Smart Home Blog

The EnOcean Alliance did a big step to success. It openned a specification for its energy harvesting wireless sensors. What do it mean? It means that more producers can make EnOcean compatible products. It also means that devices produced by different manufactures will have a good interoperability between them. And finally openned specification will help integrators and developers to add support of EnOcean devices in their home automation system.

EnOcean already offers unique feature for its devices. They don’t use batteries. Instead of that they transform electromagnetic, solar energy, thermocouples etc into usable electrical energy. That approach gives you possibility to build green system and save your money and environment.

I’d like to note that LinuxMCE supports EnOcean devices. The implementation is not fully featured so far. But I’m sure it’ll be extended in the future.

The USB Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Touchpad looks like a substitute for ordinary remote control. It has a 48 keys QWERTY compact keyboard with backlight and 2.8″ touchpad with left and right mouse buttons. Using those it’d be easy to search movies in the media library or control playback. I just would like to have dedicated arrow and Ok buttons.

The device uses 2.4GHz radio frequency. So it allows to use it up to 30 feet effective working range. It has built-in rechargeable battery (I don’t like that) and possibility to switch device off to save energy. It’s supported by Windows as well as by Linux. The price of the USB Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Touchpad is $62.

UDPATE: That Handheld Keyboard and Touchpad can be also purchased from EFO web site just for $40, plus $5 shipping to any country. Also they promise that device is compatible with Mac OS, Linux, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista and Window 7 as well as with Playstation 3, XBox 360 and Wii. Probably I’ll order it.

See the device in action in demo video below.
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That presentation will be useful for all who’d like to understand what kind of wireless devices can be used in the home automation system and how. I like it but the CoCo devices, which use some proprietary protocol instead of some standard one, should be definitely replaced by something with support Z-Wave or ZigBee. Moreover, it’s supposed that CoCo devices will control via remote control and not via PC or controller (correct me if I wrong). I found the PC interface but it’s used to set timers and not for integration with home automation system. As a simple and basic solution without controller or PC with specific software CoCo might be good (depends of the price, of couse). But for something serious it’d be better to use devices which support some standard protocol such X10, Z-Wave, ZigBee etc and which can be easily integrated with opensource or commertial software.

[via AutomatedHome]

Sure it’s better to have some professional solution to organize surveillance system in your home. Moreover the integration with home automation system will be useful as well. But sometimes people need something easy installed and simple in use. The new wireless surveillance system UDW10003 from Uniden fits those criteria. It contains two parts – indoor/outdoor camera with IR night vision and monitor (both are wireless). The monitor can be with 3.5-inch or 7-inches displays. The price of the basic package including 3.5-inch monitor and one camera is just $199.99. The bundle with 7-inches monitor and two cameras is $299.99 and each additional camera is $99.

The Uniden wireless surveillance system is an ideal solution for the most people who don’t want to spend time and money to install complicate system.

[via SlashGear]

Marmitek released its new EasyTouch Panel10 – wireless 10-inch color touchscreen panel. It can be used as X10 remote control, i. e. without controller or PC. The interface of the EasyTouch Panel10 is completely customize. User can choose any background, buttons or images. Each button can be associated with desire action which should be performed when it’s pressed.

The EasyTouch Panel10 uses two AAA batteries. So, it can be mounted anywhere in your house without additional wiring. The panel needs Transceiver Module TM13 to communicate with X10 devices.

The EasyTouch Panel10 is available in Belgium at €199 and in UK at £179.00, which is reasonable price to add more comfort and hight-tech to your DIY X10 installation.