When you love something so much – as much as this guy Pascal likes Star Trek’s LCARS UI – that you recreate it down to the smallest detail, you’d better be willing to go all the way. While he has skinned Windows to look like a screen on the deck of the Enterprise, why doesn’t he have his girlfriend dress up like a Klingon? Why aren’t there tribbles in his kitchen? Where is the Borg? WTF, Pascal. You don’t cut and run when it comes to religion. → Read More
The iPad is making a big dent in the home automation field just like I thought it would mainly because it offers so many more advantages over the traditional remotes found in the space for a fraction of the price. $500 home automation remotes tend look like your Comcast DVR remote and so the iPad is quickly crashing that market. So much so that instead of work against it, most home automation companies developed apps, docks, and entire ecosystems around the iPad. Crestron’s latest accessory, however, address what’s unfortunately viewed as one of the iPad’s key disadvantages when used as a home automation controller: the lack of hard buttons. → Read More
I had a few X10 products back in the day, but never got beyond turning my lava lamp on through a web page. Unlike my buddy Rich who was interviewed in the New York Times for his home automation efforts. Things have come a long way in low- to mid-range automation technology, so put away your childish X10 products and graduate into something from Bitwise Controls. → Read More
Arkados is a company that makes a pretty nifty set of chips that are often used in home automation products by third party companies, among other things. If you have any kind of integrated sound system or automated control deck than you might be using Arkados’s technology without even knowing it. To take advantage of this, Arkados has released a reference design for making interactive software for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s a cool idea, being able to turn on the fan in your living room from across town with just a piece of hardware you’re already carrying with you. Right now it’s just for the audio systems the company helps with, meaning you can control your entire music library from room to room with your iPhone as a remote. If you entertain often or just like each room to have its own ambience, it’s a great idea. In the future, when it’s more fleshed out, it’ll be like the Jetsons. → Read More
My vast collection of Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck and other fine wines is so disorganized that I don’t know what do do anymore nor do I know what the temperature is like or what my stocks are doing. Enter Runtriz. A touch screen-based system that catalogs your wine cellar, provides up to the minute news, weather and stock info all at your finger tips. No clue what to make for dinner? Don’t worry. Runtriz has a recipe feature to help you out and based on the recipe you choose, it automatically sends a text and/or e-mail so you know exactly what to get when you’re at the grocery store. Cool, huh? The system is available in a 12- or 15-inch model that can be placed in any room throughout your home. Packages start out at $7,000 and can be customized to suit your needs. There’s also a monthly fee of $10 to keep the system up to date and programmed just for you. Check out the site for a demo. → Read More
. But we still like to keep it old school. The Push Button Manor in Jackson, Michigan is about as old school as the concept can get. The modern (for the time) house was equipped with analog mechanics of the “future”, things like windows that close automatically during rain, remote control drapes, and automated dressing table lighting. What’s great is that the home’s owner made all the stuff DIY. Make, eat your heart out. Many of these devices are things we’d take for granted these days, but at the time of grand engineering, a man building these devices into his house wasn’t geeky, it was “Genius”. Now if we could convince the signif to let us try our hand at this, we’re all set. Push Button Manor [Modern Mechanix, via Boing Boing] → Read More
