IT DEVICES

How to Control a WeMo Insight Switch using Alexa & Echo

So I recently bought an Amazon 
Echo and a Belkin WeMo switch and I heard that the two could be used 
together. After playing around with the two devices for a bit, I managed
 to figure out how to control my WeMo switch by talking to Alexa on the 
Echo.
The great thing about using a WeMo switch with the Echo is that it 
works without requiring you to install a third-party skill on the Echo 
or buying a hub. The three WeMo devices that work directly with Alexa 
are the WeMo Light Switch, WeMo Switch and WeMo Insight Switch.

Overall, it’s really easy getting everything setup, but I’ll also 
mention some troubleshooting tips in case it doesn’t work on the first 
try.

<h2>
Configure WeMo Switch</h2>
The first thing you’re going to want to do is connect your WeMo 
Switch to your WiFi network and make sure it is showing up in the WeMo 
app. You should be able to turn it on and off using the virtual power 
button at the far right.

If you tap on the little down arrow, it should expand to show you some power usage stats (only for the WeMo Insight switch).

Now there are two things we have to do inside the WeMo app before we 
can get it connected to Alexa. Firstly, you should rename your switch to
 something other than the default name. Whatever name you give it here 
is what you’ll have to call it when you talk to Alexa. So if you name 
the switch, Fridge, you’ll be able to say “Alexa, turn off the fridge” and it will comply. To do this, tap on the Edit button at the top and then tap on the switch you want to rename.

If you use numbers in the name, make sure to spell out the number instead of using the numerical value. Tap Save and the switch should now have a new name. The second thing we have to do is enable remote access. To do this, tap on More located at the bottom of the app.

You will see an option called Remote Access. By default, it will show Not Enabled. Go ahead and tap on it and then tap on Enable Remote Access.
 This will not only allow you to control the switch from anywhere in the
 world, but it will also allow Alexa to control the switch.

You should get a message stating that remote access has been enabled 
and you can control the switch from anywhere that you have Internet 
access.

<h2>
Discover Devices using Alexa</h2>
Once we have done those two things in the WeMo app, we can now move 
over to the Alexa app. Open the app, tap on the three horizontal lines 
at the top left and then tap on Smart Home.

This screen is broken down into three sections: groups, skills and 
devices. Groups allow you to control multiple devices with one command. 
For example, if you have three WeMo switches, you can create a group 
called Bedroom Lights and then simply say “Alexa, turn off the bedroom lights.”

Under Smart Home Skills, you can enable skills for products from different companies. Above, you can see I have enabled the TP-LINK Kasa skill because I have a TP-LINK switch. Finally, under Your Devices, you can add new devices by tapping on Discover devices.

Alexa will now start looking for devices, which should take less than
 a minute. Once the search is complete, you should see the device listed
 under Your Devices.

That’s pretty much it! You’re now good to go. You should be able to 
reference the switch by its name when talking to Alexa. Just say “Alexa, turn off/on switchname.”
 If all goes well, Alexa will just say OK and that’s it. You can 
manually go check in the WeMo app and you should see the switch state 
has been changed.

If you run into issues along the way, there are a couple of things you can do:

<ol>
<li>Make sure your Amazon Echo has the latest firmware installed. You 
can do this by making sure it’s connected to WiFi and turned on. The 
Echo will check automatically and update itself if an update is 
available.</li>
<li>Make sure the WeMo switch has the latest firmware installed. When 
you open the WeMo app, it will notify you of any firmware upgrades and 
you can do it from within the app.</li>
<li>If Alexa can’t find your WeMo device, make sure the Echo is 
connected to the 2.4 GHz WiFi network, if you have a dual-band router. 
The WeMo units only connect to 2.4 GHz, so if your Echo is on the 5 GHZ 
network, it could cause issues.</li>
</ol>
Hopefully, this guide will get you up and running with Alexa and WeMo
 for a more fun smart home. Unfortunately, Belkin has said the WeMo 
devices will not support HomeKit, so controlling your lights from Siri 
won’t happen anytime soon. For me, Alexa can do a lot more than just 
control smart home devices, so if you already have an Echo, it might be 
worth buying WeMo switches since they work well together. If you have 
any questions, feel free to comment.

