Imagine you have already installed your Internet-ready lighting dimmer switches and have been using these as standalone programmable gadgets to control your lighting system for energy savings and security purposes. Your programmable thermostat has been doing very well in contributing to conserve electricity and giving you convenience in not having to manually readjust it every time you feel uncomfortably hot or cold. But you’re not satisfied – these utilities and all other appliances, such as your entertainment systems, are all automated as standalone. But if these are compatible with the Insteon protocol (or even if they’re not, you can interface with the protocol – more on that in another post), then you could centralize the control of all the systems and appliances mentioned above through your iPhone or PC.
The SmartLinc INSTEON Central Controller is an affordable and flexible central controller, perfect for enhancing any INSTEON home automation network. SmartLinc integrates INSTEON technology with any web-enabled mobile device through Wi-Fi and cellular communication, allowing you to control or create timers for INSTEON devices or scenes from inside your home, in the backyard, at work, in the car or on vacation halfway around the world!
A simple plug-in installation sets up in minutes and will allow a web-enabled phone or PDA to control your INSTEON network from almost anywhere. SmartLinc has been designed for optimal use with an iPhone or iPod touch as a mobile touch screen; however, there are customizable user-downloadable server applications that provide a flexible interface for any web-enabled device. As an added feature, SmartLinc includes IP camera support, giving you the versatility to incorporate watching and controlling your IP enabled surveillance cameras through you web-enabled interface. SmartLinc puts the power of managing your entire INSTEON home automation network in the palm of your hands. [SmartHome]
It would be great to see your smart home eventually have a centralized controller via PC or iPhone, leveraging all the standalone automated utilities previously installed. Now you can fully control all these things from your backyard, your room, your office, or from the airplane as you fly across the Pacific, as long as you have access to the internet.
Our examples above are INSTEON-compatible gadgets; nevertheless, there are other protocols that may be used and other products that can be installed, such as the Vera Home Controller, which works with the Z-Wave protocol. There are other alternatives in centralizing your home control system, and you can check Smart Home USA or Smart Home for these options.
Keep an eye out for more posts featuring central control in other protocols!
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I am interested in your home automation products but there is one problem. All you products seem to be a plug in and away you go sort of system. I am an electrician a house and I would like a system that I can cable from my PC to relays within the switchboard that control various circuits throughout the house. Also the system would have to be compatible with the Iphone/Itouch and be capable of streaming video from ip installed cameras. So basically can you help me any software that I can program myself that has some sort of controller board that connects to the PC with I/O outputs that would control relays in my switchboard that is compatible with the ITouch and has video streaming capabilities? Is there such a thing or am I chasing my tail here?
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