Smart Home Blog

I’d like to wish to all blog readers a happy New Year! Thanks for all of you to stay here and grow blog audience! Hope all your wishes will come true in 2009!

AlertMe – ZigBee based home security system is gonna offer a new functionality in its next release. I already wrote about AlertMe SmartPlugs which will help to consumer to measure the energy consumption. Additionally the new AlertMe version will have PanicPanic button – press the button of your doorbell and SMS will send to your friend, Action chooser – it’ll be possible even switch off/on lighting by some event (set system in Night mode, for example), Tracking – will allow you to set up actions for any sensor triggers and the most important feature in my mind is CCTV, which will allow to monitor your home.

The AlertMe v2.0 is expected to be released at the beginning of next year. Till it isn’t available yet have a look its demo.

That solution can be interesting for all who have garage, storage room or some other cases when lighting on/off should be automated but without some complicated stuff – Smarthome Screw-in Motion Sensing Light Adapter. It contains a 360° motion detector with five meters range. You can easily decrease the sensing view according to your requirements. Additionally the adapter is equiped with lighting sensor to avoid wasting energy with good illumination. Finally there is an adjustable timer for the light when the adapter is triggered. You can choose between 5 and 100 seconds.

The Smarthome Screw-in Motion Sensing Light Adapter is available on the Smarthome site just for $24.99.

The Wireless Illuminated Super Tiny Keyboard can be good Christmas present for all HTPC owners. That 56 keys low keycap notebook keyboard is extremely compact and portable. The illumination feature allows to use it in a low-light environment (when movie is played, for example). That keyboard works on 2.4GHz radio frequency with operation distance in 10 meters. It should be enough even for open air home cinema in your yard.

The Wireless Illuminated Super Tiny Keyboard is available on the USB.BRANDO.COM.HK for $47.00 with free worldwide shipping. So, I’m thinking to buy it as the Christmas present for myself 😉

Recently I found a good example of DIY HTPC. The 9 yeas old music center AIWA NSX-430 was used as a base. All its functions were saved except cassette player (in any case it’s not so important in our digital century). For HTPC are used following parts:

• Motherboard: Shuttle FN85 with NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 150
• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ with ZALMAN CNPS7700-AlCu
• RAM: 2×512 Kingston DDR-533
• Video: nVidia GeForce 6600 GT AGP
• HDD: Samsung SATA II HD350HJ – 350GB
• Optical drive: Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7170S SATA
• PSU: Shuttle SB75G2, 220 W

Using AUX input sound comes from HTPC to music center speakers. Moreover, it’s possible to use built-in NSX-430 equalizer and DSP.

The article is on Russian. But there is a lot of photos which cover all stages of assembly. As result the old music center can be used as HTPC as well.