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Interoperable Remote Controls
Lord Prox writes "From the HAVi website:
"Ever dreamed of how your ideal home could function in the new millennium? A TV with voice recognition capability? Or connected to a video telephone link so that the TV is muted and calls are answered automatically by a voice command? How about a video camera that automatically displays a picture on the TV screen when a visitor arrives; or starts a recording if the same thing happens unexpectedly during the night?"
Apparently 8 of the leading consumer electronics companies are trying to get rid of all those remotes and do some cooperation over IEEE 1394. Whitepapers and FAQ available."
How about a video camera that automatically displays a picture on the TV screen when a visitor arrives
Why not just look out the window?
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It'll be just like all those sci-fi movies, only we'll probably end up with standards wars anyway.
great, instead of fighting for the remote we will be fighting the other people in the room until they shutup and done say anything.
The number of gaggings will be at an all time high. Just imagine having that in a bar full of drunks!
Why use a physically wired connection for this "system of the future"? Why not WiFi or some other wireless protocol?
Running FireWire between components in the same room is feasable (though messy), but connecting to cameras at the front door and devices in other rooms is gonna be a pain.
It is interesting that they chose FireWire over other technologies. But what about the use of Ethernet? I believe FireWire is limited to a range of around 30 feet, unless you have a repeater.
Would it be possible to build a Firewire-to-Ethernet adaptor product that allows 2 firewire enabled devices to talk to each other over Ethernet, with two adaptors on each ?
Anyone notice that the companies participating in HAVi are all either European or Asian? If this standard survives, it'll probably take a while to get to the states ...
On a related note: philips already makes a programmable remote that you can program by pointing it at an other remote. You then press the button on the first remote and you can assign it to a button on the philips remote. Very handy.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I have serious doubts that these companies can actually cooperate on anything long enough to produce a viable standard. I'd be happy just to see a universal remote that actually did replace all the other remotes, instead of just giving partial functionality.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWConnecting all your home electronics by FireWire has been anticipated since Apple first introduced the technology on their PowerMacs. But I always thought that it was the MPAA, RIAA, et.al. who were keeping this from becoming a reality -- those business interests who didn't want it to be easy to move perfect digital copies from your DVD player or TiVo to your PC. (Not that this is difficult with PC DVD-ROM drives, but then they could at least try to control the software which could make the copies.)
So is this for real? Or just another pipe dream for us geeks?
Since it seems to be slashdotted (about pages say "Temporarily Unavailable"), there's an in-depth article over at ExtremeTech.
The interchangeable remotes is nice, but what looks like a real killer app is that we'll have far fewer wires. Just plug everything into a hub, and it's connected to all other devices.
Maybe we'll even be able to get rid of a few of those power cables if we can have some low power devices that can be powered through the connector.
I would of like to ideally of seen this as wireless. Say for example I have my HiFI and I want to wear headphone which have a built in Mic. Surely with Bluetooth or 802.11b I could of walked around/out of those host listening to my streaming music collection. Also if I'm on a mobile it ringing could cause other sounds to cut out
Just my thoughts
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
How many remotes do you have?
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Yes but becasue of the FCC googup over specturms allocated for DTV(ie iTV) we wil not see thi until 2010..2005 is suppose to be the year that sale channels finally show up fro devlopers of apps for itv so that one can mak emoney devloping itv apps..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Um... X-10 anyone? It isn't just for spy cameras you know. 8)= A couple of quick references to get you started: http://www/smarthome.com http://www.x10.com
To go with the super-remote system (which includes a video monitor so you don't even have to look over your shoulder to see who is nagging you to get up out of the chair for once), and the Wireless Beer Glass, we'll have the Electronic Depends diapers so you can stay in that barcalounger for days at a time. Each with its own TCP/IP address, the diaper will send an alarm to the Internet when it is too wet and needs to be changed.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I am up off the couch. There are still no windows through which I can see the door.
> EXAMINE DOOR
The door is solid. I cannot see through it.
> HELP
There is no help available. For some reason, you are not allowed to hook up a camera to the doorbell so you can see who's there, despite the fact that this technology has been available for years. This is because someone on Slashdot doesn't like the idea for some reason.
