Haier Learns an Important Lesson about Internet
I’m a little late to this party. TL;DR Haier tried to bully a FOSS developer who was making their product more useful, and got schooled. I love it.
Read moreAuthor: Andrew Van Til
Is SPAN Panel the Wrong Choice for All-Electric Homes?
The SPAN IO Smart Electric Service Panel is a really neat approach to solving some electrical service load issues. But there are several drawbacks that make it the wrong choice in many situations. Especially all-electric homes.
Read moreUbiquiti UniFi Protect Ai Theta / Pro Lens / AI Audio
I wasn’t able to find any reviews of the Ubiquiti UniFi Protect Ai Theta camera system that answered my questions around imaging performance. Specifically, how well it worked in low-light situations. So I picked one up, along with a Pro lens and the AI Audio speaker/microphone, to dig in and figure out how well it works; or in this case […]
Read moreA lot of that pivots around what you mean by “norm”, right Steve?
Every so often I see an opinion piece like the one by Steve Hanley at CleanTechnica (which TBF is a heavy copy/paste/echo job based on an opinion piece by Christoph Schwarzer) around why we should expect DC fast charging (DCFC) to become The Way we refuel battery electric vehicles (BEV / EV). I think that’s crazy talk, and have to […]
Read moreIllinois SB40 Mandates EV Ready Residential Housing
Starting January 1st, 2024 new residential housing will need to include the infrastructure necessary to enable owners to easily add Level 2 (L2) EV charging (SB40). That’s true for single, and multi family housing. I think that’s great. Not everyone in the state is on board with that approach though. Which is how we get to this post :).
Read moreRisk Is Hard: EV + Garage Edition
A friend recently mentioned some hesitancy around parking an EV in their attached garage. I get that, kind of, we all probably remember the problems that Chevy had with their Bolt EV. They actually said out loud “don’t park it in the garage”. But it’s important to keep some context around the actual risk. While EV do occasionally light on […]
Read moreEmporia Vue 2 Smart Home Energy Monitor
This is a review of the Gen 2 Emporia 2 and a comparison to the IoTaWatt, which provides similar functionality.
Read moreOverheating Kia/Hyundai J-1772/Charge Port Problems
There seems to be a strange number of people who are trying to DIY a fix to the charge port overheating problem on Kia/Hyundai GMP platform cars like our EV6. Normally I’m totally down with fixing things yourself if you can, but all of these cars are under warranty right now. There is no reason to try to DIY a […]
Read moreKia/Hyundai – The Update File Is Incompatible With Your Vehicle
Every few months Kia provides a navigation update for our EV6. The update process is very 2010, but I’m not going to complain. I’m mostly just glad that they provide the updates, which often include improvements and bug fixes for the media interface, not just the maps. The process is fairly simple, as long as you have a PC or […]
Read morePassive House Electrical System Design (BETA)
I’ve talked through some of the preliminary research and outputs for the electrical system in our passive house, but I haven’t mentioned the requirements that drove the decision making or explained the proposed design in detail. We’re going to fix that.
Read more