More Home Automation

First, since it was in the mid-20s last night and it was decided I would be grilling dinner I thought I'd be a good idea to clean the burners because they weren't generating any kind of consistent cooking surface.  I removed each of the burners from the grill and started blowing them out with the air-compressor.  When I got to the 3rd burner I noticed the end was separating and the 4th burner had a hole(!) at the end.  So I discovered the reason the grill hasn't been heating properly.  I'll be ordering replacement parts tonight.....

About a week ago heard one of the computers in the wiring closet beeping.  When wiring the garage for audio I left the door to the attic area open and just shut off the thermostat so the wiring closet dropped to 57F.  The computer in the wiring closet was now a long tone instead of just a beep.  It appears it was complaining one of the fans (CPU or power) was spinning too slowly since it didn't need much cooling @ 57F.  So that's one unexpected purchase avoided.

As for the home automation, I installed most of the gifts I got from Christmas with just one window/door sensor remaining.  I installed the garage door sensor and control unit but still need to secure the sensor plate to the garage floor.  Now we can control the garage door remotely via computer or from the keypad in the family room and kitchen.  I've also installed the motion sensors for the kitchen and family room and configured Homeseer to turn off the lights if no motion has been detected for ~15 minutes.  I know this is going to require some experimenting to get just right, but 15 minutes seems like a good place to start.  I also installed the door sensor for the back door for the purpose of automatically controlling the thermostats during the spring/fall when we open the doors and windows.  So when the door is left open for (lets say 5 minutes) the thermostats will be turned off, assuming we've left the door open on purpose.  When the door changes from open to closed (again for 5 minutes) the thermostats will be turned on.  I've also experimented with an announcement from the whole house audio to also be sent so someone can correct the door situation if needed.

Tomorrow, I pick up some CAT-6 cable, jacks, patch panel, etc.  The house was originally wired with straight CAT-5 which was "the" cable a decade ago and it worked well until a few years ago when we upgraded to gigabit ethernet.  I've discovered the CAT-5 in the walls simply cannot handle the requirements of gigabit so there is a CAT-5e cable running down the hall now which has resolved every network problem I've had for years.  So, while I'm in the attic again running the CAT-6 between the rooms I figured I'd do a double run and link the cables together for a full 2/4 gigabit connection, simply because I can.

Well enough rambling for today....  I need to think about what things I want to control from an iTouch in the house.