August 2010 – / Automation

MobiLinc Pro gets retina display support

August 26, 2010 Ruslan Ulanov 0

Arguably the best iPhone app for INSTEON-based home automation systems MobiLinc Pro just released a new version (2.16) in the AppStore. It gets new sleek images and icons specifically designed for higher resolution display of iPhone 4 (known as Retina Display). Among other changes are support for upside down orientation of the iPhone’s screen, Plug-in Store for ISY99i controller owners and a few bug fixes. Hopefully, the iPad version of MobiLinc Pro will follow soon.

KitchenTouch project: status update

August 18, 2010 Ruslan Ulanov 0

Recently I’ve posted about my pet project called KitchenTouch. Here’s the the latest status of it… The last update as of Aug 18, adds support for skinnable GUI. Now styles (i.e. colors/fonts/etc) of buttons, tabs and other UI controls could be changed. For now the style lives in App.xaml, but the intent is to move the skinning to external resource that could be modified by end-user without the need to re-compile the app. Here’s a preview of the new styling. A big win for me is that I’ve finally figured out how to make the scrollbars wider (and therefore much easier […]

DIY Project: How to cut your kid’s TV-time without saying a word, the geek-way.

August 12, 2010 Ruslan Ulanov 0

A never-ending fight for TV-time. How to cut your kid’s TV-time without saying a word, the geek-way. My kid is three and a half years old now and I got to tell you, he is smart! He keeps my home automation system on its toes. Here’s my story… As most parents, we have a never-ending fight with our kid, trying to limit his TV-time. I had brains to install TV and a DVD player in his bedroom, and now I have to find ways to tame his TV-appetite. At first, my kid just couldn’t reach the power button on a […]

My new home automation project – KitchenTouch

August 6, 2010 Ruslan Ulanov 2

It has been a little quiet in my blog lately. But it’s not because I was lazy (well, maybe just a little). I’ve been busy celebrating many many birthdays in July (including my own) and also I spent a lot of my time learning new technologies (namely HTML5, CSS3 and C# languages) and coding my own home automation project called KitchenTouch. That last thing is what I want to tell you about.