Eufy has a new stick on battery powered motion activated night light. Pretty useful around the house or apartment.
Battery Powered Version http://amzn.to/2rbDUQj
Plug in Version http://amzn.to/2qs2j0L
Networking the House
For years I had wanted to network my house with ethernet. The reason I wanted to do this was I was tired of somewhat poor wifi performance and some other things. Despite having a “good” signal strength my actual performance was not great especially with streaming video inside the network. I had been using a combination of wifi and powerline adapters and while that worked it wasn’t great with having to reboot things from time to time as well. Another reason was my city is going Gigabit over the next couple of years from two announced providers so far. No way my current setup was going to stand up to gig internet. Lastly was interest in moving data to a NAS for drive redundancy. Having recently suffered a few drive scares, even though files are backed up to the cloud, having some drive redundancy is the way to go if you can. I wanted a gigabit wired network in the house to access everything.
I started by thinking more seriously about this, going so far as to using Sketchup to create a blueprint of sorts of the layout of my house and marking where I wanted wires to go. I then talked to a friend who had done the same thing to his house and got the advice of people on a few different forums too.
The plan in general was to put 2 drops in each room, usually on opposite walls where possible and in each location a minimum of 2 wires per box. This included a total of 4 lines to the Garage, 4 to the living room, 6 to the office, 4 to the master bedroom, etc. So most rooms were between 4 to 6 lines total. I also put in a drop for access points on my main floor where I spend most of my time. Lastly I put in a drop in the attic to all 4 corners of the house and over the front door for future security cameras. Overkill yes, but well while you’re doing it you might as well do it right.
I also put in “Blue Smurf” conduit that runs from where services enter my home to my rack. Anticipating the fiber service in the future I figured this would just make things simple and give a service provider a better reason to refuse to run an extra 20 ft of fiber.
All of this terminated in the basement on the unfinished side near my HVAC equipment. There I pulled a new 20A circuit with GFCI to power the equipment. I installed a ¾” piece of plywood that I painted and attached to the studs of the wall. There I installed a 12U wall mount rack and terminated all the Cat6 runs. I grounded the rack to the water pipes above and installed some leftover LED’s in the top of the rack.
What did I learn?
- You need more wire than you think, a lot more wire. In my case I bought from monoprice a few months before 1 box of 1000ft CAT6 thinking initially that would be more than enough. I was not even close. Total amount used was 2586 FT in the walls. Pulling a bit more than that for slack on either end. I really didn’t estimate originally with much thought into it. So the suggestion here is to be more accurate when you plan and then add some for additional runs, slack, and mistakes. It’s also a lot easier to pull 2 wires at one time out of the box then measure, pull, cut, and attach to another to do your pull. So my advice is buy more wire/really measure.
- I used what’s known as “Fishing Rods” to pull twine from the basement to the attic and then between floors. They are cheap but super useful. Could not have done it without them.
- If you’re going to the hardware store for 1, buy 2 and return it if you have to. Spray Paint, zip ties, clips, old work boxes etc, were all things I needed more of than originally planned. Luckily I drive by a big box hardware store twice a day on my way to and from work so it was an easy stop. It’s also an easy return process but I could have saved time by just buying more and returning once.
- When pulling wire, it goes faster to have 2 people and two boxes. Having a friend help is pretty valuable. I was thankful to have a buddy who was a journeyman electrician help for about 2-3 days.
- Hole saws VS Twist bits – When trying to put a hole in a wall stud or floor joist a hole saw makes a lot nicer hole that’s larger than a twist bit. Eye, ear, and knee protection are all good ideas at various times too. The right tool does the job.
- Headlamps are a must. I had been meaning to get one for a while and finally did. Being able to work in a dark attic hands free is fantastic.
- Velcro not Zip Ties – Zip ties become brittle when they are exposed to extremes in temperature like in an attic and will break in short time. Velcro on the other hand is far more durable and is easy to secure to a stud with a screw.
- A cable Toner and Cable Tester are super useful. Sometimes labeling is off or smudged a toner makes quick work of this. I verified all my ends after putting them on with the Fluke Cable tester I borrowed from work. 99% success rate the first time, but now I know it’s 100% right after a fix.
