Tag: gadget

The electric car charging cable standard that is going to win is called Combined Charging System. Given Tesla’ scale, they may continue for a while with their proprietary one, but eventually it will phase out somehow. Who wants an appliance that only plugs into its own manufacturer’s power system, can you imagine a GE kettle…

So the original home automation is the thermostat. And many of us will have grown up with the Honeywell T87.  This will have been mounted to that lovely faux wood panelling in your house :). It worked in a very simple model: there was 2 wires that came from your furnace. One had 24VAC, and…

So I obtained a replacement capacitor. The old one (Yuhchang, top) and the new one (Cornell, bottom) are pictured. A quick snip with the soldering iron, and it has proven to fix the motor: no more buzzing after a few minutes of operation. Good! Now, back to the automation part. I’m still mulling over whether…

So the vac was let loose in a few rooms on the main floor. It uses a laser-ranging dome augmented with sonar. You can see its estimation of my livingroom and kitchen below. The obstacles are things like couches, tables, stairs, fireplaces, etc. its actually quite accurate, the long thin bit is the hall down…