Chapter 22
Top Ten Toys of the Future
In This Chapter
* Sucking up to home automation
* Leave the driving to us
* Music on Request
* Now that’s a bathtub
If there is one thing that is true about smart homes, it is that there is never a want for innovation. People are constantly inventing new things. And while some are not too useful (like the egg cooking machine in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), many are — and they offer a neat view of the future of the smart home. Things that seem niche-oriented and expensive now, are merely tomorrow consumer products in volume.
In this Part of Tens, we expose you to some of the neat things that are available now — and which will only get better with time. From robots to Jacuzzis, there’s something for everyone. And if you are like us, which we expect you are if you’ve read this far in the book, then you’ll want to mortgage something to at least get one of these toys! (Danny already has for his Request boxes which he swears by — in a nice way.)
On TV, it all started with robots like Klaatu in The Day The Earth Stood Still, Rosie on The Jetsons, and Robot on Lost In Space. It’s progressed to Data on Star Trek, Max Headroom, and Simone. Whether on a screen or ‘live’ and in person, robotic personalities offer the opportunity to create a life of leisure for us, while at the same time plotting to take over the world, apparently.
It’s not so simple to talk about a “Robot” and expect everyone to know what we are talking about. Indeed, there are all sorts of robots — including artificial software lifeforms — that are pertinent to our discussion. What’s important is here is that while there are academic trials of various types of android-style robots, the real marketable robots that will come commercially in the near term are very focused on specific tasks — taskmasters we call them. Something as simple as a breadmaker (which takes ingredients, mixes them, kneads the bread, and then bakes it automatically) can be considered a robotic kitchen aid, says Colin Angle, CEO and Co-Founder of iRobot, Inc. — the first firm to crack into the mass market for intelligent robotic home devices with its sub-$200 vacuum cleaner, a truly remarkable feat given the complexity of these devices. From cooking meals to cleaning windows, robots are on the way.
Don’t feel guilty wanting these devices. It does not mean you are lazy, (at least that’s what we tell ourselves). They are no different from many other products we use everyday. A dishwasher washes our dishes, a washing machine washes our clothes and answering machines answer our phones. These are all more intelligent ways to manage your time, so you can spend it on other more enjoyable activities.
Here are some of the neater toys either on the market today or in refinement, that could be inexpensive enough soon for you to buy.
* Robotic lawnmowers: Cutting the grass is a fairly repetitive and basic task, and so a logical jumping off point for robotics in the home. Products like Friendly Robotics’ Robomower (www.friendlyrobotics.com) and Toro’s iMow (www.toro.com) have hit the streets. These are amazingly reasonably priced – around $500, and indeed work great. (See sidebar: Mowing Your Lawn from the Couch! for more details on how these work.). We’d not be surprised if your neighbor teenager lawnmower businesses buy some robotic lawnmowers and sit back and watch.
* Robotic vacuum cleaners: OK, we admit it, we’re really lazy when it comes to cleaning the house. (And we’re constantly reminded of it by our spouses.) So when a product like a robotic vacuum cleaner comes along, we get really excited. And when the price points start at $199, we really get excited. iRobot (www.irobot.com) was first to market with a mass production model, Roomba, that uses intelligent navigation technology to automatically clean all household floor surfaces. These machines look like squat little space saucers that can roam around the house sensing obstructions and switching floor modes automatically. They are not really designed to replace the detail cleaning of your house — it’s going to be a while before a robot can get all those nooks and crannies — and are more targeted towards getting the bulk of the dirt up off the main pathways in your house. When you first activate iRobot’s Roomba, it spot cleans a three-foot circle centered around where you placed it. If you leave it operating, Roomba then alternates between area cleaning and edge cleaning. When edge cleaning, Roomba uses its non-contact wall sensor and side brush to clean all the way up to the wall. Roomba’s low profile allows it to clean under beds, furniture (greater than 4” off the floor) and most importantly under the kickboards in the kitchen. Roomba is designed for unattended operation. It is smart enough not to go down stairs (unless you take it there.) It automatically shuts off if it gets stuck or something gets caught in its brushes. All that for $199! Other vendors are following suit with their own approaches: Maytag Corp.'s Hoover (teaming up with Friendly Robotics, www.hoover.com) has the RV400, AB Electrolux has its Trilobite (www.electrolux.com) and its subsidiary Eureka has Robo Vac (www.eureka.com), and European appliance maker Dyson (www.dyson.co.uk) has its DC06 — all want to land a robotic vacuum cleaner in your home. Pricing can top $3000 for some of these units, so shop around.
Here are some product ideas that manufacturers are working on now. No price points or firm products on the market as of the end of 2002, but we expect them to come soon.
* Robotic garbage disposers: In many areas, the trash company won’t pick up your trash unless you’ve taken the trash cans out to the street. What a pain, especially when you forgot to do it the night before (because you did not have a home automation system to remind you!) and it is raining outside. Robotic firms are designing units that will take the trash out for you, on schedule, no matter what the weather. Simple as that.
* Robotic mail collectors: Have a long driveway? Hate to go out in inclement weather to get the mail? Have a relative who simply can’t? A robotic mail collector will go get the mail for you. Neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night, nor winds of change, nor a nation challenged will stay them from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
* Robotic snow blowers: Danny says he’ll believe this when he sees it, given all the various forms of snow and how heavy it can be. But manufacturers are working to solve those problems with these devices, that will continually clear your driveway and sidewalks, as the snow is falling. So theoretically, it never builds up to such a major level that is becomes a huge burden on the device. Still, with snowstorms that can last 24 hours (and batteries that can’t), we’ll wait to test these when they come out.
* Robotic golf ball retrievers: Have a big back yard that would be great for a driving range, but you are too lazy to always go pick up the balls? Well first you get a robotic lawnmower to give it that freshly maintained look and feel, and then you get a robotic golf ball retriever to pick them up. These are initially being designed for driving range use, and are being modified for the home market. You know, we’re going to miss trying to hit the guy in that caged-in golf ball machine on the range!
* Robotic guard dogs: If you think about it, all the elements are there for a robotic sentry — you have wireless connectivity, video and audio sensors, programming to navigate the lawn,…it’s all there. So robotic guard dogs are not too far away, we think. Already, there are companies like iRobot (www.irobot.com) that sell “CoWorkers” — robots that can roam areas and send back audio and video feeds.
