Last look at the VIP12x0s before UPS took them.

Today I did something I thought I’d be just about the last person on earth to do.

You see, I spent about 20 years of my life building products designed to make television viewing a better experience.  Cable boxes based on video games systems, digital video recorders for satellite TV services, and TV software platforms.

My penultimate product in this space was pretty successful.  We called it Mediaroom.  AT&T called it “U-Verse” and I finally got it at home last time I moved.  I had three TVs in my house connected to AT&T’s U-Verse service, complete with whole-home DVR.  Finally, I got to use a product I had built.  Very cool.  Every engineer in Silicon Valley dreams of using his/her own products.

Today, 6 ½ years after AT&T installed U-Verse in my home, I dropped the boxes off at the UPS Store and that marks the point where I officially “cut the cord” as we have been saying in the business for about 5 years (though I don’t think I ever really thought people did that). The only service I have is broadband.  Sweet, sweet, 75Mbps broadband.  Yum.

Why now?  It was a number of things:

1. Most importantly, I am finally able to get HBO without a TV subscription.  I know the economics of the industry enough to know that HBO wouldn’t do this until it was really time to do it.  Paying $10 to ESPN every month so I can watch something else just isn’t my style.

2. I really like the system we built for AT&T, but honestly, we started that project in 2002, which is 13 years ago, and it has the same interface and same processor in the box as it did when we first built it.  It took less time to get to the moon than that, and there still isn’t a better box I can get for TV.

3. I was still paying $10 for something called an “HD” fee.  Do we really still call it HD?  How about just “D”, or maybe “TV”?  On top of that, another $18 for extra receivers every month.  I know how much they cost and it’s way less than the $1404 I spent on monthly rentals without ever an option to just buy them.

What do I do with all the money I save?  Well, I spend some of it buying shows à la carte on iTunes.  Apple makes that easier than anyone else as far as I can tell.  Of course HBO NOW and Netflix.  Still a lot of dough left over for other vices.

KUDOS TO AT&T.  I never had a complaint about the actual service delivery, and I was able to cancel the TV service in a web chat without a single push from the agent to try to get me to reconsider.  I was braced for that hellish call posted last year by someone canceling Comcast, but it was actually quite pleasant, and I’ll say that if I ever decide to submit to such a regime again, I’ll call AT&T first.

I know I’m not mainstream America, and I’m doing this more to make a point than to save money, but at some point you need to act in a way that reinforces your beliefs.

A few people have had specific questions on how to wire the Aube relay to their heaters.  I put together a diagram showing how I did it.  This is NOT a recommendation of any kind and unless you REALLY REALLY know what you’re doing you should hire a trained electrician to do this for you.

The diagram explains a little better what the Aube relay is doing.  Note that the relay needs both of the incoming line wires to power its transformer so the Nest can get 24v on C and R.  So you have to identify what wires are your inbound 240v.  The relay is a switch, and the red wire is the line that is connected or disconnected from the black wire, controlled by the thermostat.

I hope this helps anyone trying to understand how the circuit works.  Again, don’t try this at home.

In the process of re-learning my board design skills, I became obsessed with the problem of finding schematic symbols and board footprints.  Eagle is a great tool, but having to download a .lbr file to see what’s in it doesn’t work for me.

So, I took a bit of a detour and created http://www.schematicpal.com.  I’m crawling the internet looking for Eagle libraries, and when I find them I index them and make them searchable.  When you find a part you like, you can download it in it’s own library file and add use it in eagle.

I’ll probably put some ads on it to offset the cost, but not before I get it all working (it’s pretty basic right now).

The surprising thing to me was how good the tools are these days for building something like this.  It took me about 2 weeks to get it to where it is.  

Thanks to Typesafe for Play/Scala/Akka, and ElasticSearch for, you know, search.  I would also thank Amazon for hosting it, but I’ve given them enough money in my life that they don’t need a thank you anymore. :-P

Finished installing my tenth Nest thermostat today.  So far everything working as expected.  

Had to use extra deep double-gang outlet boxes to have enough space for the Aube relays.  Still need to make a pass through the house with a bucket of mud and do some patching of the holes I managed to create.

Setup is a little odd.  Seems like the devices could detect that there are others in the house once they’re on the network and skip some of the set up on the thermostat.

I’m finding the iPhone app is feeding my (minor case of) OCD.  Hoping that fades soon.  Looking forward to seeing how my power bill does from here.  

-Jim

Installation tidied up with a double-gang box in the wall for the relay and the plate that came with the Nest device.  Still needs a lick of paint…

Temporary installation showing the relay unit and the Nest device.  I need to get a larger box to put the relay into the wall and this will look prettier.

I bought two Nest thermostats within hours of their launch, partly because I have some very good friends working there, but mostly because I am the type of person who is unable to control his expenditures on new gadgets.

So I unboxed the first one, and after admiring the beautiful packaging, I pulled my old, ugly thermostat off the wall and discovered I have a problem.

Short story:  I have electric baseboard heating, and the thermostats control the line voltage going to the heaters directly.

So, I needed a relay.  It turns out the Canadians make one that fits almost perfectly.  It’s from a company called Aube, the model number is RC840T-240.

The nice thing is this unit has a built-in transformer to supply the 24V needed by the Nest unit.  No additional components are required, and the connections from the relay to the thermostat have matching labels.

My old thermostat controls both legs of the 220v supply from the heater, and the RC840T-240 only has a single relay, so I had to connect the red wire from the heater (the load) to the red wire from the supply.  This is fine because I’m breaking the circuit on the black leg.  It does mean anyone servicing the heater needs to disconnect the breaker and not just turn the thermostat down to avoid getting zapped, but that’s standard practice anyway; no one should rely on a switch on the wall when playing with electricity.

If I could have found a double relay with the same parameters, that would have been a bit better, but I’m comfortable that this is plenty safe, and my living room is smarter now than I am about controlling the temperature.

I have 8 more rooms with independent thermostats, so looking forward to the Nest units going on sale again, and hoping they have a bulk discount…

Added a photo of my temporary installation here.