INSTEON Announces Windows and Windows Phone Apps for Connected Home Control and Monitoring

May 23, 2014 Ruslan Ulanov 0

IRVINE, Calif. – March 15, 2014 – INSTEON, creators of the world’s best-selling home automation and control technology, today announced that an enhanced version of its INSTEON app will be available for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8 devices as of June 1, 2014. The app comes with exclusive new features, making home automation even easier for everyone, from the ultra-techie to the average homeowner. Quickly following the release of the INSTEON app for Windows PCs, tablets and phones, INSTEON connected home devices will come to Microsoft retail stores. The INSTEON family of devices turns any home into a connected […]

Introducing SmartThings Labs

January 9, 2014 Ruslan Ulanov 0

Today at the International CES 2014 Physical Graph Corp. introduced the SmartThings Labs, a new category in their SmartApps catalog that will give users early access to up and coming features currently undergoing the beta testing. The three products we’re debuting in the SmartThings Lab are currently being showcased in our #HelloSmartHome connected house at CES: Philips hue, Belkin WeMo, and Sonos. Supposedly integration for other products demoed at the CES (like Jawbone and the August smart lock) will be coming to SmartThings Labs in the coming months.   For more information on the new SmartThings Labs apps please see SmartThings Blog.  

MobiLinc Pro for iOS receives a major update

June 23, 2011 Ruslan Ulanov 0

MobiLinc Pro Insteon and X10 Controller was updated to a new major version 3.00. MobiLinc is the leading software for INSTEON on iOS (and recently Android) devices. It supports the following Insteon Controllers: ISY-99i or 26 from Universal Devices, SmartLinc 2412N Firmware Version 3.0, PowerLinc 2414 USB or Serial. Here’s what’s new in this major release…

New CustomCTRL experimental app video published

April 8, 2011 Ruslan Ulanov 0

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.  

HomeGuru app receives support for ISY controllers

October 6, 2010 Ruslan Ulanov 0

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 […]

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 […]

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.

MobiLinc update adds support for SmartLinc controller

May 21, 2010 Ruslan Ulanov 0

Mobile Integrated Solutions has just released version 2.14 of their MobiLinc Pro software for iPhone and iPod Touch. The major feature of this update is that it adds support for Smarthome’s low-cost SmartLinc INSTEON Central Controller (2412N). Previously, MobiLinc supported only Universal Devices’ ISY 26/99i and PowerLinc 2414 controllers. The new update also polishes some GUI issues and ISY communication when switching from EDGE/3G to WiFi connection.

How to use iPhone as a wireless microphone for a PC

May 4, 2010 Ruslan Ulanov 0

Here’s a fresh new idea for home automation enthusiasts. Apparently, you can use your iPhone or the last generation iPod Touch (the one with a mic) as an external wireless microphone used to relay voice commands to your home automation controller (provided it’s a Windows-based PC). No, there’s no app for that (yet), so you will have to fumble with a few pieces of software on your PC, but the result could be well worth the time spent. This great idea comes courtesy of Greg Badros (ex-Google, and now Facebook’s Director of Engineering) who explains the process in details on […]

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