Sunday, December 9, 2007

I finally finished labeling my KeypadLincs, and....

(Click on pictures to see a bigger picture of the same picture)

So.

I spent three whole days labeling my 7 KeypadLincs. Three whole days? Yup. They take a while. See, I made my own labels in Microsoft Word. Really nice color labels (if you are going to print color labels for the KPLs, and you have access to a color laser printer, use it. The color from the laser printer looks better with the LED backlight than the color from an inkjet printer).

To make your own KPL labels, you need:

a) A tiny flat blade screwdriver for popping the lenses off....
b) A tiny Phillips screwdriver for removing and installing the keypad frames...
c) A magnet for finding the tiny little screw that you dropped into the thick-pile carpet... or the kitty litter box that was under the light switch in the laundry room...
d) A flashlight for finding the little lens diffuser that you dropped onto the shiny laminate flooring...
e) Patience...
f) Beer...
g) Scissors for cutting the tiny labels that you created in MS Word and printed out on the color laser printer at work after hours...
h) Band-aids (see g above)...
i) And lots of time.

After all of this, Smarthome quietly decided to ship the new KPLs with pretty (as in pretty much useless) laser etched buttons labeled "SCENE A", SCENE B", etc. They do not come with buttons that you can make your own cheap (especially if you do it at work on their color LaserJet) legends for. Instead, if you want something useful, you will need to purchase custom laser-engraved buttons at $7.99 a pop. That's an additional $64 for a whole 8 button KPL (plus shipping and handling!). No piece of plastic that small is worth 8 bucks apiece... except for maybe a gas permeable soft contact lens... and those aren't even laser engraved!

Anyway, I think mine look just as good.