> IGNORE SLASHDOT POSTER
Believe me, I do.
Don't get me wrong, I think this would be cool, and I welcome the day when I can dispose of the 4 remotes I have (3 of which are Sony, and they still don't interoperate well). But in this day and age of DRM, I fear that the more we automate things, the easier it will be for those in power to legislate what we can and can't do with them.
Look at DVDs, for example. Sure, the picture quality and sound are miles ahead of VHS. But on VHS, I can fastforward through that FBI warning, and trailers. I can't do that with most DVDs. Nor can I skip chapters, or access the menu unless the disc decides I'm worthy. And I'm forced to watch the MGM splash screen, and some annoying intro that the DVD designers think looks cool. (Yes, yes, I know of the existence of mod chips and hacks for DVD players. That's not the point.) With DVD, the media (as in disc, not newspapers) controls the player, as opposed to the other way around with VHS.
The more we relinquish control over our equipment, in the name of automation and progress, the more we hand control over to another group. Is that the way it has to be? No. Is that the way it should be? No. But that's the way it is.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
This smells like the beginings of the semantic web approach to me..
:)
All devices should publish information about their capabilities using, for example, RDF.
When you answer the phone, anything that has exposed a "volume control" property could be muted until the call ends.. I hope they plan on using better security than WEP for the wireless links though..
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
I own a HAVi enabled TV (Mits WS-55511) and while its nice to know its there, there arent many other HAVi enabled devices. No HAVi DVD players, cable boxes, etc. Thats the current problem with HAVi.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I'll push this technology again: It lets you program your remote. It's a sort of universal remote control protocol. You can reprogram any button to almost anything. Combined with a IR reciever for your X10 light controller and you can turn lights or anything off/on from the couch.
Best spot for info on it is this Yahoo Jp1 Group
Bottom line; You gotta build your own cable, and the tools to manage the key codes ain't that great. Better yet, write your own, but if you're reading this chances are you can get by. You only end up using the software when you get a new device, which ain't TOO often.
I've got a radio shack 15-1995, and I can control everything from the back yard. I don't know why I would want to do that, but it's nice to get the telescope setup and then turn ALL the lites in the house off with one button.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Television remotely controls YOU!
Now I can lose 1 remoted and disable up to 8 devices!!!
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Sorry, you can't bend the laws of physics...
No matter how you inter-connect devices, one is going to want the up/down button to be channel up/down, while the other is going to want it to be volume up/down, while your VCR, or anything else is not going to use it for either, but rather, only use it in some menu.
That's why people still have dozens of remotes rather than getting a universal remote. I spent $70 on a universal learning remote, but navigating the menu on my TV still leaves me using Up/Down to move forward and backwards, and using Left/Right to move up/down. In addition, even if I did re-program those buttons, it wouldn't change the fact that the labling would be contrary to the actual functions.
There needs to be a LOT of work done to standardize remote layouts. Then, and only then, would using a single remote be useful.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What is the world coming to? First, the invention of the remote control, the first sign that we humans may be a little too lazy for our own good.(don't get me wrong, I would die without my remote control). Now, voice activated televisions? This means one of two things, either the end is near and we can expect a fate much like the one you'll see while watchint T3, or we'll all die because we will all be to fat to move off of the couch.
Lets just hope that the voice activation is a little better than a cel phone I once had. I would end up dialing everyone else besides the person I was trying to dial.
HaHaHaHaHa
There's always this baby
The technology is always changing now. We have no time to get used to the most recent tech before they start on creating something new and better.
Wasn't jini supposed to do this?
Ok, this is slightly OT, but it is my current peevee against cell phone manufacturers - they are producing the car handsfree sets that can mute the radio, just as it is done with TV in article, but why not implement it also for standalone walkmans?
/.
I already have a handsfree headphones and mic. I want to listen to the music I have on my MD player. If I listen to the music, chances are that I will not hear the phone ringing, and when I hear it I have to fumble to change the headphones.