* Robotic gutter cleaners: This is another “We’ll believe it when we see it” but there are a range of spider-like robots available today that can maneuver on inclines like a roof, and there are the robotic sensors and arms that can clean out areas, so we can definitely envision the potential for something like this. But gutters sure can get clogged up, and sometimes it takes us a good high powered hose, a good stick, and a good shower afterwards to deal with the gutters. So we’ll see.
* Robotic cooks: We’ve seen it with breadmakers, why not other kitchen devices? Put the ingredients in, select a mode, and wait for your dinner to be cooked — better than a TV dinner for sure. Developers are talking about different types of fresh ravioli, for instance, or how about meatloaf? A personal chef can cost a lot of money; these might not.
* Robotic pooper scoopers: If you have a dog, this is going to be a no-brainer. We have not found any market-ready products yet, but there are a number of prototypes out there. The units we’ve discovered will roam your yard in search of something to clean up, and deposit the findings in a place you determine. There’s almost no price too high for this item, as far as we are concerned.
The quest for a humanoid robot is being moved forward, but at this stage, you are more like to see them at special events demonstrating stuff than in your kitchen cooking dinner. Products like Honda’s ASIMO (stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, http://world.honda.com/ASIMO) are remarkable for the basic things they can do, like shake hands and bow, but the taskmasters are really going to help you with day to day chores.
Mowing Your Lawn from the Couch!
Danny is allergic to anything green (except money). Mowing the lawn for him is like getting a root canal. He'd rather sit on the couch and watch the Duke Blue Devils play basketball than cut the lawn.
Well, with a smart home, he can do both, at the same time, from the luxury of his living room, kitchen, or basement by using Friendly Robotics (http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/) robotic lawn mower, Robomower, which retails around $500. Now, you can be a couch gardener.
Robomower automatically cuts your grass based on its internal programming and what it senses in its environment. Robomower uses software algorithms in combination with a high-tech electronic compass to help guide it to the most efficient paths for cutting your lawn. Sensors sense tree, shrubs and other obstacles and automatically guides the unit around them.
In most instances, Robomower guides itself using a sophisticated navigation system and by sensing the presence of a small electrified wire that you fasten to the ground surrounding the edge of your lawn. (Don't worry about the perimeter cable electrocuting you — the voltage in the perimeter line is only 4.5 volts.) This wire serves as the virtual fence for the Robomower.
Although the wire can be buried, it is designed for self-install on top of the ground because burial is not the cup-of-tea for the average homeowner. The unit comes with short plastic green stakes, much like a small tent stake. These are used to fasten the wire down below grass level to the ground. The wire is green as are the stakes, so it blends in well with the grass. In a good installation, the wire is pulled firmly to the ground — thus no tripping hazards etc. In season, when the grass is growing, the wire will simply disappear in about two weeks. Over time, it is covered by the mulched grass.
To cut the grass, just press the GO button on Robomower and sit back. When Robomower encounters obstacles, it mows all around them. Robomower mows in straight lines continually moving from left to right or vice versa across the lawn. Because Robomower cuts a full 21’ inches in width and uses steel cutting blades; it will leave your lawn perfectly manicured. A special tracking mode ensures that Robomower trims the edges of the lawn. Robomower is easily moved from the garage to the lawn and back using a removable controller containing a drive and steering function. Certain models sport a docking station with a doghouse-like housing enables your Robomower to stay outside, all the time, ready to mow.
Robomower is designed ideally to replace the standard walk behind mower. Most lawns where a walk mower is used have less than 5,000 square feet of grass that is being mowed. The shape of the lawn perimeter can be any shape. The lot size may be larger, even up to 1 acre, but the actual grass amount is significantly less. The Robomower can usually mow this area on one charge, with a run time of up to 4 hours, depending on grass conditions. However, most people use one full charge in the front lawn and one full charge in the rear, breaking the areas up for better efficiency or perhaps because there is not contiguous section of grass from front to back. So buy two batteries. Newer models promise more extensive coverage.
Robomower can typically handle any slopes a walk mower can safely mow. You can use your remote controller to mow any area manually, even on slopes as steep as 20 degrees.
The Robomower is equipped with safety features to make mowing a safe experience, even when you’re away from the house. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the top two injuries from walk behind mowers are from thrown objects and from feet slipping under the mower. Heck, simply separating the operator from the mower will dramatically reduce these injuries. Additionally, the unit contains safety sensors to detect bumping into an object, sensors to detect a lift of the cutting deck, child lock safety features and manual operator presence controls which add in
significant safety measures and systems to the consumer, far above that found on conventional walk mowers today.
If you wish, you can watch Robomower through your external security cameras. Using the picture-in-picture mode on your TV, you can watch the basketball game while Robomower mows away. Or better yet, Robomower can work while you are away at the office, the golf course or even sleeping. Future versions will allow interaction with your home automation software so you can schedule mowing.
If you need a final reason to get one: Americans and their lawn equipment spill an average of 17 million gallons of fuel each year — more than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. An electric lawnmower can be your contribution to the ecology!
You may not realize this, but your car already contains a massive computer network, similar to the type of network you find in most airplanes. Although not as sophisticated as an aircraft network, a car network touches many of the car’s most critical parts — its tentacles reach out to things like brakes, airbags, monitoring systems, and so on. But you don’t see most of that stuff, so it’s more useful than fun.
There’s a fair amount of focus on the car and enhancing its internal smarts — driven mostly by the convergence of a number of add-ons, such as mounted cell phones, in-car video systems, and laptop wireless access devices. These previously unrelated items are starting to be related to one another, and linked to similar devices and services outside of the car. For instance, the music you want to play in your car is probably much the same that you play at home (unless your spouse censors your in-home musical tastes, in which case that’s not true).
AM, FM, XM . . . XM?
Welcome to the newest thing in the radio world: satellite radio. Two companies, XM and Sirius, offer a hundred (plus!) channels of music, news, and entertainment over a satellite link that has nationwide U.S. coverage. You can turn on a station you like and drive clear across the country without changing the channel or losing the signal. To get satellite radio, you need two things: a satellite radio receiver and a subscription to one of these two services.
