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 […]
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 […]
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.
The Home Automation Superstore, Smarthome.com is running an Exclusive 4th of July Sale. Many INSTEON products are discounted 10% and more. Here’s just a few examples… You can get a SmartLinc, an iPhone-ready INSTEON Central Controller for only $116. Or save $5 on a fully redesigned Dual-Band Lamp Dimmer, on sale for $44.99. And a pair of Access Points to expand the range of your RF-only devices is on sale for $62.99 – a savings of $7. It’s a great opportunity to expand your INSTEON home automation system. Hurry, though, the Sale ends on 6th of July!
Now, this is an original concept! Actually, this is no longer a concept, this product is already in production (in The Netherlands only, for now). I’m talking here about a ‘balcony-on-demand’ from Dutch company called Bloomframe. This product transforms your window frame into a full-sized balcony, capable of holding a whole bunch of grown-up dudes (see photos below).
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