Integrating Alarm.com with the Nest thermostat
I recently wanted to integrate my Alarm.com powered alarm system with my Nest thermostat. What I wanted to happen is whenever someone arms or disarms the alarm system, the Nest 'Home' state would also update to match. When I disarm the alarm, the Nest’s ‘Home’ state would be set to Home. After doing some research online, the closest solution I could find was to use IFTTT. However, this required me to give IFTTT access to my gmail account. Also, this solution did not actually change the state of the Nest but just the temperature. Plus, it was not a very nerdy solution.
The solution I came up with was to use AWS Lambda to glue together Alarm.com and my Nest Thermostat. I will be updating this post in the near future with steps I took to set this up.
Requirements:
- Alarm.com account
- Amazon Web Services Account
- Nest Thermostat
- Nest Developer Account
Switched to a "Let's Encrypt" signed TLS Certificate
I just received received my Let's Encrypt closed beta invite. I followed the instructions and so far so good. Now I just need to automate the renewal process before my certificate expires.
October 26, 2015 | View CommentsInstalling Jekyll on Ubuntu 15.04
I recently tried to install Jekyll on Ubuntu 15.04 and ran into a bunch depency issues. Below are the steps I used to get Jekyll installed.
sudo apt-get install ruby
sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev
sudo apt-get install ruby2.1-dev
sudo apt-get install make
sudo apt-get install gcc
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo gem install jekyllResources for troubleshooting DNS
When I am troubleshooting DNS issues, I find the following sites very helpful. The following sites either let you view what's in cache or even allow you invalidate their cache.
Check Results
- OpenDNS CacheCheck
- Allows you to view what's in OpenDNS cache as well as refreshing the cache.
- DNS-LG
- A DNS looking glass that allws you to check what's in DNS cache around the world
- example query for cnemes.com A record in the Netherlands
- Dig web interface
- When dig isn't available locally.
- DISViz DNSSEC visualization tool
Flush Cache
- Google Public DNS
- Flush what's in Google Public DNS cache
- OpenDNS CacheCheck
- Allows you to view what's in OpenDNS cache as well as refreshing the cache.
Note: Will update as I find more useful resources.
February 16, 2015 | View CommentsSaving... the moment
My wife and I wanted to create a time line of our children as they grow up. The idea being that when they come of age, they can go back and experience all the events through our eyes. The first solution that came to mind was to create a blog online or a paper journal.
Journal or Blog?
Writing in a journal or a blog is hard. You don't want it to be too short but at the same time you want to produce a quality post. Another requirement for us was that the posts had to be private. We ultimately decided that neither a blog nor journal would work for us.
Email!
Email, that is something my wife and I use every day, is on our phones; along with a camera and our pictures. I created an email account for each one of my kids. Having individual accounts makes it easier to manage and a lot more personal.
Pro tip: do not forget to save the password in a safe location that you will be able to access as you probably will not remember it, I know I didn't.
Now that your email account(s) are setup, start emailing!
Example email
Tips
- Include both your significant other on emails, it helps keep both of us in sync as well as a nudge that we should probably write an email as well.
- Try to send at least 1 per week or significant events
- Keep it short, helps with removing any burden of having to think of something to write
- Always include pictures, they are worth a thousand words!