Would I recommend spending all your free time over the course of about 3 weeks wiring your house with CAT6? Of course I would. I went a bit overkill and had some project creep as one of my friends put it. It’s just really nice to be able to have a reliable fast network in the house. For instance I have my Plex set at the highest possible bit rate now. I can play any file without it buffering.
So what’s planned for the future?
- NAS – Need to do more research here and decide if I want to build from an old PC or buy an enclosure. Having 4-5 disk redundancy will be nice. I would like it to play nice with my a cloud backup service as well.
- New Router and Larger Switch – Right now my old but Reliable Asus RT-N16 keeps on working until the Gigabit fiber service arrives. I also only have an 8 port Gigabit switch. When I find the right deal on a 24 port gigabit switch I will upgrade switches. Not sure yet on a new router, I need to do more research. For now however this equipment works with the wired setup.
- Access Points??? This will play into my router decision, if I want to go with a consumer router or something more enterprise and then go with an enterprise wifi system kind of like an Ubiquiti system?
Wide Range Broadband Review
Please make sure to see my updates at the bottom of the page.
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I have talked with Lincolnites citywide who share similar frustrations with the ISP options in town. The big guys tend to overpromise, underdeliver, have over utilization problems, and reliability issues. For me, the last 6 months have been worse than average, with huge fluctuations in speed, especially during peak times. I had techs out, replaced modems, talked with support and there just was not much that could be done. On top of this, new fees and a fairly high bill have been enough for me to start looking at other options.
In Lincoln there are not a ton of options. Lincoln has a fairly limited market. We have one cable provider and one traditional POTS phone provider. There are a few resellers but they mainly use the infrastructure of the first two, thanks FCC. There have been other options, but they typically have not been able to offer the price/performance ratio I was looking for, especially delivering a faster upload speed.
The Solution
Wide Range Broadband (WRB) is a small, locally owned and operated ISP, wanting to give Lincolnites another option to get Internet, phone and TV service. When I first ran across them in late 2012 they didn’t have service in my area, but this has recently changed as they expand to cover more of the city. View a coverage map here. WRB is a point to point line of sight Wireless ISP (WISP). They use a RF technology and mount an antenna on a high point of your home and then run CAT5 inside. More on the install later. They are using fiber for the backhaul between their current 5 towers in town.Their main provider is Level 3 who dumps to the internet in Dallas TX. The transmissions from the antenna to the providers tower is encrypted using 128 bit AES, which is a great thing.
This is the rooftop antenna on my house.
The Install
The install at my house took about 1.5 hours on a weeknight. It was refreshing to have an appointment time that was not a 4 hour window. During the install, Aaron, the company owner, installed an antenna on my rooftop. They had a lots of options, and I chose to put it on the side of my chimney. Another common install point was the PVC exhaust vents many roofs have. This is a good choice if you can’t put holes into the structure. The install is similar to a satellite dish install, with the mount actually being from a satellite dish. From there he ran a length of outdoor rated CAT5 wire down the eave of my house and inside, with the rest of the service wires. The antenna and CAT5 blend in pretty well, I think. You can see them if you’re looking for it, but if not it blends in pretty well. Inside there is a simple small POE injector that plugs into electricity and a patch cable to your router.
Performance
I will admit I was a little skeptical at first of a wireless point to point service. I have two pretty heavy users (Gaming, Streaming, Online Backup and more) in the house, so low lag and performance is a must. Point to point systems of the past are associated with having problems when there is weather, and high ping times. So far I have not found this to be the case. I am on the top residential package (21×5) and am seeing download speeds between 18-20mb/s and uploads of between 5-7mb/s Upload speeds to seem to vary some, but they don’t dip that low, and are still significantly faster than I was previously receiving with my old ISP. Higher speeds are being seen at non peak times. The speed test screenshots speak for themselves. There are no bandwidth caps with the service either.
Service is dependent on distance from the towers, and according to Google Maps I am about 2.5 miles from the tower. My housemate reports his ping times when playing online games are about 1/2 or 1/3 less with the new service. Ping times to Google during peak hours are less than 30ms. Youtube and Netflix performance are a lot better; much less buffering and no throttling. So far we have not had any thunderstorms roll through to see how that affects the service. WRB told me that rain or snow would not affect the service. So far in the one storm we have had I didn’t notice any performance differences.