Some of the coolest satellite radios we’ve seen come from Sony, which has a portable unit. If you’re digging a particular show, you can just pop the unit out of the car when you get home, plug it into your home-audio system (with regular RCA audio jacks), and keep listening. You’ll need an in-home antenna to plug into the receiver as well, and it helps to have that antenna in a window that faces south (that’s where the satellites are).
Much of the focus has centered on a few key areas, such as network connectivity (being able to communicate with things outside the car) and the inherent computing capability of the car (being able to load new software to enable new functionality). If it sounds like we’re talking about a computer and a network, we are: a network for your car, linking various endpoint devices to a central computer with the smarts to do a lot of things.
One of the most noticeable technologies you’ll see soon is Bluetooth connectivity, which we talk about in Chapter 16. Bluetooth will reach out to laptops, cellphones, PDAs, watches, and other such devices to interact with the car. Some day soon, Bluetooth and cellphones may interact to function as a car’s modem, updating onboard data such as CD players or video storage systems, while you drive. When docked at home in the garage, Bluetooth can interface with the home’s Internet connection. When the car’s at the mechanic, Bluetooth can talk to the shop’s computers to diagnose problems.
So much of the focus has centered on a few key areas, such as the network connectivity (being able to communicate with things outside of the car) and the inherent computing capability (being able to load new software to enable new functionality). If it sounds like we’re talking about a computer and a network, we are. A network for your car, linking various endpoint devices to a central computer with the smarts to do a lot of things.
One of the most noticeable technologies you will see soon is Bluetooth connectivity, which we talked about in Chapter 16. Bluetooth will reach out to laptops, cellphones, PDAs, watches, and other such devices to interact with the car. Some day soon, Bluetooth and cellphones may interact to function as a car’s modem, updating onboard data like CD players or video storage systems, when driving. When ‘docked’ at home in the garage, Bluetooth can interface with the home Internet connection. When at your mechanic, Bluetooth talks to the shop’s computers to diagnose problems.
DaimlerChrysler began offering its Bluetooth-based communications system, Uconnect, in the 2003 model year, emphasizing hands-free telephone access. Uconnect can reach out to a hand-held cellphone, laid down casually on the seat or in your pocket, and interwork with systems in the car. The driver can operate the phone via voice command and speakerphones located in the car — which ‘talk’ with your cellphone via Bluetooth. This elegant system gets rid of ugly car adapter kits and retrofits. It’s a $299 option on the ticket price. Expect every car to have something like this soon.
A computer in every car — literally!
While it is nice to talk about the cars of the future, and what you can get with your next $80,000 beemer, the rest of us have to be content with our minivans, SUVs, and 10 year old Pacers. We that does not mean you have to be left out in the cold when it comes to sprucing up your car. Undoubtedly, you’ve seen the full media capabilities you can get by adding a VCR or DVD player to your car — there are many different options to choose from, and most auto stereo shops can install these for very reasonable prices (where reasonable is tied to the value of peace and quiet for that three hour drive to Grandma’s).
But there are some specialty devices that seem very functional for those who want a little more from their car. G-Net Canada’s (www.gnetcanada.com) Revolution Auto PC, for instance, is a $1300 add-on that gives you just about all you’d want to drive your smart car. It includes an MP3 audio player, a DVD player, GPS navigation support, vehicle diagnostics, a digital dash software interface, as well as a full Windows PC that can run any application you want. Slap a simple USB-to-802.11b or Bluetooth dongle from D-Link on it, and you can network it with your home network for easy transfers. They call this “the future of in-vehicle computing” — we tend to believe that!
We start with an easy to integrate embedded IBM PC compatible platform that features a fast Intel Celeron 1000mhz CPU, 128mb of RAM and a 20gb hard drive. This small unit (156x146x56mm in size, which is a little larger than a Sony Walkman) can be easily mounted in your vehicle, whether it be in the glove box, under a seat or in the trunk. You then install and connect your choice of LCD monitor and control device.
Now G-Net tends to focus on the business applications for the Revolution Auto PC, since it can support mobile business applications, real-time GPS navigation, GIS applications, Telematics, mobile advertising and in-vehicle kiosks. We think it’s cool for any smart homeowner. You can share all that PC functionality powering your home with your car. The Revolution Auto PC features four USB ports, a serial port, a parallel port, as well as two IEEE1394 (Firewire) ports for high speed external hardware devices, so you can add harddrives if you need to, or any standard computing option. If you work in your car a lot, you might start rethinking that laptop on your seat (you know, the one that slams into the dash whenever you slam on the brakes).
G-Net has also developed an operating system front-end called the “Digital Dash”. This menu system gives you quick an easy access to the most popular applications installed on the Revolution Auto PC — now if it could only order a Number 2 Supersized with a Diet Coke and no mustard!
This is one of those products you put in your car because you can!
In the near term, cars are going to get a lot sexier and smarter too. BMW Group’s iDrive Controller on its 7 Series is a good example of how the complexity of car smarts is changing the way that the driver interfaces with the car. Between the gearshift lever and the center armrest you will see the iDrive Controller, a nub-like knob that is like a joystick for the computer. You use this to change features, and select items in BMW’s computing core.
BMW is showing off several early models of future standard items, like access to the Internet. A wireless connection in the car enables you to talk to your car via the Internet. Now, before you accuse us of having gone looney for talking to our car, think about whether your lights are still on? Wouldn’t it be great to check on it from your desk instead of heading all the way down 40 floors to the parking garage? Or say you are filling out a new insurance form and forgot to check the mileage on your car. You can also on request specify its exact location and, again at your request, even allow the dealer to check your car's service status via the Internet. You can also, say, switch on the lights or the auxiliary heating, call up numbers in the car telephone or addresses in the navigation system, unlock and lock the car — even from the comfort of your smart boat.
Mercedes-Benz USA is also working hard to bring 802.11a wireless technology to a Benz near you. The manufacturer is showing prototypes of cars that can access web and media content services from roadside units to a sedan’s onboard computer. The driver can purchase music and other digital media they hear about on the radio and have them transparently download to vehicle’s onboard computer as they pass by “DriveBy InfoFueling stations.”
In future systems, automobiles could access up-to-date map data, traffic and road conditions, and information on local points of interest as the vehicle drives by roadside beacons. In addition, rich audio, video, and gaming content could be downloaded from a person’s home computer, entertainment center or residential gateway. Commercial vehicles could exchange detailed cargo status and other information as they pass truck stops and gas stations.
