Zigbee Lighting - Sylvania 74099 4/8 button remote will not pair.

https://community.hubitat.com/t/sylvania-lightify-smart-switch-8-functions-4-buttons/10943

Update:

Ken Fraleigh from the Hubitat community pointed out that what I thought of as "Reset" (3-4) is actually the ZLL (Zigbee Light Link). This information came from the European Sylvania site where they have been discussion support for ZB 3.0 and Hue Bridge compatibility.


So I was reading through the threads above and others trying to get the Sylvania  4 button controller working with the Lightify Hub . We have a goal of keeping this cost effective, shopping for deals. Maybe Hubitat for x-mas,

Anyway while trying to get one re-paired was thinking back to another one I had and was sitting on the shelf waiting to go back. The Device has 4 buttons

1		2
3		4

The Manual and on-screen directions tell you to press 2 & 3 and hold for 2 seconds and it should pulse orange and re-pair.

So that's not working, I should have realized at this point that the 2 button isn't flashing. This is because I dropped onto the floor and it exploded like an old cell with removable battery parts going flying. Wish I had thought of this earlier, but that's ok.

So if 2-3 does something, what else exists ?

3 & 4: While held, flashes orange and then ends with red. (ZLL Pairing)

1 & 4: After a few seconds flashes green 10 times then ends with long green

1 & 4 We'll call power-on reboot. It's similar to what happens when you pull the tab keeping the battery from making contact.

3 & 4 Feels like some kind of reset, warning orange ending with Red. I was incorrect this is ZLL Pairing mode (Thanks Ken)

So back to the story, This was 1 of 2 I'd just gotten, 1 new and one as replacement for another which got paired to a system that was shipped back and couldn't get it paired to the Lightify. 

After I disassembled/reassembled the other one, and had re-paired it by pressing on the metal buttons to get it paired. If you have any question if your actually pressing 2 & 3, I'd recommend removing the face and checking out under the hood.To remove the front bezel, remove the battery cover and in the rounded corners you'll see the two plastic hook tabs holding the bezel in-place.

I unpacked the one destined to be returned and did the following:

Reboot:		1 & 4
ZHA Pair:		2 & 3
Reset ZLL Pairing:		3 & 4

And look at that, it paired right up. 

Sylvania why didn't you just say that. Searched the site, Submitted tickets, Marketing-Speak back, no tech support.

Way Kool KVM (not) .. 2 PC's, 1 Keyboard

Ok, all that and a bag of chips.

So I sit at home with my laptop and anytime I want to put something up on the mediaPC in my house to show others I need to VNC into the machine, then use my Laptop's keyboard and mouse to control the machine.

This little tool allows you to create a "virtual desktop" accross machines and OS's. One machine is the "server" which means thats the active keyboard and mouse. Load a client on the other PC and then create a config that says client is to the right of server and server is to the left of client. Now drag your mouse off the right side of the server and you are now on the client.

Confused ? its ok, actually when setting it up I screwed up a few times myself. Interesting little side note, you can make your own pc a neighbor to itself (ok, explain that one). My machine is named goofy, in synergy goofy is to the left of goofy, goofy is to the right of goofy, goofy is above goofy and of course goofy is below goofy. How goofy am I now, well drag the cursor off the top and it shows up on the bottom. Yep go off the left and it pops on the right. Cute trick huh ?

But back to the main reason it exists. Now I can have 2 pc's and 2 monitors on my desk without needing 2 mice and 2 keyboards or some silly KVM.

Rick

Disposable email addresses

I've run a version of this on my own email server for years. This is a brilliant variant on it.

Sign up for an account, tell em where you want the email forwarded to and then be SURE to goto the advanced config and choose a few "watchwords". These are truly the magic of the system

for example, if I choose eater, water, dirt as my watchwords then I can give people

jspameater.6.rickalm@spamgourmet.com as my email address and it will work because of the watchword eater. Without watchwords, someone could email youareajerk.6.rickalm@spamgourmet.com and I would get spammed. Since they don't know my watchwords it would not get through.

If they have enough time on their hands to defeat this system, then maybe they are worthy of me reading about their mail enhancement potion :)

Stop Spam, Read Books

Catchy title huh,

We've all seen a "Captcha", which is a fancy word to describe the annoying "read this image and type in the word".

Re-Captcha is actually innovative. Many libraries are scanning books to archive them, and creating a OCR of the doc so that its searchable and e-book'able. OCR is not perfect, and older books use non-standard fonts and fuzzy printing. Re-Captcha is a potential solution.

Unlike most of the solutions which give you a string or word to type in Re-Captcha gives you two. One word it has a high confidence in what it is, and one word it has a low confidence about. When you type in both words, if you get the one right, there is a high probability that you got the other one right. If you take a low confidence word and give it to 50 people and they all give you the same response you just created a Human Based OCR.

Lastly, they provided a great way to hide your email ..

Click here to get my mail address ..

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/

Stop Reading books, start sending spam :) .. Monkey's and Typewriters come to mind.

In all seriousness, it’s solving two problems in a single bound.

Hyperconnectivity - Explain the Hype

From the paper "Hyperconnectivity - what we at nortel define as the state in which the number of devices, nodes and applications connected to the network far exceed the number of people using it"

Well then, my home has been hyperconnected since I was 10 years old. It really does explain why I tend to scare the non-techies in my life. In a 2 person household we have 4 tivo's, 5 TV's, 5 computers (2 laptops, 3 desktops), 3 printers all interconnected.