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EnOcean's home automation sensors communicate over TCP/IP, play nice with smartphone apps
EnOcean has long been on our radar thanks to its inexpensive light switches and thermostats, which harvest energy from solar cells and thermal differentials and boast peel-and-stick backs for easy installation. Now, they're getting hooked up for TCP/IP communication, which means in addition to talking to each other, homeowners will be able to control them using any garden-variety web-connected device. The setup will require a small gateway, at which point you can monitor rooms using desktop widgets and mobile apps such as Can2Go that are compatible with EnOcean's radio protocol (ERP). So far, the company's mostly made headway in retail stores and office buildings, but if it has its way, it could be coming to hospitals, college dorms, and (duh) your home.
EnOcean harvesting power from the environment, not batteries
Remember EnOcean's batteryless / wireless light switches on display last year? Don't sweat it, neither did we. Still, that hasn't stopped EnOcean from experimenting with battery-less sensors which harvest electricity from vibrations (pictured) and temperature differentials. According to EnOcean, their prototype thermal-differential sensor attached to say, a water pipe, can harvest up to 50-milliwatts as long as one surface is 3-degrees Celsius higher or lower than the immediate environment. While that pales in compaison to batteries, it's still enough power to transmit a tweaked RF signal as far as 300-meters in an open warehouse or 30-meters through walls. Nearby sensors can also act as relays to extend signal transmission. Link the sensors with a thermostat and you can create micro-climates around the home; link 'em to a home automation system and control your house without the need to run power and Cat 5 / WiFi everywhere. Now someone get those X10 spammers home automators on the horn, we smell a business op.
