Life in the Automatic World

Due to the stinging blows dealt by the economy these days, some analysts are now predicting bleak sales, both for the holiday season and 2008 as a whole, for Blu-ray players and many other CE products in the not-so-cheap category.

Analyst revises 2008 Blu-ray sales downward by 25%
Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:49:25 GMT

He he.....I hate Blu-ray

Its been a turbulent week in our household. From phone server lockouts due the lightening storms to battery failures.

Now in any given quarter I normally replace a set of batteries somewhere on a sensor. However, this week I have seemed to have done the rounds of battery replacement. Sensors all over the house have been failing. I guess its the time of year which is good to get it all done before the winter sets in.

I have been very quiet on my blog here and that's because I have been hard at work deploying new hardware for the system.

The summer temperatures (what little we had of them) finally saw out some of my old hardware which ran most of the home automation code. So I guess it was time to move to new hardware....well that was a whole heap of effort.

Another grand weekend and another very busy one. I have been switching messaging services this weekend to my own in house version. This is a very complex move but in the end it will be well worth it.

All our messaging addresses will soon end with the new domain name which I have been working to move to.

But its been great to get away from it all during the bank holiday period spending time with the kids!

Well why wasn't there a Friday post last week...well I was taken away from it all down to a farm...WITHOUT a power socket for 4 days.

 So there was no blogging..nothing...gees...how did I survive...as I couldn't even get a mobile phone signal!

The farm experience was just awesome and I reckcon that with young kids should go...OK so I had to make do for a while without laptops/mobile phones/TV but just to get away from it all was great. I'll post some photos later to show what it was all like 

I have put together a new Tumblr site to collate all my blog posts from now on...hurrah...one readable source.

Anyway get it at http://blog.mccarthyuk.net 

Huston we have a problem....well OK in the grand scheme of things its not a great problem but for the kids..shock horror no movies and no TV....now that is a problem!

Seem to having a problem with the main system core which drives all the TV's in the house. Without that system there is simply no TV.

Now I am not that bothered but tell that to the kids! 

Gees...another week flies by. Well its been a fraught 24hrs moving the blog server from my own servers. Its all part of the move away from the filling the boxes of Stafford IT Services.....the end result though has been good and this blog server is now hosted outside which should improve performance no end.

There are lots and lots of new stuff on the way for the blog which is going to be cool.

We have yet another busy busy weekend ahead of ourselves so that will be great...I think.

I thought it was about time that I posted a blog about what's happening with the home automation systems. I have been working very hard in driving the 5.1 release of the house systems.

Well was in 5.1e as it eventually became known as when it left test. I won't bore with you with the details but the 5.1 release was far bigger than I had ever intended it to be...

• RFXCOM conversion
• HomeEasy modules introduced
• New water flood sensors
• New outdoor power control sockets
• Upgrades to various software control modules
• Improvemens to Pool heating controls
  

Yeh....its the weekend....well almost...its Friday. For me Friday means that I don't have to travel up and down the motorway network which is great. The weather doesn't look too great but there's hope for next week. Its seems crazy that the kids were using the outdoor pool this time last year....and now....we haven't even turned the heating on yet.

Mind you my electric bill is not complaining!

Well I thought that it was about time that I started with a clean slate and new blog about all things home automation. Yes its my one real weakness....how to make technology work for me and my family!