You hear a great new song on your satellite radio (See sidebar: “AM, FM, XM . . . XM?). Maybe you didn't catch the artist or song title — doesn’t matter — you push the “buy button” on your audio system, which initiates a secure on-line transaction, and a legal copy of the song is purchased and downloaded to the car at the next DriveBy InfoFueling station. From now on, you can listen to the song over and over again, just like you would with a CD.
Teenagers,…sheeesh!
Heaven forbid you’d tell your teenager what to do, since all parents “don’t know anything.” But you can at least quietly monitor what they do in the car, thanks to new “black boxes” from Road Safety International (http://www.roadsafety.com/) that earned their stripes in ambulances and police cars. The devices not only track how fast the cars go, how hard they turn and how fast they stop — information that parents can review later — but they also emit loud beeps when the driving gets out of hand. The device plugs into a connector on cars that mechanics use to diagnose problems. Those connectors are standard on models from 1996 or later, and parents can install the boxes without the help of mechanics. In older vehicles, technicians must install the system.
The system is sold with a memory card that parents can plug into a port on the back of a computer. The computer can read the card and show columns of numbers, including the odometer reading and the number of miles driven as well as detailed statistics from measurements of the car's G-force, or the force of gravity on driver and passengers as the car moves. When the force exceeds the limit, the numbers appear in red type. Drivers can track their progress over time, and move up levels as they improve. The company is adding Global Positioning System capabilities that will allow parents to check a Website to find out where the car is.
So much for sneaking off to Lover’s Leap. Note that this will not monitor any action in the back seat of the car — there are no good products for that yet.
There’s something about riding an exercise bike to nowhere. It just doesn’t work for us. Danny has a computer monitor, keyboard and wireless mouse mounted just above the front of his treadmill to take in the best of the Web each morning.
But the folks at Icon Fitness (www.ifit.com) have taken it a step further by linking your exercise equipment, the Internet, live personal coaches, and library of audio and video slide tours that will make each day exercising a brand new adventure.
You can hike up the hills of San Francisco or explore Hawaii's Volcanoes, take in the Canadian Rockies or climb in Yosemite National Park. You can be berated by a drill sargeant-like trainer, or soothed with a firm voice. You can pick your background music, you can choose your level, you can select your pace — there are options galore. The idea is to provide an environment where you can enjoy working out, be challenged, track your results, and learn more about how to sustain your health through solid nutritional planning provided on the site.
What’s neat about iFit.com is that they not only provide you with something to watch, but they can remotely control more than 100 models of treadmills, elliptical trainers, stationary bikes, and incline trainers — from Icon’s NordicTrack, Pro-Form, Reebok, HealthRider, and Image divisions (www.iconfitness.com).
There are four main forms of enhancement offered by iFit.com:
* Basic Workouts control the speed and incline of your treadmill.
* Music Workouts stream the controls through your computer to your treadmill — accompanied by your choice of heart-rate-paced music and the voice of a virtual personal trainer to get you going and keep you going.
* Scenic Workouts create a virtual landscape by streaming photos to your computer screen along with the music, the trainer's voice, and control signals. These animated "slide shows" look and work great, even on a standard dial-up internet connection.
* Video Workouts put you in a group workout class by streaming video to your computer screen along with the music, the trainer's voice and control signals. These are ideal if you've got a high-speed internet connection.
If you don’t like these audio and video programs, you can always get a live trainer, courtesy of internet videoconferencing. For 45 minutes and $30, you see and hear the trainer — and the trainer sees and hears you. A great use of the webcams we talked about in Chapter 12.
There are also race training programs — online, offline, CD, and MP3 workouts for the Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K and 5K. The iFIT website and iFIT CDs and MP3s can control all iFIT-compatible treadmills to simulate actual segments of the race course and train you to target paces. Their 8- and 16-week Race Training Programs will get you to peak performance by Race Day!
Pricing is a lot less than you’d pay for a fancy gym workout — only $9.95 per month for a year contract. You might try the 30-day trial and see if you like it enough to impact which piece of exercise equipment you buy. iFit is constantly changing their workouts — new ones are by far the number one request from customers. So expect them to continually improve the offering. If you want to stay fit and have fun doing it (or simply not be alone working out), this is a natural complement to any Smart Home.
If you travel very much, you probably have trouble keeping current on your favorite TV shows. You can always tape the shows on your VCR, assuming you remember to program the machine — for the right time and channel, no less — and stick in a tape. With all the little things that can go wrong with taping, you’re lucky to successfully tape the shows 50 percent of the time.
If you’re tired of battling the VCR gremlins, you may want to investigate a new service called DVR — digital video recorder. DVR functionality can reside in many places — in your cable or satellite settop box, in your computer, in your TV, and in a standalone box. There are three major players — SonicBlue/ReplayTV (http://www.replaytv.com/), TiVo (http://www.tivo.com/), and Microsoft’s UltimateTV (http://www.ultimatetv.com/).
The early form factor has been a VCR-like box that sits between your video input stream (like your cable box or your DSS receiver) and your TV set. The PVR players combines your telephone, broadband connection, and video programming services — satellite, cable, or broadcast TV — to let you pause, rewind, fast-forward, instantly replay, play back in slow-motion, and with ReplayTV even transfer to other places, recorded live television.
ReplayTV’s box is essentially a VCR with a huge hard disk inside that can store up to up to hundreds of hours of your favorite programs.
ReplayTV gives you full control of live programs as well. A friendly and highly visual interface — similar to what you experience with cable or DSS systems — guides you through the available programming options for the next seven days, of more than 12,000 DBS, cable, and terrestrial systems in the U.S.
You can also create a personalized lineup of your favorite shows ready for anytime viewing. ReplayTV’s technology queries your TV preferences and puts them into a personalized channel, so you can watch your favorite shows at your convenience. Using sophisticated search software, ReplayTV intelligently searches this database of programming information to locate the shows you ask it to identify.
For example, say a viewer asks ReplayTV to create a Star Trek Replay Channel. ReplayTV then constantly scans the continuously updated channel guide information, searching for Star Trek references. When it identifies this information in the database, ReplayTV automatically configures itself to record the Star Trek program and make it available for on-demand viewing. With ReplayTV, your prime time television is essentially available whenever you want it.
