Ok, it is time to admit it.  All is not well in the geeky home.  There are little niggles, everythings working but it’s not slick and it’s not well integrated enough.  It’s time to start finding some solutions.  Here are the snags, if you know a way I can overcome any of them, then let me know in a comment on this post, email me, or twitter me.

• There’s an annoying .net framework error popping up on the Media Center every so often.
• My Harmony remote isn’t quite set up well enough.  It doesn’t work well when the Media Center is already on.  The problem is that I’ve installed a standby saving power bar, which I want to keep, but it doesn’t play nice with the remote.
• I need to find a way to ARM the Y-CAM when we leave the house and disarm it when we return.  Or I need to move it to an area with slightly less traffic, i.e. where we don’t walk all the time so that my mailbox doesn’t fillup!
• I need to be able to view the Y-CAM stream on my Windows Mobile device, or at least be able to see the latest image.  That might mean configuring FTP, which means finding a secure FTP server on the net.
• I want to workout the overall power consumption of the kit in the house.  I might be scared.
• The TV Arial just doesn’t seem to be quite right, it’s a few degrees off!  Time for cable?
• My Windows Home Server is using a bit too much power, 40kwh in standby – that needs to come down.

Technorati Tags: y-cam,media center

It’s been a long time since I had something work actually blogging about but I just had to talk about this.  I’ve finally got around to setting up my old PC as a Windows Home Server, it’s taken me this long as I’ve not had a lounge to expand into.

I’m amazed at how simple it was to setup.  Pop the CD in, tell it to format all the drives, enter a password and wait.  When it was done I logged on and got it to do updates using Windows Update.  I also setup one user for myself and I turned UPNP on on my router.

Next I setup my laptop and media center.  All I had to do here was connect to \software">\\<server>\software and run the home server connector software setup.  Now my machines will backup to the Home Server every night.

All I need to do now is work out how best to manage the power…

For more on Windows Home Server, check out We Got Served