By Dan Cash Construction • Design • Do It Yourself • General Information • Home Entertainment • Tips and Tricks • • • • • • 0 Comments

When Social Media Isn’t The Smart Answer For DIY Jobs

DIY smart devices, wireless, speakerBeing interested in all manner of smart home automation and IoT devices I’m naturally a member of several Facebook groups dedicated to the subject. Some are informative and worth staying with, some are a waste of time and better left rather than letting them annoy you unduly.

In one of these groups a question was asked by Danny: “So I was wondering anyone has done this or knows if it is possible. I use Google home across my house and I want to put approx 6 speakers in my ceiling and link them back to the Google home so the music plays through them. Does this involve taking the Google home apart and soldering new wires for the speakers ?”

Now, I know social media is a great way to get tips, advice and help for a range of different DIY subjects, so I’m not criticising the original poster for that, but if you’re thinking of taking your electronic devices apart and soldering peripherals onto it, there’s a chance you might just void your warranty. Oh, and you might just add the risk of fire or electrocution if you’re an amateur permanently adding additional cable to your electronic devices. Read more

By Dan Cash Do It Yourself • General Information • Home Entertainment • Tips and Tricks • WiFi • • • • 0 Comments

Mesh Networks, What Are They and Are They Worth It?

Hands holding a wifi enabled tabletA few years ago anyone complaining about poor WiFi signal in their home would receive the sage advice “well, stand somewhere else then”. Today though, strong, consistent, reliable signal is not only something that we all expect wherever we go, it affects how our entire home communications and entertainment systems work, and it can even knock thousands off the value of your home.

Broadband service providers such as BT are tackling the problem with their superfast fibre broadband and discs, circular routers which can be placed about the home in poor signal areas in order to boost coverage so that all of your connected devices work perfectly. Several mesh network WiFi providers offer small, discreet additional points which act as routers and then there’s Powerline, a set of routers which plug into the power supply and extend the WiFi reach in whichever room they are located in. Read more

By Dan Cash Design • General Information • Management • Renovation • WiFi • • 0 Comments

How Can You Hack Your Workspace To Achieve A More Creative Environment?

Why is it hard to be creative in an open plan office?The Connected Devices and IoT revolution continues apace, significantly affecting the way we interact with our working environment. The ease at which it is possible to switch on ‘creativity’ isn’t always available to everybody though. Some people love being able to service their clients from home, they dedicate their billable hours without having had to make the commute to their desk while others hate the lack of structure. They relish having to get up, turn up and get on, they need the face to face and the absence of home distractions to be able to deliver. It’s all just different strokes for different folks. But what if upon getting to work you find your creativity pops like a balloon on the point of a pin?

With the inexorable rise of the design led vanity office, one thing we have seen is that the open plan office, rather than being a collaborative, creative space is exactly the opposite. The idea is that you can just pop your head up and instantly produce a creative dialectic with the other people on your pod. You just have to look around and see what other people are working on and get inspired yourself. Of course the reality is we put our earbuds in in order to block out the distracting hubbub of chatter coming from all corners. Our shoulders are up around our ears as colleagues and managers peep over them silently appraising what we’re doing, and then there’s the near constant rounds of tea to be made. Nobody needs that much tea, it’s just a reason for people to bunk off while pretending to be productive or a huge hassle to remember a dozen different favourite mugs when you’re trying to do something important. Read more

By Dan Cash CCTV • Design • Do It Yourself • General Information • Home Security • Tips and Tricks • WiFi • • • 0 Comments

Is Your Smart Home Vulnerable To Silent Security Breaches?

smart speaker vulnerability silent security attackYou’ve probably heard about the ‘friends’ who, late at night yell “Alexa, play Slayer at full volume!” through a neighbour’s letterbox. It’s an amusing story, it’s got the ring of authenticity because as a security breach, it’s not only plausible, it’s entirely possible. As a prank it’s annoying, but harmless But what it does highlight is one of voice control’s most obvious and easily exploited vulnerabilities: if you don’t train Alexa or Google Assistant to respond to your voice alone, anybody within earshot can make them do things.

For more than two years Google and Amazon have also been aware of another possible chink in the armour that surrounds voice responsive technology, that it’s so sensitive and works on frequencies beyond human hearing, meaning that commands loud and clear enough to get Smart Speakers and Home Hubs to do anything can be broadcast without the owner ever being aware. Read more

By Dan Cash General Information • Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • Home Security • Management • WiFi • • 0 Comments

The Future Is Faster With Fibre

installing fibre opticVirgin Media is currently experimenting with 8Gbps, which is 22 time faster than the top speed of any current broadband provider, and more than 200 times the average speed a UK consumer receives.

If you have ultra high HD TV you could download a movie in 20 seconds instead of the hour it would take at normal download speeds. If you’re only watching in regular HD the film could be yours in five seconds instead of fifteen minutes that the average broadband customer would expect to wait.

While speed doesn’t necessarily equate to bandwidth, the fact that anything you do will be done instantly means that it will be out of the way and immediately, ready for the next task you throw at it. So those speeds will be brilliant for the connected home. As more devices are added to the network currently, if you’re only getting a standard service, things begin to lag. If you’re streaming a movie, the kids are playing an online game, someone is playing music in another room then you’re going to start to notice things take longer to happen, Alexa is slow to respond, movies freeze or start to buffer (and that always ALWAYS happens just when you’re getting to a good bit or pivotal point in the dialogue. I don’t know how it knows, but it definitely does!) Read more

By Dan Cash Design • General Information • Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • WiFi • • • 0 Comments

Every Year Smaller And Smarter. What’s The Future For Miniaturisation?

miniaturisation, smart phone, tablet, computerAlan Turing is credited with inventing computer science, cracking Enigma and shortening the Second World War by two years. And while all this is true, there’s a person in his story who’s generally overlooked. Effectively written out of history, he’s not even mentioned in The Imitation Game, the movie of Turing’s time at Bletchley Park, and that is Tommy Flowers.