After having the service about a week, I can easily say it’s the best ISP experience I have had in Lincoln and the best value. The top package is quoted as a (21×5) for $60 a month. With my old ISP I was paying $65 for (15×1) and that was not being delivered, so this is a much better value. Other packages are available as well with various levels of speed and price. I also like supporting a local company.
WRB also offers a referral program. If this post has made you interested in signing up please let them know LiquidRetro referred you.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below or find me on Twitter at @Liquidretro and I will reply back.
UPDATE1: I just wanted to write a quick update on the performance in the crazy weather Lincoln has had in the past 2 days. On Tuesday some very significant thunderstorms rolled through town. These brought with them some intense hail, that did cause a problem with my service. After talking with the ISP they acknowledged a bit of downtime due to the weather. The hail had struck some of their antennas. This was unexpected and they were looking deeper into the cause of the problem. Good news is the outage only lasted about 20 minutes. During the rest of the rain in the later thunderstorm there were no problems. Today Lincoln has received a at times heavy wintry mix of precipitation I have not had any problems with reliability or speed. Speeds are still nice and fast.
UPDATE2: As of October 2017 I no longer was a Widerrange customer. I had the opportunity to get Allo Fiber to the home which is the best thing to happen to the Lincoln ISP market. It’s a fantastic service with great customer support.
Since my Update 1 My service with Widerrange declined in speed, because unstable and customer support suffered greatly. Running a WISP takes knowledge of the wireless spectrum above general networking and it woudl appear the new owner is lacking in this. My service required resetting due to vulnerable firmware that was known to the ISP but instead of being proactive they were reactive when users called in about a problem.
At the current time I do not recommend Widerange if you have other options. The product being delivered did not meet expectations nor did the customer service. Lincoln now has better options, and I would recommend using one of them if possible.
Food Photos 1
It’s been a while since I updated the blog so I figured I would post a few photos of things I cooked recently. Enjoy.
First Snow in Lincoln, NE 2011 Timelapse
Today was the first major snow storm in Lincoln. Predictions called for up to 4 to 6″ but in the south part of Lincoln we only got about 2-3″. I made a timelapse video of the storm and of me scooping the driveway. I took about 750 individual frames totally 8.5gb to make this. The music is Emancipator – First Snow (Ooah Remix).
Make sure to watch this in 720P or 1080P at full screen!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh6cNPKYcng?hd=1
Summer Thunderstorms in Lincoln
Last night on 8/6/11 Lincoln experienced a damaging thunderstorm. The air has been full of humidity and there was lots of heat in the atmosphere so energy was abundant. The storm had tons of lighting, it knocked out power all over town and made it pretty unstable for the rest of town. One of the local TV stations took a direct hit (During the weather cast) and was offline for a little while. After the storm there were reports of lots of down trees, fences, etc. Nature repeated itself later that night with a second round.
The pictures below were all taken after the storm except the first one. The storm rolled through when the sun was starting to set so this created some great colors on the clouds. The bubble clouds are mammatus clouds. These were some of the most defined mammantus clouds I have seen recently.
I am always a little slow posting things to the blog but am much better about posting to the new G+ which I love. Follow me at http://Liquidretro.net/+
Nebraska Furniture Mart replaces fridge because of leaky ice maker
Since becoming a new homeowner I have experienced a few joys of home ownership such as a faulty toilet valve and now a leaky ice maker. At the beginning of May I purchased a new GE fridge with an optional ice maker. This was a dealer installed option. I received my fridge on May 26th and it has been working great. This weekend June 12-13 I noticed that I was getting some ice under the ice maker/bin. I found this odd and removed it to monitor the progress. 24 hours later the ice is back. Time for a warranty call.
I called Nebraska Furniture Mart customer service and told the nice lady about my problem. After verifying my account she said that there were no technicians that could come service my ice maker so the only option they had was to replace the entire fridge. I was shocked that they would do this, it seems overly expensive and inefficient but its great, who can argue about an entirely new refrigerator? Ya its an inconvenience but the replacement will be an entirely new unit with a new ice maker. This also seems overly complicated for a unit that is not even a year old. Since they have to order me a fridge I have to wait a week for delivery. I will update the blog when I get the new unit after a few weeks of use. Overall I am impressed with the customer service of NFM and will buy again from them.