Home Automation Blog

Branching out from domotics to home theatres isn’t very big of a leap in view of the fact that most users (not counting us) almost certainly kicked off the journey for mood lighting using a remote control to make the perception of home theatre setup just right. In my mind the Harmony series of remote controls have turned out to be a key device and we now have one for every one of our LCDs. Considering we never do the ‘live’ tv style of watching any more, it seems there’s perpetually a ton of items to turn on and it drove me crazy picking up one control followed by the next one until all the devices were on, before we have to repeat the process once we were over.

That said, the incorporation of lighting control and home entertainment is becoming closer by the time I check with most prevalent home automation places prototyping infared commands from a domotics network now and as a result one can then perform events we couldn’t do before like networking a mp3 system on a different floor of the house with one’s handheld Insteon tool. Neat stuff, though the details are described better at Zwave devices when compared to many X10 sites so it is definitely a key destination to see.
It’s apparent that he is way too enthusiastic when discussing this stuff.

When it comes to technologies related to domotics I really like the new devices available by companies like SmartLabs and the Zigbee Alliance.

Almost all of the new products available aren’t actually as big a deal as they claim because this stuff could all be created through other means using available basic component items but for beginners they’re offered as a prebuilt kit. As a side benefit now you don’t need fluke testers around the house to get it working.

Looking closer we see many parallels among the technologies involved. For instance, none of the offerings use battery-operated devices as signal repeaters, and they all use radio frequency as a backup. With other differences though, things become interesting – I could struggle to express it now and explain things poorly, a site like this ISY-99i review has good discussions showcasing any differentiators.

So if you have any thoughts for ways for me to bring in a bit of cash to pay for my recent dependence, don’t hesitate to help me out!