General

Cheap DIY Smart Blinds with Shelly1 and Home Assistant!

tl;dr: Take a cheap ~$150 set of motorized blinds, and make them smart(er), with a native HA integration and integrated WiFi Some time back, I decided to bite the bullet and try Home Depot's low-cost cellular shades. The reason I went for these is that they offer an optional motorization kit that comes with a… Continue reading Cheap DIY Smart Blinds with Shelly1 and Home Assistant!

General, Home Assistant, IoT, MQTT, Node-Red, Tools, Wireshark

Meraki MT, MQTT, Node-Red & Home Assistant Auto Discovery

UPDATED (10/20/23)! please download the flow file from here for updated flow configs for MT14/15 as well as the MT40! NOTE (6-9-22): Thanks to the help of Rohan Karamandi, the flows have been updated to now create device entities in Home Assistant! You can now see each MT and all its associated telemetry, as well… Continue reading Meraki MT, MQTT, Node-Red & Home Assistant Auto Discovery

General

Whoa.. where has the time gone?

It has been a while since I have added much to my blog. I would like to happily blame my role within Cisco Systems for this. I moved into product management about 2 years ago and have found it difficult to write on my own AND for Cisco at the same time. While I have… Continue reading Whoa.. where has the time gone?

Wifi

Designing Wi-Fi for High Density

In technical interviews, I often ask (and am often asked): How would you design a Wi-Fi network to support a large room with 1000 devices? The question is purposely vague to identify how someone thinks through a problem that doesn't have a single answer, and to observe how thoroughly they respond. Below I'll take my… Continue reading Designing Wi-Fi for High Density

Wifi, Wireshark

Multicast over Wireless

Multicast has brought a lot of efficiencies to IP networks. But multicast wasn’t designed for wireless, and especially isn’t well suited for high-bandwidth multicast applications like video. I'll cover the challenges of multicast over wireless and design considerations. But first, an overview of multicast: To level set, I'll briefly cover IP multicast. For the purposes… Continue reading Multicast over Wireless

Wifi

Deploying Wi-Fi for Location Analytics

Many Wi-Fi vendors on the market now include the capability to leverage access points for location analytics in addition to serving clients. However, deploying location analytics has its own set of requirements, and attempting to simply leverage the same APs for location analytics may have suboptimal results if not planned out correctly. The following sections… Continue reading Deploying Wi-Fi for Location Analytics

General, Mac, Tools, Wifi, Windows

Wifi and Meraki Widgets for Mac and Windows

I recently decided to try to learn how to write python a little bit. I'm still not very good at it, however I did create something recently that I feel should be shared! Meraki local status pages can provide some very useful information for troubleshooting, however having to browse to ap.meraki.com/switch.meraki.com/wired.meraki.com is not always desirable,… Continue reading Wifi and Meraki Widgets for Mac and Windows

routing

MX Dual VPN Hub OSPF to EIGRP Redistribution

Disclaimer: It is a highly recommended practice to employ a system of peer review for any changes you make that effect data plane traffic. This practice is especially important on systems managed via CLI. CLI is not always consistent between software versions or device types. Reviewing documentation and getting a second set of eyes always… Continue reading MX Dual VPN Hub OSPF to EIGRP Redistribution