Items Tagged With media

"The European Union has launched a research project to develop technologies for the digital home. The research project - Amigo - is attempting to open the development of middleware to as many participants as possible.

"By taking an open source approach, we believe we can speed up the development of interoperable middleware to run home networks using devices from multiple vendors," said Harmke de Groot, a researcher at Koninklijke Philips Electronics, speaking earlier this week in Berlin at the ehome conference and exhibition, which ended Friday. "We aim to use as many of the existing standards and specifications as possible."...

The Boston Globe have published a piece on Home Automatoin...

"Automated security doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars - Every so often, Michael Brennan will get an e-mail while he's at work, letting him know that something's going on at his front door, 30 miles away. Usually, it's a deliveryman leaving a package. Occasionally, it's a neighborhood kid using Brennan's driveway as a bike ramp.

But more often than not, it's a bird. Brennan knows this because he simply dials up a website that's connected to his house to see a snapshot of his door taken by a security camera. "I've got a lot of good bird pictures," said the 34-year-old software engineer. "They'll fly right up to the camera and look at it."

No problem, though, he said. He's happy to catalog the many bird species that live in Greater Worcester, as long as the disruption isn't due to a burglar...

"xAP - Likened by some to UPnP, but with a smaller overhead, xAP is a network protocol designed to be independent of operating system and programming language. Although available to any mode of transmission, it is currently only implemented via serial port or Ethernet connections. The goal of xAP is a lofty one -- to provide interconnectivity between all household devices including lights, telephones, Hi-Fi units, heating systems and computers. Although in its infancy, xAP has a dedicated developer community and may emerge as a contender in the future of home automation"...

"One of life's ironies is that those of us who can dim the living-room lights and switch the stereo to soft jazz at the press of a single button are probably the geeks who can't get a date and take advantage of the romantic atmosphere.

No less an authority than the Queer Eye team recommends dimmed lights everywhere. And that is the core of home automation today: making the remote dimming of lights and switching of appliances work for as many people as possible. New technologies and products over the next year will make automation something to think about even if you don't safety-pin your eyeglasses' hinge...

"Home automation, or the linking of devices that support entertainment and media as well as appliances, is poised for the upswing, ready to break out of the limited early adopter market and start infiltrating the upper middle class, say market watchers. That's because industry groups-namely the Zigbee Alliance (see ZigBee Buzz) and the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGI)-are pushing to develop standards that will enable disparate devices to talk to each other, says Erik Michielsen, principal analyst at ABI Research"...