Keeping It Green: Columbus Zoo and Aquarium Installs Peerless-AV® Xtremeâ„¢ Displays
Utilizing its internal digital content network, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium's staff has found it easier to connect with visitors and share relevant and interesting information.
How Small Businesses Can Use Smart Technology
Home automation technology doesn't only save business owners time and money. It also helps boost their reputation as tech savvy, environmentally friendly organizations.
New Insteon Home-Automation Hub Goes To $39
Home-automation supplier Insteon is out to grab market share with the launch of a new flagship hub with an introductory price of only $39, compared with its predecessor’s $129.
It’s promoted as the lowest-priced hub on the market. It’s also free with select kits that include home-automation devices, such as light switches and smart plugs.
The company didn’t say how long the introductory price would last.
Despite the lower price, the new hub adds such key enhancements as a 50 percent increase in wireless range, field upgradability, easier setup and a status screen that displays live updates of connected-device status. The hub is also smaller than its predecessor. The company didn’t specify a range.
“We’ve demolished barriers in order to reach the broadest customer demographic,” said CEO Joe Dada.
Insteon’s hub connects to more than 200 Insteon-brand devices, including lamp dimmers, thermostats and LED bulbs. The products use dual-band wireless RF and powerline technology for redundancy to ensure control signals reach all connected devices in a home. Products are monitored and controlled from iOS, Android and Windows smartphone and tablet apps and from computers.
NUZii Smart Life Is A Self-learning Home Automation And Cloud Storage System
Anyone looking to increase their online privacy and keep their files, documents and media safer but also accessible through a cloud storage solution, may be interested in the new system called NUZii.
NUZii has been designed by a company of the same name and has taken to Kickstarter to raise the necessary $65,000 to help the cloud storage and home automation system make the jump into the manufacturing stage.
Its creator explain a little more bout their new cloud storage solution and home automation device :
“The NUZii is the World’s First Smart Life Platform. By combining a powerful cloud storage solution, a self-learning home automation system and internet security with one unified interface, we re-imagined how the Internet of Things should be.
NUZii has a very advanced yet easy-to-use cloud storage system. It backs up your content from all of your devices so that you can access them from anywhere. You can also share your files instantly and securely with anyone, which means you don’t have to wait to upload 100 holiday photos before sharing them.
Sunnovations Launches Kickstarter Campaign for Aquanta
Water heaters, despite their ubiquity and role as the 2nd largest consumer of home energy and hub of its plumbing network, have largely been excluded from the "smart home" trend.
Aquanta changes that by being the first water heater controller to combine near-universal retrofit-ability, networked home compatibility and advanced analytics that enable "learning" controls for smart cycling of its heating. The Kickstarter campaign allows interested parties to support Aquanta's development and receive an Aquanta unit upon its commercial availability in mid-2015.
"Most people don't know that water heating is the 2nd largest consumer of energy in their home," said Sunnovations Chief Executive Officer Matt Carlson. "Aquanta is designed to save homeowners money, while at the same time provide enhanced controls and maintenance alerts like water heater leak detection. Water heaters are a sometimes overlooked but critical part of the fabric of our lives, and Aquanta will bring groundbreaking convenience, control and insight to their operation and energy usage."
Aquanta is designed to be easily installed on a home's existing water heater, and will work with the vast majority of hot water storage tanks found in North America and elsewhere in the world. Its enabling technology is its proprietary enthalpy sensor, which can highly accurately measure both energy going into a water heater as well the energy being used. Aquanta's software uses the sensor data to "learn" and control the water heating according to a homeowner's usage patterns. The user interface will be web-based, with integrations planned into the major smart home platforms on the market.
Best Buy is slashing prices on all manner of smart home gear this Black Friday
Starting on November 27 and running through the first of December, Best Buy will offer discounts on the Nest Learning Thermostat, and Dropcam HD network-connected security camera. The two products normally retail for $250 and $149, respectively, but will go for $200 and $100 during the Black Friday deal.
Also included in the deals is the Philips Hue Starter Kit ($200), which includes a set of three Wi-Fi connected, app-controlled, color-variable LED light bulbs and an accompanying network hub. Best Buy won’t be selling the kits at a discount, but if you’re willing to dish out 200 bucks on one, they’ll throw in a Philips Hue Bloom Accent Light ($80) for free.
And the best part? You won’t be forced to wade through crazed crowds of Black Friday deal hunters to get your hands on these gizmos. In addition to offering these deals at brick-and-mortar locations, Best Buy will also offer them to customers who visit its website.
