Home Automation with iPad

You need to look beyond iPad. In your scenario, it would merely be an interface for controlling these devices - getting these devices to respond to input other than what they have available right now will be the real challenge.

Google HAL 2000, (Home Assisted Living), and watch out for patent infringement.

evantoman said:

Hey guys, I have this idea and I would like to hear feedback as well as what to buy to fulfil my goal.

So my idea is to connect everything to be controlled wirelessly from an iPad. Like the lights, air conditioning, TV, maybe even phone, etc. I also want to have speakers all over the house, so that if I play music it will play throughout the house. But I want to be able to select, for example, different rooms to play in. Like, I can play my music to the speakers in my bedroom while I'm in there, and then when I go to the living room I can chose to play it through those speakers. (I think this can be achieved through AirPlay, but I don't know what kind of speakers to buy)

I kinda have like a Tony Stark setup envisioned, I guess. Any input or ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

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Indigo for Mac can take care of controlling lights and A/C. I have that set up in my house for my theater room, and sometimes use it for the Christmas lights and my "out of town" lights. It has control options for pretty much everything (lights, garage doors, security, A/C), but I don't think it really handles distributed music systems. It has iTunes control options, but that's about it. You can set it up so that it's internet accessible as well. So I can change lights from the road if I need to. I've done this when out of town to make lights turn on and off at certain times of the night to make it look like someone is home.

If you want to go to full home automation with multi-room controllable music, you're going to be spending a bit of money, although it depends on how you want to do it. If you just want to switch a single source to multiple rooms using AirPlay and separate amps, that's pretty simple.

Using iPad as "Remote"

Can I use my iPad 1 as some sort of remote to control music in my house? I have 50GB of music on an external HD, plugged into my desktop upstairs. My reciever/amp is located downstairs int he utility room. Can I use AirPlay to remotely play songs through my home speakers? (This music would not be stored on the iPad, I would want to access it the same way as you can access other iTunes libraries ont he same network) Is this possible? Any help woudl be appreciated!!

jeff.bird said:

Can I use my iPad 1 as some sort of remote to control music in my house? I have 50GB of music on an external HD, plugged into my desktop upstairs. My reciever/amp is located downstairs int he utility room. Can I use AirPlay to remotely play songs through my home speakers? (This music would not be stored on the iPad, I would want to access it the same way as you can access other iTunes libraries ont he same network) Is this possible? Any help woudl be appreciated!!

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Of course it's possible. Just put an Airport Express with your amp downstairs (and set it up correctly as part of the same network), plug the cable between the two, start tunes in your iTunes library upstairs using your iPad Remote app, and select the Express as the "speakers". Done and done.