Insteon Addiction

OK... I'm hooked. This stuff rocks and looks pretty cool. For bedroom switches, though, I'm gonna have to remove the light pipes and replace them with black electrical tape. They look really cool everywhere else though.

I'm gonna have to get one of those countdown switches for the exhaust fan in my bathroom. That'll be great to defog everything after showers.

I have all of these useless switches on the walls of my new house that control outlets - I HATE those. I can now replace the switches with Insteon and wire the outlet so it is always on. I can then use Insteon (or X10 for the moment) modules to control what I REALLY want to control when someone hits the switch. This is going to be fun (and cause me to spend money - ha ha ha). I'd better get a whole house surge suppressor installed soon.

MH

First Impressions of Insteon

WOW... Call the police - two posts in the same month - LOLOLOL.

I received my Insteon Starter Kit yesterday afternoon. I ordered the "kitchen lighting" starter kit because it had a variety of different components that I want to try. I also ordered two Insteon Outlets and the relay version of the 6 button control pad.

Yesterday I only had time to plug in the two access points. These are what allow the Insteon signals to cross between the two legs of the "split single phase" circuit that most homes in the USA have. It took two tries to find outlets that were on opposite legs - quick and painless.

Today I installed the two outlets and the 6 button dimmer. Anyone who knows me or who has read my Wiki knows that I have a lot of X10 equipment. The dimmer switch is the "holy grail" of the X10 world. It allows you to turn the light on dim and brighten as you go. Another feature that they only ellude to on the website is that the switches, when in X10 mode, not only turn the light on when you push the button, but broadcast the on and off signals to the powerline as well (part two of the "holy grail"). I have the other 4 buttons of the 6 button dimmer set to control X10 devices. They monitor the powerline for signals and adjust their status accordingly (the buttons light up when they think the device is on and go dark when they think the device is off). Pretty nifty stuff. Most of the Insteon documentation mentions that the devices "do not repeat X10 signals". I think they leave the transmit X10 signals part out on purpose so as to not confuse people.

I will be buying some more Insteon switches VERY soon. The home I bought this summer leaves a little to be desired as far as switch placement goes. I can use the 6 button controllers to compensate for this. A lot cheaper and faster than hiring an electrician to boot.

Good stuff. Over time I see myself going almost completely away from X10. So far I am not very happy with the computer interfaces offered by Insteon - not a lot of Linux support, which is a killer for me. Who'd wanna automate their home with Windows - EWWW!!!!!

Yes, I am bridging both legs of my electrical system with an X10 bridge (homemade of course) and two Insteon Access Points. So far so good.

I am officially an Insteon fan (I just wish the stuff was as cheap as X10 - but then you get what you pay for. All things considered, Insteon is a bargain for what you get compared to X10).
MH

Hilarious Car/License Plate

Man... On Thursday 7/31/08 I spotted the most Hilarious Car. I really need to get a camera phone so I can post a picture of stuff like this...

This guy passed me driving a "Wanna Be" Mercedes. All Mercedes are "Wanna Be" cars in the first place. He had North Carolina license plates that said... (Resisted temptation to put the actual plate here - let's just say it represented the ultimate "Wanna Be" language of the Dot Net Framework). I was trying not to wet myself from laughing so hard while explaining to my sons what a "Wanna Be" was. It was awesome. He must have been from RTP North Carolina which most people think stands for "Research Triangle Park". It's actually "Research Trailer Park". What a total chick magnet this guy must be - ha ha ha.

Couldn't help but think of "J.P." from the movie "Grandma's Boy" (the guy who spoke with a robot voice). Maybe that was him in the car! Dude... Thanks for the laugh!

Fun Christmas Project

If you are offended by Christmas then LOG OFF!!!!!

I just ordered some circuit boards for making one of those Christmas Light Displays that are synchronized with music. The boards are coming from another country. Once they arrive, I am going to order enough parts to populate one board and build it for a total of 16 channels. If it works, I will build the remaining boards. I will post my progress here. Yes... I'm starting early - but this could be a big project. Hopefully the local overstock store will have a ton of cheap Christmas Lights for sale around Thanksgiving like they did last year.

