• Home Automation,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Xsan

    Lights Out Managing Mac Mini Servers with Vera

    There is no Lights Out Management for a Mac mini Server (btw, am I the only one that noticed that these are now called Mac mini with Lion Server, where mini isn’t capitalized). While the Mac mini Server doesn’t have the Lights Out Management (LOM)/IPMI chips in it, there are a few things that we can control anyway. Convention would say that we’d get a NetBotz card for that spiffy APC we’ve got, which can do minor automation and even a little environmental monitoring. And there are a few other systems out there that can do similar tasks. But I’m a home automation nerd these days. So I decided to…

  • Home Automation

    Home Automation :: Mi Casa Verde's Vera Light

    Mi Casa Verde has had the Vera appliance for a number of years. Recently, they released the Vera 3, which controls practically any Z-wave device ever made (in fact many are guaranteed to work). The Vera 3 is also wireless (802.11), so you can place it practically anywhere in the home. Now there’s Vera Light, which retails for $100 less, has a much smaller footprint and no 802.11 networking but otherwise it appears to have pretty much the same feature set. I’m sure it can’t control as many things concurrently, given the smaller footprint, but it looks to me like a great deal for those looking to get started with…