Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all fellow FUSErs.  And a happy start to the holiday season.  Sorry this is a little late but we have been busy with family, friends and turkey.  Now that they are gone (all but the turkey at least) I figured it was a good time to talk about how we used our Fuse over Thanksgiving.

Though we stayed at home, our home is the nexus for the clan so the Fuse got used a lot.   It served as a bedroom keeping people from having to sleep on couches.   It served as a refuge for people to escape to when it just got too hectic in the house.  We showed it off to the curious. And lastly it got used as a lab for several projects for future blog posts.

Before everyone showed up we knew we were going to use the Fuse as an overflow bedroom.   No big deal.   All I had to do is plug it into the house power and we were good.   Everything worked fine.  The weather was beautiful and crisp (at least for Tallahassee).   The fan, open windows and the heater kept everything comfortable.  

I was actually surprised it got used as a refuge.  Several times during the weekend, people went out to get away from the confusion.  It provided a calm spot in a turbulent sea called a family get together.   Seeing this, I now I wish I had had a motorhome much earlier.

There were only two first world problems that we ran into camping in the driveway.

First, Internet access was poor.    The WiFi signal from the house made it out to the Fuse but it was not very speedy.  I set up the WiFi repeater and that was solved.   I am working on a description of this for a future post for those technically inclined.

Second, I was concerned about entertainment for those staying in the Fuse.  We get 12 channels over the air on the TV, but I wanted to make it nice for those staying in the Fuse.  So I installed a Roku Streaming Stick and a Amazon Fire TV Stick in the Fuse to improve the experience for our guests.  Ok, so it was more of an opportunity for me to play with streaming video, but you have to take advantage of opportunities as they appear. 

There will be some posts shortly on video streaming options as well.   We have Amazon Prime and streaming video/tv/movies are included in the cost.  We also have Comcast/Xfinity cable TV and with your subscription, you get access to streaming video from most of the content providers with your Comcast login. I am looking for the best way to get video that incurs no additional cost.