In a smart home, ReplayTV can interface with your broadband connection or dial into a secure server to download the latest channel-guide information, every night. ReplayTV even resets the clock so you never have to worry about the perennial flashing “12:00.” ReplayTV makes all its calls late at night to minimize any impact on your home phone-line usage.
And you can log onto MyReplayTV.com to program recordings while you're away from home. With MyReplayTV.com, whether you are at work or on vacation, if you can get online, you can setup recordings, view your personal Channel Guide or Find Shows. “It's the first truly remote, remote control,” they claim.
We think the cost is very reasonable, starting at $299 for a 40 hour storage unit. There is a monthly $9.95 fee for accessing the scheduling information — but you can get a lifetime subscription for $250.
One more thing: SonicBlue — the maker of ReplayTV — has a strong line of whole home audio and video electronics, many of which are being designed to interwork around the foundation of the ReplayTV box. Expect to see this grow into a much more multipurpose server that offers audio and video adjunct services in the future.
TiVo has a DVR-only product line that is has some features that ReplayTV does not — such as being able to recognize reruns from new episodes. UltimateTV has web access and interactive TV functions. And with UltimateTV and the DirecTV/Tivo combo, you can record two TV shows at once – how about them apples! You should check out all three providers when you go to purchase.
Going forward, the majority of DVR capabilities will be incorporated into cable boxes and satellite receivers themselves. The different firms will undoubtedly continue to license their technology to cable companies, satellite firms, consumer electronics firms, and others.
Depending on which unit you buy and which cable, satellite or broadcast area you are in, some of these DVR on-screen program guides will not totally map to the actual channel listings in your area, or may not fully describe the channels (like just saying “Pay-Per-View” in each PPV listing, instead of the movie being shown, for instance). Be sure to ask about support for your specific content provider, and check out the web sites listed above — particularly the AVS Forum — for details on this stuff. These are often more inconveniences that anything else, requiring more set-up time — you just might have to do some jiggering to get it to look the way you want it. Over time, this problem will disappear, but for now, the situation favors those companies who have their DVR functionality bundled with the cable or satellite receiver. Be sure to ask your entertainment programming provider if they have specific deals with a particular DVR player, and watch for program listing issues.
Setting up your device can be challenging for those not familiar with consumer electronics. Try these sites for more info: AV Science Forum (http://www.avsforum.com), Planet Replay (www.planetreplay.com), and the TiVo Community Forum (http://www.tivocommunity.com). Planet Replay even has a capability where ReplayTV owners can swap programs they recorded. Power out during your favorite episode? Check out Planet Replay to see if anyone else has it! (We’re not sure of the legality of this swapping service, so it might not be around for too long, but certainly, the file swapping capability of the ReplayTV units certainly make it easy to share confidentially among friends.)
Those who have DVRs in their homes swear by them, and say it has changed the way they use their TV. We agree. We end up watching more of what we want to watch, and less of ‘will do.’ But in the spirit of a Smart Home, DVR functionality should be accessible all over the house. Think about centrally locating your DVR with access to your video network, as we described in Chapter [XX]. Also, ask your DVR vendor about their options for networking in the home. SonicBlue’s audio products enable remote audio players via HPNA over phone wires in the home; expect this whole home approach to flow over to video as well.
DVR on your PC — flexibility to the max
As we mentioned, DVRs can come in other form factors as well, and a few companies have great products for the PC that provide DVR functionality without having to add another box to your entertainment system. After all, a DVR is basically a video recording and playback device with a harddisk — sounds like software on a PC to us!
SnapStream Media’s Personal Video Station (www.snapstream.com) is a great example of what you can do with a spare PCI slot in your PC, some RG59 cable, and an IR blaster. For a mere $50 ($80 if you don’t have a video capture card for your PC), you can add a PVR to your household. What’s more, if your PC is on the network (which by now in this book you know we insist on that), you can watch video from just about anywhere.
With SnapStream, you are set to watch, record, transfer, etc., video programs from your viewing sources. With one click, you can record your favorite shows. A national viewing guide drives your program selections.
You run a patch cable (RG-59 or RG-6) from your settop box to your PC. For the actual, hands-free recording, the PC will set the satellite or cable box to the right channel at the appropriate time. There are 2 ways you can do this:
1. Certain satellite boxes (SONY, RCA) have a low speed data port on the rear of the box. You can purchase a cable from SnapStream (about $15) which will connect that low speed data port to a serial port on your PC. Now, when you record something at 10pm, SnapStream will be able to tune the satellite box with that serial cable to the appropriate channel.
2. You can purchase something called an IR Blaster (about $15) from SnapStream. The IR Blaster will connect to your PC again through a serial port. The IR Blaster “learns” the remote for your cable box or satellite and then when a recording is scheduled, SnapStream will use the IR Blaster to tune your cable box or satellite box to the correct channel before starting the recording. The IR Blaster must be in direct line of sight with the receiver and can be 15 ft away at least.
You can control and edit recordings using the web-based interface from anywhere in the world too. A built-in stream server lets you watch the videos over the home network or over the Internet.
What’s cool about the SnapStream product is that you can also move your favorite TV shows to your PocketPC handeld (via PocketPC module, $30) or your laptop — forget about renting DVDs for that flight! For those of you who are more comfortable with a PC interface for everything, the SnapStream solution is about as simple and flexible as it gets.
If you are interested in also making your own DVDs of these shows, Pinnacle’s Bungee DVD (www.pinnaclesys.com) allows you to turn your Windows XP-based PC into a likewise powerful TV recording solution! With Pinnacle Bungee DVD, anyone can record television shows, movies, or video from almost any source and burn it to a CD or DVD disc that plays in your set-top DVD player. Pinnacle Bungee DVD performs many of the same functions as the SnapStream – it turns your PC into a digital video recorder, so you can watch TV on your PC, store all your favorite shows on the hard drive, pause live television, and more. The Pinnable device is an external DVD read/write drive that connects via your USB connection. Another cool addition to a smart home.
These PC based options can be as powerful and more flexible as the DVR boxes you buy in the store — that’s because of all the smarts already in your PC. Hooking your PC up to display video on a TV is easy and was covered in Chapter [XX] — in addition to the Entertainment Anywhere box from X10 (www.x10.com), there are a range of new wireless devices coming on the market to make it easier for information to flow from your PC to your entertainment centers, so the prospect of accessing recorded programs on any TV in the house — even if those TVs are not on a LAN — is becoming extremely easy.
