I have to wait an hour for my cold living room to fully heat up after arriving home. It'd be great to remotely turn on the fireplace (thermostat). That's the biggest selling point for me.
Automation of lawn sprinklers is a nice idea as well, although there are cheap timers you can use and leave on 24/7 (e.g. set to sprinkle for an hour every other day).. turn off the sprinkler system completely in Winter. An exception is if you live in a rainy area where you'd want to turn off the sprinklers to save water.
I don't care for fancy garage openers, and lights or TVs, which are already easy to flick on/off. How long does it actually take to open the garage door via a mobile phone, considering Internet latency? I'd hate to have to pull into my driveway and wait for minutes before I can drive in.. what if the Internet box disconnects?
I will look into building a small 60 watt MiniITX server running Smoothwall or lightweight Linux, and hook it up to my thermostat for remote heat operation. Send an e-mail (from any Internet station or phone) to the server box containing a command, time to execute(optional), and password. A motion sensor may be included to automatically turn off the thermostat if there's no movement in a few hours since remote operation. The tricky part is communicating with these devices in a Linux box.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
malone @ Jan 10th 2008 11:15AM
I have to wait an hour for my cold living room to fully heat up after arriving home. It'd be great to remotely turn on the fireplace (thermostat). That's the biggest selling point for me.
Automation of lawn sprinklers is a nice idea as well, although there are cheap timers you can use and leave on 24/7 (e.g. set to sprinkle for an hour every other day).. turn off the sprinkler system completely in Winter. An exception is if you live in a rainy area where you'd want to turn off the sprinklers to save water.
I don't care for fancy garage openers, and lights or TVs, which are already easy to flick on/off. How long does it actually take to open the garage door via a mobile phone, considering Internet latency? I'd hate to have to pull into my driveway and wait for minutes before I can drive in.. what if the Internet box disconnects?
I will look into building a small 60 watt MiniITX server running Smoothwall or lightweight Linux, and hook it up to my thermostat for remote heat operation. Send an e-mail (from any Internet station or phone) to the server box containing a command, time to execute(optional), and password. A motion sensor may be included to automatically turn off the thermostat if there's no movement in a few hours since remote operation. The tricky part is communicating with these devices in a Linux box.