Review: Aeon Labs Minimote

As some can probably tell from my writings, I'm very into home automation and have my whole house setup so that it basically runs itself (OK, not really). I have lots of "scenes" programmed to respond to various triggers such as wall switches, motion detectors and time of day. The way our house is setup, we have a very large sliding glass door leading to the backyard which makes it hard to mount any switch near it. At night we let the dog out and turn the light on for him; if the door was closed, opening the door at night causes the light to turn on. If the door was open like it has been all summer, the light only comes on when the dog passes the outside motion sensor.

Since I'm lazy (why else would I automate so many things?), I wanted an easy way to turn the lights on and then turn them off without getting off the couch. I saw a special on the Aeon Labs Minimote, so I bought 2. This is a Z-Wave remote that integrates into Z-Wave automation systems. This version was an older model that could have its firmware flashed to the new model; only difference being the markings on the buttons and possibly the plastic.

I was quite excited to get these remotes as I'd be able to put one near the couch and turn the outside lights on or off. My excitement was tempered as the version of VeraEdge that I was running didn't work with the remote. The newer version of the firmware did, but reports were that there were issues with it. So when newer firmware came out, I upgraded my Vera Edge, crossed my fingers and paired the remote. Setup of the remote was quite simple and I assigned "scenes" to the buttons. The remote has 4 buttons and each button responds to a short and a long press giving me 8 possible scenes to run. I setup each button with an on scene (short press) and an off scene (long press) and put the remote by the couch.

Within a few days, I found myself regularly using the remote. The remote responded quickly and I haven't had any problems with it. I knew I had a hit on my hands when my wife used it to turn the lights off; I haven't labelled the buttons yet (that's on my list), but she remembered that I said button 1 was for the backyard lights (button 2 is for the front lights; still trying to figure out what to do with the other buttons).

The remote is powered by a rechargeable battery and I have an Anker charger right next to the couch, so once it is time to charge, I just have to plug it in and won't have to figure out where I put it.

Pros

• Compact
• Rechargeable
• Easy setup
• Works with the Vera Edge

Cons

• Feels cheaply made; I suspect the newer model feels a little better based on the pictures I've seen.

Summary

If you have a Z-Wave automation system, buying this remote is a no brainer as there are times that you want to control some scene, but don't want to go over to the wall to a hard wired controller or you don't want to pull out a phone to run an app. The only real problem I have with this is I have no idea what to do with the second one as there are so many possibilities!

Cable confusion helps in cutting the cord

A few months ago, my parents moved to a different part of town and one of the services they had to switch was cable. Due to franchise agreements in San Diego, they had to switch providers. My dad called me and asked for advice on what cable TV package to get and I had no idea because I don't have cable TV and have a different provider. However, we went through the shows that my parents recorded on their TiVo and with a few exceptions, the shows were all on broadcast TV. I suggested that my dad give an antenna a try as that would be a lot cheaper and he wouldn't have to pick a package. He agree and I told him to order an Antennas Direct ClearStream Antenna

The antenna arrived a few days later, I assembled it, set it on the ground and started tuning channels. We got a ton of channels, but missed NBC, I believe. I raised the antenna up a few feet and got NBC and other channels. At that moment, the decision to just use an antenna was solidified. I put the antenna in the attic, fished the coax up there, and that was it. (My dad already had a lifetime subscription to TiVo and the current generation of TiVo boxes handle antennas without problems; I believe a few years ago this wasn't the case.)

It has now been a few months and my parents are happy with the picture quality and the channels they get; I'm sure there are a few shows they'd like, but I'm not sure the cost justifies them. There are many options between Amazon Prime, Netflix or even buying episodes on iTunes that they're content. My parents aren't sports people, so not having ESPN and the like isn't a problem.

I dropped cable a few years ago and haven't look back. My father would have purchased a TV package from the cable company, but the choices were too overwhelming, so instead I saved him a bunch of money. Many content providers are already offering programming outside of cable which is excellent and will have to be content with just being a pipe for the Internet.

SSL Certificates on Private Networks with the EdgeRouter

These days it seems like every device on my home network has its own web server. Some of the devices have SSL enabled on them and force you to use them (http requests are redirected to https); this isn't bad, but since the sites are accessed with an IP address or a local name (using Bonjour), browsers always give a warning about a domain name mismatch. For those that don't know, when you connect to a secure site, the browser checks the domain name you entered with that of the certificate; if they don't match, it could indicate that someone is trying to spoof the site. You can either ignore the warning or you can choose the option to always trust the certificate. The latter method is what I usually do, but it just doesn't feel right and there could be security issues with this method.

Since I purchased a wildcard SSL certificate for my domain, I thought there must be a way to use it and not get browser warnings or have to accept the certificate. While browsing the forums for my EdgeRouter Lite, I stumbled upon a command that lets me basically override DNS entries. I could have setup DNS entries such as mydevice-internal.gruby.com and setup a private IP address (10.0.1.200) on my DNS provider, it isn't a good idea to pollute DNS with private addresses and I'm not even sure my provider's system would have allowed it.

The forums indicated I could do the following:

    configure
    set system static-host-mapping host-name mydevice-internal.gruby.com inet 10.0.1.200
    commit
    save

This simple command tells the EdgeRouter Lite's caching DNS server to return this entry prior to using real DNS servers. I setup the SSL certificate on a few of my internal boxes, used that command and now I use https://mydevice-internal.gruby.com to securely access the devices and no longer get browser warnings.

The EdgeRouter Lite has so many options that I'm just starting to scratch the surface on them and how I can use them!

Could we get Internet choice in San Diego?

Today Google announced that they are exploring bringing Fiber to San Diego. This is excellent news, but it will be a long time before anything actually happens. With Time Warner Cable bringing 300 Mbps/20Mbps connections to us later this year and possibly having gigabit from Google, consumers may actually have a choice in San Diego.

I'm not holding my breath that we'll get Google Fiber here because we are a large city with aging infrastructure in many areas (in my neighborhood, we don't have power cables in conduit and I suspect that we don't have conduit in the street for cable or telephone). Also as my son correctly pointed out, San Diego has cable franchise agreements with Time Warner Cable north of Interstate 8 and with Cox Communications south of Interstate 8. Why would Google Fiber be different than cable? It would provide the same services that cable provides, telephone, Internet, and TV. I suspect that the city council would have to do something about the franchise agreements.

I'm crossing my fingers that Google Fiber will come, but in the meantime barring any problems with Time Warner Cable, I'll be getting 200 Mbps service in a few months.