Tag: HOME AUTOMATION

During our trip to the desert, we took some time off from the convention floor to head over to the NextGen Home Experience. This super-green, 5,200 square-foot "smart" home boasts some smooth accoutrements, including a powerful home-automation system and a Microsoft Vista-based, centralized entertainment center and media server. But there's nothing really new about a media server for your ...

Last week at CES, 4Home Inc. showed off its new 4Home Energy system that lets you track and control the amount of heat and electricity used by any device in your home. The outlet modules and thermostat all report back to a base unit which can be accessed via a Web browser. From there, consumers can see not only broad energy use reports, but can drill down and see how much electricity a ...

We've always thought our basement full of old Newtons and Amiga machines was pretty spooky, but we'd admit that we've been one-upped by Pennsylvania's Halloween Park, which built an entire haunted mansion using off-the-shelf HAI home automation equipment. Designed by Digital Panacea, the system is "run by typical motion detectors, contacts, resets, and timers," which trigger spooky sound effects ...

Sure, you can outfit your whole home with ZigBee-connected home automation devices, but if you're not quite ready to take that plunge in the future, you may want to consider something like Ecobee's new Smart Thermostat, which will give you a taste of home automation and help you save a few bucks in the process. As with some other similar thermostats, this one relies on Wi-Fi to connect to your ...