Why not put a simple 2.5mm jack on the phone, route the sound from the walkman through it and on to the handsfree headphones? Phone rings, music fades off, you get a beep-beep through the headphones, and you pick up. OK, the music is still running, and you would have to pause your walkman, but I think it is a minor issue. Furthermore walkmans can now be operated from the dongle on the headphones cord - I think that Sony could make their phones work with their walkmans...
My next idea is to have a soothing female voice tell me through the headphones which button should I press to retreive the call - somehow I tend to botch it.
And, yeah, if somebody tries to patent it - you saw it firs on
Ever dreamed of how your ideal home could function in the new millennium?
Hi, I'm Troy McClure. Let me tell you about a great new product:
Tiny Wireless Camera for Fun _and_ Safety! Camera fits anywhere... yeah, anywhere. (camera pans down woman's shirt)
Wait, what's the safety part?
Surely you geeks must have a kick ass universal remote (I have the Sony AV3000) which you can use? I've got about a billion cables running around my living room (PC, XBox, Computer, router, laptop, Freeview digital TV, Amp, playstation, etc...) any more cables would cause the floor to give way. At least with a decent remote with programmable buttons and macros I've managed to get rid of my 5+ individual remotes.
Don't hold your breath waiting for this. The consumer electronics (CE) companies like to talk a good game about interoperability but the truth is that they really don't want it. Each company wants you to buy all your electronics from them exclusively and seriously don't want you mixing and matching.
Don't believe me, check out this from the HAVi website charter page:
"The Organization is promoting the development of products based on the the HAVi 1.0 final specification, completed in December 1999."
So there has been a standard for almost four years, but how many HAVi enabled electronics devices do you see down at your local Generic Big Box Electronics Store? Zero would be a reasonable estimate.
Sure, the CE companies might put it on a few of their very high end items just for PR purposes. But never on the stuff that makes up the bulk of their revenue.
I just like the current one, except without the roaches.
I can see it now, the new wave of hacking will be to steal the unique ID of someone's uber-remote, and then to control their entire house from Uzbekistan or something. Then, you can ransom back their UID to them or else not let them out for food or anything, plus you can broadcast the whole thing directly to the media for enchanced public outcry. WOO! That's modern technology!
stuff |
when the tv is actually voice activated, whats to stop things like:
(loudly spoken from the TV) TV Stop Recording, VCR Stop Recording, Stop Recording, DVD/VCR erase media.
wonder how much a station would have to get paid before it started running ads that had
"watch KPr0n, just by saying TV Switch to channel 69"
Licensing Information...
Intellectual Property Rights licenses are available from the companies that contributed to the HAVi 1.0 specification.
The seven of the eight promoter companies (Grundig, Hitachi, Matsushita including JVC as Matsushita's group member, Philips, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba) who have co-created the HAVi Specification enable smooth and easy access to their IPR, which protects the HAVi Specification, by an open Joint-License program via Philips, as Licensor, on non-discriminatory most favourable terms and conditions.
The relevant IPR includes:
1. the HAVi Specification;
2. Essential Patents, which are deemed to be necessary for the manufacture of HAVi Products, that comply with the HAVi Specification;
3. the HAVi logo, the use of which is allowed for the promotion and sales of HAVi Products and
4. HAVi Compliance Test Suite and HAVi Test Requirements, which are prescriptions for testing certain aspects of implementation of the HAVi Specification in products.
A really "nice and patented" standard :(
I don't have any of these problems that you guys are having. I live in South Carolina, and my couch is in the front yard.
"I can tell you that that the HAVi standards are already written and available." Well, whoop te do.
I don't know what's going on. You can put any brand of gas in your car and it will go, you can put any brand of analog audio cassette in your cassette player and it will play, but when it comes to digital electronics, suddenly standards mean nothing.
You can't even buy plain old CD-R media and have more than about 80% confidence that you can burn it in drive A and then read it in CD player B. For DVD recordables, +, -, you name it, the degree of interoperability is far less. There have been "written and available" standards for years.
There are "written and available" standards for FireWire, but you'd better not buy a random camcorder and expect to plug it into your Mac and use iMovie without checking some reviews and discussion groups and KnowledgeBase articles first.
What do you want to bet: there will be no real validation method; the companies will rush stuff to market based on early versions of the HAVI standard; when it doesn't work, they'll fingerpoint at the other guy and claim noncompliance; if a consumer ever does figure out which device is noncompliant, that information will be of no value in getting the problem solved...
