Smart Home Blog

A new ASUS all-in-one touchscreen PC is ready for pre-order on the UK online shop. It sports 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, 15.6-inch touchscreen LCD, a 1.3-megapixel camera, built-in stereo speakers, WiFi (802.11b/g/n) адаптер and gigabit LAN and runs Windows XP Home. The release date is set for November 20th, but now you can pre-order it for £399.99 ($685)!

The all-in-one ASUS PC looks really amazing! Till that time the most appropriate solution for big, WinXP-based touchscreen control panel for LinuxMCE, called Orbiter, was Sahara i400. But new all-in-one Eee provides better configuration for the half price (Sahara i400 is tagged at $1700.00)! A big respect to ASUS for its amazing line Eee!

[via Engadget]

Share This

Keene Electronics released its new product - IR Anywhere. It allows to send IR signals over TCP/IP network. Even through Internet! IR Anywhere contains two physically identical modules. Each of them can act as either a receiver, as a target or as a stand alone.
A receiver will receive an IR command, convert it to packet data and send that data to a pre-determined IP address (usually another module). A target module will decode the received data and retransmit the IR as originally received. A stand alone module will operate as a target receiver without attempting to locate a compatible PC or other module on the local network.

The IR Anywhere can be very useful for multi-room A/V distribution systems. It seems ideal to transmit IR commands from one room to another. But if you’d like to control A/V equipment from some IP-based home automation system the better solution is GC100.

[via AutomatedHome]

Share This

iPhone is very popular in home automation area. Many well-known smarthome producers released their interfaces for Apple’s smartphone - Crestron, mControl, Lagotek, SpeakerCraft etc. Slovenian manufacturer Gorenje also found iPhone attractive and announced a new line of its home appliance controlled via TCP/IP. For all iPhone/iPod Touch owners the company offers a nice looking web interface. So, consumers will be able to set cooking times or laundry cycles from anywhere. What you need is an Internet connection, iPhone and WiFi hotspot.

Sure, the Gorenje web interface will work with any device with web browser - PC, Internet tablet or smartphone. If you don’t have iPhone you can use them instead.

[via 9to5Mac]

Share This

Panasonic announced a new concept of its remote control - EZ Touch Remote. It doesn’t look like any other remote control. The idea is do not have any hard key or virtual button on the device itself. Instead of that all information is displayed directly on the controlled TV. The EZ Touch Remote has two touch pads which allow multitouch data entry and zoom manipulation.

The EZ Touch Remote doesn’t look handy for me. Not sure that Panasonic’s approach is better then usual remote controls with hard keys or touchscreen. In any case let’s see how fast EZ Touch Remote will be available for consumers and what they will tell about it.

Share This

The latest Logitech product Squeezebox Boom has been reviewed recently. Briefly it’s good and it pays for itself. It didn’t spark a revolution in the internet-capable device area but definitely Squeezebox Boom set a new benchmark in the market.

I liked Sqeezebox (but not its remote control) when I got it for testing a couple years ago. And like very much Squeezebox Boom and maybe will buy it some day.

Share This