My Dreams of the iPhone Home Automation Application….
Okay! I know we have all seen the commercial on TV with the couple on vacation who use their iPhone to make sure they turned the lights at home. Personally I don’t take these things at face value. It is not that I am not trusting of Apple, I know corporations never lie or exaggerate their products features and usage… I trust them all! But in this case I had to find out if this application existed or not.
For me this would be the application that would make an iPhone worth buying. Being a cantankerous old guy, it made perfect sense. It would be great for those times when the spousal unit is yelling at me to go home, because she thinks she left the iron on, after we have travel more than halfway to our destination. Instead of hitting the brakes and swinging the Suburban around in traffic, cutting off one those Prius things, I could whip out my iPhone with the home monitoring application and handle it from there! Ahhhh… I bask in my glory. But I digress.
Searching around I found the company who has created a home management application for the iPhone, Savant corporation located in Osterville, MA. According the Savant, their “…Home Automation Application transforms your iPhone or iPod touch into a personal and portable control device that’s capable of monitoring and running your home theater room, lighting control systems, whole house audio and distributed video system, and any other smart home electronics that make your life easier and more enjoyable.”
Savant, says “There’s virtually no amenity in an integrated home that you can’t control from an iPhone or iPod touch…” From the looks of it I believe them. Aside from being able to control the HVAC, lighting and my DVR at home, they list a number of other items I can control with the iPhone application, such as security cameras and motorized shades. I could control the temperature in my pool or spa. Hell I can even use it to control playing music and movies from a iTunes® digital media server. Damn, wish I had that stuff!
Based on what I can tell, Savant has a huge array of home automation capabilities that go well beyond the iPhone application. It looks like the iPhone is a convenient and simple interface for a very complex, yet from the looks of it, highly adaptable system.
I see a lot of possibilities for this technology and I have to ask myself why this technology is not more prevalent than it is. I think in the future this will be more commonplace, as it has become in our cars. However, for right now the hold back is due to cost, at least for the initial installation. While prices are not provided. I can only imagine a system that is this versatile and able to handle a number of functions for you that this systems looks like it can, it is probably not cheap. But one would think the security and the green factor might offset some of those costs in the long run.
As for me, well aside from the cost, and having to learn yet more new technology, it would probably just ruin all of my fun anyway. After all, despite what I may say to the wife, I really do enjoy doing U turns in my troop transport in front of those little Priuses. The look on their faces when they look up from texting while driving and see this huge tank pull out in front of them as they drop their phones and try to remember where the brake pedal is located, is priceless. And besides, when was the last time my spousal unit really touched an iron?!
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