Savant's new Rosie Virtual Control uses your home for the interface, your car to impress girls
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Jun 12th 2009 1:44AM
posted Jun 12th 2009 1:44AM
Home automation fans, head's up: Savant is cooking up a new Rosie control interface that replaces traditional menus and icons with actual 360 degree photos of your location. Users turn on a light, f'rinstance, by touching the light that they want to activate, and control the dimmer switch by swiping up or down. The heart of the system is a rather familiar-looking 9-inch capacitive touchscreen device that displays the current location on the majority of the screen, with the other rooms scrolling across the bottom. Currently being pimped by the company at its Dealer Conference in Hyannis, there is no word on release date or cost, but we're guessing it's gonna be rather pricey -- the service includes a visit by the company's Professional Services Division, who photograph your home for you. Just make sure you straighten up a bit before they arrive. See the thing in the action after the break.
i can see the ads now...
"when a thief breaks into your home while youre away, you dont know and are powerless to stop it if you do know. but, from (insert company name here), today we are releasing a new technology that will surely scare burglars out!"
huh?
Being an architect, I can tell you that this is a neat idea which would be very successful in 20 years. Leaving the menu / verbal world for imagery of the real environment is a pretty big step, but the major problem with this is if you update the space, rearrange, or purchase new pieces for various locations. This prototype is a early model of what we will encounter in the future just like todays light switch, but the technology will have to become smart / interactive. A device that can take its own photographs when the rooms are altered is mandatory. Also mandatory in my mind is digital ID's for all manufactured electronic devices, such that the device knows a ligt bulb is from GE or Phillips, model blah blah, and capable of dimming or not, etc. I presume some of that is already in the works, but all electronics manufacturers should standardize on a digital communication scheme that uses household wall outlets / bluetooth / fm / something, to communicate to let the control devices know what devices are in the house.
It's coming, and it's way cool, but this is just the middle of the journey. It would be very cool if we could eliminate wires for electrical distribution in a house, so it's all wirelessly powered at the house. That would eliminate all those wall outlets, and in wall wiring... that would need to be considered for the evolution of this home automation system.
Pictures just make life hard. It's one of the features that looks nice but then you realise - yeah this was stupid. It's not a 360 degree view (because that would look bizarre) so you have to scroll, instantly making it hard to access basic things like lightswitches. Distinguishing between two lights that are both distant is also a challenge.
To add insult to injury, this doesn't even do the QuickTimeVR-style smooth pan! It moves around the room in nasty jumps that still appear to load slowly. Given its only benefit is to look cool, if it doesn't achieve that... that's piss-poor.
I think there is definitely room for this kind of technology but they are barking up the wrong tree with the 3D picture idea. What it really needs is a 2D floorplan. The plan just displays the walls (you can make this data fairly easily with a scanning device) and all items are indicated on the plan in their accurate location (with adjustments so it doesn't show two on top of each other, and a diagrammatic way of indicating if there are two things one above the other). In this way you can immediately access any device with a single press, and yet it remains clear where they all are in regard to the room.
If something doesn't have location facilities you might have to register its location by marking it with a wireless puck once and then whenever you move it, but wireless-connected devices can be aware of their own location because they can triangulate based on the positions of other wireless-enabled devices. So if you unplug the table lamp and plug it in elsewhere, the icon automatically moves. (Essentially your home wi-fi network becomes a highly accurate local positioning system.) Yeah, I don't think this is possible right now, but it should be...
"Hey ladies,welcome to Sharper Image...nice windbreakers...Fila or Nike? Anyway, let me point out a few new features available in Windows95. It will be awesome."
Worked for a place that did a similar thing for industrial automation about 8 years ago! Instead of photos, we took CAD data of the actual machine, and rendered it in 3-D and added the appropriate controls via touchscreen. No scrolling...jumped between various views via an edge-of-screen menu setup.
Several existing home automation controllers (such as HomeVision: http://www.csi3.com/homevis2.htm ) have a web server (even can use Flash) that allows you to design your own screen controls...so you could take a pictures of your own home and add the buttons to control various loads. This capability has been around for a while.
But these guys are making it more of a system that home automation installers would use to set up a high $$ setup for folks that still have $$. If they can get their HFE guys to make the interface fluid and user-friendly, that is a step forward.
please tell me it's named "rosie" after the robot from the jetsons