For any of you who follow the website regularly you'll notice that I haven't "put" the car and website up for a sale in a while. Well, it's your lucky day.

So it’s been a year since I really did anything with my home automation projects. In that time we’ve moved, from Missouri to Colorado, and purchased our first home.

It is time to begin again! I recently ordered a Smarthome kit, INSTEON Lamp Scene Lighting Starter Kit. I ended up finding it on a special deal a day website that Best Buy has for its Rewardzone members. The kit was priced at $60, a pretty good deal considering Smarthome sells it for $99. I expected it to show up in a few days and I would hook it up and get a few things running. To my surprise however I didn’t receive the kit in the mail, I got a decent sized box from the deal website, labeled as a smarthome box. I though there must be a lot of packing material in the box, only to open it and find a plethora of Insteon hardware, nothing like the kit I ordered, but WAY better.

I ended up getting around $800 worth of parts, here’s a photo of the score.  So what did I do? I went out to the deal a day company’s website and started trying to buy more! They had them listed on their own auctions, and on Ebay. I ended up bidding on 15 different auctions on ebay over about a week or two. I was sniped by automated tools on every darn auction. The auctions started off finishing around $65 each, but towards the end of the run they were ending at $105 each, still a bargain if what they were really selling was what I received in the box. My guess is that they didn’t know what they actually had, and were selling it far cheaper than it was actually worth. Unfortunately I think someone else figured that out too, thus the run on the product on Ebay. I really wish I had been able to purchase another kit, but they appear to be all sold out now as they aren’t listing them anymore as they were there for the past couple of weeks.

This weekend I decided it was time to move my office around, I didn’t care for the layout I had setup when we moved into the house. In order to move things though I wanted to put my two bookshelves on the wall near the door, the problem with that was the light switches for the office are there. I took this as the opportunity to start wiring up some of my newly acquired, and previously acquired, insteon hardware. I setup a dimmer switch for the overhead light, and just an on off switch for the fan, leaving the original switch in place for the switched outlet. I figured I would just leave that one on all the time for now and not worry about it, if I wanted another lamp in the room I will just hook up a lamplinc module to control it.

Wiring up the switches took me far longer than it has in the past. The switches had three separate neutral wires in the box, unfortunately I tried splitting them up, only to figure out (a few hours later) that they had to all be tied together, otherwise the lights in the office bathroom, and the outlets in the family room didn’t work. After getting the switches in place I moved the bookshelves and got the office situated. Mistake! I should have written down the Codes for the switches before I put the plate back on and moved the bookshelves, so this morning I unloaded a bookshelf and got access to the switches again for the proper info.

I spent a good couple of hours today trying to get the switches controllable. I was using the Insteon Powerlinc Controller (2414U) that came with the recent stash of new Smarthome equipment. I also downloaded a trial version of the Homeseer Software HS2. After a couple hours trying to get that to work I went to the basement to try and locate my other Insteon hardware that hadn’t been unpacked from the move. I knew I had two other controllers in there, one was the developer modem, and the other a INSTEON PowerLinc Modem, USB 2412U.

First I tried the developer modem, but I couldn’t get Homeseer to see the device. Then I hooked up the 2412u, but I also made a few other changes. I hooked up the FilterLinc 10-Amp Plug-In Noise Filter that came with the stash. I also moved the power source for my Windows Home Server (the machine I was hooking the modems up to) to a different power strip that was fed from the filter. Once I made these changes and connected the 2412U up Homeseer was able to see my devices here in the office (2 switches) and was even able to control them.

So at this point I have a trial version of Homeseer that will run for the next 30 days, controlling two switches, both in my office. I have quite a few other switches however and I hope to start wiring those up in the house, possible this week, or after the holidays. Be sure to come back later to see more on my home automation adventures!

Well the SDN event here in The Netherlands was a blast, I must say I had another great time visiting the Dutch DotNetNuke users once again. I am excited for the Day of DotNetNuke (possibly named something else) that is being planned for Paris in May of 2010. I’m going to start booking my travel for that very soon, I just need to check out Bing Travel to see what the prices are, and if they are expected to go up or down!

