The other day we were talking about the coronavirus (covid19) pandemic and the rush on toilet paper at most stores in the United States. Then the topic of Bidets came up. If you're looking for a bidet, to remove your dependancy on toilet paper, be sure to check out some of the bidet options on Amazon! 

I recently installed a mesh network in our house using Google Wifi, replacing an Asus RT-N66U that was powering the network for our entire house (2 story, with basement). We found that Wifi was weak in certain areas of the house, the RT-N66U was on the first floor in the middle of the house.

I thought I blogged about this previously, but apparently not. One of the most frustrating things with getting your Foscam FI9803ep setup and running is getting the FTP access working. With the firmware updates in the past year or two, enabling FTP access to the camera isn’t easy.

It’s been a year or more that people have been waiting for Google Home hardware to be able to control Insteon home automation hardware. Finally Insteon has come out with support for Google Assistant!

Insteon sent out an email earlier today with:

Text from the Email:

News and Updates from Insteon

Insteon Now works with the Google Assistant

We are happy to announce that today, Insteon-compatible lighting and electrical control devices (dimmers, switches, outlets, and thermostats) can now be controlled by the Google Assistant on voice-activated speakers, eligible Android phones, TVs and more.

If you already use the Google Assistant, check out this article on how to get started controlling Insteon.

Here are some things you can do with Insteon and Google Home

Lighting devices (dimmers, switches, outlets, bulbs):

Hey Google,

• "Turn on the living room light"
• "Turn off the basement lights"
• "Set the dining room light to 65 percent"
• "Brighten the bedroom light to 100 percent"

Thermostats:

Hey Google,

• "Make it warmer"
• "Set the upstairs thermostat to 72 degrees"
• "Turn up the temperature by 2 degrees"
• "Set the thermostat to heating"
• "What's the temperature inside?"
• "Turn the downstairs thermostat off"

I recently got around to installing my Foscam fi9803ep (HD/POE) camera, and after getting everything setup, realized I was unable to access the SD card via the “SD Card Management” option in the settings for the Camera.

If you logged into the camera via the web interface (using Internet Explorer, no Chrome support from what I can find) you can configure the camera to take a Snapshot every X seconds, as well as have it take snapshots or record based on an “Alarm” setting. I was able to get all of that configured, but when I tried to access any of those files, I was unable to do so remotely. Clicking on the SD Card Management link in Internet Explorer would simply open up an FTP connection to the camera, in Windows 10, but no matter what I typed in, I wasn’t able to successfully log in.

Update: I have experienced the same problem with a Foscam fi9900ep camera as well. 

This is a follow up post to our post earlier this week

Earlier this week we posted about not being able to get the INSTEON Wireless Security IP Camera with Pan, Tilt and Night Vision working with our Insteon Hub using the Android Application. I reached out to Insteon support to see what they had to offer, they suggested that if I had an iOS device I could use the “Add existing” option when adding the Camera to the Hub app, but that feature isn’t available on the Android version.

We are an Android household, though I do have a Macbook Pro, I don’t have an iOS devices. I commandeered the office’s IPod Touch for the weekend to see if I could get the cameras working, and what do you know, they sure do!

Has anyone been able to successfully configure the Insteon Wireless IP Cameras to work with the Insteon Hub, though the Android application?

I’ve tried multiple times over the past two months and finally gave up and emailed support to see if they can help. My cameras work fine using the IP Camera Tool, but I cannot get the App to finish the “Saving settings – do not unplug camera.” screen. It will reboot the camera after applying the settings, but never responds after that. You can then retry, but the camera doesn’t reboot a second time.

I’ve tried with both the camera plugged in to ethernet, and with it just using WiFi without any luck.

It has been 3+ years since I’ve worked with the Insteon hardware that I acquired years ago (some of which was documented here), since the last time I gave Insteon a go, we have moved to from San Carlos, CA, to Half Moon Bay, Ca, to Ballwin, MO, and now we’ve purchased a home in Wildwood, Missouri.

One of the projects that we will be following here  at Domoticsblog.com will be the move of Christopher and Natalie Hammond over at www.going2colorado.com. They will be moving to Colorado in the summer of 2009 and part of their moving process will be to configure a house with a home automation setup. Stay tuned as that process unfolds!

Update: The website is no more but all the content is now here on Chris Hammond's website.

Domoticsblog.com will provide you with all of the information necessary to get your home up and running with the latest wave in Home Automation Technology. We will also cover the latest industry news, installer and product reviews, and much much more!

Stay tuned as we get the site up and running with the best Home Automation information online. All brought to you by Shift8Read, The New Network.