x10

Using your iPhone to Remotely Control Your Garage Door

1 Comment / Home Automation, Phones / By /

We just posted that Smart Start iPhone app from Viper that lets you start your car remotely, but what about opening your garage door remotely? Why you ask?

Here’s the scenario – you wake up on a cold winter morning, maybe in your upstairs bedroom, and you’re already late for work but just can’t imagine getting into that cold car sitting in your garage, but you’ve got the Smart Start iPhone app. Great, except that it’s going to take more than a minute or two to get that car warmed up, and you don’t want all the noxious exhaust filling your garage and seeping into your house as well.

Convinced? Ok. So one enterprising techie has already figured out how to rig his garage door [Howto] with some X10-enabled equipment that he could then control via an iPhone app called X10 Commander. And just so you know, that’s not the only game in town – there are more apps for the iPhone for your home automation control, such as iLinc.

iLinc: iPhone app to control your INSTEON/X10 home automation devices remotely

3 Comments / Gizmo of the Day, Home Automation / By /

Now that you have your home automation all tricked out, and you got yourself an iPhone, how do you control your HA system from your God-phone?! Not to worry, iLinc is an iPhone/iPod Touch app that lets you do just that.

For example, you can control up to 1000 INSTEON or X10 devices as well as up to 1000 ‘scenes’. You of course need some way to make your devices accessible to the Intenret, and either the ISY-99i controller or the INSTEON PowerLinc controller will do the trick.

There are 2 versions, the iLinc Lite can only control 1 device, but it’s enough to get you started testing. iLinc Pro will let you control all of your devices and also works with the USB/Serial PowerLinc.

By the way, this isn’t the only iPhone app available to control your home automation devices.

Buy now!

Price: iLinc Lite: Free, iLinc Pro: $19.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

InterHome – smart house ‘learns’ from its inhabitants

Home Automation / By /

More good (and cool) news from the home automation field. The University of Hertfordshire has put together a working demo of a house they called InterHome that is able to ‘learn’ and adapt to its inhabitants lifestyles. Using X10 technology and embedded devices, the house can text its owners in the event of unlocked doors or wasted energy (ex: lights unused or thermostat too high/low). In turn the owner can control the InterHome via web browsers, smartphones and SMS messages.

As more such projects are unveiled and their cost to implement comes down, we’ll should see more homeowners jump at the chance to add their houses to the list of eco-friendly, energy-saving, carbon-neutral abodes. For example, take a look at the wireless temperature monitoring project. In time, such features will no longer be add-ons, but standard. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

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