TIPS How to Control a WeMo Insight Switch using Alexa & Echo

How to Setup Your Own Personal Cloud Storage

12:39 PM Unknown 3

For those folks who don’t trust 
their data in the cloud, the best storage solution is usually local, 
meaning either an external hard drive or a computer. The advantage to 
this solution is that you don’t have to pay any money to store your data
 (other than purchasing the drives) and you don’t have to worry about 
someone else being able to get into your data (for the most part).
However, there are several disadvantages to storing everything 
locally on internal and external hard drives. Firstly, unless you have a
 good backup solution in place, you are more at risk of losing your 
data. Cloud storage companies have many redundant layers of backup to 
protect all your data.

Secondly, it can be really difficult and frustrating to access data 
stored on a single external hard drive from anywhere in the world on any
 device. Cloud storage services usually make this really easy by having 
desktop apps and mobile apps for accessing data.

If you want the advantages of cloud storage, but the security of 
having everything locally stored, you should consider setting up 
personal cloud storage. Again, you’ll get all the mobile and desktop 
apps and everything will be synced, but you’ll have the data stored 
locally on your own devices.

Again, you’ll have no monthly fees to worry about, but you’ll have a 
higher up-front cost. Personal cloud storage is also really good for 
anyone who has terabytes of data they need to store, but don’t want to 
pay the hefty monthly costs associated with anything over 1 TB. For 
example, after the 1 TB plan on Google Drive, it skips to 10 TB and you 
have to spend $99 a month.

With OneDrive, you can only add more space after 1 TB in 50 GB 
increments. Each 50 GB increment costs $1.99. To get to 10 TB, you’d 
have to pay a whopping $360 a month! With Dropbox, you can only get a 
max of 1 TB with a Pro account. If you want more than that, you need to 
become a business customer with at least 5 users.

<h2>
Understanding Network Hard Drives</h2>
So what do you need to buy in order to get your own cloud storage 
setup? Well, you’re basically buying a network attached storage device 
or NAS. Note that a NAS device is slightly different than a network hard
 drive.

In my view, a network hard drive is a single hard drive inside a 
device that connects to the network and provides a web interface to 
control and access data. A NAS has multiple hard drives that can be 
configured in a RAID array, thereby providing in-built data protection.

I recommend staying away from single network hard drive solutions 
because it’s pretty much the same thing as using a regular external hard
 drive, except you get all the cloud features. However, if the drive 
fails, you lose all your data, which may or may not be duplicated 
somewhere else.

For example, if you consider the <a href="http://amzn.com/B00EVVGAFI" target="_blank">WD My Cloud Personal NAS</a>,
 the single drive is really just a network hard drive. If you get the 
dual drive version, then it can be considered a NAS in my opinion.

As you can see, though, you can get 8 TB worth of storage for about 
$400, which is not bad at all. Of course, there is one caveat to 
consider. The reason I suggest a NAS device with two or more hard drives
 is for data protection. If you put your drives into a RAID array, one 
drive can fail and you won’t lose any data.

All of the devices mentioned here support RAID on the NAS devices and
 it’s actually really easy to setup. The only issue is that you lose 
some available space. For example, if you take the 8 TB NAS above and 
use RAID 1, you’ll only have 4 TB of free space. If you use RAID 5, 
you’ll need at least 3 drives, but will get two-thirds of the total 
space of all three drives.

Considering you can get a dual drive 16 TB NAS for around $750, even 
being left with 8 TB is probably way more than enough for even creative 
professionals.

<h2>
Other Benefits of a NAS</h2>
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/nas-device.jpg"><img alt="nas device" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59792 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/nas-device.jpg" height="441" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/nas-device.jpg" style="display: block;" width="680" /></a>

Beyond the personal cloud benefits and being able to sync your data 
across all your different devices, NAS devices provide a lot of other 
benefits. Not every device I mention below supports all of these 
features, except for Synolgy, so be sure to check the features on the 
device you are considering.

<ul>
<li>Data protection when using a mutli-bay NAS with RAID</li>
<li>Ability to locally and remotely stream videos from NAS to games consoles, set-top boxes, smartphones and tablets</li>
<li>Ability to connect IP cameras to NAS for video surveillance and recordings</li>
<li>Ability to backup local computers (Windows, Mac, Linux) to the NAS</li>
<li>Ability to backup entire NAS to online cloud storage services like Amazon S3, Glacier, etc.</li>
<li>Ability to use your NAS a FTP server, web server, mail server, etc. with the use of apps</li>
<li>Ability to share files and folders easily with anyone</li>
</ul>
As you can see, the benefits of having a NAS are much more than just 
having your own personal cloud storage. You can do a lot with these 
devices, which makes the up-front cost more bearable.

