Home automation on iOS

[xraydoc]

I'm working towards integrating as much home automation technology on to my iOS devices as possible. I'd like to hear other people's solutions and ideas.

• I have a couple Izon wifi cameras which work nicely via their iPhone & iPad apps.

• I just upgraded my burglar alarm system to support Honeywell's Total Connect so I can arm/disarm and receive event notifications.

• Will probably invest in a couple Nest wifi thermostats.

Anyone know a good system for controlling lights? iOS X10 support (is that still a valid technology or am I dating myself?)?

Any other things that you can think of that might be useful or fun to add to an iOS-based home automation system?

 

[D-Back]

I'm working towards integrating as much home automation technology on to my iOS devices as possible. I'd like to hear other people's solutions and ideas.

• I have a couple Izon wifi cameras which work nicely via their iPhone & iPad apps.

• I just upgraded my burglar alarm system to support Honeywell's Total Connect so I can arm/disarm and receive event notifications.

• Will probably invest in a couple Nest wifi thermostats.

Anyone know a good system for controlling lights? iOS X10 support (is that still a valid technology or am I dating myself?)?

Any other things that you can think of that might be useful or fun to add to an iOS-based home automation system?

Im picking up the Iris system from lowes (lowes.com/iris) tomorrow. It hooks up to your router and has options for security, lighting, thermostats, energy monitoring, door locks and cameras. I will give some impressions when I get it all up and running.

 

[popcorn-in-sac]

lights? iOS X10 support (is that still a valid technology or am I dating myself?)?

I used to use an X10-based system at home, but just recently changed over to one based on INSTEON from smarthome.com. I use software from Perceptive Automation (Indigo) to perform computer-based automation tasks. It's got an iOS app that works with it also. I've been pretty happy with this setup so far, but I'm not that far into it either. I believe Indigo is fairly extensible and supports more than just X10/INSTEON features as well.

Mark

 

[Benbikeman]

I've just bought a Belkin Wemo, but that probably makes more sense for people who want to control a few things rather than as part of a larger home automation project (at least until they add more products).

Here's the review I posted of it elsewhere:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H7338B/A/belkin-wemo-switch

Remember those remote-controlled plug sockets with a nasty white remote which you couldn't get rid of 'cos your universal remote was infra-red and the plug used some radio frequency or other? The Wemo is that idea updated.

A plug socket adapter much like the ones of old: plug into a socket and plug your lamp or whatever into that. But instead of a nasty white plastic remote, there's an iPhone app, and instead of a direct radio-control it uses wifi.

It should win an award for being the world's easiest wifi device to set up. I was seriously impressed. Plug it in, and it creates its own wifi network. Connect your iPhone to that network and you're talking to the plug, which asks for your normal wifi network details. Give it those, the plug connects to the router and it switches off its own wifi so your phone automatically reconnects to your router. Very, very neat.

Literally one minute after taking it out of the box it was working.

You can manually switch it on/off using your phone, or you can set up rules, or both. Rules can be days and times, or activation of a motion sensor (you can buy a pack with one socket and one sensor), or the operation of another switch, or elapsed time, or … Lots of options.

The next clever bit is that all those rules are stored not in the app but online, in your Wemo account. So they continue to run whether or not the app is open, and you can operate your Wemo devices remotely over the net.

A single socket is £40. A socket and motion-sensor is £80. I just bought the socket for now, but I can see this getting out of hand if I'm not careful … Other devices are promised (light switches, etc).

Ben

 

[DanMac608]

running instruments from command line

Hi

So far im only running instruments from instruments gui with a real iphone device.
And i have some Difficulties running it from Terminal command line shell.

the command im running is:
instruments -t myphone.trace -w mydidnumber myapplicationname -e Testcases.js -e results

the response of the command is:
Instruments Trace Error : (null)

Any help appriciated
Thanks