Since my last post about the HomeOS I’ve been a little obsessed with technology in the domestic environment: security, media, automation, robots, the works. And reading around I’m starting to get a good feeling that 2012 might be the year that home automation finally hits the mainstream.
First thing to catch my attention was Android @ Home. Just watch this video from May 2011 and see if you’re as excited as I am – the good bit starts at 6:12.
It’s not so much the Android aspects that excite me here, though clearly that has cool potential. It is the large company throwing R&D and brand weight behind the little things that make home automation work – like the controllable lightbulbs. Without someone doing these in volume the price will always remain high – circa £10-15 at the moment for a cheap controllable socket and more if you want to add something like a dimmer or tuck the tech away behind the wall. This isn’t wildly expensive but it is a little too much to convince people to do their whole house. If this could be brought down to £5-7 I think people would be much more inclined to get their homes wired up. Hopefully we’ll see some products on the market soon.
Secondly I checked out the Aldebaran NAO. Sadly I don’t have the £15k I’d need to buy one, but it would certainly be high on my list post lottery win. Would it be much use at home? Probably not – it can’t lift a can of beer. But it would be very, very cool.
On a more down to earth robotics note, I finally posted my review of the Neato Robotics XV-15 robot vacuum cleaner. It’s a great piece of kit and though I had my reservations I’d very much like one long term. Fortunately the same day my trial was collected, the latest iRobot Roomba was delivered. I’ll be reviewing this soon but so far, I like it a lot.
Following the announcements from this year’s CES I noticed the new Samsung TVs with gesture interfaces – imagine changing channel with the wave of your hand. These are just the latest generation of internet-connected TVs, devices that are less and less about watching broadcast content and more and more about providing a window on the world of media: music, videos, news and games from your own home and the wider web. Adding the gesture interface makes these TVs suddenly seem like something very much less prosaic.
Finally, I’ve started mucking around with LinuxMCE again. LinuxMCE is an open source option for a home operating system – a centralised computer system to manage your heating, lights, security, media and phones. I like it for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is that it is free and it will run on old PC hardware, so it’s great for tinkering. It also interfaces with all sorts of different kit for the alarm, lighting control etc, all of which I’m looking forward to getting up and running when I have time and space. At the moment I just have the latest version running on an old laptop just to re-familiarise myself, but I’m planning a dive into the garage at some point to see if I can find an old PC onto which I can pop a more permanent install. I see plenty of time being enjoyably wasted there…
