Category: Computer Stuff

This is an update to https://robertjwallace.com/home-automation-smart-home/.

I am finally beginning to move from the X10 system to a more modern system, despite the cost. My existing system is an hybrid of Philips Hue and X10. To integrate the X10 with Alexa I use the X10 CM19 transceiver with the mochad linux driver, and ha-bridge, a Philips Hue emulator. This allowed me to use Alexa to control the X10 system.

Amazon does not make it easy to get a list of the e-books you own, especially if you want to put the list into a spreadsheet. This solution uses a javascript bookmarklet, a small piece of code that you drag and drop onto your bookmark tool bar in your browser.

I have a need to connect to my office using Sonicwall’s netExtender. Once connected I need to use RDP to open a remote desktop session to my work computer. But for some reason I ran into two issues on my AMD-based HP home desktop. First I was unable to get the netExtenderGui to run. It kept throwing errors. And second, I was using Remmina for the RDP client and discovered that it did not support dual monitor displays.

After some googling and yahooing, with a bing or two thrown in I had a solution.

The basic premise is that there are three doors, behind one is a prize. The contestant makes a guess as to which door has the prize. In this case the odds of winning are one in three. But after the guess is make the host of the game opens one of the two remaining doors, showing no prize behind it. The question is should the contestant change his guess from the original door to the remaining closed door.

So, in ditching Windows I had to find a solution to my Windows-based X-10 home automation. On Windows I had a CM19a USB based transceiver for issuing X-10 commands to the X-10 modules controlling my house lights. I used a piece of software named Alex10 to command the CM19a, and a Philips Hue Bridge emulator (HA-Bridge) to allow me to give voice commands via my Amazon Echo.

The HA-Bridge software was a Java program with a web interface, so it ported over cleanly from Windows to Linux. What I had to find was something to replace the Alex10 software. Searching the Internet I found some software that did exactly what I needed, Mochad.

I finally decided to drop Windows from all of my home computers (currently three systems) and move them all over to Linux. I had already moved two of them, one that I use for a home theater, and one I use for general work. The third was being used for general work and for controlling my old home automation system.

Early in my career, when I was working on Unix systems I started collecting fortunes, quotations, etc and put them into a “fortune” program. Click the button below to see a new fortune.

In 2013, when I was working with HB Design, I had my personal website hosted on a company web server. That server that was used for hosting employee websites has long since been decommission, and between that and my retirement the HTML table generator web tool that I wrote disappeared.

Now with my new site up I found that the link to the table generator was broken. After looking through all of my backups and archive files, and not finding the code, I decided to try the Way Back Machine and I found the code. Which illustrates how hard it is to lose a web page on the internet.

I was able to copy the source code off the Way Back Machine and, with some simple edits to remove code that the Way Back Machine inserted into the archived page, was able to recreate the tool on this web site.

You can play with the table generator at https://robertjwallace.com///tablegen

I just setup WordPress on Amazons EC2 service. I didn’t find a good set of instructions on how to do it, but pieced together the following from various sources. Note that my PC is Linux based.