I already have an FM transmitter and found some cool Christmas Music. I am not revealing the songs on the internet because I want to be the first to do these songs. I'm probably going to include "Wizards in Winter" by Trans Siberian Orchestra because "everyone does it" and I can get a good start on a sequence by downloading it.

(The following video link is not of my house) For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, check this video out (I REPEAT, not of my house).

If I get anything decent working, I will upload some YouTube videos and post the link to my channel.

Since I just moved in June, I will surely make an "impression" on my new neighbors. Cracks me up... I found out that my house is known as "the computer science house" by several neighbors because the previous owner taught computer science at an elementary school. Boy, are they in for a surprise - HA HA HA

DMZ Host and OpenWRT

I now have my ActionTec router that Verizon gave me with my FiOS set to use my OpenWRT router as the DMZ Host. So far, so good. The only major "problem" so far is that if I portscan myself, all of the ports that I am not running services on show up as "closed". The ports I run services on and a few others drop the packets on the floor and show up as "stealth". I need to figure that one out but at least I'm connected through a secure connection now. I tried turning the ActionTec into a bridge but it doesn't seem to be worth the trouble. My bandwidth seems to be about the same with this config. The bridging methods I've seen appear to be a real PITA as you have to reset some things after power failures etc. Not worth it to me at this point.

Update: Quick tweak to a couple of lines in my firewall config on OpenWRT and everything is as it should be once again. grc.com reports my router is totally stealth.

MH Alert: Major FiOS WiFi Security Hole

I recently got FiOS through Verizon. I am very pleased with the service. If you have FiOS, please take a look at your router... in particular the sticker with the default WEP key on it. Notice another number that is very similar that happens to be on the same sticker????? AHA - they use the last 10 characters of the MAC address as the default WEP key!!!!

So:

1. You aren't foolish enough to be using WEP, are you? Switch to WPA or WPA2.
2. If you have to use WEP, you aren't foolish enough to use the default WEP Key, are you?
3. The first 6 characters of the MAC typically are the same for the manufacturer/model so they are probably all the same.
4. WiFi 802.11b and 802.11g broadcast the MAC in the clear so your router is basically announcing it's default WEP key to the world!

I mentioned this to my installer and he said "yeah... people are stupid and they don't change it." He was fairly technical as far as installers go and knew it was an issue when I mentioned it.

This is so awesomely stupid on Verizon's part. Surely these things have serial numbers that could be used as the WEP key. "Can you hack (sic) me now? Good..."

"Verizon... It's the network" and it's not secure at all - BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Most WEP protection can be broken after collecting many thousands of packets. Verizon's can be broken after one packet - BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Personally... I'm going to turn off the WiFi on this beast altogether and use my OpenWRT router as the "DMZ Host" and use it's WiFi. If I can spot this hole during the installation of my service, what other gaping holes are out there waiting to be discovered? Verizon should have gotten a router that uses OpenWRT, the service would then rock my face off.

Be careful out there!

Update... In Verizon's admin interface, it has RECOMMENDED next to WEP and not next to any of the WPA options.

Microsoft's "4th Gen. After Success: Sucks" Pattern

I have held this theory for a while and wanted to document it. I have noticed over the years that after a particular technology that Microsoft releases "catches on", the 4th generation of it becomes a horrid piece of trash. Here are my examples:

1. MS-DOS 1.x - Tremendously caught on - started the whole PC Revolution. MS DOS 4.x was the worst version of MS-DOS EVER. Version 5.x and 6.x were major improvements and brought things back under control.

2. Windows 3.x - Windows finally catches on. The following releases of the technology were (#2) Windows 95, (#3) Windows 98/98SE, (#4) Windows ME. I don't think too many people will argue with me that Windows ME was the worst.

3. Windows NT Technology - This really did not take off until Windows NT 4 so we will call that #1. The following releases of the technology were (#2) Windows 2000, (#3) Windows XP, (#4) Windows Vista. Need I say more? Look at how horrible Vista is doing.

What is it with Microsoft and the number 4? The only thing I can figure is this: Look what happens when you count to 4 in binary on your fingers - ha ha.