While CDs were a fabulous improvement over cassette tapes and vinyl records, it’s easy to grow a collection of a couple of hundred disks, and then you have to shuffle them if you ever wanted to play DJ at a party. There are CD-jukeboxes that will allow you to store up to 200 or more CDs in a device, but that’s hardly scalable as you add CDs for your kids as well.
What you really need is a CD server! Break down, get one, you’ll be glad you did. And here’s the one you want: Request, Inc.’s AudioReQuest system (www.request.com). Capable of storing as many CDs as you have (you can add additional storage by their swappable harddrives or getting higher capacity units), this is the ultimate in CD listening pleasure.
What’s so fun about this device is that you can use your TV set screen as your interface to your music collection. You can create playlists from albums and artists stored in the system. Loading (‘ripping’) a CD into the system is as easy as opening the tray and closing it. The system determines whether the CD is already in your system and then looks up the name of the album and artist in its internal database of 650,000 albums; if not found, the system checks a master database via connection to the Internet.
But what’s really nice about this system is that you can add other units to the system and network them together. You can get one for your boat, your ski condo, or your second home. Danny has a unit in his house in Maine and in Connecticut, and they stay synchronized with each other. (So no more, “Damn, I left that CD at home!) What’s more, multiple units enables you to always have a back up your collection in case (Heaven Forbid!) your harddisk were to crash.
The TV display is not just for picking and playing your music, but also can be entertainment in itself. You can pick from several visual themes that morph with the music in all sorts of different patterns, colors, and gyrations, and gives you a glimpse of what the 60s must have really been like!
But wait, there’s more…tie this with a great Crestron (www.crestron.com) color touchscreen interface, like a CT-1000, and you can remotely control the CD server from anywhere in the house.
Since the songs are stored in MP3 format, there’s a range of things you can do with them. Via PC access, you can stream them over your home network to a range of speaker outlet options, you can download them to your favorite MP3 Rio player from SonicBlue (www.sonicblue.com), or other MP3 device. The music is accessible via Samba, a protocol by which a lot of PC-related machines share files, so you can download files from anywhere you can access a browser. By the time you read this, Danny will have figured out how to sync it with his MP3 player in his car.
Higher end units also support WAV and FLAK (loss less compression) protocols, for those who want audio fidelity.
It’s truly the future of music in the entertainment center. An entry level Nitro system will cost about $2500, and scale up from there depending on storage capacity and extra features for the true aficionado. This is the box you put in your home if you are serious about music!
Let’s face it — the world revolves around remote controls. Whoever owns the remote control rules the household. No one wants to fess up to this fact, but it’s true. In any household, the person who changes the channels really wears the pants in the family. (Pat and Danny can safely say this because neither of them gets to hold the remote control; we’re just called upon for our reprogramming talents.)
Remote controls, though, are becoming quite the science. And remote capabilities are finding themselves embedded into all sorts of devices, from cell phones to PDAs. We discussed voice control of your whole home system in Chapter [20], and told you about neat panels in the home to control your home entertainment center, like those from Crestron (very neat!).
But the concept of a universal remote control to consolidate the seven remotes on the top of the TV is now several generations into development. We’re well beyond the simple $19.99 Universal Remote Control you buy at Radio Shack; we’re talking products like the $99 Harmony Remote Control (www.harmonyremote.com) that do more than allow you to control different devices — they help you control different actions. Harmony’s remote has a LCD screen and links to your PC via a USB connection to program the remote to tie together multiple actions at once, in order.
Let’s say you want to listen to a CD on your AudioRequest CD server. You have to turn on the TV, set it to video mode, turn on receiver one, set it to CD, turn on receiver two, set it to CD, scroll down to your desired playlist, and hit play. Harmony reduces this to a simple one click task — it makes schedules and listings available on your remote’s screen, and when you click on it, all the requisite actions on your CD player, receivers, TV set, etc. are all done in one quick series of signals from the remote to the devices. So Harmony is designed to help you perform activities like Watch TV, Play a CD, Play a DVD, etc. That’s what we call click and play!
Harmony takes it even one step further in making it easy for you to train your system. Instead of requiring all sorts of code guessing and entries, Harmony lets you put your old remote and Harmony remote head-to-head, and the Harmony learns from the old remote by pushing select buttons. Harmony checks its databases for the unique signature of your remote, and logs it into the system. If it does not find the remote, it walks you through a more detailed process of learning your remote.
The latest version of Harmony’s remote has added number buttons, a docking and recharging station, and bi-directional RF to a PC home server or set-top box for automatic updates. Trés cool. For the price and simplicity, every smart homeowner should check out these Harmony remotes.
Going higher up the price range, you find a range of special remotes for controlling entertainment centers, including the popular Philips Pronto line of remotes (pronto.philips.com). Universal remotes are constantly changing, and vary in prince from a couple of hundred dollars on up. They can have touch screens, color screens, voice commands, etc. A lot of it depends on what you really want out a remote control. The more you spend on your entertainment system, the more you’ll probably spend on your remote controls.
Some of it starts to merge the entertainment and computing realms. Philips and Intel have co-developed a platform (iPronto) that combines home theater system control and 802.11b wireless broadband internet access, allowing you to control you’re AV system components, checkout program guides, and surf the web from a tablet-like platform. Initial pricing is $1700.
There are remote controls for your PC as well. Your PC can play MP3s, CDs, DVDs, PowerPoint presentations, and more, but without a PC remote control, you're handcuffed to the keyboard and mouse. That’s why you’re probably going to want to hook up your PC to a Streamzap PC Remote (www.streamzap.com), where you can control everything using a simple hand-held remote—just like you control your stereo or TV.
If you have MP3s, now you can relax anywhere and skip songs, change volume, mute, pause, even load your favorite albums and playlists all with the touch of a button. If you like all the streaming radio stations on the Internet, you'll like them even more when you're relaxing on your couch. With a Streamzap remote you can adjust the volume, hit mute to answer the phone, or switch stations with a click of the remote. Watch DVD movies on your PC? No more jumping up to pause, fastforward, or rewind. Got a TV in/out card? Now you can use a remote to change channels, volume, even record TV shows on your hard drive for later.