<h2>
Personal Cloud Storage Solutions</h2>
So which NAS should you get? Well, when it comes to cloud storage, 
what you are really looking for is great software. All the major hard 
drive vendors have NAS devices with some sort of personal cloud option, 
but only a few work really well and have a suite of apps to manage the 
cloud data.

<h3>
Synology</h3>
I personally have a WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra and a Synology DS 411+II 
and I find the Synology to be an absolutely amazing device. My Synology 
NAS is several years old, but can still be updated to the latest version
 of DSM (DiskStation Manager). The software running on the NAS is excellent and is almost like using Windows.

They have <a href="https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/6.0/mobile" target="_blank">several mobile apps</a> that work very well for managing the NAS, viewing your files, <a href="https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/multimedia" target="_blank">streaming photos and videos</a> and for <a href="https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/6.0/cloud_file_syncing" target="_blank">managing your personal cloud</a>.
 What I like about Synology is that they are constantly updating their 
hardware and software so that it supports the latest technology. They 
also have a lot of different models with a wide price range.

If you’re not sure which one would work for you, just use their <a href="https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/nas_selector" target="_blank">NAS selector</a> tool.
 If you’re not a technical person, no worries. Adding hard drives to 
these devices is very simple and straight-forward. Also, a lot of times 
you can buy them with the drives already installed.

<h3>
Western Digital My Cloud</h3>
The other product I would recommend is WD’s My Cloud and My Cloud EX 
series. Overall, these devices are great, but they lack the feature set 
and finesse of the Synology products. I found them to be a little harder
 to setup and I didn’t like the selection of mobile apps.

Whereas Synology pretty much has a separate app for everything, WD 
only has two apps, which aren’t that great at what they are supposed to 
do anyway. However, if you don’t care so much about all of these extra 
features, then the <a href="http://www.wdc.com/en/products/personalcloud/consumer/" target="_blank">WD My Cloud</a> products are still a good choice.

You can also check out the <a href="http://www.wdc.com/en/products/nas/expert/" target="_blank">Expert Series</a>, which is basically a more powerful NAS in addition to the cloud capabilities.

<h3>
Seagate</h3>
Seagate is one of the biggest manufacturers of hard drives in the 
world, so it’s no surprise that they have also gotten into the NAS 
business. I personally have not used their <a href="http://www.seagate.com/products/network-attached-storage/home-network/personal-cloud/#features" target="_blank">Personal Cloud Storage</a> drives and I recommend doing your research before you buy anything.

The drive only has about <a href="http://amzn.com/B00PZZZEAG" target="_blank">3.5 stars on Amazon</a>,
 with most people seeming to complain about the software. Again, this is
 where Synology really shines and beats out everyone else.

There are obviously more choices for personal cloud storage, but 
these are your best choices on the market right now. If something new 
comes out or something better, I’ll be sure to update this post with 
that information. If you have any questions, feel free to comment.

Networking Troubleshooting How to Setup Your Own Personal Cloud Storage

The Best Way to Stream from Android to PS4

12:33 PM Unknown 0

If you have an Android device and
 a PlayStation 4, you might be wondering what’s the best way to stream 
your photos and videos from your phone or tablet to the PS4?  If you do a
 Google search, you’ll get all kinds of results with a whole bunch of 
different possible solutions.
I tried out most of them and was surprised to find that nothing 
really worked! The main solution was to download an app that would turn 
the Android device into a media server, but one app was no longer 
available (Skifta) and the other one worked, but it would not let me 
play any of my videos (iMediaShare)!

Instead of using apps I had never heard of, I decided to try out some
 familiar names in the media server business: Kodi, Plex, Tversity. 
While doing the research, I realized that Kodi doesn’t have an app for 
the PlayStation 4 and Tversity doesn’t have an Android app. This only 
left me with Plex, which has an app in both stores.

In this article, I’ll show you how to use Plex to stream your local 
photos and videos from your Android device to your PlayStation 4 for 
free. Plex has subscription plans and also a small one-time fee to 
“activate” your mobile app, but you don’t need any of that if you just 
want to stream local videos from your device to the PS4.

