GeorgeFormanGrill
Latest
Chad Barraford's JARVIS life assistant is the envy of Pepper Potts (video)
Chad Barraford is living the dream. Inspired by Edwin Jarvis, the superhero's man-servant turned computer in the film adaptation of Iron Man, the 27 year old Barraford pieced together a digital life assistant, dubbed JARVIS, to keep his household (and life) in order. JARVIS is built on a 4-year-old Mac mini linked to everything from his home lighting/security and RFID entry system (self-built on Arduino) to his George Foreman grill plugged into his X10 home automation network. JARVIS is always aware of Chad's location (thanks to Google Latitude) and can be controlled in the house via remote control or a wireless mic and the Mac's built-in speech recognition software; or via Twitter and text messages when away. Chad's friends each have their own keychain RFID tags. So does his dog. When his friends are in the house, JARVIS becomes less chatty and doesn't speak any personal information related to his finances or Facebook updates, for example. When the dog comes home JARVIS turns on the lights in the mutt's room. The Chad started the project less than a year ago and cost the man less than $700 in gear. Yes, he hopes to commercialize it. Until then we've got a few choice video selections after the break.
