Smart Home Blog

Today a big even started in Berlin - ehome 2008 – Trade Show and Congress for Home Networking. Its focus will be on changed living standards and requirements. Two new areas will be central to the event: a practical exhibition area with a prototype apartment and a lecture program parallel as well as the international expert congresses in the subject of “Assisted Living” and “Energy Efficiency” with its own accompanying exhibition.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to go to that fair. Smarthome is still my hobby and not main job. But Andrew from Convergent Home Technologies promised me to tell about all interesting things there.

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Smarthome updated its flash demo. They added a new INSTEON remote control which was announced recently. Similar to its suggestions of hardware and software for home automation the demo is oriented on its products INSTEON enabled remote control, dimmers, relays etc. You may see four rooms: living room, bed room, kitchen and bathroom. The advantage of that demo is that it shows a simple and not expensive automation which can be done DIY.

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Smarthome guys published “Good, Better & Best Product Recommendations for a Smart Home” on their site. Sure they promote hardware and software which they sell. But it may give you a right idea for automation your home. The article split by automation area - climate, security, entertainment, light etc. There are also different recommendations for retrofit and new constructions. This is reasonable because for existing flat or house it’d be difficult add automation stuff without breaking an interior finish. But you can reduce damage by using proper hardware. For example, some popular wireless technology such Z-Wave, ZigBee or INSTEON.

Anyway, read thet recommendation and make your choice

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Plutohome fork LinuxMCE started its own life. The version 1.1 is released today. The new LinuxMCE is based on Kubuntu Feisty and integrated with KDE Desktop. The problem with Gnome was that ” the window manager in the Gnome desktop in Ubuntu does not support compositing and some of the other extensions needed to deliver a rich multi-media experience.” With new implementation LinuxMCE is running as a normal application and simply appears as an extra KDE desktop.
New version of LinuxMCE is available for downloading via BitTorrent. But remember that Kubuntu Feisty should be installed first. All bug reports can be posted here.
I already downloaded Kubuntu Feisty. So tonight I’ll install it on VMWave and download LinuxMCE 1.1 ISO (I hope).

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I’ve setup a Smart Search engine which already includes more than 30 sites. This number will be increased as new intersting sites about smarthome technologies will be found. If you’re an owner of good site/blog about smarthomes or just know some, please, contact me and I’ll add it to the Smart Search.

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