Look, nothing personal about HAVi, but I'm sick of this brave new world in which NOTHING WORKS and NOBODY CARES.
OK, I feel better now.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"Ever dreamed of how your ideal home could function in the new millennium? A TV with voice recognition capability? "
No. Talking to inanimate devices in my home is something I do not what to do, and while cute, gets REALLY OLD FAST.
Don't ever invest in anything that uses "voice recognition technology" as a selling point for a consumer product. It's all pointless and it sucks. Are you realistically going to sit there and listen to your SO talk to the TV?
The killer app for voice recognition technology is in automating call centers. The first person to develop transparent dialog with a computer will become a multi-billionaire as you've just found a way to eliminate tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs in front line technical support.
..don't panic
and VividLogic is based in California. It appears that 25 percent of them are American companies. Although I agree with the other poster who noted most American companies have exited the field. It is area with low profit margins, that tends to rely on cheap labor in third world countries.
I have work in the home automation business, here are some features we have been able to offers for some years now.
1. Door camera's, when someone rings the door bell and the TV is on, you see the person on the picture in a picture display on your TV. Also can talk with them by picking up and phone with the in home intercom system.
2. TV remotes with script files, press power and the TV, DVD, Receiver turn ON. Press play on your remote and the lights in the room dim, blinds close.
3. Forget to turn down your heat/air or turn on the alarm, not problem dial on from you cell phone and set any of them. or in bed and don't want to get up to change the temp or turn on the alarm, just pick up your phone and set it form the comfort of your bed.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
I don't want voice recognition...my PC's voice recognition system *still* doesn't recognize some very standard english words when I say them, even after several hours of training, lots of regular use, and even adding the words it misses to a custom file complete with a recording of me saying the word about every possible way I can. Voice recognition in a television would be horrible. There are already voice-recognizing phones...my experience with them is that, they are almost totally inaccurate or ineffective.
I would, however, be very interested in the other components in the system; especially the camera bit. I have already thought about implimenting a type of laser tripwire system to alert when someone is approaching the door in my house and linking it to my computer (probably pretty easily doable) but it would be even easier to do that if the devices are already designed for that purpose.
Smart devices = great.
Voice recognition, anywhere = not great.
What job does your wife do?
Fortunatelly for me, my wife is an IT professional and can appreciate both the advantages of this setup (our CDs are instantly available throughout the house, we can remotely retrieve caller-id information on last calls, setup customized alarm response scenarios, and so on) and the inevitable bugs (the first friends to ring our doorbell were were greeted by an answering machine message).
However, getting the behavior of the system just right took us more than a year, I am still being very conservative when I tweak something (I am never introducing changes to it before leaving for a vacation), and there were times where we discussed the system's interface over a graphical depiction of state machine diagram. I am sure the /. crowd thinks this is the way to go, but I also think there will be people who might find such a setup a bit bewildering.
Diomidis Spinellis - Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
#include "/dev/tty"
Ethernet? No. FireWire is designed for hubless, daisy-chainable, high speed, peer-to-peer device communications and control from the ground up. And you are incorrect about the distance limitations. Feel like you need TCP/IP specifically? No problem.
Additionally, FireWire is already widely used on almost all digital video cameras, decks, and equipment, is emerging on DVD-A devices, and is the standard interconnect for OpenCable set-top boxes specified by CableLabs.
This was what FireWire was made for. Unfortunately, its adoption and use has been crippled by an entertainment industry deathly afraid of the prospect of 100% digital transport, copies, recording, and manipulation by the end customer. What a shame.
IEEE-1394b, the current iteration of the standard, supports speeds from 100 to 3200 Mbps at distances up to 100 m, and supports its "native" 9-conductor shielded twisted-pair copper, ordinary CAT-5, and various flavors of optical cabling.
See the informative IEEE-1394b Technical Brief and What is 1394? for more information.
For even more information, including information about Wireless FireWire, see Intel's 1394 Technology site.
...the cost is now $0.25 per device.
Subject says it all.
