Daniel Kleinman, the man behind a new home automation controller called CustomCTRL, has published a new video of the experimental iOS app prototype. It uses the accelerometer, compass and wifi signal strengths of the smartphone to add some pretty impressive capabilities. It’s really cool! Check it out below.
Not so long ago Smarthome had released iMeter Solo power meter – device that captures current energy consumption by one particular device (or a power strip, if you’d rather measure a few devices at once, like TV, DVD player and the like). But until now there wasn’t an easy way to visualize that data. INSTEON Energy Display changes that with a simple, low cost, RF device you can put on your kitchen counter. INSTEON Energy Display (Item# 2448A2) can display energy information from up to three iMeter Solo’s (current watts used as well as cost and energy consumption per month for […]
CustomCTRL is a new and very promising Open-source Hardware (OSHW) controller, based on Arduino platform. It supports all major home automation interfaces which will allow it to integrate your home’s lighting, HVAC, and AV control into accessible, expandable and hopefully simple to operate system. But here’s the catch – for this project to take off and to go into production it needs support from the fellow DIY crowd. Literally, it needs to raise at least $33,000 by May 3rd to get funded. The whole idea of OSHW is very interesting and gained quite a lot of momentum in the past few years. […]
To tell the truth, it’s been a long while since X10’s low-cost security system seen any updates. Having owned the original system as well as its more refined RadioShack-branded counterpart I can say that it works pretty reliable. Since it’s a wireless system I know that for most users battery-powered motion and door sensors are cause for concern — batteries require periodic replacement, signal strength degrades over time. But from using X10 security system over the years I can tell that batteries easily last for over a year before needing replacement (provided that you use fresh and good quality stuff […]
Did you miss Smarthome’s Beat-the-clock sale? Well, don’t despair. Today (12/28) only Smarthome is offering 10% off all* INSTEON products. Head on to Smarthome.com and don’t forget to use coupon code ESLD10 at checkout. Remember, this deal will last one day only! * Discounts apply to Smarthome brand INSTEON products only, 3rd party products excluded.
iMeter Solo (Item# 2423A1) is the first native INSTEON plug-in module that will allow you to measure power consumption of a single appliance or a lamp. Simply plug an appliance (up to 15Amps) into iMeter and plug the iMeter into an outlet. You can then retrieve the data in the iMeter Solo from any compatible INSTEON computer controller such as HouseLinc 2 or ISY-99i. The data is stored as a .csv (comma-separated values) file format on your computer allowing you to open and create graphs to track energy consumption in programs such as Excel, Apple Numbers, OpenOffice, Google Docs and more. Unfortunately, as […]
The iPhone/iPad application HomeGuru by zenwheel has just received a major update to version 2.0. The new version adds support for Universal Devices’ ISY99i series of controllers. If you have a SmartLinc INSTEON controller from SmartLabs, HomeGuru is the perfect way to control your home’s lights and appliances. It allows you to view a list of all configured scenes in your house, view their status and control them by sending on, off or fade commands to them. It is much quicker and friendlier than using the web interface to the device, especially if you use authentication. HomeGuru supports all the […]
Wow, it has finally happened! Now, let’s start from the beginning… iPhones, iPod Touch and iPads are great multi-purpose devices. They are also great for remotely controlling almost anything in your home – televisions, lights, HVAC, and much much more (see our extensive apps list). But all these great (and rather expensive) devices are missing a very basic feature that any regular (even the cheapest) IR remote has – hard buttons that you can push without glancing at the screen. Crestron fixes that problem with it’s iPanel – which snaps over iPad’s screen and adds a total of 13(!) hardware buttons: […]
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.
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 […]
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