[CEDIA 06] Exceptional Innovation’s Sci-Fi House
September 13th, 2006 — By Barry Willis
CEDIA Expo kicked off at noon Wednesday with a demo of Exceptional Innovation’s house of the future. Assembled on the spot directly across the street from the Colorado Convention Center, the house is outfitted with EI’s “life/ware� connected products, including “life/point’ on-wall touchpad controllers, “life/link� RF conversion modules, and huge-capacity “life/storage� servers.
The concept is that everything in a “life/ware� house is interactive, and interactively controllable—from the lighting, window shades, and security system, to the televisions and audio systems, to the oven in the kitchen. Cat5 cabling steams throughout the house, home-run to a central system room very much like a shrunk-down version of a corporate mainframe computer room. An EI system can be controlled from any touchpad, from the home’s primary office room, or from a remote location via VPN technology.
Freedom of choice is a strong theme, with a bewildering array of entertainment, information, and productivity possibilities within reach from almost anywhere in the home. �Life/vision� takes picture-in-picture to the four-option level, with four channels running separately in each quadrant of any TV screen. Any one of them can be maximized at an instant should something compelling happen. The system also responds to intruders as homeowners wish, with everything from loud music to a silent call to police. Complete system installed in a new home should run about $80,000, conceivably rolled into a mortgage, according to an EI exec. Labor-intensive retrofits will cost more.
and How much such system will cost me?
Comment by Meshal Al-Salim March 7th, 2007 @ 5:54 amThe entire concept and approach for this and other so-called “smart” houses is utterly asinine. EIGHTY THOUSAND BONES to keep me from having a cardiac from going over and running up the shades? From having to wait for dinner to cook after I get home? Having one centralized system to run these utterly simple tasks — many of which are vanishingly trivial — is farcical. Conceptually, it is like an old mainframe computer. WHY, like a Stalinist style dictatorship, have all this automated control centralized? So Microsoft and others can get their mitts on controlling it, and charge for the system. the decision making is centralized for the benefit of the software and hardware peddlers. Why do you need to have your thermostat run by a centalized computer? I have two thermostats in my house. One for the basement (hooked up to electric radiant heating) and a standard one upstairs. The upstairs one, made by Hunter, has four programmable times and temperatures for every damn day, I set it up once, it works perfectly, and I’m comfortable 100% OF THE TIME. It raises the temp when I’m gone in the summer and drops it in the winter. Is the temperature in each room within a degree or two of the other through the day? Probably not. Can you notice? Does it matter? Do you have to mess around with your thermostat settings every three hours? Absolutely not. I haven’t changed them in six years. This thermostat BTW retails for about $60. I installed it and set it up myself in 45 minutes. Oh, wait! Driving home, I suddenly decide after four months that the house should be two degrees cooler when I get there! Now with a phone call I can save myself from horrible instant immolation by spontaneous combustion when I arrive. Oops, the call just got dropped right when I was changing the setting, the thermostat is now set for 58 degrees. (And look out for that truck!) A system that would control the temp more closely in each room to save energy would be worthwhile, but it had better be implemented a lot cheaper than this system. You want lighting control? Put a motion senstive switch in each room and hook it up to a timer, so it stays on for 30 sec or so after you leave, and what more do you need? You wouldn’t even have to go over to a touchpad. Music? In 1968 we had whole house music — it was basically an intercom system. Was the interface “user-friendly?” YES — because we weren’t totally brain-dead, you actually thought to go and TURN IT OFF if you were going to watch a TV show at 5:00 PM or whatever. Oh you may have had to walk into another room, but we survived to tell the tale. 30 room mansion too big to make the trek? Well, just yell at Jeeves to go do it for you — after all, you’re already paying for And all this of course begs the question — WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SYSTEM CRASHES??? Then do you lose your wireless music AND your video service AND your espresso machine AND your A.C AND your remote controlled blinds (also available self -contained and decentralized from Levelor and others right now, photocell controlled as well) AND your garage door opener AND your alarm system. . .at least you could still flush the damn john. . .oh LET ME GUESS. . .but why not have all this conrtrolled by one system? After all, it will be as simple and reliable as. . .WINDOWS. Wouldn’t it have been great if, instead of wasting so much R&D on all this superfluous geekiness, that Microsoft would have say, after FIVE YEARS, made Vista actually a REAL improvement over XP???. . .obviously my priorities are hopeless. And BTW AV/computer/media corporations, thank you so VERY MUCH AGAIN for what we all were wanting so much. . .the HD videodisc format war. . .oh yes, you are always working, as usual, so tirelessly in our interests. . .
Comment by Sambalita's Daddy March 18th, 2007 @ 10:08 pmDelightful rant to follow
Comment by Sambalita's Daddy March 18th, 2007 @ 10:11 pm