you had to run up and down the stairs to the basement tracking dirt through the house. Very inconvenient to say the least. 

I actually started the journey by prototyping an Aurdino to run the sprinklers. But as such things go, time was always a factor and in one of my searches I found an EtherRain. It’s an incredible simple device. An ethernet port to call home to the LawnCheck website,  low voltage ports to drive the solenoids, and enough firmware to process the schedules. The device is so simple, so rock solid, that I set it up once, and never touched it again. Over the years, I would use the website to control my schedules, but I never actually touched the EtherRain. 

When Rachio, hit kickstarter, I so desperately wanted to participate, but hey if it ain’t broken… I continued to ride my EtherRain. About 2 years ago, I got my lucky break. My father called because their 30 years old clock had stopped functioning. A quick trip over to their house to verify it was dead, and I was off like lightning to Home Depot to get a Rachio. The Gen1 Rachio was so much superior to the EtherRain, I had serious clock envy, which was tempered a bit, by getting to set things up for the rents. 

Flash forward to today. When we moved into the church I knew one of my first projects was going to be to replace the horrible clock that the builder installed. The challenge was that our clock is outside and I knew the Rachio was for indoor use. I figured someone had to have figured out how to mount it outside. I hit up google and sure enough, someone had. Rachio! There is now a Gen2 device which can be mounted outside. 

The Gen2 clock was a tad bit more difficult to install than the Gen1. Nothing to do with the Rachio, but with the outside mount. The outside mount for the Rachio needs to be have a plug added to it. I was able to take the plug off my old clock, and use it for the Rachio. I have a simple device to check that the wiring is correct in an outlet and in about ~45 minutes I had the box mounted to the wall, and wired for electricity. 

Once the box was mounted it took all of about 5 minutes to install the Rachio and get it on-line. The app is awesome, and I appreciate the water saving features. 

Logitech Alert

Several years ago in our old house we had a home security review. The person who came out said that our alarm should be fine, but that we should add in cameras on the front and back doors for additional security.  I know he was a salesman just doing his job, up selling us, but I was not sold on the need. On my next trip to Micro Center I saw a system called Logitech Alert and decided to give it a go. 

The system, like most, comes with a main component, which includes a camera and base station. Then you can add additional cameras. Unlike other camera systems I have seen, the cameras connect to the base through the electrical wires.  That's right, plug the cameras in and they find the base over your copper. No additional networking needed.  I picked up the base component and an additional camera 

and for many years proceeded to catch nothing but all the pesky squirrels that went through our yard. 

When we moved to the church, for reasons I did not investigate, the system will only work if the cameras and the base are on the same electrical circuit. I was already going with a different camera system for security, and decided to drop the Logitech system into our cellar. It would still notify me if something, most likely water, was moving down there. 

The system is several years old at this point and one of the camera’s night vision feature stopped working. This led to a very interesting demonstration of the night vision capabilities of the system, as I now had a camera with night vision on and one with it off, right next to each other. As you can see in the pic, its quite impressive what the night vision can see! 

T-KAPA18 is on-line

I have always loved traveling for work and pleasure, and will openly admit it. I am an avgeek. Over the  years I have watched as the apps for aviation have grown. One of the ones that I have often used is Flight Radar 24. The crazy thing about it is how they get their data. Planes broadcast their position, a receiver in a known location can pick up that broadcast and update their database. FR24 has receivers all over the world. I saw a post on twitter about offering to host one for them. Turns out they have more than ample coverage in my location, and don’t need me to host a receiver. 

As I was checking out the request page, I found that you don’t have to have one of their receivers to participate. You can build your own! I looked at the parts list and realized that I had everything I needed from several started but not finished IoT projects. 

Parts list:

• Raspberry Pi 1 model B revision 2 - any Pi will work
• DVB-T USB Stick 
• USB cable to power the Pi 
• USB Wall wart 
• SD Card 
• Ethernet Cable 

Simply follow the directions on their page and in ~15 minutes you will be up and adding data. The best part is is that you get a free premium membership as long as you are participating! 

