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Hi All,   I sold my house near Sacramento with the Elk installed along with UPB lighting.  The new owner is trying to learn, but could use some additional expertise and is willing to pay for help.  I reached out to Elk and the person who used to be the area distributor, but got no response from...

Hi All,   The last time I automated my house was back in 2011, and it was a carryover from one I did in 2008.  Back then, there were a lot less options, and this whole consumer automation craze hadn't started.  Then, I used what I felt were the best options - an Elk M1G, UPB, and RCS...

Woke up this morning (quite abruptly I might add) to my frantic wife...  we actually have a refrigerator in our laundry room, and she went in to grab something to drink at 6:00AM.   Turns out, our Electrolux washer didn't fully close the fill valve.  The washer sits in a pan - one I had to...

Amazon's Gold Box deal of the day (well Bonus deal of the day, on the right side) is the Schlage Connect deadbolt series.  While supplies last - but right now it looks like they have several styles and finishes available.   I gave in - I've been wanting to upgrade my standalone lock to Z-Wave...

So, this may be old news to a lot of people - I'm not sure... but I just found this out today and it just went on sale today from what I could tell.  There is now a Raspberri Pi 2 available for purchase now that's quite an upgrade from the original - they went from a single core 700mhz processor...

Hi all,   Just a quick note - BlueIris Software just released a pretty major update - version 4.  If you look at your BI machine you'll see a popup notification but otherwise might not realize for a while.   Key differences are a 64-bit version to unlock the PC's resources, multi-camera playback...

Hi All, I've seen a handful of posts where community members wish to get some real-time feedback about what's going on with our properties.  Well, some of us have had some real fun the last couple days with something extraordinarily simple that gives us just that! Click here to view the article

Things seem to be heating up in the battle to bring the Internet of Things to fruition.  The latest such entry into this market may just be the game changer we've been looking for to start bringing all these different systems together.  We've seen plenty of other attempts at standardizing...

I'm of course aware of Haiku and eKeypad - just wondering if any of these totally turnkey solutions are worth much?  If it works for one home, it'd have to work for multiple for the current customer I'm working with - so being able to log in once and choose the residence in question would be...

Long story, but I'm consulting on a project and have to decide where to put 3D TV's and where to put non-3D TV's in a large vacation property that includes theater, guest suites, etc.   3D TV has been out for a while - and I'm sure it's been improving.  Problem is, I don't see in 3D - whatsoever...

Just as the title says - I'm curious if anyone is monitoring their cameras via Synology's app using that as a storage device.  I have someone I'm working with who needs a NAS anyway and will likely run more than one to synchronize certain data between their homes.  They're also looking for...

Hi All,   Though many of you have had quite the winter, in California we're starting off the summer with one of the worst droughts in history.  On top of that, about 3 years ago I re-landscaped my back yard (suburban tract home - only 1/10th of an acre so just nice plants/trees) and most of what...

CQC is having their once-a-year sale right now. Save 25% now through Feb 24th on new purchases and upgrades. Click here to view the article

People are always asking about example installation pictures - Elk is doing a "Make Me Famous" contest showcasing some nice looking installs.  May be nice to check out:   http://www.elkproducts.com/make-me-famous  

Hopefully this hasn't been posted already; this was pointed out by another member in the CT Chat room:   http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/26/smart-homes-hack/   Goes to show that you need to be diligent in securing your network and be very cautious about what you open up through...

Yesterday I was researching a product for a client - he was looking to replace a command line exporter that's grown over the last 8 years from 2-3 scheduled windows tasks to now over a hundred - so I set out to look for a better task scheduler.   One thing I stumbled across was called Mayhem -...

Hi All,   This seems to be a topic many people have researched around here - and one I'm not well versed in (I know how to work on an AC and how it works but I know nothing about what brands are good or not).   The time has come to replace our AC - I say this while sitting in a 83 degree...

Hi All, I figured I'd do a post about this... there's always been the issue of the Elk not keeping track of lighting changes when affected by a scene... well, lately I had been noticing that I seem to have pretty accurate status in my M1 despite the use of a few scenes - it always looks pretty...

As we all know, Home Automation is turning into the next big thing - for security, convenience, energy management, etc. Especially with the increasing popularity of SmartPhones - people want an app for everything, including managing their house. And EVERYONE wants a piece of the action. We're...

This is as off-topic as anything, but I know there's a handful of Mac users here... I use a MacBook for my laptop, but a PC Desktop, as I feel each is better suited for what I use them for. Anyway - having used MacBooks for close to 5 years now, I got to like the reliability of them, and when...