Before we get started, you need to create a free Plex account. Visit the <a href="https://plex.tv/" target="_blank">website here</a> and click on Sign Up. Once you have your username and password, let’s get Plex installed on the PS4.

<h2>
Install Plex App on PlayStation 4</h2>
To install the app on your PS4, you need to go to the PlayStation Store and then scroll down until you see the section called Apps. On the right-hand select, select Popular.

Scroll down until you see the Plex thumbnail. It will be several rows down before you see it.

Select Download and wait for the app to install. Once complete, you can either select Start or you can go back to the Home screen, select TV & Video and then scroll down until you see the Plex icon.

When you open the app on the PS4, you’ll need to select the Sign In button at the bottom right. If you didn’t create an account yet with Plex, you should do so now.

The next screen will show you a code and tell you to visit <a href="https://plex.tv/link" target="_blank">https://plex.tv/link</a> to add your PlayStation to your Plex account.

Visit the website and you’ll first have to sign into your Plex 
account. You’ll then have to enter the code that is showing on your TV 
into the text box.

Finally, tap on Link and if everything went well, you should see a App Linked message.

On your TV, you’ll see that Plex has been linked and that it will 
start looking for a Plex server immediately. You’ll then get a screen 
with a big error message.

Don’t worry about this right now! We have to install the app on our 
Android device, configure it and then come back to this screen. Just so 
you know, once the app on the phone or tablet is setup, we’re going to 
select Go Home, not Retry.

<h2>
Install Plex App on Android Device</h2>
On your Android device, open the Google Play Store and search for Plex. Go ahead and install the app.

Open the app and you’ll be asked to log in or sign up. Go ahead and 
log into the app using your Plex account credentials. The next screen 
will then try to get you to purchase a subscription or activate the 
device, neither of which you need to do. Just tap on Stay in Trial Mode at the very bottom.

This will bring you to the Plex home screen, where you will see a 
message stating that no servers have been found. This is fine, again, 
because we do not need to setup a full-fledged Plex server. All we are 
going to do is make our app act as a server and the content will be the 
photos and videos stored on the phone or tablet.

In order to setup the app properly, you have to first tap on Grant Permission
 so that other Plex apps can access the camera roll media. Once you have
 done that, you need to tap on the three horizontal lines at the top 
left and then tap on Settings.

You’ll see another menu with more options. Here you have to tap on System.

Finally, on the System settings screen, we have to make sure all of the items are checked. Most importantly, we need to check Advertise as server, Show camera roll media and Network discovery.

<h2>
Access Media on PS4</h2>
Now we can go back to the PS4 and select Go Home. If everything is 
setup properly and both of your devices are connected to the same 
network, you should see your Android device show up at the top right 
along with Local Photos and Local Videos.

If you select Local Videos, for example, you should get a list of all
 the videos that are currently saved on your Android device.

In my tests, the videos played immediately from my Nexus 6 and the 
video stream was smooth. Obviously, this only works for videos that are 
stored directly on your Android device. As mentioned, this was the best 
and most reliable way I could find to get my photos and videos onto the 
PS4 for free. If you know of a better way, feel free to let us know in 
the comments.

Softwares TIPS Troubleshooting The Best Way to Stream from Android to PS4

How to Export WeMo Energy Usage Data to Excel Yesterday, I wrote about controlling a WeMo switch using Alexa and today I wanted to write about how you can export the energy usage data from a WeMo Insight switch to Excel.

