Smart Home Blog

Exceptional Innovation is startingt to ship its first 50 CableCard-ready LifeMedia Media Center PCs. Life|media is a powerful media server optimized for complete digital entertainment and comprehensive home automation. It’s based on Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate Operating System. So, you won’t be able problems with drivers for your hardware. The stylish case hides Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor, up to 3 TB RAID5 storage, up to 4 GB RAM and nVidia 8XXX graphic card.

Since Life|media is entertainment system is features DVD, HD-DVD™ or Blu-ray™ drive, 28-in-1 flash drive, choice of digital CableCARD, ATSC and NTSC tuner, HDMI, DVI, S-Video, Composite Video and 7.1 channel analog and optical audio with Dolby Master Studio decoding.

But according to producer’s worlds Life|media is also situated for home automation. For that purpose it includes two RS-232 ports for integrating with third-party systems, rear IR control input/output (in addition to an IR receiver on the front panel), and two ports for 12V trigger relays and contact closure devices.

To see more details about new Life|media media server have a look exclusive photoset from CePro.

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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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English-based company U-Touch Limited offers the simplest way to turn your large display or plasma to the interactive screen with its new product - U-Touch screen overlay. Just attach it over the front of your plasma or LCD flat panel monitor and you can use it to control your home or HTPC without remote control or keyboard.

The U-Touch screen overlay is connected to the PC via USB and uses Windows or Mac based software to implement touchscreen. It can be placed even to window and will allow to interact with a monitor behind it. It possible to attache the U-Touch to the LCD or plasma with diagonal from 30 to 100 inch. So, it’s cover all range of existing “big screens”. The speed response is also acceptable. For example, 13 msec through 4 mm glass.

It sounds very attractive except fact that Linux doesn’t support. Also the price is unavailable. But I suspect that the big plasma with touchscreen (if it exists) will cost much more than the simple one with the U-Touch screen overlay.

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A new version of HouseBot, Windows based home automation system, was released recently. The HouseBot offers following features:

• Automatic or manually executed Tasks
• Device / Equipment control and monitoring
• Control programs on computer
• Extensible through VBScript
• Remote Control
• Customizable Remote User Interfaces
• Plugin architecture

Read more »

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Sometimes you have to take it with you, and that’s when the Sahara i400 by TabletKiosk makes its move. Unlike a laptop or even a standard PC, a tablet PC isn’t meant for traditional PC applications like Web surfing, but it’s ideal for going from room to room and running applications like a home theater or even your lights, heating, and A/C.

There’s no keyboard; either a touchscreen or pressure-sensitive digitizer stands in. The i400 has a 12.1-inch XGA screen and a 179-degree viewing angle. It’s just under an inch thick and weighs in at 3.3 pounds. Other extras include Intel® Celeron® M ULV 423, 512MB DDR2 RAM, 60GB SATA Hard Disk Drive, Built-in Wireless a/b/g Networking, Bluetooth, a fingerprint reader, two USB ports, a PCMCIA slot.
Sahara supports both Microsoft® Windows® XP Pro and openSUSE Linux. The price starts from $1700.00. Additionally, you can buy a bunch of accessories for Sahara to put it on the wall, for example.
We’re going to buy one Sahara to test it as stationary Plutohome Orbiter. So, I hope the feedback will be posted soon.

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