Smart Home Blog

That weather station can display its data directly on your big plasma instead of small monochrome LCD monitor. It includes a temperature sensor together with radio transmitter, wind sensor and rain sensor. The information can be transmitted up to 60 meters (196.85ft) to the indoor receiver for displaying. The receiver, connected to the TV using RCA cable, analyzes 11 weather conditions and generates easy-to-read weather report.

I’m also thinking about creation of personal weather station. But my choice won’t be TV one. Because for me much more important to connect the weather station to the PC. In that case using special software like Oww and home automation system like LinuxMCE you can show weather report on PC, TV, Internet Tablet or smartphone.

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American company ehômesys specializes in IP-based home entertainment systems. Its solutions allows to create both single room and multi-room system (up to 30 rooms). ehômesys systems offers PVR functionality, play-back DVDs, watching LiveTV (full HDTV), browsing photo galleries, internet surfing. Additionally, they allow to control light and climate and connect security system. So, ehômesys doesn’t offer just music play (if I’m not wrong).

ehômesys offers commercial systems. So, there is no any words about using OS and hardware. But I’d be very interested in to get more details about it.

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Mirror Media Ltd offers a cool device which contains mirror, TV and PC in one - MirrorMedia. It’s available four models with different diagonal - 20′, 26′, 30′ and 32′ and different PC configuration. The 20′ model features Intel Pentium Mobile 500MHz,
256MB SDRAM, HDD 60GB 2.5” 4500rpm, AGP Video S3 Mobile Savage with 8MB SGRAM 2/3D accelerator, Yamaha YMF724F – Creative Labs SB 128 Compatible, Line out, Line in, MIC, SPDIF, LAN 10/100 on board, Wireless LAN option, USB 2 x USB 2.0. To communicate with TV-PC you can use wireless IR keyboard & mouse. The keyboard includes built in track ball. MirrorMedia TV-PC works under Microsoft Windows XP Pro. The bigger models have faster processor and HDD, more RAM and HDD capacity.

In my mind it’d be much useful to add touchscreen functionality. In that case that computerized TV mirror can be used as control panel for your home automation system. In current implementation is just an expensive (I suspect its price won’t be cheap) toy. Nothing more.

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Samsung released a new plasma series with a built-in 802.11n module. Thanks to that module a TV can communicate with a hidden receiver located up to 60 meters away from it. The receiver allows to transmit the audio and video signals up to 1080i HD resolution. It also includes three HDMI 1.3 ports with CEC technology for easy home theater expansion. Over-the-air HDTV channels can be viewed with the built-in NTSC/ATSC/QAM digital tuner.

The wireless plasmas will be available in 50-inch and 58-inch varieties at the end of the year with price $3599 and $5299, respectively.

[via CrunchGear]

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Functionality of Neuros OSD - open source DVR, recently was enlarged by YouTube browser. It allows browse and play the entire YouTube video collection on any TV, both standard and high definition. It’s possible to use keyword searching and browse by category and rating. Future releases will bring user interface improvements and added functionality such as sharing, subscriptions, and much more.

The new functionality was developed by open source community, which works closely with Neuros internal team, and their contributions are quickly incorporated into the company’s releases. This is another good example of advantage of open source development for all producers who stake on proprietary closed technologies.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

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