12:33 PM Unknown 0

The WeMo Insight switch 
generates a lot of detailed information that is really useful if you’re 
trying to figure out how much energy certain devices or appliances are 
using in your home or office.
Even though the app data is great, you can export 45 days’ worth of 
far more detailed data to Excel and then do whatever you like with it: 
create charts and graphs showing which days the most energy is being 
used, how many hours the device is in standby mode vs on, etc. 
In this post, I’ll talk about the process for exporting the data and 
then go over how the data is organized in the Excel spreadsheet. I’ll 
also show you how to make a quick chart to graph out the energy usage. 
<h2>
Export Energy Data from WeMo</h2>
By default, the WeMo app will give you high-level energy usage data 
like how long the device was on today and on an average day, the 
estimated monthly cost and the average and current wattage usage. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-insight-stats.png"><img alt="wemo insight stats" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59714 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-insight-stats.png" height="642" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-insight-stats.png" style="display: block;" width="600" /></a> 
This is good enough for most people, but if you are a data geek and 
you love using Excel, you’ll love the fact that you can export so much 
extra data out to analyze on your own. To do this, we need to tap on the
 Edit button at the top right of the WeMo app. The 
switches will change how they are displayed and you should tap on the 
WeMo Insight switch. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-edit-switch.png"><img alt="wemo edit switch" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59724 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-edit-switch.png" height="280" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-edit-switch.png" style="display: block;" width="650" /></a> 
On the next screen, you’ll see a couple of options at the bottom, but the one we are interested in is Data Export. Some of the other options I’ll also explain later on as they can affect what data is exported. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-data-export.png"><img alt="wemo data export" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59725 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-data-export.png" height="606" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-data-export.png" style="display: block;" width="650" /></a> 
Finally, on the last screen, type in your email address and then tap on Export Now. This will immediately send you an email with a CSV attachment containing all data for the device over the last 45 days. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-export-now-1.png"><img alt="wemo export now" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59727 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-export-now-1.png" height="471" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-export-now-1.png" style="display: block;" width="650" /></a> 
If you like, you can also setup scheduled exports on a daily, weekly 
or monthly basis. Since data is only kept for 45 days, it’s a good idea 
to export the data once a month, so that you don’t lose any data if you 
forget to export manually. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-scheduled-export.png"><img alt="wemo scheduled export" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59729 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-scheduled-export.png" height="350" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-scheduled-export.png" style="display: block;" width="650" /></a> 
I also suggest using the monthly frequency because the way it works 
right now, ALL the data for the last 45 days is sent every time you 
perform an export. It’s not like the data is reset or anything like 
that. Eventually, you’ll also have to create a master worksheet and copy
 and paste the data from the newer spreadsheets into the older ones if 
you want more than 45 days’ worth of data in a single spreadsheet. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-email-data.png"><img alt="wemo email data" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59728 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-email-data.png" height="479" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-email-data.png" style="display: block;" width="623" /></a> 
In the email, the name of the file will be Export for devicename.
 Since it’s a CSV file, you can open it in Google Sheets, Excel or a 
host of other programs if you like. For simplicity, I will be using 
Excel. Now let’s take a look at the spreadsheet. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-excel-overview.png"><img alt="wemo excel overview" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59730 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-excel-overview.png" height="68" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-excel-overview.png" style="display: block;" width="680" /></a> 
At the top, you’ll get some basic information like the last updated 
date and time for this energy report, the device name, some MAC ID, the 
signal strength of the WeMo device and then the Energy Cost per kWh and the Threshold (Watts).
 These last two values can be changed in the app on the screen where you
 tapped on Data Export. So the estimated monthly cost that WeMo gives 
you is based on this .111 per kWh value, but your energy costs may be 
different. 
The best way to figure this out is to look at your energy bill and divide the total Electric Amount by the total kWh Used. You should only be looking at the Electric Details part of your bill, not the gas details. Here’s an example of my electric bill just to make it clear: 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/electric-bill.jpg"><img alt="electric bill" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59731 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/electric-bill.jpg" height="413" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/electric-bill.jpg" style="display: block;" width="680" /></a> 
So here, I would take $267.46 and divide it by 1830 kWh Used and that gives me around .146, which is 14.6 cents per kWh
 as the cost. So now I go into the WeMo app and change it from .111 to 
.146 and that will give me a very accurate estimate of my monthly cost 
for this device. 
In addition, you can adjust the Threshold value, which basically dictates whether the device is On or in Standby
 mode. By default, this value is set to 8 Watts. If the device uses less
 than that, it is considered in standby mode. I’m no electrical engineer
 and I’m not really sure what the best value for that is, so I just left
 it at 8w. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/daily-usage-summary-wemo.png"><img alt="daily usage summary wemo" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59732 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/daily-usage-summary-wemo.png" height="64" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/daily-usage-summary-wemo.png" style="display: block;" width="680" /></a> 
Below that is the daily usage summary section, which breaks down key 
stats by day. You can see time on, time in standby, average power 
consumption over the day, and the day’s cost. If you want to see total 
power consumed for the day, just create a formula and add Power Consumption (On) and Power Consumption (Standby) for each row. Finally, at the bottom, you get a breakdown of usage by half-hour. 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-energy-data.png"><img alt="wemo energy data" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59733 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-energy-data.png" height="439" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wemo-energy-data.png" style="display: block;" width="459" /></a> 
Depending on how many days’ worth of data you have, this can add up 
to quite a lot of rows of data. This will also allow you to create nice 
graphs to see energy usage over time. In my opinion, the best chart for 
viewing this type of data is an X Y Scatter plot. If you select the two 
columns of data, including the headings, click on Insert – Chart, and choose X Y Scatter, you’ll get something like this: 
<a href="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/excel-chart-wemo.png"><img alt="excel chart wemo" class="lazy size-full wp-image-59734 aligncenter" data-original="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/excel-chart-wemo.png" height="384" itemprop="image" src="http://11986-presscdn-0-77.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/excel-chart-wemo.png" style="display: block;" width="660" /></a> 
As you can see, my fridge uses around .006 kWh when not running and 
jumps to about .012 kWh when cooling. It also alternates between these 
states all day and night. Usage by other devices will probably generate 
different looking charts. 
Note that it’s a good idea to reset the WeMo if you decide to move it
 to another location to track data about a different device. If you 
don’t, you’ll get data from two different devices, which will make the 
data useless unless you remember the exact day you moved the switch. 
Overall, the WeMo Insight switch is worth the cost if you are a data 
junkie. In my opinion, you really only need one of these around the 
house to track different devices. Once you have a couple of weeks’ worth
 of data for one device, it’s not really going to change all that much, 
so you can then reset the data and start tracking another device. If you
 have any questions, feel free to comment.

