Old Tech and New

It's hard to think of something more technically challenging than merging old products with new ones. I had opportunity to do this on two occasions over the past week or so... one was easy, and one was a little more challenging.

First, the easy one.

In my house, we have a total of 5 heating zones. Two of the zones have super-old, standard-knob thermostats, and the other three had some rather ancient Honeywell programmable thermostats that have served us well for the past 20 years or so, and probably the one or two families before us as well. That's a long time for a technology to work, and work well! The rest of the heating system is even older.

In my haste to replace the batteries in one of the programmable thermostats, I broke the remaining tab that holds the thermostat to the backplate -- the backplate that establishes the connection between the thermostat and the heating system.

Now, there are a lot of things duct tape can fix, but surprisingly, this wasn't one of them. I'd tape it down to hold the 'stat against the backplate, but in short order it would slowly pull away. While the 'stat looked like it was "on", in fact the heating system was not engaged.

This seemed like the perfect time to venture into the world of home automation... with a web-capable thermostat. After a bit of research, and in trying to keep costs to a minimum, I went with a Google Nest E, basic programmable thermostat.

Our heating system has only a "W" and an "R" wire, and installation was a complete breeze with this thing. For $99, I now have a thermostat that learns when we turn up or down our heat, knows when I leave so it can go into "eco" mode, and can be controlled from anywhere.

Yes, Google now has even more information about me and my family, but I guess as long as it doesn't have a camera in it, we're probably safe. This was a prime example of old tech meeting new without any friction at all.... it took longer to drill the pilot holes in the tough-as-diamond plaster wall than it did to get the thing installed and heating us up.

Now, for the more challenging...

I've owned a Sony Handycam (DCR TRV-140) Digital 8 camera since at least 2002, if not earlier. Over the years - until cameras in cell phones became amazingly powerful in their own right - I accumulated at least 50 one-hour tapes full of memories. And now that computers can handle video importing and editing without any issues, quality storage space is the cheapest its ever been, and cutting to DVD is as easy as can be, it made sense to get these tapes into digital files on my mac.

It took a good couple of days of experimenting before I realized that I didn't have exactly what I needed. I had switched from Windows a couple years ago, and I no longer had a machine with a Firewire 400 port (though I still had a card I could install in one as a last resort). I tried an analog (RCA) A/V-to-USB converter, but the quality was poor, and iMovie wasn't gonna recognize that no matter what I did. I hadn't worked with Firewire in years, and had to re-learn the history of Firewire and what the different FW technologies were, to ensure that I wasn't wasting my money on a cable or converter that wasn't going to work. My 2012 Mac Mini has a Firewire 800 port, but the camera only came with a 4pin (iLink) to Firewire 400 cable.

I eventually tracked down a simple FW400 to FW800 adapter, and was able to use the cable that came with the camera to go into my iMac FW800 port... at which point iMovie made importing tapes a snap. Within 5 minutes my first tape (which happened to be the last thing recorded with the camera - my wedding, in March of 2017) was importing into my mac.

As technology progresses, I'm sure it's going to get more and more difficult to get the various old and new devices talking to one another. These are exciting times! But also frustrating times, if you're low on cash and time, and concerned about waiting too long before the technologies don't talk to each other at all. And when it comes to Digital 8 or VHS tapes, there's deterioration to worry about too. So making time to get things into digital format became a priority for me, and I'd say I hopped onto the train just in time.

What old and new technologies have YOU dealt with lately, and what was your experience? Were you successful, or did you have to throw your hands in the air?