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Going back to the future with home automation systems.

Homes of the future have always fascinated us. Wouldn’t it be interesting if you could walk into your kitchen and your fridge tells you what food and drink choices you can make. Or if you are running low on grocery items, the fridge will actually tell you what items you need to pick up during your weekly grocery run.

Or better yet, imagine that you are at work and rather than coming home to a cold home in the winter, you could command your home to feel as warm as the tropics by the time that you arrive home. These are just a few ideas of what future homes have in store.

 

There is no need to feel like you will be stuck in a time warp. Retro or classic looks have their place, however it is the look of innovation that will really inspire homeowners, lodgers and guests. There’s an increase in smart technology and gadgets that are contributing to the installation of home automation systems in Australia. Below are a few futuristic ways to create the wow factor in your home.

Future homes will communicate with us and make our lives better.
From the movies, we expected talking houses with artificial intelligence. Although we are edging closer towards this, we are in a good position to communicate better with our homes via the automation systems that we install within the home. Essentially, the home will provide smarter functionality from the use of computer and wireless technology. You can have some of the coolest gadgets in your own place and have them all talk to each other to improve the convenience and functionality within your home.

 

Setting the ambiance of your home.
You can set the ambiance of your home to different settings at the stroke of a finger. Configure your lighting or heating that you want to create for the interior of your home. Should you feel the need to change the dynamic of the environment via sound, you can configure your home’s sound system to play music or soothing sounds around the home as and when you please.

Never lose your keys again!
It’s frustrating when you can’t find the things that you desperately need in that moment. When it comes to losing (rather misplacing) the car keys, finding them can be a nightmare. In the future, you could have your home track where your keys are located or even set off an alarm to help you find them. Additionally, this can be applied to other household items such as remote controls, mobile phones and other portable devices.

Smarter energy consumption.
Imagine having a green-friendly home that does the green thinking for you. That is a smart idea! There are some homes that use natural lighting to add to the warmth and brightness of the home. Automating shutters, curtains and blinds can help with keeping your home cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Furthermore, you will be doing your part to help the environment.

Give your home an added level of security.
You should feel safe when you are sleeping at night. A smarter home can add an extra level of security by integrating alarm and camera systems in the home with your smart devices. The accessibility of the security data can be accessed from your smart device by configuring alerts and live data streaming such as video to your smart device.

This is an exciting era to be in when it comes to technology for the home. There is the opportunity to automate your home from the palm of your hand and with the push of a button. Don’t get stuck in the past. Seek out the new and creative ways to modernize your home for the better.

The post Homes of the future appeared first on Well Done Stuff.

In most American cities, it's hard to walk through a park without spotting a gray squirrel. Those bushy-tailed little buggers are everywhere, chomping on nuts and climbing up trees—but not thanks to nature. No sir. They're there because we put them there to entertain us—among other things.

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And here we thought the only privacy risk with having a Wi-Fi network at home was someone figuring out our password. Researchers at MIT felt that a stranger having access to your wireless network wasn't scary enough, so they developed a way for someone to use Wi-Fi signals as a sort of x-ray vision to track a person's movements in another room.

Borrowing similar techniques as used with radar and sonar, the Wi-Vi system—as the researchers have called it—sends out a pair of inverse wireless signals as pings. When they hit something stationary, they cancel each other out, but when an object is in motion it creates an offset between the signals that can be processed to determine where and how fast it's moving.

In its current state it's far from Superman's x-ray vision, though. The system isn't precise enough to determine exactly what someone is doing in another room, but that doesn't mean its useless. Using a smartphone as the signal source, Wi-Vi could provide a cheap way for rescue workers to search for captives in a building, or even as a way to hunt for survivors trapped under rubble, as long as they're moving. Or, as a mobile version of Kinect that doesn't necessarily need to see you to detect your gestures. [MIT via SlashGear]

A wireless wind meter containing no electronics – now on kickstarter It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but the Vaavud wind meter is in fact without any sort of electronics, yet it communicates directly with your smartphone. Vaavud – a new Danish Start-up – aims to bring this product on the market via kickstarter (link to project). An innovative new use of one of the sensors in our smartphones The rotor in the wind meter contains two small magnets, which cause alterations in the magnetic field around the phone. These changes can be detected by the magnetometer. The signal is then transformed to frequency using sine waves, and converted to wind speed, utilizing the linear relationship between rotation frequency and wind speed for cup anemometers ”Developers have been allowed access to the ”raw” magnetometer readings in both Android and iOS for several years, but as far as we know, we are the only ones who has put this to use for rotation measurement so far”, says Co-founder & CTO of Vaavud, Andreas Okholm. Taking accurate, ultra-local wind reports online A digital wind meter is nothing new, but all of the handheld models currently on the market are offline. The Vaavud wind meter allows instant sharing of the wind readings, for the benefit of others, and lets you keep an electronic record of the conditions, so you can easily recall that epic day, when the conditions were just right. “Initially we had thought of surfers and sailors as the primary user groups for our product, but after launching on kickstarter we have also been contacted by paragliders, base jumpers and even a storm chaser, so it has an even broader appeal than we had dared hope for”, says Co-founder & CEO of Vaavud, Thomas Helms.
For further information contact: Co-founder & CEO, Thomas Helms, thomas@vaavud.com 
 Kickstarter:http://bit.ly/1448VUA - vaavud.com - facebook.com/vaavud - @Vaavud