Monat: November 2012

Home automation with iOS – WeMo from Belkin

Another nice device offered in the Belkin store is the WeMo. The category is Connected Home and they offer an WeMO Baby device, which looks interesting and it’s worth further attentation.

http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F7C027

„Finally, Your Home Gets Its Own App

The Belkin WeMo Switch, lets you turn electronic devices on or off from anywhere inside–or outside–your home. The WeMo Switch uses your existing home Wi-Fi network to provide wireless control of TVs, lamps, stereos, and more. Simply download the free WeMo app, plug the switch into an outlet in your home, and plug any device into the switch. You’ll be able to turn that device on or off using your iPhone or iPad. You can even set schedules for your devices and control them remotely using a mobile Internet connection. You can also add additional switches to your home to control more devices.“

The good news, the WeMo is offered with european standard switch too and the price of 49 € is awesome. Buy the way, while looking around the belkin shop, I spot a few really nice products.

Ambient Light – Philips Hue control your light environment from your iPhone or iPad

Control your light environment from your iPhone or iPad. The starter pack is available for 199$ and in Germany for 199€ via the Apple online store. I’m not aware of the opportunity to buy them in the retail store, but maybe they have the Hue in stock too.

http://www.meethue.com/en-US/buy

http://store.apple.com/us/product/HA779VC/A/philips-hue-connected-bulb-starter-pack

http://www.meethue.com/en-US

Light automation without the need for an additional home house bus system like KNX / EIB for example.

„KNX is a standardized (EN 50090, ISO/IEC 14543), OSI-based network communications protocol for intelligent buildings. KNX is the successor to, and convergence of, three previous standards: the European Home Systems Protocol (EHS), BâtiBUS, and the European Installation Bus (EIB or Instabus). The KNX standard is administered by the KNX Association.“

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_%28standard%29

 

 

Raspberry Pi mediacenter with AirPlay and AirTunes support

„Raspbmc is a minimal Linux distribution based on Debian that brings XBMC to your Raspberry Pi. This device has an excellent form factor and enough power to handle media playback, making it an ideal component in a low HTPC setup, yet delivering the same XBMC experience that can be enjoyed on much more costly platforms. Raspbmc is brought to you by the developer of the Crystalbuntu Linux Distribution, which brings XBMC and 1080p decoding to the 1st generation Apple TV.

Here’s why you might like Raspbmc:

  • Free and open source.
  • No knowledge of Linux is needed. If you want to use the Raspberry Pi as an XBMC frontend you can do exactly that with no knowledge of how anything works.
  • It can be installed with a few simple clicks from a Mac or a PC running Windows or Linux.
  • It’s auto updating, meaning you constantly get new features, performance and driver updates. You can however turn updates off at any time.
  • It supports 1080p playback.
  • Share your content from your PC over NFS, SMB, FTP and HTTP.
  • AirPlay and AirTunes support allow you to send music and video from your iDevice to the TV.
  • Full GPIO support!
  • As it is a Debian system, it is completely expansive and you can install any packages from Debian’s massive repository!
  • … and much more!

Raspbmc is created and maintained by Sam Nazarko, an 18 year old student from London.“

http://www.raspbmc.com/about/