I’ve been watching the file transfers in my home cloud a little more closely, and now I can definitively say the bottle neck is the network. Oh sure, the hardware is slow too, but faster hardware won’t make much of a difference. On a very good day I can get about as much as 2 MB/s (roughly 1% of the theoretical max the hardware can do.) On a bad day I may not even get 100 KB/s. More typically I get maybe 300 KB/s.

In retrospect this should have been obvious. I’ve been really cranky with our internet speeds. The lines are so congested here that it’s not uncommon to be without internet all together a few times a week. (I blame both high density housing, and the fact that we’re currently living in Silicon Valley. I’m sure there are at least 3 start-ups within 50 feet of me as I write this blog post.) We’ve even had days were the wireless signal is so saturated our baby monitor – which doesn’t run over the internet – looses it’s signal! Thankfully things have been better, at least in terms of up time, maybe not in terms of speed.

On slow days even accessing my cloud can be painful. If I need to browse the photo directory to find a photo to show grandma? Not going to happen unless I go use the computer physically attached to the hard drive. Our network is just too slow.

My options:

• Set up a wired connection. Get a large (50 ft? 75 ft?) ethernet cable and plug our cloud computer directly into the modem. I’d also need a shorter cable for my laptop. This will at least cut down on the wireless interference, and help with the weak signal. The fairly obvious con is now we have a cable running the lengthwise of our apartment. We don’t need additional tripping hazards. Believe me, we have plenty as it is.
• Move the modem. It’s right now in the Living room since it’s cable and internet in one box. I kind of want to pitch cable, but I’m not sure I’m ready to. Besides, then I’d have the opposite problem of having very poor signal in the living room, instead of the office.
• Purchase a repeater. A repeater can boost the wireless signal, but it can’t do much to combat the saturated line.
• Live with it. I can avoid backing up my memory card during peek hours. I even joked with Domingo that not having immediate access to my photos might help with my photo separation anxiety.

“Live with it” is the option I’m leaning towards. We’re planning on moving in (hopefully) no more than 9 months, so I’m reluctant to buy a cable or repeater to fix a short term problem. I know, I know, they’re cheap, but so am I!

While I haven’t finished sorting through all the old external hard drives, I have cleared enough to setup the home cloud to run as planned. After a bit of a rough start, we’ve been up and running for the past few weeks. So far, the results are mixed.

In the pro column, it’s very nice to not have to plug the external hard drive into my laptop every time I want access to one my files, or to download my photos off of my memory card. I’m no longer relegated to doing work from a single spot in the house. It’s like I suddenly have a much larger hard drive on my laptop. Everything is always at my fingertips. I didn’t realize just how inconvenient my old setup was until the cloud was up and running.

The backup also runs more smoothly from the cloud than it ever did from my laptop. I’d often leave the external hard drive unplugged for days on end. Obviously if the drive is disconnected it cannot be backed up. Our cloud computer is always on, so there are no interruptions.

As predicted, however, using the old hardware is s…l…o…w… It’s probably also partially the wireless in the apartment, as the signal isn’t great in the office were our home cloud is running. How slow is it? A weekend set of photos would take about 10 to 20 minutes with the old setup of plugging the hard drive in directly to my laptop. The new setup, with the “new” hard drive takes seven hours. Not exactly ideal.

I think I may have to break down and buy a new computer/new external drives after all. I’m going to try and limp along, at least until after the holidays and Ziggy’s arrival. I’d prefer not to get anything new until after the move, especially since I’m not sure what the where exactly is the bottle neck. For now, I’ll try and make do.

This week we took HUE out of the package and it’s every bit as addictive as I thought it would be.

I can not emphasize how happy I am to have the spectrum of white light available. I know most people who invest in HUE are going to want to create color, but having control over how warm/cool my “white” light is feels huge. I find I soft cream colors relaxing in the evening, and blue white energies me during the day.

I actually don’t think we’d explore the spectrum of light as much if not for Nicki. She is fascinated with Hue. I showed it to her yesterday before bed and it was the first thing she asked for in the morning, before breakfast. We’re taking it as an opportunity to learn colors (e.g. “What color is this?” “What color do you want next?”).

Hue Lightstrip on our mantel giving a nice blue back lighting. Alas, I’m going to need to find a new spot for the light, it’s about 18 inches longer than our mantel.

Hue works by varying the amount of light output from Red, Green and Blue LEDS. That means virtually any bright color is at your finger tips, but there are some colors you cannot generate: primarily black – which is created from the absence of light. You can make very bright very vibrant colors but you also can’t make low saturation dark colors (crimson, navy, royal purple, etc).

A close up the red, green and blue LEDs.

The lack of dark colors isn’t particularly limiting in my opinion, though I did see some reviews that complained about it. If, for example, I wanted to set the lights to Steelers colors for game day, I’d use a bright golden yellow as my primary color with red and blue accents. That is, if/when I have more than two light bulbs.

Another drawback I noticed is that if you create a very dim white light (at least with the strip) you get some slight color ghosting. That’s because the red, green and blue LEDs aren’t right on top of each other. When the light is dim, the individual color lights aren’t dispersing as far. That means on the side of the strip with the green LED you might see a faint amount of green light bordering the white light where the red and blue lights aren’t reaching.

My biggest complaint, however, is the app. It’s not ideally laid out, takes too long to load, and is a little on the slow side. When you want to turn the lights off, you need to open up the app again which feels like a surprisingly long time when compared to flipping a switch. One of the first things I do when I start playing with the SDK is to create a simple, light weight off button.

Lastly, there’s the hefty price tag that comes with HUE. Each light bulb can run $60 to $80! I do plan on getting more HUE lights, but probably not until we purchase our next home. I’m to afraid of leaving a HUE light in one of the fixtures here when we move out!

This weekend was our open house. While prospective buyers were touring our house, wondering if it would be their next home, Domingo and I have been discussing our next home. His big non-negotiable is a big kitchen. My must have is good lightening. Our current apartment has no lightening in the washing machine/dryer nook. It sucks. And don’t get me started on the terrible orange light our Chandler gives off in the dining room. Yuck.

While discussing our dream home, Domingo and I started talking about home automation. I showed him Hue. Hue is “smart lightening” that allows you to change not only the color, but the brightness of each light from your phone or tablet. Soft blue hues that won’t reflect on the TV screen at night, colorless white light during photo time, warm yellows to wake up to in the morning – what’s not the love? You can set your lightening scheme to match your favorite sports team for the big game or to match your themed party. Check out their promo to see the use cases they came up with.

I figured Hue would be expensive, and something that would require an electrician. Well, I was half right. You need to buy a starter pack which costs $200 and has 2 to 3 light bulbs. Each additional light bulb runs about $60. To outfit your home could easily cost in the thousands, but the difficulty level is that of screwing in a light bulb – literally!

Hue also comes with an SDK. If you can think it, you can program it. I can’t see myself ever using Hue to let me know when my cookies or done, or that I should pack an umbrella, but I would love a motion sensored night light for the hallway. Clumsy me gave myself quite a bruise when I got up to check on Nicole in the middle of the night last week.

Domingo and I decided to take the plunge, and use our tax refund gift card money on the light strip starter packs. I plan to put one over our mantel. I figured if there’s any one spot I’d like a splash of color, that would be it.

I am ridiculously excited for Hue. I think I’m more eagerly awaiting it’s arrival than I did my last computer. Hopefully the price will come down before I get too addicted to customizable lightening.