Lutron Caseta - 5 stars

February 21, 2016 by Omar Shahine in newsletter, home

I installed my first "smart" switch in 2010. It was a Leviton Z-Wave switch. Back then, getting automated "smart home" stuff was expensive, hard, and complicated. I was forced to do this as a result of some wacky wiring in my kitchen that required I have a smart keypad that can turn two lights on at once. The Leviton Viza RF+ products did the job for a number of years. But programming Z-Wave products stinks and interoperability is not perfect.

However, there has been a significant lighting change that required that I revisit much of my lighting: LED Light Bulbs. Lighting is the #1 consumer of energy in my home. We have over a hundred recessed lights in our home. Each room has 6-10 Par 30LN or Par38 bulbs each consuming 50W-90W of energy. Our kitchen and family room alone is about 1000W of energy for 10 hours per day. In a year that's about 3000kw of energy, roughly 15% of all my electrical usage or $400 a year. To light one room! I have been motivated to cut this down with LED bulbs to roughly 210w (vs 1000w).

My quest for high quality replacement LEDs throughout the house meant all new dimmers. LEDs don't usually work with traditional dimmers and especially not my Leviton Z-Wave dimmers.

Around this time, Lutron had announced their Caseta "home" products. Lutron is an old name in custom lighting and makes most of the commercial and high end products in the market. They are all branded and packaged differently, but customer builders will use products like Radio RA2 and HomeWorks (for new construction). In fact, the way that new homes are getting wired resembles nothing like how current homes are wired. Lutron HomeWorks allows you to discretely control each load in the house through a central control panel. 120V is run to every light and Cat5 cable is run to each switch or dimmer as a "home run" back to the electrical panels. From there the nonsense of multi-way lighting (3, 4, 5 way) is eliminated along with all the head scratching ways of doing the wiring. It also means a lot less copper 14 gauge wire running all over the place.

For me though, I went with the do-it-yourself Caseta system. Most of the components can be purchased from Amazon and the entire system is HomeKit compatible, meaning you can say "Siri turn off the Main Floor" and she will turn off all the lights on the main floor. Other neat thing I can do, are dim the lights to 60% when the TV remote is used to turn on the TV. I can also use IFTTT recipes to trigger other remote actions. Siri is really powerful here with lots of easy to use commands. You can even dim lights for movie night or guests.

So how do you get started?

You need enough electrical knowledge to replace dimmers and switches, including finding the neutral wire and connect that to some of the switches.
You need to have a basic understanding of 3-way circuits although you will not be using them as Lutron accomplishes 3-way to using small little remotes that run off batteries that replace your old 3-way switch
A Lutron Smart Bridge
Some Dimmers, Switches and Remotes

Omar's Finds Jan 25: 5 Finds

January 25, 2016 by Omar Shahine in finds

01 Technology: It's impressive to watch the world of TVs and Projectors evolve. It's no secret that the best TV on the market is this LG OLED Flat TV. But at $5,000 for the 65 inch and $3,000 for the 55 inches, the best comes with a steep price tag. Sony however, it doing some interesting stuff with these Ultra Short Throw Projectors. You may not know what a Throw projector is. If you have visited an middle or high school lately you will see them in classrooms as they can be placed on a cart and wheeled around placed right in front of a wall.

02 Engineering: We all want our kids to be engineers right? Just kidding. But seriously, like Math and Science, every child should have a foundation in programming and making. My buddy Scott has written about these awesome electrical kits that teach kids how electricity works. His latest review covers littleBits that makes even cooler maker kits to basically design computers and robots.

03 TV: Kids love video. So it's no surprise that HBO has a dedicated Kids section for HBO Now and HBO Go. After years of sucking, HBO finally has their shit together. Yay for progress. Now if only Amazon could make this easy across Fire TV / Amazon Video on iPad / Kindle Fire / Kindle Reader - it's a hot mess. Do the Amazon parents with kids who work on all these products talk? Ok that was a low blow - I'm sure they are working on it (Hi friends!).

04 Luggage: These collapsible hard case luggage look pretty neat. Not buying but I'm interested. I love my Rimowa and Victorinox products. Also since I'm going 13 months strong on my Kickstarter diet, I won't be backing this.

05 Bags: I like the design and price of this backpack.

Omar's Finds Jan 19: 6 Finds

January 19, 2016 by Omar Shahine in finds

01 Home Automation: These integrated iPad mounts for the home look incredible. Lots of options including magnetic mounts, low voltage power and so on. The cost of an iPad Mini 2 + all the crazy awesome home automation apps for iPhone make this a pretty realistic wall mount / control solution. Need to investigate more. Thinking about it more I wish they had iPod mounts like this. Would make for a nice Sonos/Ecobee controller no?

02 Tools: The Tool Pen Mini looks like a really high quality tool for small screws and such.

03 Kitchen: While in San Francisco this past weekend my wife and I visited Heath Ceramics and fell in love with their products. On our wish list, Chez Panisse Soup Bowl and Coupe Dinner Plate + Cereal Bowl. As an added bonus, the Heath Ceramics showroom in the Mission has a Blue Bottle Coffee in the store. Yumm.

