Home Automation Follow-up Post
November 13, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
This is a follow-up post to my earlier post about technology to help improve the sharing of information among a family. My original post wasn’t about these specific panels from AMX being used as my solution, just that similar functionality could be used in the home. However, what I’ve seen and read about with these AMX controls, I believe they could do most of what I would need from the user-input standpoint.
The problem with the white erase board is that the information is then only available on the white-erase board. I recently developed an application for a client where we eliminated a white-erase board being used for department status information and created a "banner" that everyone could access and see from their computers and a webpage.
The white-erase board also isn’t interactive. I can’t set reminders on the white erase board that would sync to my phone and computer.
With energy consumption, the panels themselves could have screens like the new Kindle. Low-power consumption where power is only used to change the display, not keep it visible.
The problem with relying on my cell phone is that again, it’s an island of information for me. I can’t share or assign "To Do" items to the other members of my family. My kids don’t have cell phones and I don’t plan on them having them for at least another few years at the earliest.
These information controls would absolutely sync to computers as another portal for that information.
As for music, I believe the AMX panels can absolutely work as a digital jukebox functionality. Not sure what range issues you’re talking about with the panels being connected via Ethernet or wireless connections. The panels themselves wouldn’t have the speakers in them, each room would have separate speaker, providing much higher audio quality and far higher than a cell phone playing music.
I can see your point about the white board and cellphones. Also about the other things.
I’m probably more doubtful about this type of home automation concept, probably because I don’t see any myself or my family using this type of set-up.
I love technology and all, but even if this concept existed for everyone right now, I’d still probably leave messages on a white-erase board or sticky notes, call back on the home phone or to a family member’s cellphone to notify of any changes, and that’d just about do it for me.
If I were going to ‘up’ the tech process of it, I could just login to my IM account anywhere, check to see if any family member’s are online and if they are, I’ll send an IM to notify. If not, just an e-mail. Not as reliable, but still something.
And to take it a step further, to make it more realistic right now, my family could use a shared web calendar. Anything we post on there, will be available for everyone to see if they check via computer or smartphone with Internet access. Not as fancy as the AMX panels, but I think that would also just work fine for me and also be cheap.
As for music, I don’t see wiring my whole house with every room having it’s own speaker set (or having every room in the house connected to one system), and I’m just content with playing it in my living/media room.
If this concept of yours does come closer to life someday, then cool. I just don’t see the practicality in my lifestyle and would not mind using lower-tech alternatives to this concept.