Better yet — train your Harmony Remote with your StreamZap PC Remote, and have one remote that can control your entertainment AND computing devices. Wow!
Want to use your PDA as a remote control? There are a couple solutions out there. Philips has a ProntoLITE ($19.95) for turning Palm-based PDAs into a universal remote control. Universal Electronic’s Nevo (www.mynevo.com) is a more ‘on-board’ solution. Initially built into Compaq’s iPAQ Pocket PCs, Nevo is a remote control operating system that uses the infrared port of the PDA to control devices. What’s cool about the Nevo concept is that it removes a lot of the hardware design from the remote vendor and allows them to focus much more on the software and usability itself. For people who want the flexibility of a big color screen, you can take advantage of the dropping costs of PDAs to get a world class universal remote. Neat idea if more PDAs ship with it on-board. Check the Nevo site if you are looking at PDAs.
Remote control for your car?
Well it sounds very 007, but we assure you that there are valid reasons for having a remote control for your car — other than wanting to drive through a crowded parking garage with the bad guys shooting at you. In fact, remote controls for your car can be quite ordinary and useful. Many remotes for cars now come with the ability to automatically open minivan doors or turn on the lights. But one of the most useful products for anyone who lives in very hot or very cold weather is a remote car starter. It’s like having a personal butler who will start your car, turn on its heater/defroster or air conditioner, unlock power doors and trunk, and turn off the alarm system. Fancier ones, like the AutoCommand Deluxe Remote Starter w/ Keyless Entry & Alarm from DesignTech International (http://www.designtech-intl.com) have a built in car finder capability as well as a remote headlight control. AutoCommand can be programmed to automatically start your vehicle at the same time the next day, at low temperature, or at low battery voltage. Never come back to a dead battery again! Scared of leaving the keys in the car while you run a store to get something? Its Quick Stop option lets you remove the ignition key and temporarily leave the car running with the doors locked while you quickly run into a store. All that for $200. What a deal!
And if you really want to get sexy — try out Midas from UEI (http://www.uei.com/). Midas is a contemporary looking watch with coverage of most remote control functions for TVs and cable boxes. Well it solves the problem of losing your remote in the couch!
Finally, got kids? Try the weemote, from Fobis ($24.95 from www.weemote.com). This is a remote designed just for kids aged 3 to 8, so you can limit the channels they watch, and make them responsible for their own remotes (in other words, keep their paws off your’s.) A typical setup with a cable ready TV takes about 5 minutes.
A great site to check out remote control options is Remote Central (www.remotecentral.com). They have great reviews and track the newest remotes on the market.
Entertaining for the evening? Why not treat your guests to a stylish in-home concert of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas K. 310, K. 333, and K. 533? Don’t play the piano? No problem, Baldwin Piano (http://www.baldwinpiano.com/) has a solution for you — ConcertMaster.
Your smart home can plug into your Baldwin, Chickering, or Wurlitzer piano and play almost any musical piece you can imagine. ConcertMaster works in several ways: as a standard piano, as a player piano that utilizes special digital data instead of the rolls used by old-fashioned ones, as a playback system (with built-in amplified speakers) for your own CDs, and even as a karaoke system. You can even plug it into your home network’s VCR and watch the pianist creating the music your piano plays back for you. If you play the piano a bit yourself (which is always nice if you own one), you can also use ConcertMaster to record your own performances — a great tool for learning.
You can plan an entire evening of music from any combination of sources, to play in any order. The internal ConcertMaster Library comes preloaded with 20 hours of performances in five musical categories: Classical, Country, Jazz, Pop, and Rock. You can create up to 99 custom library categories to store your music (for example, one for your favorite Aerosmith piano solos). With up to 99 songs in each category, you can conceivably have nearly 50,000 songs onboard and ready to play, without having to insert a disk or CD.
This system is not just one-way — you can record, too. A one-touch Quick-Record button lets you instantly save piano performances. How about recording your child’s piano recital? You can use songs that you record and store on floppy disk with your personal computer to enjoy the benefits of popular editing, sequencing, and score notation programs.
ConcertMaster is both easy to use and flexible. Its operation is directed by either the stationary controller that attaches to the piano or a handheld, wireless RF remote control (as discussed in Chapter 5). You can inconspicuously fit the stationary controller under the front of the piano or on the side. Small pinlights show power status, software source, and input signals at a glance. ConcertMaster can perform at extremely low volume levels, so you can have a normal conversation, even right beside the piano.
You can use your smart home’s Internet connection to download the latest operating system software from Baldwin’s servers, too. Encore!
On a beautiful, starry night, you want your child to see the space shuttle zooming across the sky, so you grab your trusty telescope and wait for it to appear across the horizon, right? Lots of luck. The space shuttle is moving at more than 17,500 miles per hour, and keeping a good focus on an object moving that fast is nearly impossible.
Impossible, that is, unless you have a smart home (wild clapping!). Imagine sitting on your couch and watching the night sky through your home-network-controlled telescope.
Start with one of the finer telescopes, say a Meade ETX or LX200GPS series (http://www.meade.com/). With its super high-tech, motorized system for rotating the lens across the sky, the LX200GPS is a wonderful platform for satellite observing and tracking. As you use a handheld control to select specific planets or galaxies, the telescope slides over to that area of the sky.
If you want to get star-crossed, you can add an electronic eyepiece, a CCD camera, Meade’s AstroFinder or Epoch 2000 software and a connector cable set to connect to your PC. Point and click to any celestial object on the PC display and watch as the telescope moves to the object and places it in the field of view.
If you are like us, you probably have a hard time telling the difference between a satellite, a star, and an airplane, … much less a supernova. But not the LX200GPS, which has an onboard Autostar II database of more than 145,000 celestial objects including all sorts of planets, stars, comets, galaxies, and even satellites (including the International Space Station, the Hubbell Telescope, the Space Shuttle, and classified U.S. and Russian spy satellites). In truly Dummies fashion, you can just an automatic guided tour of “Tonight’s Best.” And you can upgrade your telescope’s database directly from Meade’s website, via the PC connection.
Of particular interest are the Iridium Telecommunication Satellites which are very frequent and very, very bright — some of the Iridium satellites will outshine Jupiter, Venus and other bright objects in the sky. You’ll see a ‘flare’ — caused by the ‘main mission antennae’ of the Iridium satellite being at the proper angle to reflect the sun’s rays back to your location — as it transits the sky.