I want the ABILITY to switch to a channel to see the front door cam when I hear the doorbell (Or better yet a text crawl across the bottom of the screen. like my caller ID box does.
The "automatic" stuff does nothing but piss off users.. Being a Home automation hobbiest and on the side installer/integrator (Yes I have designed and installed home automation systems for other people)
I know what people hate... and they absolutely hate things that assume what they want.
Besides, all of this is possible right now (except the text crawl I mentioned) as I have installed 3 such systems already into home automation/theatre systems....
doorbell rings or motion detector senses motion near the front door. activate alerter (light flash, nice doortone while fading down the background music/tv sound/stereo/whatever, select my front door cable tv channel, pick up phone and dial 44 for the front door and talk with them... press # to buzz the door open.
some of you say "get up and look" but this is not really feasable for the 6500sq foot 3 story home that 99.997% of these systems are in.
my 1150sq foot flat? it's silly. but I still saw the kids trying to spraypaint my car last night so I could hit the all lights on button and unlock the doggie door to watch my german shepard tear the arse out of one of the punks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
See these articles as an example.
And even with 5C content protection, the entertainment industry is STILL deathly afraid of the idea of delivering digital content to customers with full digital interconnectivity between their devices.
If not for them, we would have a single, clean FireWire cable, or no cable at all, connecting all of our devices, and enabling them to seamlessly communicate with and control one another. I would have thought we'd be there by now...
I don't think HAVI is going anywhere. They even planned on making Jini (Sun) work with HAVI hardware - "Under the agreement, Philips, Sony, and Sun will create a +ACI-bridge+ACI- that allows HAVI products in the home to communicate and interact with Jini-compliant products elsewhere" It seems that only Mitsubishi and RCA have a couple of products that support it. If SONY doesn't support the "standard", I am not buying it.e sentat ions/2002/1/26/files/2002+Telematics+Update+Confer ence+2002-05-15.pdf
There's another "standard" for optical car network from http://www.mostnet.de and it looks like a lot of (european) car manufactuters are using it (Porsche, BMW,etc) I wish they had this kind of cooperation when it came to home networks. Here's a PDF with more info about MOST
http://www.mostnet.de/news/Conferences+&+Pr
"1394 has more than enough capacity to simultaneously carry multiple digital audio and video streams around the house, and provides support for digital copy protection.
The RIAA/MPAA have not only convinced these manufacturers that P2P is evil, but now they want to control how we use media between rooms in our own homes. Maybe they will call it R2R(room to room) piracy.
The Fat Man Walks Alone
Simply plug the D-VHS deck into a Mits NetCommander enabled set and your D-VHS controls and features are automatically added to the onscreen menus of the HD set AND to the TV remote.
Many other devices that currently use proprietary IEEE1394 control interfaces are getting ready to switch to HAVi, particularly since the cable industry finally opted for Firewire connections for recording devices.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
I would be happy just to have a room without the kid's shoes all over the floor.
I have a Mitsubishi with the HAVi interface. I've been looking for an OSS project that implements the HAVi API. I want to hook up a PC to the television and have an onscreen GUI for streaming audio/video and for my home control system.
Any pointers out there?
I can't even begin to think about what our lives would be like with this kind of technology. It sounds impressive but I have to wonder how much this would contribute to the already growing number of obese people.
OnTV-21 won second place in the Circuit Cellar PSoC 2002 contest. The device is a box that sits between your cable/sat box and your TV. It has a telephone interface and a WiFi interface to your PC. It uses the closed captioning decoder built into most TV's to display caller ID information when the telephone rings. It also displays the sender and subject line for new e-mail.
Like so many other things in this industry, havi is being stopped by political issues..
What's the first device that someone buys after getting that new 65" Mitsubishi HDTV (which supports havi / firewire)?? A DVD player, of course.
And, how many DVD players support havi?? ZERO. Our friends at the MPAA cannot allow a DVD player with a firewire output (even though it supports usage restrictions that stop any copying).
How many DirecTV receivers have firewire ports?? ZERO. Our friends at the MPAA cannot allow this, since all the high value HD movies on the pay channels could then be time shifted, and watched at any time.
