Smart Home Blog

VooMote Zapper can turn your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad into universal remote control with extended functions. To do that it combines VooMote iOS App and Zapper – compact and stylish IR transmitter. The application offers all functions of ordinary remote control and more. You may build your own custom layout for each device. While Zapper allows to learn IR commands from your original remote control if it isn’t listed in the VooMote database.

The VooMote Zapper will be available on October at €49.99 or $69.99. Additionally you may get a stylish cover for your iOS device in the same color as the Zapper.

Sonos finally released its controller for Android-based devices. It looks nice and offers a full control over Sonos multi-room music system. User can choose different source for each audio zone as well as control playback and volume. The controller is already available on Android Market for free.

In the same time the Sonos added support of Apple AirPlay to its new firmware v3.4. It allows to stream from the Apple AirPlay, plugged into a Sonos device’s aux-in input, around the home.

Samsung demonstrated its new application for Galaxy Tabs or a Galaxy-series Android smartphones which not just tuns them to advanced remote control but also allows to watch Smart TV live stream over WiFi. That application will be available on the new Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 10.1. It also can be installed from the Samsung App Store. Good advantage to your Smart TV!

XBMC team gave us more information about porting its glorious software to the Sigma processors. The first proof-of-concept is based on SMP8670 and run XBMC. It was demonstrated at CES 2011. Sure it’s far from production – GUI is choppy and playback is still not working. But that fact didn’t prevent a significant amount of iinterest from CES attendees.

The Sigma Designs developers are going to work directly with XBMC developers. Also the company takes the GPL seriously. So, the partnerships between XBMC and Sigma Designs will bring not just XBMC to the Sigma-based media players. But also should improve XBMC itself a lot. However, a huge job should be done. That’s why we don’t expect to see a Sigma-based XBMC solution on shelves in the next few months. But when it’ll happen there will be two possibilities to run XBMC – as main user interface or as a application. A decision will be done by manufactures.

An open source project called Simonsays offers a voice control for Win7 MCE via microphone to capture voice commands. Those commands are processed by Windows 7 Voice Recognition SDK. Currently hole project is a Python script hosted at Google Code. It has a limited dictionary of commands. But it should be enough to control playback or volume. You can install and configure Simonsays using that instruction.

[via ehomeUgrade]