Reviews

It is about 5 months since i wrote Housegard Note – Smokealarm (it works, kinda). I can happily say that we have had no fire in the house since I started to test these – but there have not been any false alarms either. I bought this for testing when we started renovating an apartment in the basement. As the …

I recently bought two Housegard Note smokealarms, with the hub. They kinda works, but it’s not «Apple». Before I get to the Housegard, I will say something about my testing and choices so far. In the last five years, I have tested four Fibaro smoke detectors. When I first bought them, there wasn’t a lot of choices – it was …

I have been using cameras at home since late 90’s, mostly for fun. When we bought a house in 2011, the usage changed. I started with a camera to check if the garage door was open or closed, then a weather-camera, then a camera in the stable to check on the horses and so on.

Time goes fast. It’s almost 1 1/2 year since (07.08.2018 to be exact) we bought the Xiaomi Roborock vacuum cleaner, and it’s one of my best investment ever made!

After watching the LED-strip tutorial on BRUH Automation, I decided I needed some LED-strips!

Last week I switched my router from Sophos XG to Ubiquiti (UBNT) USG (UniFi Security Gateway). The setup The setup was a bit tricky. First I tried to plug it in my existing network with a laptop connected to the LAN-port. I could reach the USG, but as most of the configuration is done in the UniFi-controller, I just had …

It’s almost time for a new LAN-party event I’m hosting with 20 others. Not all in the crew are as technical, so this time I wanted a game server management, so others could manage the game servers.

I was so impressed with this car-stereo/player that I have to write some few words about it 🙂 First a little history We have an old Volvo V40 (2000-mod). The default car-stereo has radio, cd and cassette, which is not that bad for this old car. In the first 6 months of this year (2017), Norway has switched from radio/FM …

I wanted to test a camera with WiFi this time for easier placement, so I bought two different cameras – one from Ebay and the other from Alibaba. It was not before I got the packages that I realized they were basically the same cameras. Both cameras is branded HJT and it looks like they have the same firmware. The …

Belive it or not… Finding a simple ping software to monitor some of your devices and your Internet is actually hard. There is a lot of software out there for it. Most of them works, but they are mostly crap and a lot of them cost money. Free Ping Tool License: Free Download: https://www.manageengine.com/free-ping-tool/free-ping-tool-index.html Simple and clean interface. Default view …

I have used Sophos XG at home for about one week now, and I could not have been happier 🙂 For the last year I have tried most of the software firewalls out there, but let’s face it, I am a home user – I need a simple and nice GUI! It does not matter how great a functionality is, if you …

Heatmiser has now released gen 2 of their NeoHub, with Apple HomeKit. I was quick to preorder – and I just received and connected it. It is now 1 1/2 year since I mounted my Neohub (first generation) and the neoStat thermostat; see my post about it here. I don’t think there is a lot to say about Gen 2. It has …

I just got my Tellstick ZNet Lite v2 that I bought from Netonnet for 1290 NOK. I also have the first Znet Lite, so this isn’t the biggest upgrade for me. I only bought it because it can send and receive 433 MHz, so now I can replace my old Tellstick Net and Znet Lite with just this one box.

My last Pi’s was one of the first ones (2x USB) from around 2012/13. I just bought the new Pi 3, but not all was straight forward… First of all, the filesystem is limited to 3,5 GB of my 16GB SD Card – after creating it with the Win32 Disk Imager and the default Raspbian image. «df -h» shows that …

To follow-up the article “Why not to buy Nissan Leaf or Grundig Television”, Nissan actually released a brand new app to the iPhone now. I think it’s appropriate to mention a few words about their new app, since I wrote that this was one of the reasons why not to buy a Nissan Leaf. Why Carwings was a problem? I …

I successfully tested the Fibaro smoke sensor with my (Telldus) Tellstick Znet Lite today. Summary: Add it to Association Group 2 under Device settings in Telldus Live. Test it with REAL smoke, as test-alarm won’t trigger. The Fibaro smoke sensor …is actually a beautiful little thing, compared to other ugly smoke sensors. It has some nice features like tamper-protection/alert and …

You are probably asking yourself how these two can be compared, and I will try to elaborate in this article. Let’s start with something else, the Apple iPhone. When the iPhone was released, people always got the new iOS. It didn’t really matter if Apple released one, two or three new iPhones after yours – you still got the latest …

In September, I received my floor thermostat from Heatmiser, neoKit-e. I replaced my old standard bathroom thermostat with my new neoStat-e, here in Norway. I have had some positive experience with the heatmiser thermostat earlier, as my brother has two of them on his cabin in Sweden. The heatmiser neoStat is a “smart” thermostat that can be controlled by your …

Today I received my Telldus Znet Lite! I’m not really sure why I bought this, as I already have an Telldus Net. But my passion for home-automation could not resist 🙂 So, what is Telldus Znet Lite? It’s a little box that sends and receive wireless signals to different devices in your home, and let you control these devices from your …

Update: After I fixed the driver conflict and auto turnoff, the headset actually worked great and I got to like it a little. I also heard some rumours that the noises when turning on/off the headset could be fixed in the manifest xml file – but I haven’t tried that yet. I would still not recommend it because of the high …

Today I installed and tested Fedora Server 23. This version of Fedora comes with cockpit, which are a web-interface for server monitoring. I have mostly used CentOS up to now, but Fedora looks more interesting for the reasons I will mention below. To add my CentOS servers to the Cockpit monitoring, I need to install Cockpit on them as well. Setting up …

In the last days, I’ve been hunting for alternative surveillance software for iSpy. It has been a fun ride through the Internet! Some of the software’s i visited was: iSpy, Synology, Netcam Studio, Webcam XP, go1984, Yawcam, Contacam, Sighthound Video, Ubiquiti, HomeGuard, TinCam, TeboCam, Security monitor pro, Genius Vision, iVideon, NetCamCenter, Smartvue, CameraFTP, Blue Iris and Xeoma webcam. Some tips …

Today I bought a Netcam Studio license for 16 cameras for $75. After a long and hard search for a good home surveillance software, I felt that this was the best choice. I recommend to looking at the Netcam Studio webpage to see features and other information, as there is no point in copy-paste this information. The software When …

Today I bought two IP-cameras with Wifi from Biltema (Norway). Price: 649 kr ($79,78) each. Sensor: 1,0 MP / 25FPS CMOS LED range: 20 meters RTSP URL: rtsp://< IP-ADDRESS>:<PORT>/11 Other articles: Kameraovervåkning hjemme (Norwegian) Hardware The hardware looks like a basic “china-camera” and has the same wall mount as my YianTime …