Okay, I need to start making a list of things I want to be able to control from the home automation system for my house… So I’m just going to use this blog entry for that. If anyone can think of anything I’ve forgotten, please leave it as a comment and I’ll update this post as necessary…
- Lights (indoor, outdoor and landscape)
- Some door locks (front door, server room, office)
- Heat and air conditioning
- Music to any room (or outside)
- Video (all TVs, central PVR/movie server?)
- Fireplaces
- Waterfall
- Sprinklers
- Spa
- Cameras
- Security
- Windows (open/close windows, shades up/down, electrochromic maybe)
>>Feed cats
Dude, do have a fob? I have dreams that all of my keys will someday be replaced by one little RFID on a key chain. In my nightmares though I lose my fob along with access to my identity and have to live in the sewers with CRAB PEOPLE.
Been looking at the RFID stuff a little bit… even one that gets implanted in you. 🙂
http://www.shawnhogan.com/2005/08/human-implantable-access-control.html
Add “holiday” to the “indoor, outdoor and landscape” lights … … but you knew I’d recommend that!
Have you looked at Crestron?
http://www.crestron.com/features/applications/home/
They have an internet based e-control system as well…
http://www.crestron.com/features/e-control/
Yeah, I looked at the Crestron stuff last year, and wans’t terribly impressed. These were the two companies I narrowed it down to:
http://www.shawnhogan.com/2005/07/amx-vs-visiomatic-home-automation.html
You ever take those quarters and go visit Visiomatic? 🙂
Shawn-a few design ideas to think about that may need automated: in the bathroom-install large fans for the stinky stuff and to decrease humidity after long showers. You could automate those fans to go off say whenever motion is detected in the bathroom. Maybe that would be overkill.
Don’t forget the Voip / Asterisk doorbell:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=416104&p=1
Can do some crazy stuff with it…
Centrally-controlled roomba vacuums. (requires non-trivial hacking, currently).
Ultra-violet lights in kitchen & bathroom to kill germs, turns on for x amount of time when no motion is detected.
Auto-syncing of car hard drive audio library with home audio library when new music added to ‘car playlist’ on personal computers.
I did the auto-syncing of car audio library via wifi (802.11b) but the ultra-violet lighting is a new one to me… The security camera stuff is even more useful now when you combine it with face recognition software and perform actions based on the person in the camera field of view.