LittleBits' New Kit Connects Old Appliances to the Internet
LittleBits, which makes brightly colored modules that snap together to create electronic circuits, is now selling a $249 DIY kit for those who want to turn their analog abodes into WiFi-enabled smart homes. The set extends the use of the recently launched cloudBit, giving users a menu of projects that include a remote pet feeder, a smart air-conditioner, and a garage door monitor. It essentially allows people to build their own IoT hardware without having to wait for companies like Nest, GE, or Apple to roll out another product.
“The electronics industry pretty much remains a very top-down industry that is very much controlled by large companies, by experts, by engineers,” says LittleBits CEO Ayah Bdeir. “Very few people are able to gain access and innovate in it.” Her three-year-old startup makes it as easy to customize hardware as it is to assemble Ikea furniture.
The Smart Home Kit comes with 14 bits, including the cloudBit as well as five new ones: an MP3 player, a temperature sensor, a number counter (which, for instance, can be attached to the temperature sensor to display Fahrenheit or Celsius values), a threshold (which can turn a sensor into a trigger module), and an infrared transmitter (which can be paired with an AC switch to turn appliances on or off). The company includes an infographic poster cataloging a host of potential projects, from a device that adds toilet paper to your digital grocery list when someone takes the last roll to an alarm that sounds when your fridge is left open too long. Makers can control the devices through the LittleBits-hosted Web app; their own API, or IFTTT (If This Then That), a service that connects to a channel like Twitter or Facebook to trigger an action such as a tweet or Facebook status update.
Will Lasers Be The Future For Projectors?
In the future, I expect the familiar projection bulbs that we have used for decades will be phased out and replaced by laser/LED technology, as this light source puts out much less heat and are quieter, allowing for more placement options.
Upcoming Tradeshow, Conference & Exhibition Summary
Jan, Feb, Mar 2015
With the New Year comes the end of the Holiday Tradeshow lull and of course CES and the many events centered around it!
European manufacturer of the wireless home automation system FIBARO comes to U.S.
Fibar Group, European manufacturer of the wireless home automation system FIBARO comes to U.S.
The Pros, Cons of Software vs. Hardware RAID
With today's vastly improved, more powerful CPUs, the performance differences between hardware and software RAID options have been virtually eliminated.
Smarten Up: Win More Home Buyers Through Effective Audio Branding
As a homebuilder, you have an opportunity to convey numerous positive sounding audio messages about your brand - from the quality of your work to the top-quality products that go into your work - throughout your showhome.
Miller Outdoor Theatre Takes the Leap to Digital Signage Displays
Houston's Miller Outdoor Theatre Installs Peerless-AV® Xtremeâ„¢ 55″ Daylight Readable Display to Increase Advertising and Enhance Electric Vibe
Start-Ups Place Bets On The Smart Home
The fledgling home-automation market is growing quickly and continuing to attract new companies. Some of the newest entrants include Ecovent, Snupi Technologies, Cielo WiGle and Droplit. iDevices, the maker of Bluetooth kitchen and outdoor-grill thermometers, also plans an entry.
The newcomers enter a market whose U.S. unit sales will grow in 2015 by 20 percent to 24.9 million units and grow at 20 percent rates in 2016 and 2017, a Parks Associates/Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) report shows.
The units include smart thermostats, networked cameras, smart door locks, water-leak detectors, smart smoke and CO detectors, smart light bulbs and switches, smart plugs and outlets, smart power strips, and the like.
Despite the gains, only 10 percent of U.S. households have at least one smart-home device, and no single device has an ownership rate exceeding 6 percent, the Parks/CEA survey found. The survey also found that 62 percent of broadband-connected households in the U.S. are unfamiliar with smart-home products, almost 70 percent don’t know where to buy them, but 20 percent intend to buy one or more smart-home devices in the next 12 months.
Busy Samsung stirs many pots, from smart home to VR to health tech
Samsung on Wednesday detailed its latest tools for developers -- including a new sensor-filled wearable reference design -- to get them excited about making apps customized for its devices.
Samsung is hosting its second annual developers conference at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, the same venue where Apple and Google host their yearly confabs. The conference is part of Samsung's effort to work with startups and become a bigger part of Silicon Valley. The South Korean company has long been at the forefront of hardware advancements, but it has struggled with software and services.
Samsung hasn't said how many people have registered to attend, but last year's event, which was held at a smaller venue, had 1,300 participants. The company has more than 200 people lined up to speak over the course of three days.
In particular, Samsung's developers conference will be focus on digital health, smart home, virtual reality and wearables.
The company introduced software development kits for the sectors, including the Samsung Digital Health SDK, a beta SDK for Samsung Smart Home and an S Pen SDK. The New Look SDK allows developers to take advantage of the curved screen of the Note Edge phablet, and a Gear S SDK lets app makers create software that applies to the smartwatch's standalone features. The Gear S includes its own cellular modem, making it the first Samsung smartwatch that doesn't need to be constantly connected to a smartphone.
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