Smart Home Blog

Specialising in luxury home entertainment and automation systems, iLifeSolutions offer their customer some of the best and brightest technology
systems available on the planet. From use of home systems, to residential markets and even hotels, i.Life design, install and commission some of the best
and unique projects in the United Kingdom.

As home cinema systems become more and more popular throughout the UK, the great news is that they are also becoming cheaper. i.Life offer you a vast range
of luxurious opportunities with their bronze, silver and gold packages. Home cinemas offer you the opportunity to experience that big screen reality without
having to pay the prices of the every day cinemas. Even the base package offers you 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound in-ceiling amplified speakers, one-touch keypads
and an audio, multi-room system. Whichever plan you choose however, you will be offered only the best, high quality bespoke products that satisfy both you and
your home.

Of course, besides the most brilliant home cinema systems, i.Life also offer state of the art home automation systems. Whether you want to control your security cameras, blinds, heating or even television cabinets, i.Life can arrange this with the most simple to use control systems. If you are away from home however, and you wish to check up on what’s happening, you can even have the ability to check on your prized possessions through your mobile phone or the internet.
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You already may know howto replace expensive AMX control panel using iPad and iRidium. Now with iBracket from Gravity Switch you’ll able to mount iPad on the wall and make it similar in design to original AMX control panel. The iBracket is available in a range of 14 colours including polished anodized aluminum. Gravity Switch promises to offer soon wood and plastic finishes as well as metal. Additionally the iBracket can include four built-in speakers. So, you’ll able to use it as intercom.

Sure the price in $349 for basic unit and $399 for unit with speakers is not a cheap. But a combination iPad and iBracket still can save your money. At lot of your money.

[via AutomatedHome]

Recently I found the Verve – the first (at least I had never seen before any) commercial lighting control system based on EnOcean. EnOcean is a modern wireless technology to easily build your home automation system. Comparing with another technologies such Z-Wave or ZigBee, EnOCean has a big advantage. It doesn’t use any battery to power devices. Instead of that it convert electromagnetic, piezogenerators, solar cells, thermocouples etc into usable electrical energy.

There is, unfortunately, not any detailed info, price and availability of the Verve. But it’s nice to see that EnOcean becomes more popular.

P. S. I just would like to remind you that LinuxMCE has basic support of EnOcean too. See that wiki page for more details.

Today the second beta version of LinuxMCE 0810 was released. I’d like highlight following changes there. The first one is very important for non English spoken countries. It’s support of UTF-8 (I participated in that task too). Thanks to that addition of new translations in the system will be simpler.

Another interesting change is improving of setup of graphic card drivers and adding of VDPAU support to the MythTV and Xine. So, I hope it’ll allow to playback MKV files using Xine and not Mplayer (I don’t oppose to Mplayer but the pause doesn’t work during MKV playback under my LinuxMCE 0710 installation).

The DVD with new 0810 Beta2 can be downloaded from the official LinuxMCE torrent. Note that you still use installation scripts to setup the latest version of LinuxMCE 0810.

C-Bus users now have a possibility to build wireless network as well as a wired. It might be needed when existing system is expanded and you don’t want to put additional cables. Currently only wireless switches, dimmers, scene controls and remote controls are available. Unfortunately there are no any security sensors or thermostats yet.

The switches, dimmers and scene controls are available in two styles – Neo and Saturn. Switches and dimmers can have two or four buttons. Scene controls – only four. To integrate wireless devices into wired system the C-Bus RF Gateway should be used. It provides a C-Bus protocol communication bridge between a single C-Bus RF wireless system and a single C-Bus wired network.

Wireless C-Bus devices look nice but there are two big disadvantages which limit their usage. The first one is small choice of available devices. And the second one is a range of transmitting of the commands. If I’m not wrong a wireless C-Bus device cannot re-transmit command sent from the controller via gateway. So, to improve a signal coverage additional gateway should be added. Comparing with Z-Wave or ZigBee where each device in the network can re-transmit sent commands.

But in any case, for existing C-Bus users the wireless devices can help extend their network without breaking walls.