Who doesn't long for a smart home system that gives you full control of your thermostat, lighting, AV, and security system from the convenience of your cellphone? While many proprietary and "standards-based" off-the-shelf solutions exist, things quickly break down due to the lack of interoperability, cost, or sheer complexity of medium-to-large home automation designs. Enter Nokia who just announced its Home Control Center, a platform open for third parties to develop "plug and play" solutions, all of which can be controlled via your phone or PC from both inside and outside the home. HCC will let home owners switch devices on and off as they monitor and control their electricity usage while providing access to objects such as temperature sensors, cameras, and motion detectors. Ultimately it will integrate more complex systems like security, heating, and ventilation. Although few technical details were provided, a research paper from last year that outlined Nokia's Smart Home strategy called for a 802.11n WiFi
home gateway device (presumably from Nokia) with optional GSM/GPRS module integrating into a home network of
Z-Wave and
ZigBee-compliant devices. The system is expected to include pre-packaged Smart Home kits ranging from starter, security, energy, and baby monitoring when it goes retail (Europe first) by the end of 2009.
Update: Good news, remote access only requires a web browser. As such, you can use
any cellphone with a decent browser to manage your home remotely.
Read -- Press Release
Read -- Product brief [Warning: PDF]
Read -- Research paper [Warning: PDF]
posted Nov 27th 2008 4:54AM
Just wait for the iPhone to have this in the remote application..
but then i guess we need to buy AppleLight, AppleFan, iMotion, tempX
AMX already provides support for Home-automation with mobile devices such as PDAs and Mobile phones. It gives access to every IP based device.
Um, Yeah. I think the idea here is to buy a phone instead of a $10k dealer installed, proprietary system like AMX. Crestron, while also way cool, would also not be a competitor.
Well, thats true but you need to have control over appliances like lights to operate them. You just cant expect to turn on a light using a Nokia phone unless you have the light connected to a electric box with IP support. So you would connect your phone to WiFi (to which the electric main is connected) and then select options on the phone and the electric box will receive them over WiFi and execute them.
hmmm, I have an image of my grand-mother phoning me and asking the set the timer on the video recorder even when i'm on holiday in another country.
Oh the joy of tech !
This is just a lame version of FemtoCells where Nokia is trying to use its big market share in cell phones to extend to other markets. Femto Cells provide this in a much more secure and faster way utilizing 3G. When these external devices come out with internet-based control applications built-in, it'll be the most common thing to control everything in your house and office from your mobile phone anyway...
You're not really making much sense...this thing has pretty much nothing to do with Femto Cells.
You could use a femtocell to connect a 3G phone into the home network - see these demos...
http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/me_tv?bcpid=1422585024&bclid=1631239611&bctid=1636629553
On a random note, I had the N80, it was a great phone for its time, but crappy battery though, i had to carry an extra one on me all the time.
I had one before my n95, an absolutely fantastic phone. The n95 just feels like an evolution of it, which is not a bad thing.
so theyre dropping japan for this?
Erm, where does it say anything about ZigBee? There also seems to be a big question mark over how non-proprietary and standards-based Z-Wave really is? Can you actually get a copy of the standard with great expense?
Our company Homemanageables has been providing the same services for a long time. Our solutions, starting at $199 allow for everything described above and is available now. We also have a "native", not just web browser, iPhone application that is available for FREE on the app store.
Here is some info below:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/20-iphone-apps-save-gas-energy-time-and-money.php?page=4
You can buy the system at:
http://store.homemanageables.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=HM%2DSK001
If you have any questions please feel free to email me at dasofsky@homemanageables.com or via phone at: 914-864-2814
David Asofsky
Homemanageables
I like LinuxMCE's Home Automation/content management and distribution/security features. I've never been able to play with as many features as I'd like to (Having an apartment alone instead of a home with a family makes many of the features either useless to me or impossible to implement), But it's pretty featured.
Does it come with a disproportioned N80?
A N820 with EIB/KNX would be better.
Multidomo already has this working with KNX/EIB and X10, and IP cameras also. It works with Nokia, Windows Mobile and iPhone... and Web, Media Center, etc...
it seems like it will only get easier to break into houses now.
if ever you needed a reason to buy new lights, TVs, recorders, heaters/coolers, fridges, washing machines, toasters, coffee machines and what-have-you, here's the perfect one ! And guess what, you just might help the banks back to their feet.
What, you dont use some of that stuff ? never mind, with some luck, you could switch off that nagging neighbor's heater ! That'd be cool..especially in winter.
On a more serious note - Will Nokia launch this in a year's time? Nah, I dont see that happening. It's one thing to build a protocol in a phone, it something else all together to a) get an ecosystem of devices working with that damn protocol and b) getting consumers to buy these devices and c) to keep getting budgets for seeming sci-fi when markets are tumbling