“Apple is getting close to rolling out its smart home plans in a big way,” Aaron Tilley reports for Forbes. “The company [last week] pushed out a little noticed update to its set-top box, Apple TV, to make it support HomeKit, according to a person with knowledge of the program. HomeKit is Apple’s protocol for allowing connected home gadgets to connect safely and easily in iOS.”
“The update means that Apple TV could be the hub that unifies the fragmented smart home industry, allowing you to turn on your lights or unlock your door from an iPhone remotely using Apple TV as a bridge device,” Tilley reports. “Apple TV has both Bluetooth low energy and Wi-Fi wireless technologies, both of which Apple has made clear are the primary technologies that connected devices will communicate in the iOS environment. Apple TV is a device that is always on in your home, making it ideal as a hub to communicate with smart devices.”
Tilley reports, “Anyone with a third generation Apple TV and with the latest 7.0 software update will now likely have a HomeKit-enabled central hub, whether they know it or not.”
Read more in the full article here.
Yeah, I need those HomeKit IR control squirts for every A/C in my apartment so I can automatically have the A/C on in the room I want. The afternoon sun heats up the 30cm thick concrete wall and it needs to be cooled several hours before I go to bed.
you could try a low tech solution – like get a heat sink on that thing… have your building superintendent plaster the outside cinder blocks in mud. This will act as a heat sink and keep the building cool.
This building has 180 apartments with the same ‘”sunny afternoon hot bedroom syndrome”, most apartments between 5th and 30th floors. Maybe a 75 meter high building wide banner would help. The trick I’m using is, I have always the A/C on in the room I’m not in and it also depends on which wall is getting he sun, and where the outside compressor unit is.
You could buy a low tech Christmas tree timing for $10 and get the same effect.
Good idea—plug a high-amp device like an air conditioner into a low-amp switch designed for Christmas trees. Why don’t you plug a vacuum cleaner into a UPS next? (Someone did that in a small office I worked in and nuked the UPS. This particular UPS was one of those that looks like a fat power strip—definitely not up to vacuum cleaners or laser printers.)
Run water off the roof down that wall to create the worlds first high rise waterfall!
collect the now warm water and pipe it through the hot water pipes for your evening shower!!!
The TV has one big flaw and that is lag. When Apple solves this, and some patents looks like it has, it will be a major disruption in the set-top box world. You can already play four player games where every iDevice has it’s own screen as well as what’s on the TV. This is without having to buy a new game for the TV. You can mirror an iDevice or a Mac. The lag is what kills it. I think they will introduce a new model with the new iPads. Keep it at $100.00 and it will blow everything else away.
IF The Home Kit is anything like the Health Kit DO NOT EVEN TRY TO BUILD A IMAGINARY STICK HOUSE… YOU’LL DIE !!
Right!
That would be a good solution for you !!