Automated Home

In the annual trek to our loft for the Christmas decorations I spotted an old friend – a case of audio tapes from my youth.  Amongst them was a pub recording I’d made of a Belfast band we followed during the 80′s called ‘Ghost of an American Airman‘.  How cool would it be to listen […]

We’ve been following Plex since it was osxbmc, almost 6 years ago now.  Last week the developers finally hit their v1.0 milestone with the release of Plex Home Theater.  You now have a choice of using it or the Plex Web client  on your desktop, although you’ll definitely want PHT on your HTPC.  We asked Plex lead developer […]

So you’ve got an iPad mini and you want to do some real work with it.  Apple’s little tablet can be a legitimate laptop replacement for some people, with a little help from a ‘proper’ keyboard like this ‘Snugg iPad mini Ultra Slim Bluetooth Keyboard Case’. The first thing we noticed about the Snugg was […]

Control4′s Blake VanCleave gives a quick behind the scenes look at a condo in Indiana that features a Panelized Lighting system.  The panel is inside a cabinet, completely hidden away from the customer… The advantage of doing this then, is that the consumer only gets to see a single keypad in each one of these zones. The […]

At Automated Home we’re lucky to have a Web Wizard working behind the scenes to keep the site in tip-top shape – Steve Edwards. Steve started off as an Automated Home reader and attended the famous UKHA2003 and UKHA2004 meets in Hatfield.  Sometime later we kidnapped him and forced him to work he volunteered to help with the […]

Tado° launched their smart home heating control system in Germany, Austria and Switzerland around this time last year.  Now they’ve adapted their mobile app and developed a new connector kit especially designed for UK homes, as well as launching across the rest of Europe. The two elements of the system are the tado box and the free iPhone / Android […]

Remember when everyone had to have a big bulky PC on their desktop.  Now we all want Laptops that give us the freedom to take our powerful computer with us, whether we are travelling from home to work or just from the bedroom to the lounge.  The laptop computer provides such a useful work tool these days, […]

Idratek are well known for their work in building intricate smart home systems whilst reducing the complexity for the user. Director, Karam Karam takes us through a recent assisted living installation that has lessons for all home automators… Significant home automation installs tend to be seen as the preserve of the gadget lover or in the context […]

Here’s the Scobleizer’s half-hour Google Hangout with Revolv co-founder, Mike Soucie. Revolv aim to be the App to unify your home automation systems on iOS (Android coming by Q2 next year) and their $300 hardware hub contains 7 radios including Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Z-Wave and Insteon. With it they can control Sonos, Philips Hue, Belkin WeMo and Nest […]

After technology, cars have always been my other passion.  So you’d think the electric car, sitting at the junction of both my interests would be nirvana for me, right?  Wrong.  As a confirmed petrol head, I’ve always mourned the impending (if elongated) death of the internal combustion engine. But the reality of climate change and the […]