Category: About

I hate cables. Seriously. There is a lot of trouble with them. Cables are constantly interconnecting, they are too short, can’t find them or do not have the proper cord.

From the beginning I was thinking that it would be possible to setup home without a network cable. But while I was planning where my equipment will be placed and where it will be plugged in, it turned out that network wiring will be needed. And I really needed a lot of cables.

I planned to carry out the wiring only where it is really needed, that is: for the security CCTV cameras, WiFi base stations, TV in the living room and in the kitchen, an IPTV box, that  is used with the TV also requires a cable, to the heating system control nodes, the door and the garage door, and maybe a couple of wires just in case. I did not lay them near every power outlet, to the bedrooms, and so on. And I used 3 boxes of network cable, 305 meters each! 915 meters of LAN cable at all! And I already see that maybe I will be missing the cable in one place or another… So, in those places, it will be necessary to return to the original idea that everything is about to be wireless. Continue reading Cables

Router at smart home is essential piece of equipment, providing fast and reliable internet connection. As long as your internet provider provides fast and reliable service. Here in Lithuania, major ISP’s provides fiber to the home service, so using such provider we can get reliable and high speed services.

In many cases internet services provider provides to the user preconfigured router. Such router in many cases is reasonable solution. But if you need some special configuration – such router will have limitations.

Here is a list of my requirements for the router:

• It has to be reliable and fast.
• Has to provide solid firewall.
• Has to have VPN server function for remote connection to home network.
• Has to support virtual networks vLAN, for local IPTV from ISP.
• It has to be easy to configure and maintain.
• Has to have some kind of functionality to restrict, limit or turn off internet for selected device at selected time.

I have been using a lot of different routers with various firmwares: Apple, Linksys, TP-Link, Asus devices. With default firmware these routers are capable of providing basic functionality or router. Internet connection sharing and protection of network. But if you need to configure virtual network for IPTV or VPN server, you need to install third party firmware. For example DD-WRT or Tomato. From my experience i can tell, that there are many problems using 3rd party firmware, such as router becomes unstable and reboots on high load, or it just not provides the required speed of internet. Continue reading Router for smart home

Hello friends,

Smart home and home automation is my hobby. I want to share my knowledge with you and to show you, how it is simple to build smart home using newest technologies.

While renovating my home, I had to install all my home automatics from scratch, so all configuration and installation I will blog here.
Many new smart devices work by using wireless networks, but unfortunately to fully ditch wires are impossible for now. Smart home starts from reliable and fast wireless network.

My smart home start from this rack. To this rack comes cables from rooms and places where I plan to install smart home devices, internet cable and electricity cable, which is connected to separate automatic switch.

Follow me on this blog and you will see how smart home is born.