How to Export WeMo Energy Usage Data to Excel Yesterday, I wrote about controlling a WeMo switch using Alexa and today I wanted to write about how you can export the energy usage data from a WeMo Insight switch to Excel.

Networking TIPS How to Export WeMo Energy Usage Data to Excel Yesterday, I wrote about controlling a WeMo switch using Alexa and today I wanted to write about how you can export the energy usage data from a WeMo Insight switch to Excel.

How to Tell if an Email is Fake, Spoofed or Spam

12:31 PM Unknown 0

So a friend recently told me that
 they got a verification email from Apple stating that a new email 
address had been added to their Apple ID. The person knew that they 
didn’t add any email address and when they logged into their Apple 
account, no other email other than their own was showing up.
The friend wanted to know whether this was a phishing email or was it
 legitimate, but sent to them incorrectly by Apple? Well, it ended up 
being a fake email that was trying to get the user to click on a link so
 that they would enter their Apple ID credentials. Luckily, the friend 
didn’t click the link, but instead opened his browser and typed in 
iCloud.com and logged in that way.

Even though this friend received a phishing email, not all 
verification emails are fake. In this article, I’ll show you how you can
 tell whether the email is fake or not and the best practice for 
checking your account if you’re not sure.

<h2>
Verification Emails</h2>
Even though I’m an IT guy and overall computer geek, I still get 
spoofed by some emails myself. For example, the first time I got this 
email from Google, I was worried someone was trying to hack into my 
account.

The wording of this email makes it sound like someone created a new 
email account and somehow linked it to my account. Could they then try 
to recover my password and get it sent to this new email address? I 
wasn’t sure, so I clicked on the link at the bottom, which states that 
if you didn’t create this email address, then you can unlink it from 
your account.

I probably shouldn’t have clicked the link in the email since I 
didn’t really know at that moment if it was from Google or not. Luckily 
for me, it was and the email was harmless. Basically, when someone 
creates a new Gmail account, they have to add a recovery email address, 
which sometimes gets mistyped and hence sent to the wrong person. In any
 case, you do have to be vigilant before clicking on any link in these 
types of emails.

<h2>
How to Check if an Email is Authentic</h2>
In order to verify an email as authentic, you have to look at the 
sending email address and also the email header to be really safe. 
The ability to distinguish between a real email and a fake one also 
depends on your email client. I’ll explain further below.

For example, in the above screenshot, you can see that the email was sent from mail-noreply@google.com.
 This should confirm that the email is really from Google, correct? 
Well, it depends. If someone sets up a rogue email server, they can send
 a fake email that can show the sending address as whatever@google.com. 
Even though they can fake this aspect, the rest cannot be faked.

