Items Tagged With announcements

We've reached another 'End of an Era' this week as Crag Chadwick has announced that his HomeVision home automation controller business is winding up.  It's testament to Craig's design that the 8-bit hardware has survived well into a 64-bit world and indeed still powers many homes today.  It's legendary reliability, expandability, flexibility and elegant macro programmability made it a firm favourite with home automators on both sides of the Atlantic.  This is you're last opportunity to grab a discounted spare board or accessory.  Details after the jump...

A couple of weeks ago a group of enthusiasts got together in London for an un-conference, Home Camp 4.  A technical community interested in using open systems and low-cost, often re-purposed hardware to change the way they use energy and appliances around the home.  Editing of the videos has been completed and you can watch the 7 presentations on-line...

This morning we woke to the sad news that Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs has died at the age of 56 after his long battle with cancer.

When someone famous dies, a pop star, a sports personality or other celebrity, there's often a public outpouring of grief in our culture.  Sometimes it seems a little over the top.  But whether you admired him or not, few would argue with the impact Steve Jobs has had on our daily lives.

I don't think we've ever covered an industry death before in Automated Home's 15 years on the web, but you only have to look at the way the iPad and iPhone have become the leading Home Automation controllers in the few short years since their creation, to see the brilliance of the man.

Apple put it like this on their website this morning - "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius and the world has lost an amazing human being.  Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor.  Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple." 

It seems the rumours of the last few weeks are true and X10 is really heading into receivership.  We've heard on the grape vine that Marmitek may have done an exclusive deal with ShangHai Super Smart Electronics to continue to supply X10 products.  We also spoke to a couple of UK Home Automation retailers too who told us they have a 'good level of stock'...

2011 sees Automated Home reach the ripe old age of 15.  To celebrate our quindecennium (yes, really) we've asked some friends of the site to look back and give us their home automation highlights from the past decade-and-a-half.  For an even greater challenge we then asked them to look ahead to what advances the next 15 years will bring to digital domesticity.  In the eighth of our special series, Dr Karam Karam looks back on the lofty goal of turning a house into a 'living organism' whilst hoping intelligence plays more of a role in future systems....