Smart Home Blog

Since I wrote about MAME plugin and JavaMO for LinuxMCE both applications got a good progress. MAME plugin now displays correctly extracted game’s meta data and picture (see its Screencast). So, hope to find it in the next 0710 beta 3 build.

The results of development of JavaMO – Mobile Orbiter for phones with support of Java, can be tested on the next build of 0710 beta 3. The Orbiter works fine on the Windows Mobile and a Nokia Symbian phones. So, can’t wait the next build to play with it!

And finally the extremely annoying bug with wrong checksum in the CM11A interface was fixed recently! Additionally many improvements were made to give consumers more repayable X10 interface. Well done!

When I read about Botanicalls Twitter I found that open source project – Arduino Software. It can be used to write code and upload it to the Arduino I/O boards (see the list of supported hardware). The Arduino Software is based on Java and uses Processing, avr-gcc, and other open source software. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Hopefully it’ll help somebody to create custom controller.

If you continuously forget to watering your plants Botanicalls Twitter is what you actually need. Using a simple electric parts and a bit knack you’ll get an intelligent system which will measure moisture level and notify you via Twitter (in case of connecting the system to the Internet) about necessity of watering. That’s really cool, it’s it? But maybe that irrigation system would be more useful because you need just put the water into tank time by time. The rest will be done automatically.

Recently ControlThink introduced ThinkRemote Community Edition, software that offers consumers access to Windows SideShow content from electronic devices found in nearly every home – mobile phones, portable game consoles and remote controls. Following devices are supported at current time – Windows Mobile phone or PDA, Apple iPhone or iPod Touch, Java-enabled phones, Sony PSP and Playstation 3, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii, Web browser (I hope it won’t be just IE).

Well, the ThinkRemote platform seems cool. Especially if you use Windows Media Center or some Windows-based home automation system such HomeSeer. I’m not a big fan of Windows OS or its software. But the idea of SideShow is excellent. Hope Linux community will have something similar or better as usual.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

Completely forget about birthday of Smart Home Blog. It’s two years old now (actually the first post was done at 6th of February 2006)! As I see the number of blog readers is growing day by day and they spent enough time to read posts. But this is not my target. My target is sharing of my experience with home automation and popularization of smarthome technologies and systems. Especially my favourite one, LinuxMCE.

I’d like to say “Thanks” for all blog readers and commenters. I hope you’ll find many interesting things in the Smart Home Blog in the future! So, stay in tune!