Smart Home Blog

New Potato Technologies introduced an Infrared iPhone / iPod touch dongle FLPR. It turns iPone into smart remote control and allows to manage all IR-based devices in the home. It offers IR codes for more than 14000 different devices and App with generates remote control UI.

The big advantage of Potato FLPR IR dongle is that it doesn’t need additional device like, for example, RedEye which needs IR transmitter near your TV or air-condition. The FLPR is self-sufficient. That fact gives consumers more flexibility.

The Potato FLPR IR dongle is already available in the producer’s online shop at $79.99. The rest shops will get it at the end of March.

[via Engadget]

Digital photo frames are becoming more and more popular. And as result they include more and more features which are not related to photo at all. The same can be said about MeeFrame produced by LOOQS. Sure it displays photos from internal 1GB memory as well as from USB stick or SD card. But additionally to that the MeeFrame sports WiFi b/g adapter. So it can show streamed content from Flickr, Picasa and MeeChannel, playback internet radio (thanks to 2W stereo speakers), display RSS feeds and photos received via email. Not bad for the digital photo frame, isn’t?

The LOOQS MeeFrame has 8″ touchscreen display with 800×600 resolution. So, you won’t spend you time to adopt photos to display on full screen. Touchscreen offers easy and clear way to configure and control device. Additionally the MeeFrame can be used together with other LOOQS products – the MeeBox NAS and MeeBox Router.

The LOOQS MeeFrame will be demonstrated at CES in January 2010. I suspect after that we’ll know about its price and date of availability.

[via SlashGear]

Marmitek introduced its new X10 remote control. The X10 Easy Icon 10RF Remote can control not only X10 devices in your home. But using its RF transmitter combined with Marmitek infrared-extension products, like the Control Anywhere, consumers may control A/V equipment.

The Marmitek remote control provides following main features:

• Control up to 10 A/V devices.
• Possibility to define macros included A/V and X10 commands.
• Choose channels using recognisable network logos.
• Personalize the remote for every person in the household.
• User-friendly Wizard makes programming very easy.

The X10 Easy Icon 10RF Remote is compatible with ActiveHome and ActiveHomePro. It’s available now at suggested price €79.95.

[via AutomatedHome]

I thought about buying wireless compact keyboard for my LinuxMCE hybrid server a long time ago. Something like that illuminated keyboard. And finally I bought RF Wireless Multimedia Tiny Keyboard. It’s really light and small. Also it has a big advantage over the illuminated keyboard – a trackball and mouse buttons. I was scare a bit about supporting of that features in Linux. But the keyboard started working properly right after paring with adaptor.

Another cool feature – switching off mouse to save battery. Personally I use mouse very rarely. So, that possibility is very helpful for me. I think that the RF Wireless Multimedia Tiny Keyboard is very good addition to Windows or Linux based HTPC.

Using application Zemote ($3.99) developed by Zigzix you can easily turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into smart remote control for your HTPC. The Zemote communicates with HTPC via WiFi and needs additionally Zemote Receiver which should be installed on the media center side. Currently Windows XP or Vista version is available only. The OS X Zemote Receiver is coming soon. It’s sad that there is no any word about Linux version on the application web site.

[via eHomeUpgrade]