about 7 months ago - 1 comment
Recently I added a smart power strip to the TV/Amplifier setup in the living room. My main aim was convenience – to make it easier to turn everything off all at once. But I also wanted to see how much power I could save by eliminating the parasitic power drain that a TV, amplifier and More >
about 7 months ago - 1 comment
So what does a smart home do at Christmas time? Well, obviously it controls the Christmas lights, both the ones on the exterior and the ones on the Christmas tree and around the house. The indoor lights come on automatically at dusk and stay on provided the room they are in is occupied. Leave the More >
about 10 months ago - No comments
Someone recently asked me what the top features are in my home automation system. That’s a tough question, I have several favorites and there are so many features in there already or under development. But, here’s a current list of some of my favorites: Lights turn themselves off automatically – saves 40% on electricity usage More >
about 10 months ago - No comments
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about 10 months ago - No comments
When developing .NET applications there is often the need to execute multiple background processes, for example, fetching and rendering different size thumbnails for images. Typically you queue actions like these onto the thread pool. But in the case of thumbnail generation you typically want to fetch a base image first and then perform the resize More >
about 10 months ago - No comments
When developing .NET applications there is often the need to execute some slow background process repeatedly. For example, fetching a feed from a remote site, updating a user’s last logged in time, … etc. Typically you queue actions like these onto the thread pool. But under load that becomes problematic as requests may be coming More >
about 11 months ago - No comments
In GDI+ you can call Image.FromFile to load an image from a file. BUT there are several issues with this call, the biggest being that GDI+ will keep the file open long after you are done with it. Here is an image loader that gets around this issue. If you are running a high volume More >
about 11 months ago - No comments
In the USA we are lucky to have the NOAA and their excellent web service that can provide a detailed weather forecast for any location (specified by latitude and longitude). Using this service my home automation system maintains a detailed, regularly updated local weather forecast object which can be queried easily by any other object More >
about 11 months ago - No comments
One of the features of my home automation system is extensions to the C# language that make it easy to define complex logical and temporal behaviors. These behave somewhat like the new Reactive Extensions in .NET but with some key differences which I will explain below. I developed these extensions before Reactive Framework was released More >
about 1 year ago - No comments
I’m somewhat surprised to see how much effort and excitement Google and Microsoft are putting into the ability to show graphs of home energy consumption minute-by-minute from a smart meter. I’ve had that ability in my house for several years now (not directly measured but a close enough proxy based on knowing which devices are More >
about 1 year ago
Hi – this should really be posted next to your general home automation article.. what light switches did you end up using in your project – X10 or some other brand? As a programmer I was looking for something flexible – I didn’t want to have to buy someone else’s software. Thanks! Dave
about 1 year ago
@David. My automation system has drivers for X10 and Insteon and I’ve done some experiments with ZWave. UPB is about the only retro-fit switch I haven’t tried. Mostly the house uses Leviton Two-way X-10 switches as they have proven to be the most reliable of all. I have box full of non-functional switches from other manufacturers!