Smart Home Blog

BlueLava is a Perl web application which allows to control your x10 devices via Internet. It’s run as CGI script (it’s old school but many providers support CGI and its configuration is extremely simple) and uses various commandline x10 utilities. The latest version – v0.4.1 offers WAP interface. So you’ll able to control your home devices even from your mobile phone. Demo version of BlueLava 0.4.3 can be found here.

BlueLava is developed using Perl under GPL license. So if you’re Perl geek you can extend it easily and share your result with other people.

BlueLava v0.4.3 can be downloaded here.

As you may know to listen music with SlimDevices streamer Squeezebox you should have a SlimServer running on your PC (Linux, Mac or Windows). It’s possible to control specified streamer via its remote control. But there is a way to control whole system using Nokia770 and optimized SlimServer web interface. Just install and run version 6.5 and point Nokia770 web browser to

http://your.server.ip.address:9000/Nokia770/

Bingo! Now you can control any SlimDevices playes (Sqeezebox or Transporter), choose room, artist, track etc. Moreover, you can listen music on your Nokia770 (you just need to configure its audio player).

It seems that Nokia770 (and its next generation N800) is going to be very popular device for using as intelligent remote control. As example, have a look:

• The Media Center with the Nokia 770 as the Controller
• MoodSeer
• Nokia770 as Plutohome Orbiter

The HomeRemote started shipping Wireless Home Automation System. It’s actually a gate to your Z-Wave home devices from the outside world. It’s connected to your home broadband network router and acts as the central management system for your home or office. You can schedule your lights to turn on and off at a specific time, setup events alerts to your cell phone or Email or control an entire group of devices with the touch of a single button all from the Gateway’s user-friendly interface.

There are many Z-Wave accessories currently available in the market: thermostats, automatic window shades, plug in lighting modules, light switches, electrical appliance modules, motion detectors and much more. In addition, after Zensys announced its new Z/IP program to drive convergence of Z-Wave and TCP/IP, it seems Z-Wave is going to be dominate wireless technology for home automation. Unfortunately, there are no any words about integration with existing home automation systems.

The HomeRemote Wireless Home Automation System is tagged at $229.

[via Engadget]

The new Clever Media Control system (CMCS) is designed to allow Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition to sit at the heart of a whole house digital media solution. It can be used for viewing, searching and playing back music stored on MCE and for controlling the multi-room audio distribution system as well as other commonly used entertainment products.
The original CMCS user interface is based on a touch-screen application. So, the ideal control panel for it is some Windows-based UMPC such Samsung Q1. Additionally, CMCS uses the Autonomic Home MCE Control Server to provide part of its feature set. This makes CMC Server compatible with both AMX and Creston control tablets in addition to the CMC Client.

CMCS can control multi-room audio distribution products from NuVo and Russound. So, it might be a good solution to build music system for your home if you prefer Windows as OS.

It time to add modern technologies into bathroom. Once Grohe already announced its Wireless Digital Shower. Now Grohe presents a new hi-tech shower – Ondus AquaFountain. Its amazing design hides fully electronic control. The Grohe Ondus AquaFountain comes with a backlit touchpad and LCD display to input the exact temperature or choose the shower mode. It’s possible to pause the shower (sounds funny. Maybe later they add recording :)) and continue with already defined temperature and mode.

Cool! The number of electric gadgets in our dwelling is growing day by day. So, maybe after 5 – 10 year it won’t be possible to manage them without some central control system.