04 Home Automation: My Keen registers arrived and I installed 2 of them (out of 5 that I ordered). So far, super happy. I will review soon. These are registers for your heating/ac system that can open/close using an iOS/Android app. They can operate automatically to, opening and closing to ensure the right temperature in a room. Since our house is 3 stories with only 1 zone, these are the answer to the problem of hot and cold spots in your house. They already integrate with Nest and SmartThings, with ecobee coming soon. Here is a link for $40 your order.

05 Advertising: Ever wonder how Facebook shows you ads for Amazon stuff that you recently searched for, or is in your cart? My friend Dare details how. I personally need no assistance with what I want from Amazon since I visit their site more than some of you visit Facebook. I also happen to find this creepy.

06 Home Automation: I continue to be impressed with the Lutron Caseta system. I have now replaced 10 loads in my home, with 2 more to finish. I've got a half dozen or so pico remote controls and I can now program all sorts of awesome things to happen. For example, when I go upstairs (I'm usually the past person to go to bed) I can press a button at the bottom of the staircase to illuminate my path to my room... when leaving my home I can tell Siri to turn all the house lights off. I'm addicted. And the Lutron tech is incredible. My hope is that Lutron keeps cranking out new products.

Laken Water Bottles - 4 stars

January 17, 2016 by Omar Shahine in newsletter

It's funny how my kids are growing up in a world where their water bottle is a constant companion. School, by their bed, travel, car. Everywhee we go, they have their water bottle. They want it full, they are aware when it's missing and they pretty much just drink water all day. I did not grow up in that world.

So it's not a surprise that I'm pretty much constrantly checking out different bottles and assessing them on a few key features.

Durability
Quality / Feel / Design
Thermal capabiliries
Drinkability (cap vs straw)
Materials
Design / Usability

The last time I wrote about water bottles I was telling you about S'Well bottles. By now you have seen S'Well bottles at stores like Starbucks, Storables and licensed in a number of stores like sports games and such. There are also plenty of cheap knock offs everywhere that copy their signature look.

While I still like our S'Well bottles they have not worked out so well for our kids. And I've found that they are a bit tall and narrow making them a bit wobbly in most cup holders. The final straw was when our daughter's S'Well slid out of her carry on bag, down the jetway, and onto the tarmac never to be seen again. What happened next was some crying. It was sad.

So, like I do thousands of times a year, I fired up Amazon and spent some time checking out what was out there. My criteria for a good water bottles are first and foremost stainless steel or glass. No coating, no aluminum, no plastic of any kind. I'm sure the BPA free plastic Tritan bottles out there have some kind of problem with them. Here is the thing, I'm fairly certain glass and stainless still will never.

Once I narrow the materials down, then it's a matter of features I call out above.

I discovered bottles made by a company called Laken. They make a variety of bottles that are insulated, stainless steel, with a silicon spout. Bottles are made in Spain

Omar's Finds Jan 13: 8 Finds

January 13, 2016 by Omar Shahine in finds

01 Tesla: with each month that goes by, my Robot Car gets a bit smarter. I awoke this morning to a car that would automatically close and open my garage door for me (saving me the strain of reaching to the touch screen and pressing a button). Small feature, but hella cool. The car shows a distance count down as I approach the garage allowing me to "skip" opening it, and if I do nothing it just opens. The car will also drive itself (without me present) in and out of my garage. Mind blow. It can park in a perpendicular spot like most public garages. And of course, they improved the auto rain sensor wind shield wipers, auto pilot, auto steer, cruise control, and a few other things. I'll tell you what. Waking up in the morning and having an upgrade for your car is a world I am getting used to.

02 Cooking: Lora and I just got this Bluetooth enabled Instapot. Never mind the Bluetooth. I have never owned a pressure cooker. Can you say rice in 8 minutes? This thing is amazing. It makes rice better than our previous rice cooker and it's a really high quality product. Also made in Canada. Special thanks to our friend Kelsi for opening our eyes to the world of pressure cooking. And now I have an app on my phone that can make food.

03 Travel: I'm always looking for cool travel accessories, this roundup has some good recommendations.

04 Star Wars: It was a big deal for my daughter that the main character and interest of the latest Star Wars movie is a bad ass woman. Sadly, our entrenched 'machine' or "the man" or whatever didn't represent this reality in the merchandise that was first available. Thankfully this is being corrected.

05 Legos: First the Ghostbusters fire station in all it's glory. Now the classic Batman series I watched as a kid. I can resist the fire station. Not sure I can resist Batman given how much Miles loves Batman. Even more than Star Wars.

06 TV: Since the advent of Netflix and Amazon, it's been hard for me to keep track on what I've watched and what I want to watch. Certain apps like HBO are piss poor about telling where you are in a series or even what you have seen. Netflix and Amazon are pretty competent. But there are still gaps. Television Time is a great, high quality app for tracking shows you want to watch or are watching. Highly recommended. I wish they had a Movie app.

07 Education: My sister pointed this out to me, and it's brilliant. Osmo is a physical / app based learning tool for kids to lean words, numbers, shapes, puzzles and drawing. Incredible value for $79. We got one for the kids to share and they are already fighting about it.

08 Photos: I may try out this service to turn your Instagram Photos into magazines you get.