Smart Home Blog

I found very interesting DIY project of kitchen PC. It includes an ELO 19″ 4:3 touchscreen, Intel Core i5 processor based PC, iPhone-like user interface and a bunch of useful applications such kitchen database with barcode scanner, cooking timer, todo list etc. Additionally Twitter client, iTunes, Skype, Google Maps, weather app are available for users. Also PC allows to watch TV (DVB-T) and works as digital photo frame in standby mode.

The kitchen PC runs Windows 7 and uses Active Desktop feature to set custom UI. The budget of the kitchen PC is about €1000. Thanks to the author you can download all used applications including UI, graphics and kitchen database.

Well, the project looks pretty cool. But … It’s overpriced I think. First of all in my mind the nVidia Ion with dual-core Atom would be more appropriate choice. It’s cheaper, more compact and energy efficient but offers the same possibilities – run rich GUI or watch HD video. I’m also would like to see Linux as OS instead of Windows. Cause it’s more reliable and it takes less resources. So, you don’t need the strong processor and big amount of RAM to run applications included into the kitchen project. In any case, that project demonstrates how attractive a kitchen PC can be and it gives a basic ideas for your own project as well.

Amazing Zenith 5-s-29 Radio Case Mod is demonstrated on the bit-tech.net. Stylish design, wooden case, water colling, highlighting and more. See the step by step case building process. That kind of PC will fit very well into antique style living or study room in the house.

Toshiba announced in Japan a new series of its LCD TVs – Z3500. The TVs of that series combine ordinary LCD TV and PC where Linux is used as operation system (no information about what Linux distribution is there). It includes three Ethernet port to get media content from any Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) devices or Toshiba’s in-house VARDIA recorders. Using two USB ports you can connect to the TV external HDDs for recording TV shows.

Regardless of size – 37, 42, 46, 52, and 57 inch, each set boasts native 1080p at 24 or 60 frames per second, a 120Hz LCD panel that eliminates motion artifacts, and three HDMI inputs with deep color support.

The new PC-TV from Toshiba will start to sell in late September with price started from $3153.00.

[via Electronista]

Mirror Media Ltd offers a cool device which contains mirror, TV and PC in one – MirrorMedia. It’s available four models with different diagonal – 20′, 26′, 30′ and 32′ and different PC configuration. The 20′ model features Intel Pentium Mobile 500MHz,
256MB SDRAM, HDD 60GB 2.5” 4500rpm, AGP Video S3 Mobile Savage with 8MB SGRAM 2/3D accelerator, Yamaha YMF724F – Creative Labs SB 128 Compatible, Line out, Line in, MIC, SPDIF, LAN 10/100 on board, Wireless LAN option, USB 2 x USB 2.0. To communicate with TV-PC you can use wireless IR keyboard & mouse. The keyboard includes built in track ball. MirrorMedia TV-PC works under Microsoft Windows XP Pro. The bigger models have faster processor and HDD, more RAM and HDD capacity.

In my mind it’d be much useful to add touchscreen functionality. In that case that computerized TV mirror can be used as control panel for your home automation system. In current implementation is just an expensive (I suspect its price won’t be cheap) toy. Nothing more.

If you know what is HDTV and want to watch it on your PC or HTPC this brief howto is excactly what do you need. There are just four simple steps to bring HDTV to the your PC: buy and install HDTV card in PC, install a new indoor antenna, plug antenna cable to the card input and run appropriate DTV software. That’s it.

You can get background information on how HDTV works here.