I hope to see more of the European DotNetNuke users at this event, I’ll post a link when there is one available, but so you can start planning for it, I hear it will be on 5/28/2010 in Paris.

Thanks again to Stefan, Erik, Joop and Remi for everything at SDN this weekend, I’m headed back to the United States now, regretting leaving, but also ready to get home to my lovely wife (she’ll be going to Paris as well)

Photo Courtesy of Oliver Hine, launch of STS-129

So one of the things I have always wanted to do is see a Space Shuttle launch, and take photos of a shuttle launch. Well 2010 is slated as the final year for the Shuttle program so I think it is time to start making a trip to watch/shoot the launch happen. I started looking around at the NASA launch schedule a week or two ago and saw that there is/was a launch scheduled for 2/4 (STS-130, Endeavour). I say is/was because of some information I found today, but more on that later.

Natalie and I are going to try to go, and I’ve talked to a few friends lately who have said they would be interested in seeing a launch as well, especially since there are no current launches scheduled past 2010 (also subject to change). So I started putting feelers out to see who might be interested in going, so far I know at least one, Terec, will attend, the rest are sort of up in the air.

So Terec and I started doing research, he’s done most of that so far, looking to see what the best locations are for watching the launch, and of course, where the best locations are for taking photos of the launch. We are both amateur photogs, so we are hoping to get some cool shots, Terec being far more advanced though in his skills. We shot some bald eagles last February in Illinois, and his shots turned out far better than mine.

We’ve got just less than two months until the launch is scheduled, and there is actually a launch of an Atlas V scheduled on 2/3 as well. It would be cool to get to see both launches in the same trip. We realize that the launch can get rescheduled, so when we do go to book a flight we’re going to try to be flexible, likely planning for being in Florida for a week. After doing some reading today it looks like the launch may already be rescheduled to 2/6 or even 2/7. Those dates might actually work out better, being on Saturday/Sunday, but I haven’t seen anything official from NASA yet with those dates mentioned.

We’re still working on finding out the best location to view, and also looking for a place to stay. I’m also keeping track of NASA on twitter. Back in November they held a Tweetup, in which they had 100 twitter users and showed them things for the launch that not many people have been able to see. A friend of mine, Oliver, was able to attend and got some great photos and video. I’m hoping that they do another Tweetup for STS-130 (the launch of Endeavour scheduled for February), though I think they might do a tweetup for the SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) that is scheduled on the Atlas V launch on 2/3.

If I got selected for that tweetup I would definitely try to stick around for the shuttle launch, though if I didn’t get selected I would likely concentrate on the shuttle launch exclusively.

From a photography perspective we have some planning to do as well. I just got a Canon 5d Mark II from my wife this weekend for our Anniversary and as my Xmas present. I'm still using the existing lenses I have from my Canon Rebel XT that I've been shooting with for the past few years. I'm likely going to rent a large lens, 600mm or 800mm for the launch. The launch is scheduled for somewhere before sunrise last I checked, so I'm curious to see how this whole thing turns out. I might need to get there early to do some test shots the day before at the same time of day to make sure I get everything right. I definitely have a lot to learn in my photography skills, I should see about taking a class this spring if I can.

If you are interested in trying to attend the launch as well let me know, it would be cool to have a group of people down there. I believe KSC (Kennedy Space Center) will be putting launch viewing tickets on sale in the next couple of weeks (hopefully not while I am in Amsterdam this weekend). Terec and I are going to try to buy some tickets, though I hear they sell out quickly, so we will see how that goes.

I’m up getting ready for the quattro’s first autocross tomorrow morning. This will likely be the first time I have ever autocrossed in November, and I’ve been autocrossing for almost 10 years now. Here’s to hoping the A6 makes it there and back in one piece! Hoping to have some conecam video of the action as well, we’ll see.