Home Refrence Database

I have often wanted to have a good reference database of manual, settings, configurations of items at home. I think google's notebook LM offers a compelling option here. In my case with a new house its full of items i am not entirely familiar with on how they were setup. Struggling to read through a user manual or hope there is a guide online is a mess on 20 year old tech.

The setup

Collect all your PDF user manuals or other helpful resources you can find online for the appliances, HVAC, whatever you got kicking around the house. I also created a running google doc to write down specifics on make, model, configurations etc.. that i want to try remember or have handy. I am also exploring using reference photos to either query them directly or have them brought up.

The payoff

Querying notebook LM is much easier to ask human questions and have it browse the technical manuals to provide a step by step process. In my case setting up the alarm panel that was abandoned by the previous owner. Guides online didn't follow this model's specifics and there were some unique gotchas. It was super simple to ask it to provide a step by step on configuring and customizing the options without wasting time learning the manual.

It is easy to query the notebook either directly in the notebookLM site or to attach it to a new gemini conversation. Its simple to lookup a detail on the go.

Future ideas

I want to try bundle as much of this sort of information into this notebook finding more devices that can be added in. There are lots of pretty specific items that are wildly out of date and no longer supported by the manufacture but still work (or need attention). Some key areas are the electrical panel and wiring circuits represent it as a diagram and tables. Pull out any regular maintenance schedules from manuals. Incorporate utilities and other oddball home stuff for easy reference.