Smart Home Blog

Company Vesternet launched a few interesting Z-Wave products in UK. First of all its plug and play transceiver comes with on board drivers and a Z-Wave application for managing devices. So, by attaching it to PC or laptop we immediately will have Z-Wave controller. Clever solution for £49.99 device indeed.

Also Vesternet offers two kinds of kits – Energy and Security. Both of them include free Z-Wave USB stick. Additionally Energy kit contains nine Homepro On/Off Sockets and AeonLabs 3-Clamp Power Meter. Security kit has three Everspring Door & Window Sensors, three Homepro Motion Detector and three Everspring On/Off sockets. Sure you can buy any device included into kit separately.

[via AutomatedHome]

If you’d like to add a possibility to watch and record satellite TV to your Linux-based compact HTPC (ASRock HTPC with XBMC, for example) the Qbox S2 USB DVB-S2 card can be an option for that. It’s supported by both VDR and MythTV and have a reasonable price – €68.68. TBS also is planning to release a version with CI if you’re interesting to watch encoded channels.

Combi Chef 6 microwave is probably the first microwave in the world equiped with USB port! For what reason it’s done? Well, the idea is to prepare different kinds of scenarios to cook your favourite dishes, store them to the USB stick and then just pickup desire one from the menu. Not sure that it’ll be useful for personal using but it might be helpful for the restaurants, coffee houses etc.

By the way, I don’t understand why everybody worry about possibility to charge their gadgets via microwave’s USB port??? In my mind you can find better place in your home for that 😉

If you have external USB hard drive and would like to access it without PC the Pogoplug is probably what do you need. This stylish adaptor turns any USB storage device into NAS. Additionally to sharing files it provides UPnP service to stream media content by home network. The Pogoplug can be easily configured via web interface. For Linux geeks it provides SSH access and a few open source components. The functionality of the Pogoplug can be expanded by uploading a new firmware. So, later some new features might be added there.

The Pogoplug is available just for $99 which is near to cost some one bay NAS without HDD. But using USB hub you can connect to the Pogoplug more then one device.

You can watch demo video about configuration Pogoplug after jump.
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Mini PCs such ASUS Eee Desktop or Acer Aspire are good to use them as HTPC. They are compact, quiet and good looking. But they have a big disadvantage. It isn’t possible to install DVB-S card there to watch satellite TV. DVBWorld HD Box can solve that problem. Connected via USB port it supports DVB-S and modern DVB-S2. So, you’ll able to watch HD satellite channels. Additionally the box includes a PVR software which allows to schedule recording, record and play recorded TV shows as well as broadcast MPEG video to home network.

DVBWorld HD Box has drivers for MS Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.