So how do you verify that an email is actually being sent from the 
real source and not someone else? In simple terms, you check the email 
header. This is also where the email client comes into play. If you are 
using Gmail, you can verify the source very quickly by simply clicking 
on the Show Details arrow directly below the name of the sender.

The important sections are mailed- by, signed-by and encryption. Since it says google.com
 for both of these fields, the email is truly from Google. For any email
 that claims to come from a bank or big company, it should always have 
the mailed-by and signed-by fields. A 
visible mailed-by field means that email was SPF-authenticated. A 
visible signed-by field means the email was DKIM-signed. Lastly, the 
email will almost always be encrypted if sent from a major bank or 
company.

Even though these fields ensure the email was verified, you need to 
make sure it was verified by the same company supposedly sending it. For
 example, since this email is from Google, it should say google.com for 
the two fields, which it does. Some spammers have gotten smart and sign 
and verify their own emails, but it won’t match the actual company. 
Let’s take a look at an example:

As you can see, this email is supposedly from ICICI bank, but the 
email address automatically casts doubt on the authenticity of the 
email. Instead of anything related to the bank name, the domain is 
seajin.chtah.com, which is very spammy sounding. The email does have the
 mailed-by and signed-by fields, but again, it’s not the bank domain. 
Lastly, there is no encryption on the email, which is very shady again.

Here’s another email where there is a mailed by field and it 
was encrypted, but is certainly not from Microsoft. As you can see, the 
domain is not Microsoft.com, but some unheard of domain. When verifying 
emails, always check that the sending email address is from the company 
you believe it is from, i.e. whatever@paypal.com and that mailed-by and signed-by are from the latter part of the email address, i.e. paypal.com.

Let’s look at one more example, which can be a little confusing.

Here, I have an email from a company called Actiontec, but it is VIA actiontecelectronics.onmicrosoft.com.
 It’s also signed by actiontecelectronics.onmicrosoft.com and has been 
encrypted. In this case, it means that the email is being sent by a 
third-party email service, which can’t necessarily be authenticated. In 
this case, the company is using Office 365 for their company email and 
that’s why it’s being sent from that domain.

Even though the above email is legitimate, the information in the 
header does not guarantee that the email is safe. You best option here 
is to make sure the third-party email service is also a large reputable 
company. In this case, it’s from Microsoft. Lastly, if someone is really
 trying to fake another email address, Google will probably be able to 
tell and give you a warning like this:

Or something like this:

If you ever get any of these warnings, then you shouldn’t trust the 
emails at all. You might be wondering what to do if you’re not using 
Gmail and if you’re not looking at the email in the web browser? Well, 
in those cases, you have to view the full email header. Just Google your
 email provider name followed by “view email header“. For example, Google Outlook 2016 view email header to get instructions for that client.

Once you do that, you want to search for the following pieces of text under the heading Authentication Results:

<blockquote>
spf=pass

dkim=pass</blockquote>
The spf line is equivalent to the mailed-by field in Gmail and dkim 
is equivalent to signed-by. It should look something like this:

Again, even if both items have PASS, you need to 
make sure it’s for the real domain, not the fake one the spammer may be 
using. If you want to read more about email authentication in Gmail, 
check out these links below:

<a href="https://support.google.com/mail/answer/180707?hl=en" target="_blank">https://support.google.com/mail/answer/180707?hl=en</a>

<a href="https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/2411000?hl=en&ref_topic=3395029" target="_blank">https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/2411000?hl=en&ref_topic=3395029</a>

<a href="https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en" target="_blank">https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en</a>

After testing multiple services, it’s also the reason why I stick 
with Gmail over other email clients and why I specifically use the web 
interface because it provides many more layers of protection that you 
otherwise wouldn’t get.

Lastly, you should make it a habit of going to the browser and 
manually visiting a website rather than clicking on the link in the 
email. Even if you know the email is safe, it’s a sure-fire way of 
knowing you’re not visiting some spoof website. If there is a link in an
 email that must be clicked, make sure to check the URL in the address 
bar of your browser before you enter any login details or other 
sensitive information. If you have any questions, feel free to comment.

TIPS How to Tell if an Email is Fake, Spoofed or Spam

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How to Export WeMo Energy Usage Data to Excel Yesterday, I wrote about controlling a WeMo switch using Alexa and today I wanted to write about how you can export the energy usage data from a WeMo Insight switch to Excel.

How to Tell if an Email is Fake, Spoofed or Spam

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