Smart Home Blog

Automated Home yesterday published a photo and brief description of new Sonos controller CR200. It has portrait orientation and sports color touchscreen display. To simplify charging of the device it comes with dock.

There is no word about price and availability of the CR200. But Sonos already created a new bundle – BU250, which is actually BU150 but with new controller. Zoneplayers hardware will be the same. They just will get a new color to meet with the CR200.

Chinese company EKON produced its own automation system to control home or office. It uses proprietary Power Line protocol (not X10 as I understand) to send data between controller and execution units. The EKON controllers are embeded into touchscreen control panels. The consumer can choose between wall-mounted, table-mounted and wireless ones.

Together with managing of electrical stuff in your home of office EKON system allows to make security and CCTV using Alarm&CCTV Controller add-on. Using the touch panels consumer can see the alarm signals and watch video from the security cams.

The EKON system is a ready-made software and hardware solution. From one hand it’s good because the system contains only tested and working parts. But the its big disadvantage is proprietary technology and devices. It’s impossible to use switches or dimmers produced by other manufacturers. Another aspect which can be very important is integration EKON with other systems to have, for example, multi-room control. Have no idea how easy or hard to do that. In any case it’s good to have alternatives. Especially in the area of DIY home control systems.

Korean producer DignLab announced Atom based all-in-one nettop AIO A1. It has 19” LCD touchscreen display with resolution 1280×1024 and response time in 5ms, the Mini-ITX motherboard, unspecified Atom CPU and 3.5-inch hard-drive and run Windows XP. Additionally it ’s equiped with integrated 5W stereo speakers, two USB 2.0 ports, audio in/out and a custom 170W power supply. The DignLab AIO A1 is priced at the equivalent of $300 in Korea.

That device is amazing. A couple years ago I made a search of Windows touch panel for Plutohome Orbiter. The best variant was 12″ TableKiosk Sahara priced by $1700. The AIO A1 looks very attractive to use it as LinuxMCE Orbiter or control panel for some other home automation system. Hope DignLab will sell its device worldwide. So, home automation professionals and enthusiasts will have a chance to get a big touchscreen control panel for their systems.

[via SlashGear].

Touchscreen PC WebDT 366 was suggested as WinCE Orbiter for Plutohome and LinuxMCE. But it was too expensive (about $1500 – $2000). But now the situation has been changed. There are a lot of touchscreen UMPC on the market and the WebDT 366 was discontinued. As result, its price (for used devices) was decreased and now it can be even budget control panel for the LinuxMCE installation.

One of the LinuxMCE developers Tom aka tschak909 created a micro-distribution of Debian (based on Lenny), which contains the Linux based Orbiter. So, you can find WebDT 366 and flash it by yourself by Tom’s image or you can buy already preconfigured device ($250) or/and bootable LMCE webpad orbiter installation USB stick ($25).

In any case with Linux image WebDT 366 got a new life. So, don’t miss opportunity to add inexpensive and stable 8.4” touchscreen Orbiter to your LinuxMCE installation.

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]