Category / Recommendations

by Aaron

Blue Iris 3 and Samsung SmartCam SNH-1011N

If you’ve got a Samsung SmartCam SNH-1011N and you want to use it with Blue Iris 3, I found a reasonable currently undocumented way to make it work. The camera currently isn’t officially supported by Blue Iris, but it can be made to work with a few simple steps. I’ve sent the following information to the Blue Iris developer and ideally it will become part of the standard application.

If you’re not familiar with Blue Iris – it’s an extremely capable “DVR” for many of your IP based web cameras that you may own. I’d highly recommend it. It does not however work with “cloud-only” style IP cameras, like DropCam.

After setting up the camera normally, and updating the firmware to the latest version (at the time of this, it is 1.07_130516), Add a new camera:

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(I’ve just right-clicked on the Camera’s display).

Then, fill out the name and the other important fields on the General tab:

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Click the Video tab, and select Network IP and then click the Configure… button.

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First, select the camera. As this camera isn’t currently officially supported, you’ll need to select the protocol and stream type instead:

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Select RTSP H.264/MJPG/MPEG4 from the list. It’s generally very near the top of the list. Next, type in the host name or IP address of the camera. It’s whatever you used to set up the camera originally.

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When you setup the SmartCam, you created a Private Key.

imageHere’s the strange part, type only the first eight (8) characters of the Private Key into the password field:

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Yes, just the first eight characters. If you use any more than eight, the connection will fail. The camera only uses the first eight.

Finally, in the Video / Path field, type: /profile5/media.smp as shown below:

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Hit the OK button, do any other setup you’d like, and the camera should be working!

You might want to frame limit (as I was tracing the network traffic, I saw this was the recommended size that Blue Iris switches to automatically):

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by Aaron

Fitbit Flex, dead and won’t charge?

imageMy wife and I both pre-ordered a Fitbit Flex. While it’s not a life-changing device, it’s been generally fun to wear. I’m always interested in the sleep tracking when I travel … “Awake 16x, slept 5 hours.”

Last night though, my wife’s Flex had stopped working. The lights wouldn’t show up when the device was tapped and when she used the charger, it wouldn’t begin to charge. I found a few recommendations to use rubber bands to hold the Flex into the charger, cleaning the contacts, and a few more. Cleaning the contacts didn’t help. The charger worked with my Flex, so that meant the rubber band trick wouldn’t help.

I found though on the Fitbit support website this morning though a suggestion that worked! Apparently, you can restart/reset the tracker without loosing data. The steps are easy:

  1. Plug your charging cable into a USB port and insert your Flex as you normally would.
  2. Insert a paperclip into the small pinhole on the back of the charger (I’d never noticed it before, it’s small!)
  3. Press gently on the pinhole for 3-4 seconds. You’ll feel a gentle ‘click’ when you’ve depressed it far enough (although my “one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand” count actually got to 6). The lights flashed a few times, and it started charging a few seconds later.

I’m posting this here as my searching the night before hadn’t turned up that specific support web site page. It may be because the web page is poorly titled and applies to four of their trackers.

Hope this helps someone else.

by Aaron

Nest thermostat savings?

I created a really brief survey that I hope those of you who own Nests will considering taking the minute or two to fill out (it’s only 5 simple questions). Lots of people report “massive” savings with their Nest thermostats. As prior owners of various programmable thermostats, and as someone who was careful about turning/up down the thermostat before owning a Nest, we really haven’t seen any difference in our heating/cooling bills since we bought our 3 thermostats in November 2011. It’s disappointing of course, but expected.

You’ll be able to see all of the results after you take the survey.

http://bit.ly/nestsave

Thanks!

by Aaron

Dripping Mansfield Outdoor Wall Hydrant

We’ve got 4 of these on our house:

http://www.prier.com/products/retired-products/500-series.html

(Apparently, they were Mansfield 500s, but the product line was acquired by Prier in 2007 and is now similar to the Prier 400 series).

When the water was turned on inside the house, and the water valve was open at the hydrant, yet an attachment was not drawing water (for example, a connected hose with an end that was not open), a consistent leak occurred around the handle (some refer to it as leaking behind the handle). This meant that we couldn’t connect a water sprinkle on a timer without wasting lots of water (as the hydrant was always on).

We had two professional plumbers tell us that they’d need to tear open the finished walls on the inside of the house and replace the whole unit to fix the problem. Not believing these claims, I went in search of a solution.

One solution was to tighten the handle and was easy to perform. While that helped a bit, it wasn’t the solution we needed.

The best solution was to buy and use this kit:

http://www.amazon.com/Prier-Products-630-7755-Service-Hydrants/dp/B000LNPEIO/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_1

Prier Products 630-7755 Service Parts Kit

It doesn’t come with instructions on the package, instead you’re direct to watch a video on YouTube with the details.

I watched the video once through and then fixed 2 of our faucets in about 15 minutes. It would have taken about 10 minutes if I had brought the correct tools with me to the faucets.

I’m no plumber, but it was easy to do the steps.

Neither faucets drip anymore. (I haven’t fixed the others yet). Hope this helps someone who’s a doubter about this working. The kit is around $10, which is far less than your plumber would charge for the trip and work.

by Aaron

Nest Thermostat Wifi Connectivity Issues?

I’ve been seeing more Wifi issues recently with my Nest thermostats. I don’t see a pattern to the problem, and it seems to randomly affect all of them (sometimes at the same time, but often just one).

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I’ve got a supported Wifi router (Apple Airport Express), and it’s within reasonable range to all of the thermostats in our house (no more than 20 foot from any thermostat). While it’s unfortunately overlapping with a similar band/frequency in our house, the router is dedicated to only the Thermostats right now (a unique SSID).

It doesn’t have any settings that seem necessary to change:

SNAGHTMLe2a23de

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Any ideas?