Smart Home Blog

Wireless garage sentry will indicate whether your garage door is open or closed. You need just attach the battery powered sensor to the inside of your garage door and plug the receiver into any standard electrical wall outlet. The maximum range between sensor and receiver can be 100 meters. One receiver can control up to four doors.

You can be the lucky owner of the wireless garage sentry just for $79.95.

Dedicated Devices, Inc. puts together new DigitaLife Server 300 and DigitaLife Storage 300 products to produce DigitaLife System, the first digital home entertainment and network solution that is designed specifically to be built into new homes.

Key system features include:

• Centralized management, distribution and control of digital content, in all of the most popular formats, to anywhere in the house.

• Convenient private home network for sharing internet access, files, printers and other equipment throughout the home.

• Built-in residential gateway to the internet.

• Handles up to 8 streams of audio and photos, or 4 streams of video, independently and simultaneously.

• ActivLink software that automates the copying of digital media files to the DigitaLife Server.

• Gracenote Media Management software, which automatically names and categorizes a music collection by artist, album and genre.

• Network Manager, a browser-based control console for managing network and media settings.
• Support for IP/network cameras

The DigitaLife System looks cool but it covers only entertainment area of smart home and maybe security a bit (support of IP/network cameras). So, you have to integrate the DigitalLife into some home control system of enjoy just the entertainment automation. Also, The DigitaLife System supports only the Panasonic BB-HCM311A wired network camera and the Panasonic BL-C10A wired network camera. But they are not provide PoE (Power over Ethernet) which is very useful.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

HDTV is a reality. Moreover, now people have more than one HDTV source. To make their life easier BetterCables.com, a leading manufacturer/retailer of high-performance audio/video cables and accessories, released The Display Magic HDMI Switcher. It supports all current and future HDTV resolutions including 1080p, as well as PC resolutions to 1900×1200 60Hz.

The Display Magic HDMI Switcher features five HDMI inputs – each are selectable via front panel button or via the included IR remote control. Each of the five inputs can accept any HDMI source, including HDTV, DVD, HD-DVD™, Blu-ray™ or PCs.

The switcher is available at $349.95 on BetterCables.com.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

If you want to have a nice looking PC near your TV the psile 10a is all what do you need! It is a silver aluminum case with a shiny white cover. Its sophisticated design will match any interior. And the advanced inner construction will guarantee good cooling for your systems components and an optimal silent operation. Features highlighting:

• based on mini-itx motherboard

• supplied with 1 real silent 80mm case fan (only 17,6 dbA)

• flexible positioning system for fan positioning

• allows building a single fan system

• requires standard 3.5″ hard disk drive

• fits regular add-on/PCI card (with max. 21cm length)

• slot-in DVD multi drive (included in most regions)

• case size: 22.5×22.5×19.1cm / 8.87×8.87×7.53inch

So, the psile 10a is bigger then Mac Mini but it looks much better then many Mini ITX cases.

GE Consumer & Industrial – leader in major appliance, lighting and integrated industrial equipment presented its point of view on a kitchen of the future. It’ll be the interconnected suite of interactive products: Refrigerator which knows what has been placed in the unit and updates an electronic list of all contents, Speedcook Oven which knows all about prepared food from the package, Water System with refinement based on ultraviolet light and so on. You can watch the video with illustrates this concept.