You can buy a D-VHS VCR, which supports HD video, with a firewire port, and havi integration. But, there are only a handful of movies available in this format. And, since no cable or satellite services can be recorded via firewire, this VCR is of very limited value.
Havi is a great concept. It could greatly simplify integration and usage of home entertainment equipment. It can even reduce costs by eliminating redundant equipment (a DVD player would not need an MPEG decoder, since that exists in the display. It only needs to read the MPEG data and send it over the firewire. Same thing for satellite receivers.) But, without support from the common devices, havi is useless.
Actually, I would just settle for being able to FIND the #!@$%#$ed remote control!
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Sun (Jini) and Microsoft (UPP) have been fighting over the consumer electronics arena for years.
CNN has an article on it
If they really want to battle with Microsoft's infamous marketing machine they'd better make friends with some of the bigger bullies on the block.
Really, all of the cool technology (voice recognition, programming home appliances, etc) exists already in X-10 and other implementations. It's all just a matter of how much time and money you want to spend to create a system you want.
After watching the ultramatic bed commercials. I can just envisage a couple lying there why little Johnny next door tweaks some remote and proceeds to make a person sandwich.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Why not just use RM-X? This guy will have it working with all the devices in your house before these slow ass corporate companies will. Right now it's mainly focused on Winamp, but he's going to have it work with everything. I hear he's working on implementations of it in controlling a in-house automatic irrigation system, as well as a security system. He's also going to open source it. The way I see it, how can you do any better? This corporate attempt will just take years and still have an expensive system full of bugs that will never get fixed.
Nothing that you can't already do using a properly designed Clapper network...
A competing standard uses IP networks:
www.upnp.org
It's already got devices shipping. There's a Linux stack for it:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/upnp
as common as remotes are, how often do you see those simple audio/video switch boxes so you can use all your new and fancy toys and still have to walk up to the silly thing to swicth it? even Sony who WANTS everything to talk to everything can't standardize between their own stuff. each piece of equipment will always be designed as if it's the only one there. Always has been, always will be.
Any British people here may possibly have heard of or watched "Tomorrow's World", a now-defunct BBC2 science program, showing cutting-edge inventions. I remember they had a TV like this, with a certian degree of "intelligence" included - ie, it would automatically switch to news, or remind you when your favourite programs were on, etc. Regarding the IEEE 1394 - firewire - why firewire? Surely wireless technologies are preferable?
With all the DRM and IP whining and crying going on, and all the litigious vampires out there there is no way that they will allow the little people to have any form of control over thier own lives.
And god forbid that the little people have any control over the things that they see or hear.
Soon, like the curse word detector in Demolition Man, there will be tune detectors everywhere.
Humm a tune while you work? Cha-ching! "John Doe, you have been fined $20 for violating the RIAA self entertainment law". Or the same thing for singing in the shower.
You'll have no control over what you see or hear. And the dya will come when it's not permitted, much less possible to turn off your viewscreen.
Yes brothers, enjoy your Victory gin under the spreading chestnut tree.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
RIAA IS GOD
I love the simple function of my cordless phone, where I just press a button @ the base, and the phone beeps so I can find it.
I'm waiting for a TV remote that can do this, why can't they just include this?!?!?
- sigs are for wimps.
Crestron and AMX are only a few (but the best known) of the many companies that have these solutions already.
They aren't cheap but they are tres cool.
As an aside, they all use wires as wireless tend to be for cheap products that are installed by the homeowner after the fact. Real home automation systems are very complex and are usually installed at build or renovation time by professionals.
Check out Enlightened for more links and info.
Everything hooked together with protocols that have been deliberately compromised by the **AAs to enable DRM and will probably have security holes big enough to drive a tank through. I can just see the future in such a house when the script kiddies start working on this. Your TV will display nothing but pr0n and the door on your dryer will refuse to open while displaying the message "all of your socks are belong to us!"
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
More on the topic of too many remotes than the potential solution technology - Am I the only one who would like to have a "local positioning system" in my house? Wouldn't it be nice to have, for example, RFID tags on stuff and scanners in the house such that you could locate the remote under the sofa or your keys that got closed in a magazine, the wallet that you left in the freezer :) etc.?
