Smart Home Blog

iPhone becomes more and more popular in the home control industry. Here is a list of the most popular or fresh applications for Apple’s gadget which can help consumers to manage their houses more efficient:

• AirRemote - turns iPhone into smart remote control. It uses WiFi to send commands and needs GC100 to transmit them to IR.
• ILoveControl is another universal remote control implementation for iPhone. But it allows to control not A/V equipment but all devices added in the Crestron, AMX, Control4, Lifeware, Lutron or NetStreams.
• iPhone interface to control Lagotek smarthome systems
• iPhone interface for SpeakerCraft music systems is web-based but extremely expensive - $1000 for pre-configured device and ERS 1.0 Ethernet-to-serial adapter run web server!
• Savant Systems iPhone Interface provides a full control for its systems.
• NetLinc Insteon Central Controller includes an iPhone interface to control INSTEON devices connected to that controller.
• HAI WL3 is an iPhone optimized web interface to control HAI smarthome systems.
• TiVoRemote turns iPhone into remote control for TiVo boxes. It sends commands via TCP/IP.
• MyMote allows to control your MythTV box from iPhone.
• iPhone interface for home automation system mControl.
• MythTV for iPhone is a MythTV front-end for iPhone. You can watch LiveTV or recorded shows.
• Asterisk Voicemail for iPhone offers a simple way to listen and manage you Asterisk voice mail from any place where you can find WiFi connection.
• Promix’s iPhone UI to control its smarthome system Girder.
• Technology BD Touch allows to user iPhone as a remote control for Blu-ray players. I’m not sure that it’ll be so interesting as AirRemote or ILoveControl.

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MyMote is another cool application for iPhone. It transform Apple’s phone into smart MythTV remote control. Unlike a bunch of web based iPhone applications MyMote is developed using Apple iPhone SDK and it can be downloaded from the App Store without any charges. Unfortunately the applications is not approved yet. But you can get an ad hoc distribution of a development snapshot here.

The MyMote is an open source application. So, you can get its code, improve it or make a donation to its author for his excellent work.

[via MythTV News]

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A few days ago new version of XMLTV was released. The changes of v. 0.5.52 are following:

• tv_grab_uk_rt: lots of improvements.. should upgrade
• tv_grab_re: better season/episode number handling
• tv_grab_be: responding to source site changes
• tv_grab_fr: better title detection
• tv_grab_huro: now generates stop times
• tv_grab_na_dtv: responding to source site changes
• tv_grab_pt: responding to source site changes
• tv_grab_za: improve episode tags
• not working, removed: tv_grab_il, tv_grab_nl_wolf
• some bugfixes and polish.

XMLTV is used in the PVR software such VDR or MythTV to get and parse EPG data.

[via MythTV News]

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HAI - Home Automation, Inc. recently announced its new software for Windows Home Server - WL3. It’s realized as an Add-in for a Windows Home Server and allows to monitor and control HAI Home Control System from any device with a web browser, including the newly announced iPhone 2.0, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, smartphone, computer, PDA, Internet Tablet etc.

The WL3 is flexible and customizable. It allows to change UI by applying different graphic and color schemes. Additionally, you can add RSS feeds for custom data, such as weather forecasts or personal blogs to the WL3 main page. So, you’ll able to read some news between watching video from your security cameras or checking status of various sensors.

The WL3 provides a web-based user interface. In my opinion this is the best choice. It has some limitations. But as advantage it gives a possibility to control your home from any device with web browser. Which is not bad any way.

The WL3 be shipping in July. Price is not tagged yet.

[via AutomatedHome]

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Simplify Media released a new version of its software for mobile devices. That version includes following new features: using Amazon Web Service to search album art, getting artist bios from last.fm and lyrics from lyrics wiki, select Shuffle from the top of any song list, and the tracks from an album, a genre, an artist or a playlist will be randomized for your enjoyment.

Note that build 949 of Simplify Media Mobile is a recommended update for all iPhone and iPod Touch users with firmware 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3 and 1.1.4. Enjoy!

[via SimplifyMedia weblog]

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