19 Sep 2009
I checked out this Andy Stanford-Clark guy and he's a really lovable geek, but having the ability to turn his lights on from his mobile phone while sitting 100 miles away or from within second life is slightly missing the point. My company is working on technology that does not just monitor your home environment but takes decisions based on that information FOR YOU. So it someone in second life tries to turn on my lights my computer would say "Why - its daytime and there is nobody in the room anyway".
Don't get me wrong - I absolutely agree that the wired home is part of the solution, but I don't want to be tweeted that the light is on in a room that's not occupied, I want it to turn the light off and not bother me with the details, apart perhaps from periodically telling me how much CO2 its saved for me!
21 Sep 2009
Hi nextgenheating,
Thanks for the response - interested to learn more about your new technology - do you have any other details?
The twittering house is really only a very small (but visible) part of what Andy has been doing. He was influential in the creation of 'homecamp' - - a community of home automation hackers. He is also the architect of some real time message brokering protocols and software that I imagine would be of interest to you.
In my humble opinion, the wired house is a really important step towards domestic energy/resource efficiency. Developing intelligent software that can then optimise utility usage is a further step down the road. What Andy's been doing is absolutely critical to both steps!