My grandfather recently passed away, and my grandmother is 92 years old. Both of them are/were in sound mind, and as active as the elderly can be.
Working with them the past few years has been enlightening as far as how remotes and items we take for granted day-to-day are giant hurdles for them.
ON TOPIC: The engineers who develop these horrible remotes which have a thousand buttons, all which are sub-atomic size, should take into account that there is a *large* population of 70+ people who simply don't purchase and can't use these devices because they're too small to operate, and too complicated. There are *some* large-button remotes out there, but they usually must be set up, which requires even more hurdles.
I'm not sure there's ever going to be a perfect solution for the elderly, but from the remotes I've seen, there's plenty of room for improvement. Sony, to my suprise, are the biggest offenders of tiny-button remotes.
Pie menus enable multiple functions on a single touch-screen button, so you can not only touch, but also stroke up, down left or right. They're fast, reliable and easy to use with your finger instead of a pen, and with only one hand. You get much more functionality out of the same amount of screen space, so the resulting remote control interfaces are less cluttered and more functional.
You can touch the pause button and stroke down to stop, touch the program description and stroke up to switch to the channel, stroke left and right to page to the previous and next programs, stroke down to link to the index, etc.
I'm currently developing a ConnectedTV skin editor, that will let you create your own remote control interfaces with custom buttons and graphics, program them with any IR command, and bake your own pie menus.
The skin editor isn't available yet, but I'm interested in hearing from people who would like to beta test it, and who have opinions about what it should do. I'm especially interested in hearing from Pronto users: not only is ConnectedTV much cheaper than Pronto because runs on your existing Palm, but it also has useful features like the pie menus and the personalized TV guide, integrated with a universal remote control. So you can take your Palm with you wherever you go (like the kitchen, bathroom, school or work), and browse the ConnectedTV guide any time you want.
A free two week trial of ConnectedTV for the Palm is available at Connected.TV.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
...like the "interoperability" between my JVC-HM-DR10000 DVHS machine and my Sony KP61PS2 61" rear projection set. Individually, they are awesome pieces of equipment. As for playing together well though, I suppose they do what's expected of them only if your expectations are based on what first-generation VCRs could do - but the interoperability features that are supposed to let the VCR and the TV control each other are so flawed that they just have to be disabled. For example, with them switched on, no matter what input the VCR is recording through, if I change channels on the TV or switch it off then the recording stops and the VCR powers off. The other stupid glitches are just too weird to try and explain. But it all adds up to the fact that a good proportion of the cost of these boxes was wasted because the features they paid for just don't work at all in any usable way.
I don't know... I prefer the fing-longer... ;)
ah..! but then if you lost both (RCRC and the RC), you'd need a third remote controller?
at the end of the month, you wonder why your sofa has lumps like a camel. Take off those cushions only to find hundreds of Remote Controls.
laziness..
Home automation is nothing new. There are, off the top of my head, a half dozen companies that can do this parlor trick stuff with their eyes closed:
Crestron (best by far)
AMX/Panja
Elan
Niles (to some degree)
Phast
Lutron (HomeWorks)
Lighting control, A/V automation, integration with your phone system/home network/HVAC.... This IEEE1394 talk has been talk for over 5 years now. It's all hype. They're still arguing amongst themselves over who uses what standard for which system. They just don't want Microsoft to come in, lay waste to all the small frys, then royally screw up home automation altogether.
Take it from someone who's been doing this for years: lots of hot new stuff has come and gone over the past decade, and still the original solutions have worked (and been improved upon). We don't need square wheels on an already well-moving car.
Thankfully I don't feel compelled to use most of them...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Sounds like the superpowered Clapper to me.
My RCA TV has this neat little gizmo they call GLink. It is 2 little IR emitters on long wires that you put in front of the VCR and the cable box. It allows the TV to control the other 2 for single-remote programming. This needs to be extended to a single controller box that could take the new integration and extend it to the older technology. This new "brain" would be the nexus that all the gizmos plug into, allowing the new features on the old hardware.
Just a thought... ymmv
--- Donal, SysAdmin of The Brewers' Witch BBS
Kelly LeBrock!
Manufacture This!