ESXi 6

Hello old|new friend. Like most folks I have been working with ESXi for more years then I want to admit. I have always ran a home lab, which including running our windows VM’s. Just over 2 years ago, I had a hyper-v project I needed to work on, and I converted my server to that technology. What was supposed to be a quick project, wound up running for a long time. 

With my recent motivation to move back to VMW technologies, it was time to rebuild to ESXi. The first step was to move the one VM that actually has a purpose. My wife has one windows application that she must use for work. I picked up a copy of Fusion and Windows 10. I must say its pretty slick when she 3 finger swipes between her Mac and Windows OS screens. 

Since our move, my servers are not as easily accessible and I needed to get the iLOM on-line for remote access. Simply plug in the Ethernet, right? Of course not, nothing seems to go down with out Yak Shaving. It seems there has been some java security updates and the remote KVM won’t start anymore. After a few hours I found a post on-line that has a work around. While it deprecates the security levels, it allows it to work. 

One of my new co-workers recommended using USB to boot/run ESXi to save the internal disks for VM’s. I decided to give it a whirl. A quick search on-line led me to a nice script to create the bootable USB thumb drive.  Worked like a champ, but alas the server wouldn’t boot to it.  Decide I was not in the mood to debug, and kicked it old school. Burned a CD and installed. 

The next issue that I hit was during install. At what seemed to be the end of ESXi loading, before it starts the install, it hung at loading kernel drivers. A quick search on-line led to a post about running headless. You can either modify the boot parameters or your Bios. I choose the bios route and the install worked on the next try.

I now have ESXi 6 U2 up and running. There are several, new to me features since I last ran ESXi. The first is that VMware now provides a web interface per ESXi host. Its somewhat similar to the vCenter appliance. It's a great addition and I am glad to have it. The other new feature to me is VMware Remote Console. This a great little app that installs on OS X that allows you to run console windows to your VM’s, through the new web gui. 

And as I always do, the first VM that went onto the new server is Ubuntu, running the World Community Grid.  My philosophy is that if the server is going to be on, burning power, it should be doing something worthwhile. Check it out and feel free to join the team. 

Church Lab

After many years we recently moved into a newly remodeled church that was built in 1924. I needed to get my lab on-line and what should be a quick "its on line” result, turned into a serious amount of Yak Shaving. 

My lab has always been in the basement of our houses. However, the church doesn’t officially have a basement, it has a cellar. The ceiling is about 5 feet high which is fine for the servers, they don’t care how high the roof is. The builder who redid the church, I guess thought no one would use the space because the ceiling is too low. Step one: hire an electrician to extend the electrical plugs and lights for the servers. The really good news is there was electricity down there to extend. 

When the remodel was done the builder left the original outside walls which are 4 bricks thick. What seems like a previous life, in college, I ran ethernet cable for a telecomm company one summer. Yes those were the days when wireless was not even a thing. Hey you kids get off my lawn!!  While I have moved to wireless for my workstations and who only knows how many IoT devices, I have stayed wired for my servers. 

Now back to 2 points here: I know how to run cable, and those 4 brick thick walls. There is no way I was going to be able to run Ethernet to the servers.  I decided it was time to make the servers wireless. My first inclination was to find some type of wired/wireless bridge. 

There are as many opinions as products on the market as to how to solve this problem. As I was doing my research I had an aha moment. Many years ago I had purchased an airport express to make some wireless speakers. Over time we stopped using them, because we were invited to be a beta tester for Alexa. The express was not even on-line in our new house. There was not really an example of doing what I wanted to do with an airport express. Either it’s obvious so why bother posting it, or I was not googling right, but I decided to fire it up and give it go. 

After searching through boxes, and a firmware update, the airport express was on-line and sure enough it simply passes the ethernet port on it through the wireless it is connected to. My old switch lab is plugged into the express and my entire lab, after a 6 week interlude,  is on my network again. 

Evolution

Evolution of the church from 1937 as one of the first Christian churches in this area, to 1952 as a masonic lodge and community center, to 2016 a residential home...this place has great history and amazing brick walls with stories to tell.