Author: Nick Momrik

I'm searching for my first hole-in-one. I enjoy being active and making things. I work for Automattic.

Home Automation Part 1: Devices

Nick Momrik5 Comments

Since I keep putting off a big home automation post due to not having much actual automation done, I’m going to split things up into a series of 3 posts. It’ll make for shorter posts and hopefully motivate me to get my automations done. This first post will share all of the equipment I have around my house, part 2 will be about the software, and part 3 will be about the actual automating.

myq-alertsMyQ Garage Door Opener

Don’t buy one of these. The online service the device communicates with is always having problems. I have mine configured to send me an alert whenever the door is open for at least 30 minutes. Over a 2 day period, all 4 of these notifications shown in the screenshot were incorrect! Happens at least once a month.

I want to see if I can reverse engineer the sensor attached to the door and make my own opener using a microcontroller and a spare remote I have.

Nest Thermostats

My house has a boiler with baseboard heat and 4 heating zones. I have one of these in each location. They work great.

Nest Protects

Alarms for detecting smoke and carbon monoxide. They “talk” to the thermostats as well. I have 3, but hope I never need to find out how well they work.

Nest Cam and the previous Dropcam

One is sitting on an end table pointed at my front door and one is mounted in my garage (mostly so I can check on the garage door if needed).

August Smark Lock with Connect

The lock on my front door. Runs through 4 AA batteries faster than I’d expect, but works great.

Harmony Hub with Ultimate One

I’ve used Harmony remotes for years. Love ’em!

Caséta Wireless

I have 8 switches and 5 remotes (there are a lot of 3-way switches in my house). These were simple to install. Having dimming capabilities is a nice feature.

Belkin Wemo

I have 2 Insight Smart Plugs, 2 Light Switches, and 1 Switch. The thing I like most about the Belkin devices is you don’t need a hub or anything else to control them. Very plug-n-play. I’m not sold on having plugs though. I’m using them for some lamps, but you have to remember not to turn the lamp off with the actual lamp switch otherwise your smart plug is useless.

Garage Temperature Sensor/Monitor

Built this device myself using a Raspberry Pi Zero v1.2 and some other electronics parts.

Wink Hub 2

Allows me to access devices from my control system.

Alexa Echo Dot

Maybe my favorite device. I use it every day to control the lights in the main areas of my house.

Automatic Pro

The location and status of my car feeds into my system so I can automate other things.

iPhone – Siri

I don’t use this much anymore with the Echo. Still comes in handy for quickly controlling something though. Will also use the iPhone location for automations of home/away status.

None of the stuff is cheap. We’re still in the early stages of home automation. Watch out in the next couple of years.

Some things I plan to add are:

  • A moisture sensor near my sump pump so I can be alerted right away if something goes wrong. Maybe some sensors in bathrooms as well.
  • This summer I plan to replace a couple of old in-wall AC units. One no longer works and the other is mostly broken. I’ll be buying units I can automate and control.

If you have questions about anything here, let me know.

Link Dump – 2017/02/26

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Who Told Flynn to Call Russia? WordPress and Update Signing Why Trump Can’t Come Clean on Russia James Comey Has Some Goddamn Explaining to Do Emily Abbot Bests Bumble Bumbler Free Web Development & Performance Ebooks Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber How’s Your New Year’s Resolution Going? Trump wasn’t a real […]

Quick Forget

Nick Momrik1 Comment

This week I came across a company domain I didn’t know we had.

quickforget.com

It’s a very simple web service which allows you to store a secret, set an expiration, and then provides a URL so you can share it. When someone uses the special URL, if the expiration hasn’t passed they’ll be able see the secret.

Why would you need something like this? Maybe you want to share a password with someone. For security you shouldn’t send a password via email or text message, where it’s always visible in plain text. You can use something like this to send the URL and if you set it to expire after 1 viewing anyone else who finds the URL will not be able to view the secret.

This is what a 1 time view secret looks like when the URL is accessed…

secret-expiring.png

If I try to reload the page…

secret-forgot.png

Nifty, right?

We’ve had an internal Automattic tool called Once for years that does this same thing and I use it all the time when I need to send a password to a coworker. Give Quick Forget a try!

CrossFit Open Tips

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With the 2017 CrossFit Open starting tomorrow night, I wanted to share some simple tips. It’ll be my 6th time competing in the Open, but first time as a Masters athlete. I wasn’t doing CrossFit in 2011, the first year of the Open, but I wrote about my results in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Get together with friends each week on Thursday night and watch the live announcement.

It’s fun to hear everyone discuss what they like and don’t like about each workout when Dave Castro announces each one. Then watching some of the top athletes battle it out in the exact same we’ll all be doing is humbling, horrifying, and impressive.

Plan to rest the day before you do the Open workout each week.

Go in fresh so you can give each workout your best attempt. Try to get some extra sleep the night before you throwdown.

Pay more attention to your diet for 5 weeks.

Eat more carbs on the rest day and in the meal before your workout. Drink more water. Get protein in your body as soon as possible after your workouts. Cut out extra sugar.

Have a game plan going into each Open workout.

Based on other workouts you’ve done you should be able to estimate your score. Have some kind of idea how you’ll need to break up reps and how little rest between sets you can get by on. Don’t be afraid to change the game plan during the workout, but at least have an idea of how you’ll attack.

Have fun!

Battle it out each week with your friends. Push each other. Come up with a fun wager to make it interesting. After the workout, have a big cheat meal or grab some beers.

I’ll see you on the leaderboard!