Tommy who? Exactly!

Flowers had been working on a machine for the Post Office which could increase the efficiency of telephone exchanges, turning them from mechanical or hand operated to electronic relays. He started off his wartime engineering adventures making a Bombe machine decoder (a basic mechanical computer akin to Babbage’s Difference Engine) for Turing which was intended to process thousands of bits of data every minute, but when Turing abandoned that idea he asked Flowers to build a machine which could crack the Enigma code. Flowers looked at the brief and thought “Actually, I can make it better than this!” and he did.  He created Colossus instead, a machine as big as the average bedroom which could process vast amounts of data even faster. With his engineering genius and Turing’s mathematics the German encoders working with an encryption machine which could only do millions of permutations had their work cut out trying to keep secrets from Hut 8. Read more

By Dan Cash Construction • Design • Energy Saving • General Information • Renovation • • 0 Comments

Smart Homes Are The Future of Architecture.

Over recent years the number of people taking up Smart Home Technology has increased exponentially. As digital has penetrated all areas of our lives, from TV and radio to phones, cameras, and audio players the more we expect from it. Once upon a time ‘home automation’ used to mean a thermostat on the wall which would conveniently turn the heating on when it got too cold and being able to set the video to record a show if you were out.

Today, with smart home automation, that’s the bare minimum we’d expect from the products we introduce into our homes. If your heating doesn’t know when you’re home or when you’re out, and your TV box doesn’t record entire series’ of your favourite shows when they’re on a number of channels all at the same time it’s like living in the stone age! In fact we’ve grown so accustomed to devices which work autonomously, from vacuum cleaners to doorbells which can recognise who’s coming to the door and let them in or keep them out that there seems to be nothing that Smart Home Technology won’t be able to do in the future, even if it can’t do it today.

In the same way that it’s now impossible to dream of designing a building which doesn’t have power cables, water and gas pipework, it will also soon be inconceivable that a building can be designed without home automation in mind as well. Read more

By Dan Cash Business Security • CCTV • Do It Yourself • General Information • Home Entertainment • Home Security • Tips and Tricks • WiFi • • 0 Comments

After Recent Home Network Security Breaches, What Are The Top Tips To Secure Your IoT?

Modern angular lounge in earthy neutral colours. The room is filled with modern technology.Over recent weeks we’ve heard about staff at the head office of a major smart home security and environmental control manufacture sharing video that the home security cameras with colleagues. It’s hard to define this abuse of trust a breach as such, but it does highlight the responsibilities service providers have to look after their clients’ interests when they put themselves in a position of trust.

Concurrently a homeowner in California had her home system hacked. She was told that North Korea had launched a retaliatory missile attack, followed by sounding alarms. Then there was a family in Illinois who had someone talk to their baby, swear at them, and turn the heat up to above 30 degrees. Other households have had people watching them and speaking to them via their security cameras, threats made against their children and loud music played over baby monitors. While being frightening, so far there have been no reported incidents of people taking over a home network and using it to facilitate a crime but it’s a distinct possibility that it could happen if people don’t tighten up the way they secure Smart Home Devices when connecting them to the network. Read more

By Dan Cash CCTV • Construction • Design • Do It Yourself • General Information • Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • Home Security • Older People • Tips and Tricks • • • • • 0 Comments

What Top Ten Factors Influence Adoption, Inclusion & Function Of Smart Home Technology?

It’s easy to fall into one of three camps, firstly to think that everyone is buying up smart devices, and finding new uses for them. They’re creating skills, naming every electronic device in the house and telling their Smart Speaker or Home Hub to turn thing off and on, or up and down, all without moving from the comfort of the sofa. But then it’s also just as easy to write it off as a fad that is only of interest to a select few who are engaged with the technology. A third assumption would be that automated home technology is like the microwave oven, it’s going to take time for the price to come down far enough for the useful, efficient, practical technology to become an everyday feature in every home up and down the country.

Because Smart technology doesn’t seek to ultimately solve a particular problem once and for all, uptake will initially be slow, but incessant. Connected devices may save time, energy and effort, and it may make the living environment more responsive, but because it only does what you can already do yourself it can be seen as a luxury development which is nice, but ultimately unnecessary. Read more

By Dan Cash Do It Yourself • Energy Saving • General Information • Home Security • Management • Older People • Tips and Tricks • • • 0 Comments

There’s A Chill In The Air, And Thoughts Turn To Smart Thermostats

Woman using a digital heating control panelBaby it’s cold outside, and Smart people are using their Smart thermostats and lights to increase the efficiency of their homes.
Now, of course we’ve always had thermostats and timers to control the boiler and central heating so that it comes on and off when we want, but only if the temperature demands it, so what’s the difference that Smart thermostats make?

First of all, it’s important to bear in mind that a Smart Thermostat isn’t for everyone. If you’re habits and want are as predictable as clockwork then the timer and thermostat combination you already have in your home are more than likely to be quite sufficient to your needs. That’s not to say a Smart thermostat wouldn’t be handy in the long run, just don’t expect to see any miraculous plunges in your heating bills if you’re already in complete control of the heating. Read more