Handle With Linux

Geek toy, or serious business?

At first when discovering this I thought of it as just another geek toy, but after thinking about it for a while it came to my mind this is actually a very interesting subject.

Home automation may seem like something most interesting for lazy people or people with very big houses, but it can actually save lots of time and money.

Remote shutdown and powerup

We have a lot of electronics in the house, many are always running just for convenience. For instance the game console, hard disk recorder, network storage they are always on standby and sucking juice because I want them available at will. I thought about connecting them to a switched power source but I'm just not going to be happy turning everything on and of all the time.
What if I could just switch them on and off remotely from my android phone? Sounds great to me.

Expensive

Problem with most home automation hardware is it's not going to save me a lot because it's all very expensive, especially if you want a unified solution to control everything.

Linux to the rescue

This is the OpenRemote ORB, they sell these for about $350 but you can build one yourself for about 50$ if you want to.

The software is open source and for download at the openremote site
At first I only thought of controlling the lights in the house, but then I read about the cheap infrared controllers and radio controlled power-switches which you can control over the internet using the OpenRemote project. We keep our multimedia hardware hidden in the house and I always have to open a door to allow for the use of a ir remote. When using a controller like this I can easily control everything over wifi throughout the house.

One stereo, one harddisk recorder, coffee on demand

When I can control my devices over the network, I only need speakers and screens in the bedrooms. Remote controlling everything using my phone. Wake up and switch on the coffee machine with the push of one button on my super remote.

Android App

At the moment of this writing the Android app is still in alpha state. So a little patience may be in it's place. I have no doubt android will provide a great platform for the future of home remote control.

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