Smart Home Blog

Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo E is a home media PC which became very popular lately. Scaleo E looks nice (it won’t break an interior of your living room) and features:

• Intel Pentium 4 630 (3GHz)
• 1GB of Ram
• Intel 915 chipset
• Integrated graphics
• 250GB hard drive
• Dual layer DVD writer
• Outputs: 2 Scart, S-video, DVI, VGA outputs
• Inputs: S-video, composite
• Windows XP Media Center Edition
• 430 x 425m x 100m (w x d x h)
• 15kg

One of the most important parameters of home media PC is noise level. Scaleo E quiet enough but the noise increase when a DVD is spinning or the fans need to crank up to cool down the processor. The price of the Fujitsu-Siemens media PC is about $1400. It’s more expensive then ordinary PC which can be easy transformed to the PVR and made quiet enough for living room. Certainly, to do that you should have necessary technical knowledge and free time 🙂

Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo E is a home media PC which became very popular lately. Scaleo E looks nice (it won’t break an interior of your living room) and features:

• Intel Pentium 4 630 (3GHz)
• 1GB of Ram
• Intel 915 chipset
• Integrated graphics
• 250GB hard drive
• Dual layer DVD writer
• Outputs: 2 Scart, S-video, DVI, VGA outputs
• Inputs: S-video, composite
• Windows XP Media Center Edition
• 430 x 425m x 100m (w x d x h)
• 15kg

One of the most important parameters of home media PC is noise level. Scaleo E quiet enough but the noise increase when a DVD is spinning or the fans need to crank up to cool down the processor. The price of the Fujitsu-Siemens media PC is about $1400. It’s more expensive then ordinary PC which can be easy transformed to the PVR and made quiet enough for living room. Certainly, to do that you should have necessary technical knowledge and free time 🙂

The patent filed by Microsoft in December and made public last week reveals some Microsoft ideas about what it’s portable devices can be used for. The patent talks mainly about how PDA’s and Windows Mobile devices that can be used as a control panels for various home appliances. However this concept can be easily expanded for the UMPCs.

In order to use portable device as a control panel, home appliances should have a special docking station or interface port to which the device is connected. Portable device then determines the type of appliance to which it is connected and changes the user interface accordingly. Home appliance can be operated through the touch screen or input buttons on the UMPC. The user interface settings can also be stored on the home appliance themselves and transmitted to UMPC when connected.

I like this conception to have one device to control all home appliances. But maybe it’s more reasonable to have a home automation system to do this kind of work.

Samsung has announced a new “smart” oven. It reads special barcode from the frozen food package and cooks it according to the activated program. Before the intelligence came down to choice of oven program according to food type – chicken, beef, pizza etc. The using of smart barcodes is a big step to the smart kitchen where human shouldn’t know what food is in the package 🙂
Also, Smart Oven has extremely stylish design and uses innovation technology of the optimum mix of fan oven cooking, with microwaves to deliver perfect cooking in extra quick time.
The Smart Oven can decorate your kitchen just for $300.

[via Personal Tech Pipeline]

The security is one of important parts of the smart home. Camera 7546BB can see 100 feet in total darkness. It’s possible because of the camera features 66 high-power IR LEDs. Detailed specification can be found here.