Here’s a tip from Chris Peat, at a cool Web site, Heavens-Above (www.heavens-above.com): “Satellites are only visible when they are lit by the sun, but the observer on the ground is already in darkness. These conditions are met only when the sun is below the observer’s horizon, but not too far down or the satellites themselves are also in the earth’s shadow. So normally, satellites are only visible a few hours after sunset, or before sunrise. In the middle of the night the sun is simply too far below the horizon to light them. In summer however, especially at latitudes far north or south, the sun is never too far down, even at midnight, and satellites can be seen the whole night through.”
The Meade telescopes start at range from about $500 to $5000, plus any accessories you might want to add on. Great fun for the kids and you!
Okay, some people like to sing in the shower, some like to hang out in the Jacuzzi forever, and some like to watch the news in the morning. Well now, you can do all of these things, at the same time!
We can’t go to the Jacuzzi Whirlpool Bath (http://www.jacuzzi.com/) Web site without crying. This is probably the ultimate for a smart home enthusiast – far more important that a great home theater. We’re talking about our bathroom time here.
Jacuzzi shows you why their name is synonymous with bathroom comfort with three neat products – a shower, a bath, and a home entertainment bathing center, all outfitted with the latest in smart home comforts.
J-Allure (http://www.jacuzzi.com/products/showers/designer/lux_jallure.html) combines a full-size whirlpool bath — which has a luxury shower system and soothing steam bath — with a color television/VCR monitor. A digital control panel offers easy access to the whirlpool operation, underwater lighting, and temperature read-out. Talk about wired.
Because the tub’s a Jacuzzi, it’s outfitted with the total range of powerful water jet streams. J-Allure’s whirlpool bath offers four PowerPro body jets and two lumbar jets. Additional luxury features include two multifunction showerheads: one is fixed in an overhead position, and the other is height-adjustable and may be handheld. Twelve vertical jets provide an invigorating body massage. The steam bath has a sculpted seat.
But most importantly, the J-Allure comes standard with a built-in stereo/CD system, complete with four speakers. The unit is also available with an optional television/VCR monitor. Cable ready, this feature allows you to enjoy the morning news or your favorite movie. The multichannel, 9-inch unit is waterproof and includes a remote control. You can adapt the monitor for DVD or WebTV.
All these features for a mere $12,500 retail price.
If that’s not enough for you, you can try a Vizion (http://www.jacuzzi.com/products/baths/private/vizion.htm) – a whirlpool bath that sports 10 strategically placed hydrotherapy jets. While bathing, you can take advantage of Vizion’s built-in state-of-the-art entertainment center, complete with a high-definition, 10-inch flat screen television, DVD/CD player, AM/FM stereo and four surround-sound speakers. Furthermore, a unique floating remote control offers fingertip access to the jet system, television and underwater lighting.
All this for only $18,000 (price does not include installation).
And if this does not meet your fancy, try a home theater in a tub – their La Scala model (http://www.jacuzzi.com/products/baths/private/la_scala72.htm) treats you to the ultimate home theater surround sound and entertainment system right in the luxury of your own whirlpool bath. With plenty of room for side by side bathing, you can nestle in for a long soak and the finest motion picture experience ever imagined. La Scala showcases a 42-inch high-definition Plasma monitor as well as a surround sound system so powerful it can make even the most subtle nuances spring to life. Whether you choose to watch the latest DVD, your favorite sports event or simply unwind to a relaxing CD, you’ll be assured of one thing: an experience nothing short of sensational. Of course it comes with the now-standard floating remote control, which features fingertip access to all of the innovative features. Oh, and there are 10 fully adjustable jets too, in case you even needed those. Price: black or white — $29,000, platinum — $31,000.
And you thought we were crazy for wiring the bathroom.
Driven by PCs in your smart home, new toys from LEGO MINDSTORMS and LEGO Spybotics — can really start to transform your kids’ early life. These toys are the traditional LEGO building bricks on steroids and robotic steroids.
LEGO MINDSTORMS, targeted at the 12+ year old crowd, lets you design, build, and program real robots by using the standard LEGO brick system along with a microcomputer core and special bricks with light and touch sensors. With The LEGO Company’s Robotics Invention System (RIS), you can create light-sensitive intruder alarms, line-tracking rovers, robotic soda-can retrievers, or even robots with collision and edge detection. Expansion kits allow you to create sports machines, monster creatures and much more.
The brain of the RIS is the RCX brick, which looks like a big LEGO brick with an LCD screen in it. The RCX is really an autonomous microcomputer that you can program by using your smart home’s PCs. The RCX uses sensors to take input from its environment, processes data, and signals output motors to turn on and off. You can also download the system’s upgradeable firmware to your PC over your smart home’s Internet connection, and then send it via infrared to the RCX.
You build your robot by using the RCX and LEGO elements. Then you create a program for your invention by using RCX Code (a simple programming language), which you download to the RCX by using a special infrared transmitter. Your creation can now interact with the environment, fully autonomous from the computer. Want to get other programs? The LEGO MINDSTORMS Web site http://mindstorms.lego.com/ has scads of advice and downloadable software.
The LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotics Invention System 2.0 has a suggested retail price of $199.99 each. Each expansion set runs about $50.
For the younger crowd (9+ years), LEGO Spybotics offers challenging robotics experiences in a format more structured and theme-based than the LEGO MINDSTORMS RIS and with a lower price tag.
Spybotics is an on- and off-PC gaming experience enabling children to combine the virtual experience of video game play with real-time interactivity in the physical world. With Spybotics, children role-play as secret agents by customizing and downloading action and strategy games to their Spybots in the form of “missions.” They then complete single or multi-player missions with their high-tech partners — any one or more of the four unique Spybots. The objective: successfully complete the mission to earn status and rise up the secret agent ranks!
In typical LEGO fashion, children not only build their robots, they also construct the mission’s physical environment using household objects — such as shoeboxes, soda cans and desk lamps — to recreate the conditions of the mission per the software video brief. Players use infrared remote control to maneuver the interactive Spybots. The Spybots’ suggested retail price is $59.99.
From Smart Homes for Dummies®, 2nd Edition by Danny Briere and Pat Hurley. Copyright© 2003 Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Content reproduced here by permission of publisher. For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc.
